Striking the Balance

“Playin’ ball-what else?” Mutt answered. “I started out number two catcher for the Quincy Gems in the Iowa State League-my first time ever in Yankee country, and Lord! was I lonesome. Number one catcher-his name was Ruddock, Charlie Ruddock-he broke his thumb second week in May. I hit 360 for a month after that, and the Gray’s Harbor Grays, out in Washington State, bought my contract. The Northwestern League was Class B, two notches up from Quincy, but I was kinda sorry to leave just the same.”

“How come?” Muldoon asked. “You ain’t the kind of guy to turn down a promotion, Lieutenant, and I bet you never was.”

Daniels laughed softly. He looked out toward the Mississippi, too. Itwas

a big river here, but not a patch on what it would be when it got down to his home state, which shared its name. It hadn’t had the Missouri or the Ohio or the Tennessee or the Red or a zillion other rivers join it, not yet.

Only a quarter of him was thinking about the Mississippi, though. The rest looked not so much across Quincy as across almost two thirds of a lifetime. More to himself than to Herman Muldoon, he said, “There was this pretty little girl with curly hair just the color o’ ripe corn. Her name was Addie Strasheim, an’ I can see the little dimple in her cheek plain as if it was yesterday. She was a sweetie, Addie was. I’d’a stayed here all season, likely tell I woulda married her if I coulda talked her pa into it.”

“You get the chance, you oughta go lookin’ for her,” Muldoon said. “Town ain’t been fought over too bad, and this don’t look like the kind of place where a whole bunch of people pull up stakes and head for the big city.”

“You know, Muldoon, for a pretty smart guy, you can be a natural-born damn fool,” Mutt said. His sergeant grinned back at him, not in the least put out. Slowly, again half to himself, Daniels went on, “I was twenty-one then, she was maybe eighteen. Don’t think I was the first boy who ever kissed her, but I reckon there couldn’t have been more than a couple ahead of me. She’s alive now, she’s got old, same as me, same as you, same as everybody. I’d sooner think of her like she was, sweet as a peach pie.” He sighed. “Hell, I’d sooner think of me like I was, a kid who thought a kiss was somethin’ special, not a guy standin’ in line for a fast fuck.”

“World’s a nasty place,” Muldoon said. “You live in it, it wears you down after a while. War makes it worse, but it’s pretty bad any old way.”

“Ain’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Mutt said.

“Here.” Muldoon took his canteen off his belt and held it out to Mutt. “Good for what ails you.”

“Yeah?” Nobody had ever offered Mutt water with a promise like that. He unscrewed the lid, raised the canteen to his lips, and took a swig. What came out was clear as water, but kicked like a mule. He’d had raw corn likker a time or three, but this stuff made some of the other moonshine he’d poured down feel like Jack Daniel’s by comparison. He swallowed, coughed a couple of times, and handed the canteen back to Muldoon. “Good thing I ain’t got me no cigarettes. I light a match and breathe in, I figure I’d explode.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit,” the sergeant said with a chuckle. He looked at his watch. “We better grab some sack time while we can. We start earnin’ our pay again at midnight.”

Daniels sighed. “Yeah, I know. An’ if this goes just right, we push the Lizards back a quarter of a mile down the Mississippi. At that rate, we can have the whole damn river open about three weeks before Judgment Day.” Once he got the complaints out of his system, he rolled himself up in a blanket and fell asleep in a minute and a half, tops.

As he was dozing off, he figured Captain Szymanski would have to kick him awake, because he was down for the count. But he woke up in good time without the help of the company commander’s boot. Mosquitoes made sure of that. They came through the glassless windows of the Wood House buzzing like a flight of fighter planes, and they didn’t chew him up a whole lot less than getting strafed would have.

He slapped at his hands and his face. He wasn’t showing any other bare skin, but that was plenty for the mosquitoes. Come morning, he’d look like raw meat. Then he remembered the mission. Come morning, he was liable tobe raw meat.

Muldoon was awake, too. They went downstairs together, a couple of old-timers still hanging on in a young man’s world, a young man’s game. Back when he was a kid fighting to hook onto a big-league job even for a little while, he’d resented-he’d almost hated-old geezers who hung on and hung on and wouldn’t quit and give the new guys a chance. Now he was a geezer himself. When quitting meant going out feet first, you were less inclined to do it than when all you lost was your job.