Short Story - All The Way Home

Hello employees!

Honestly, I didn't think I'd get any takers for this Patreon's top tier, but Brett Klaczyk is a madlad and I'm deeply indebted to him for his support. When I asked him what he'd like his story to be about, he said baseball, so I can only hope that I did my research properly, cos I knew nothing about the US' National Game.

Brett was kind enough to allow me to share the story with all of you, so please feel free to take a SMALL work break to enjoy the latest work of your benevolent founder.

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Of all things - and an argument can be made that it contains all things - Baseball’s primary blessing is that we all stand equally in its fields; we all are judged equally for our merit, and we all of us run under that equal sky, pressing ever forward for one end, that the heart of man does cherish most

going home

                ~one~

He sounded like a piglet that had been ripped from its mother. 

Eeeeeeerrgggghhhhaaaa eeeeerrrgggghaaaaaa

Cody hated him, a dark hatred borne of difference and inconvenience, and the more the boy screamed the more that hatred smothered like tar any lingering concern, pity, fear. His fingers gripped tighter and tighter over the bat in his right hand.

Eeeaaarrrrrrgggghhhhh ahh ahh eaaahhhhhhhhhgggghh

Play had stopped completely now and the assembled crowd busied itself in not gawping. The pitcher stood still, studying the ball, turning the leather over in his hand. The catcher had moved away from the plate, finding great interest in the stitching of his cloth cap. Upfield, a small group of players were fervently whispering to each other, waiting for Coff to return with one of the New Jacks that normally patrolled the gates of Arlette’s Pork Plant. 

Aaaahh aaaaaah aaaaahh

The boy had settled into a violent rhythm of shrieks, occasionally rising in pitch, his vocal chords tearing and rending. He sat on the ground, pounding the earth with the flats of his sack shoes kicking up small waves of dust. The strain on his purple face disgusted Cody, like his eyes were about to pop out of his skull, like his teeth were about to wrench themselves free of his jaw. His chin jutted as far forward as he could, his neck at such a godawful stretched angle that it looked like it could break with the pressure. 

Cody wasn’t going to move, the plate was his. He’d seen almost his entire workbreak bleed out under the July sun, picking at the grease under his fingernails and smelling the fat on the air as it drifted, heavy as a curtain, on the southwestery across the Hudson and on towards Hoboken. It was only his second game for the Arlettes, still ‘getting his skin’ as the boys put it. 

His first he’d been struck out swinging wild ‘like a blind man beset by hornets’ as his foreman Coff put it, and that was as close as he got to play. The rest of the afternoon he’d sat in under the corrugated sheet of tin that hung out over the bench that Arlette had lined up along the brickwork of the factory, looking out over the field as ‘the Swiners’ (as those in the district called them) played amongst themselves.

Aeeeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrhhhhhhhhhhhgggggggg

A particularly violent screech brought Cody blinking back. There were about ten minutes left before the whistle would sound and they’d drop bats and head back inside. Cody was not budging. 

They hadn’t noticed the boy at first. He must have crept through a gap in the fence from the street beyond. They often drew a small crowd to their short games, kids from the neighbourhood, mothers taking the thick air with their babes, or maybe scouts from Hendersons cannery two streets over, who’d be looking for plays ahead of the weekend games, and catching a broken pinky finger for their trouble if caught. Cody had been studying Dickie’s pitches and all the ‘candies’ he’d been throwing. Coff was waxing his ear off about how curveballs were ripping the spirit out of the game, how deception wasn’t what made it fun, when Cody first heard the boy. 

The cries hadn’t sounded human to begin with, in much the way that humans don’t when labouring under true distress, when they leave behind the shame of being seen, heard, understood. Pitched regular bleats like a goat, Cody thought, making a break from eating trash off Wright Street, as Coff was instructing him on the holes in his game.

“The way the game is now,” he had said, “With all the tricks, you play better doing nothing at all. The boys are so het about curving every which way that you’re guaranteed a walk if you just let alone.”

Cody had wondered why no one had kicked the goat along when he saw Dickie halt his pitch and drop his arm to his side. Following Dickie’s shift in vision, Cody turned and saw the boy sitting not fifty yards away, near a slit in the fence that separated the field from the street. 

His age was indeterminate, the grime and dust saw to that. Hell, he could have been anywhere between fourteen and twenty. He wasn’t a child, that much struck Cody, as what were assumed to be beast- or baby-cries raised new concern when coming from someone who’s spent time in life. 

