I did okay, but I didn’t eat Hoey’s lunch. My steadiness had him hassled, though. Mister JayMac’d gone out to Oklahoma to recruit a new shortstop, so Hoey saw himself on his knees under a guillotine blade. If I made a play, he had to. If I knocked a darter out of the air, pounced on it, and got back on my feet to nip the runner, he had to match my heroics. Mostly, he did. But the heat-from the sun, from Mister JayMac-made him snippish and petty. He tried to rag me into misplays. He asked me how far I reckoned beginner’s luck would carry a dumb-fart Okie in the CVL. It irked him I couldn’t answer. He’d’ve enjoyed an insult-slinging free-for-all.

“You’re a showboat, Dumbo. I’d tell Mister JayMac to stick one in your ear, but that’d be too easy.”

Hoey was scared. About Dunnagin’s age, he’d never spent six minutes, much less six seasons, in the bigs. With time out between ’36 and ’40 peddling Ohio real estate, his whole career had played out in the minors: the Carolina League, the Southern Association, the Appalachian League, the Sally League. A wife and four pre-Pearl Harbor rug rats’d kept him out of the Army, but a smidgen less talent than he needed, or bad luck, had kept him out of the bigs. The worry in Hoey’s good-looking mug came through loud and clear. I wanted to outplay the jerk, but I didn’t want to unemploy him. How would he tell Mrs Hoey? How would he feed his rug rats?

“Yall get in here!” shouted Mister JayMac, red-faced and sweaty. He’d soaked his shirt out. His T-shirt showed through like a filmy corset. His trousers were sopped, from waist to thigh, like he’d sat down in a wash tub. We circled him on the infield grass, amazed by his energy, just like he wanted us to be. You had to hand it to him, though. He didn’t huddle in the dugout with a jar of white lightning and a hand-held Jesus fan from Stiffslinger & Sons’ Christian Mortuary.

“How’d we do?” Reese Curriden said. Curriden’d played third, with relief from Burt Fanning, and he’d done fine. You just had to hope he didn’t go down with a sprung hamstring. A pitcher or a utilityman would have to replace him, and no sub could do it. The Hellbenders weren’t exactly the Georgia Light and Power Company. Like most other CVL clubs, we had a shortage of utilitymen.

“Better than yesterday,” Mister JayMac said. “Yall seem to’ve remembered what this”-he held up a dirty baseball-“is for, after all. Praise Saint Doubleday.”

“Screw Saint Doubleday,” Buck Hoey said. “Who’s starting where the next time we play for keeps?”

“Whoa,” Mister JayMac said. “I got to see how my rookies measure up in the hitting department.”

“Look at our box scores,” Hoey said. “Check our averages. Knowles and me didn’t fall off a milk wagon three hours ago. It’s too damned hot for this chickenshit.”

“So they say out to Camp Penticuff too,” Mister JayMac said. “Except it isn’t, not for Army recruits. Men’s lives hang in the balance. Likewise this team’s.”

“I meant my chickenshit remark respectfully, sir.”

Everybody laughed.

“A queer bit of English on it then,” Mister JayMac said.

“Should Trapdoor, Lamar, and I start pounding the pavement for defense jobs and new housing?” Hoey said.

“No one here today’s in danger of the ax. Only my next lineup’s in doubt. We’ll play an exhibition so I can decide.”

“Now?” Peter Hay said.

The other ballplayers called Hay Haystack. He had yellow hair and waddled like a haywagon. Mister JayMac always had him running, but he could pitch and that kept him on the squad. As soon as he said, “Now?” a half dozen Hellbenders linked arms and spieled:

“Huge Peter Haystack,

Please move your hulk.

Your gut goes by flat car,

Your butt goes by bulk.”

Hay just grinned and pounded a fist on Turkey Sloan’s head, mashing his cap in.

Sloan’d started the chant. He’d got half the team to join in by waving his arms like a chorus leader. Mister JayMac let it happen, seeing it as a tension-breaker.

Turkey Sloan backed Double Dunnagin at catcher and handled most bullpen chores. Turkey didn’t mean, back then, what it does now-a brainless jerk, like a turkey that lifts its head to watch it rain and ends up drowning. Sloan’d got his nickname because he caught, and ballplayers at the turn of the century, thinking home plate looked like a serving plate at Thanksgiving, started calling it the turkey.

Anyway, Sloan had a catcher’s body build-big shoulders, big thighs, and a teddy bear’s friendly mug. He also had brains. He’d written the “Huge Peter Haystack” rhyme, among others, and the team saw him as its unofficial poet laureate. A weakness for Mother Goose doggerel and a lot of time on his hands had helped him claim the title.

I glanced around.

The only other guy not laughing was Jumbo. He squinted at us like a scowling Jehovah. You figured he’d been born during a Puritan sermon with a dirge as background. You figured if he ever told a joke, it’d start with “Inasmuch as” or something else lawyerly.

“No, Mr Hay, not now,” Mister JayMac said when everybody’d quieted down. “In”-he checked his watch-“forty minutes. Take a break.”

Players cheered, like kids let out for recess.

Hoey said, “Hey. Who’s gonna be playing who? The regulars versus the rubes?”

“With that breakdown,” Mister JayMac said, “some of yall’d have to play yourselves.”

“All right, then. Who’s pitching for who?”

Mister JayMac held us there on hooks. He didn’t want to tip his hand yet.

“Fess up, Mister JayMac,” Parris said. “What’s forty minutes gonna mean? Announce your pitchers.”

“Tell us!” a whole slew of players cried.

Mister JayMac made calming motions. “Easy. Don’t herniate yourselves. The rookies and their pals will play behind-”

“Ankers!” Hoey said.

“Astute deduction.” Mister JayMac smiled like a kindly grandpa with a bandolier full of machine-gun ammo.

“And who for us?” Hoey said. “Who for us?”

I wanted to know too. Which pitcher, after our break, would I have to step in against? Quip Parris? Nutter, the ex-big leaguer? Mariani? Or Dunnagin’s roomy, Jerry Wayne Sosebee? They all looked tough, even the Eye-talian, a 4-F punctured-eardrum.

But Mister JayMac said, “Darius Satterfield.”

“You’re kidding,” Hoey said gleefully.

“Darius Satterfield,” Mister JayMac repeated.

Hoey shadow-boxed a tornado of noseeums. “Hot dog!”

Sudikoff, doomed to play with rookies, cried, “Jesus, why you wanna throw that speedballin nigger at these new boys?”

“At you, you mean.” Even with his spikes in red Georgia clay, Hoey walked on a bed of cumuli, giddy as hell.

Showily, Mister JayMac checked his watch. “Yall’re down to thirty-six minutes. Be back at ten-fifteen. Nickel-a-mmute fine for latecomers.”

“Don’t sound so fine to me,” Quip Parris said.

“Beat it!” Mister JayMac said.