He had a mangled mouth, the skin of his upper lip had been cut and stitched poorly, giving him a trench of a scar that ran down from the side of his nose, straight across his lips and almost to the cleft of his chin. As he screamed the scar tissue looked taut and ready to split, and even to Cody, a man well-acquainted with meat, it was a chilling sight. Someone from the field had shouted at the boy to scram but that had just caused the bleats to grow into more violent screeches. 

Dickie had tried to carry on, had pitched and got a man out, signalling Cody’s turn at the plate. As Cody lifted himself from the bench, an argument erupted over distraction and fair play. Cody took a bat from the bin and tried to accustom himself to the weight of it in his hand as the sound of screams began to pitch over the top of the ruckus taking place at the home plate. Cody felt his heartbeat start to quicken. 

Cody had always been sensitive to noise. It was why he hated the city, the way unexpected noise seemed to erect walls around him, walls that closed in, giving him no space, no room. He looked at the man, saw him sitting, clutching the ground with both hands and letting loose such awful noise that all Cody could be at first was confused. He was past that now and leaning towards dark thoughts, when the asshole on third, Beake, suddenly broke into stride towards the kid. Cody felt his feet move underneath him and made to stop what he knew would take place.

“Why don’t you just shut your damn mouth,” Beake shouted at the figure slamming his feet on the ground. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” 

Even as he spoke, the young man screamed louder and louder, forcing Beake to shout louder to try and break through, and Cody felt an icy hand close around his heart and a pounding in between his ears. 

Aaeeeerrrrgghhh eeeeeeeeaaaaaaaa  aaaagggghhhhh

A number of players were making their way over but before they could reach him Beake lifted up his knee and planted a boot hard into the screaming boy’s shoulder, just above his heart. The boy fell backwards, still screaming, as a number of onlookers that had assembled behind the gap in the fence and peaking over the slats began to yell out equal recriminations and encouragements to Beake.

“Not enough mustard!”

“Hey now!”

“No call now!”

“Paste the feather-brain!”

Beake raised his foot for another kick, as Cody reached him, dropping the bat in the dust and heaving himself sideways into the man’s body. One-footed, Beake tumbled over, smacking into the hardwood of the fence with a low thud, and sprawling down into the dirt. As he started to rise, Cody took both hands to Beake’s overalls and pushed him back down to the ground.

“The kid’s sick,” Cody found the words slip from him unbidden. “You can see that!” 

The hoots and hollers from the fence found fresh volume. 

“Gibface is driving me crazy,” shouted Beake, spitting up at him. “Get up offa me, damn you!” 

Cody pushed him again and was about to shout over the ruckus, when he realised that he didn’t need to. The shouts had abruptly stopped, and even Beake was no longer glaring at him but over his shoulder, a stone-struck expression on his face. Cody turned to see the kid with the mangled mouth stood to his feet, holding Cody’s bat in his hand. Beake began to wriggle backwards out from under Cody’s grip.

“Now let’s just walk this back,” Beake stammered. “No reason for anything else.”

Cody stood to his feet, looking at the kid, who gripped the bat with two fists, holding it out in front of him, with no clear intention one way or the other. Cody stood his ground between the kid and Beake, as the kid held the bat, stared at it, chest heaving, small mews occasionally escaping torn lips. 

Mmmm hmmm 

“Figure you’ll just hand that on over now,” Cody said quietly. 

Manglemouth met his eye, and instead of doing what Cody thought would come next and all hell breaking loose, he made a move towards home plate. He moved slowly, one foot in front of the other, as the other players gave him a wide berth, the catcher retreating almost as far as the bench. When the kid got to home base, he stopped and turned towards Dickie, who stared at him with mouth flapped open.

Cody took a few steps away from Beake, who scrambled to his feet and pounded off towards third with a cloud over him. Cody approached the plate and took position behind the kid, catching Dickie’s eye.

“Pitch him,” Cody said. “Let’s just keep it all calm and friendly. Can we?” Those last words were lilted upwards, directed at the field.

Dickie ran his fingers along the stitching of the ball and under-armed something soft at the kid with the bat, who swung wildly above it, as Cody flinched, half-expecting the bat to come flying out of Manglemouth’s grasp and clatter him in the face. Instead, the kid just straightened up, and readied himself again. Cody threw the ball back to Dickie and nodded.

Another pitch, this time faster, came sailing over from Dickie and this time the kid didn’t even swing as it crossed him. Cody snatched the ball from the air and said 

“Two,” almost to himself.

The kid was still, didn’t turn, didn’t smash the ground with the bat. He just stood there, waiting for the next pitch. Cody returned in and waited as Dickie wound up. He loosed the ball and this time Manglemouth turned, switched his hips, dropped the bat and reached forward, the ball smacking into his outstretched hand with a meaty thwack. No one moved, not even the kid. After a few seconds, Cody cleared his throat.

“You’re supposed to hit the ball,” he said.

The kid turned to him, a small patch of his teeth exposed through his cut mouth and said, with an unmistakable Virginian twang, “Ah know how to play baseball.”

Coff emerged through the main gate, the heavy one that separated the factory floor from the field, with an officer in tow. Manglemouth scrambled away across the dirt, bending forwards and dipping through the gap in the fence. His footsteps could be heard pounding up the street on the other side, as Cody bent to retrieve his bat from the dirt. 

It was only when Cody straightened up to look at Dickie that he realised - the kid had dashed off with their ball. 

The whistle shrieked overhead and half the players near jumped out of their skin.

                  ~two~

July 26, 1861

Dear Sir,

It is with relief, and no small amount of shame, I report that I am still here amongst the living. 

I have taken stock of as many Brooklyn boys as I could amongst the fallen, and have enclosed a list of names to the best of my knowledge. If the company is unable to report these lost boys home, perhaps you might take up the inevitable task of doing the rounds and making the families aware.

We are moving back towards Washington, and a great solumness hangs over the camp, a stark turnaround from the optimism I reported in my last letter. As all of us fresh fish took towards Bull Run, the boys still sang and joked as though this was all a great outing, and the workers had found one another. The Swiners ate and drank together, as did the Canners from over on Willbrush Street, those under the employ of Brooklyn Raptium could often be found huddled and cussing to the air the myriad cruelties of Magnus, their foreman back home. Now, each band has seen some loss and the enterprise has lost its spirit. I myself witnessed Hosea Jackson take a musketball to the shoulder on Henry Hill. He was retrieved and we’re carrying him with us, but infection has set into the wound. His outlook is poor.

Despite assurances of our advantage in numbers and weaponry from the Brass, we faced a much larger force of Greybacks than expected. There are whispers of intrigue and sabotage, but that strikes me merely as the dark shadow of the boys’ former optimism. I don’t rightly know where blame lies. We were too few, they were too many, and all of us young; that appears to be the shape of it.

The retreat has been haphazard. We have faced pursuit by small companies of rebels, who have attacked our position in fits and starts from concealment. The terror this has brought to the camps has persuaded the captains to split the battalion and forge disparate routes back to Washington. The boys grumble about easy prey, but when I spoke to Lieutenant Warren he assured me that our increased maneuverability makes our return more certain. I have allowed myself to be convinced on this point for now, hard as it has been to see some of the lads disappear over hills and forestry, and hoping to catch them for a game when next we meet.

A few days after our retreat began, the first attack took place. The boys were trying to patch spirits with an inning or two of baseball as late afternoon bled into twilight and the baking heat started to thin. I must confess that I’ve attempted to start a game whenever I’ve had a free moment, as I’m keen not to lose my form. The sun had briefly set when musket fire hit our outfielders from the treeline. The cracks of Springfields peppered the ground as Harry Briggs, our left field, fell, and the boys scattered for our overnight barricades and returned fire. We didn’t see much but as night drew in, the occasional crack would sound from the trees and while casualties were low, the effect on the men’s nerves has been utmost. The Captains circulated orders that we would march at first light, and to hold position until visibility returned.

I would ask that you not relay this next piece of correspondence to Momma and Ruthie. I hesitate even in the telling of it to you, sir, but perhaps you might understand why I took the decision.

A few hours into the attack, I took it upon myself to crawl the few hundred yards out to where the men had been playing our game. After a number of games during our approach we had whittled our supply of balls down to just the one, and for all I knew this might be the only ball left in Virginia. If we were to make our way home, I wished to retrieve it. I apologise for the foolishness, and I am certain that were I to find myself back in that moment, with a cool, rested head, I would have made that same mistake. Sir, it was our last ball.

As the men kept watch as best they could, I crawled forward through the grass in the pitch black. The treeline couldn’t have been more than fifty yards away, and though I would often stop still and listen, I heard nothing beyond the wind’s progress through the leaves. I reached the canteen we’d placed to designate the pitcher’s station, and began to feel around in the darkness. As the musketfire first rang out, Dickie had been set to pitch, and told me that he’d dropped the ball when making his run back to the lines. Though my fingers closed on the cool metal of the canteen, I could feel nothing else as I swept my arm in an arc, when I first heard the noise.

It was a series of muffled cries, like mewling through a hand clapped across the mouth, or an animal breathing through dull pains. I froze and listened again. 

It sounded again, and as my eyes adjusted to the slivers of moonlight that the cloud cover allowed, I saw a figure crouched on the grass in the distance. I slowly readied my rifle, but knowing that a shot would give me away, I crawled slowly towards the figure, gradually prizing my bayonet from the scabbard on my hip.

As I neared the shadowy figure I dragged myself too roughly on a patch of earth and must have given away my position, as the figure let out a slightly louder wail. A report of gunfire sounded from the trees, hitting far wide of where I lay but the shock of it left me with my face buried in the grass and my heart threatening to squeeze itself out through my ribs. When my panic had slowed and I felt secure enough to lift my head, I found I was not alone.

A young man sat in the darkness, a few paces from me, rifle in one hand, and a baseball in the other. In the darkness it was hard to make out if his uniform was grey or blue, but I knew he was a rebel. Sir, I recognised him as the screaming boy I told you of all those years ago, the thief Virginian with the scar that ran across his mouth. The same scrap of teeth could be seen through his mangled lips in the faded light and he stared at me, his chest still heaving from its own internal struggles.

Looking back I’m not sure exactly how many seconds or minutes elapsed, I find myself devilled by hindsight. It felt like a long while, I staring at him, and he at me. His rifle was trained at my face and in my earlier seizure of fright, my bayonet had slipped from my hands, so I kept my palms to the earth, choosing to let be what would be. After a time, when silence had fairly deafened us long enough, he lowered his rifle, placed one hand to the ground, before turning and moving away into the night. The clouds had thickened overhead, shielding the moonlight and it only took a few steps before he was completely vanished. I reached around for my blade, and instead my hands closed upon a baseball. 

As I crawled back in the darkness, I thought I made out the shadow of the rebel one last time, but as a cloud parted above me, I saw it instead to be the still body of Harry Briggs.

I made safe my return to the barricade, and at first light we set off without further incident, save our ragged spirits and sleepless gait. We have been split now for a day, and it’s been several since the last attack. We’re two days hike from the Washington border, and the brass feel assured enough that the rebel companies in pursuit have returned home. We hope for safe passage to the same.

When safe in Washington I will write again, hoping that, in the meantime, this letter balms poor Momma’s spirits. I was much afraid for her from your last report. 

Til next,

Your loving son,

Cody

                ~three~

THE RICHMOND DISPATCH

August 8, 1884

VICTORY FOR THE HOME NINE

RICHMOND BALLISTS ROUTE BROOKLYN IN FINE STYLE

Richmond, Va. – Before a hearty crowd at Allen Pasture yesterday, the newly-minted Virginians proved their mettle upon the diamond, dispatching the Brooklyn Atlantics by a score of 10 to 2. This stirring contest marked the first triumph of our local nine in the grand American Association, and the assembled spectators, though at first hesitant, found themselves seized by the spirit of the affair before the final tally was struck.

The contest opened with both clubs in stalwart defensive form, though Richmond’s newest pitcher, Willie Keegan, a man whose fastball is already earning renown beyond the boundaries of this fair state, made swift work of Brooklyn’s first efforts at bat. Standing tall upon the mound, his fierce countenance marred by a long-healed but fearsome scar across his cheek, a marker of a difficult childhood much alluded to but never officially remarked upon by the man, Keegan hurled with authority, retiring the first strikers without ceremony.

It was in the second inning that an incident most uncommon took place, one which gave pause to even the most spirited among the assembled. Brooklyn’s batter, Cody Butler, a man of veteran stature, making what is assumed to be his final tour with the Atlantics, strode to the plate and fixed his gaze upon the Virginians newest pitcher. For a spell, neither man stirred. The hush that fell upon the field seemed to press upon the onlooker an odd, weighty silence, first of confusion, then concern. That spell broke when, in an irregular display from the famously stoic Butler, he took the short walk forward toward the pitcher’s mound. Butler and Keegan stood face to face and, with neither word nor ceremony, they grasped hands firmly before returning to their stations, with Butler struck out by our boy shortly thereafter, bringing the inning to a close.

A crucial moment arrived in the fifth inning, when Richmond, with two men already across the plate, sent a mighty blow into the left field. The Brooklyn gardener, scrambling in a most undignified manner, failed to collect the ball, allowing our lads to tally two more runs and put the affair quite beyond doubt.

By the eighth, the visiting club, looking quite spent under the Southern sun, mustered but a single run for their efforts, a meager consolation against the steady tally of our Virginians. When the final hand was retired, and Richmond stood victorious by eight clear runs, a fine cheer went up from the assembled masses, many tipping their hats in approval of this most commendable debut victory.

It remains to be seen whether Richmond’s nine can maintain this fighting spirit through the remainder of the campaign, but for this day, at least, we lovers of the game may boast of Southern champions upon the sacred field.

— Chadwick Russell