Kid from Tomkinsville Read Free Page A

Lots of rookies didn’t. Suppose... Then a man stalked across the lobby in front of his chair.
    The man was tall, broad-shouldered, quietly but expensively dressed in blue striped trousers, a blue sports coat, and the whitest of white sports shoes. The ballplayers all had tan shoes with white tips, but his shoes were white all over. There was something impressive in the way he walked, or maybe in the way he swayed his shoulders, and the gesture with which he twirled his Panama in his hand as he moved over to the newsstand. He picked up a newspaper with decisive movement. One... two... three... four... now what does anyone want five newspapers for? There was even decision in the way he folded them and snapped them under his arm, turned and walked down the stairs to the street. This man was somebody. Someone who’d done things. He was sure of himself. He was...
    Of course. It was MacManus.
    Jack MacManus, the man who broke into the big leagues straight from Minnesota, the guy who enlisted as a private in the war and came out a colonel, who went back to college and played on a Big Ten championship football team, who started off in the big leagues by spiking Ty Cobb when Ty tried to run him down as a fresh young busher. Man who’d made a million dollars in oil, lost it in the market, re-made it in radio, bought a minor league club, and finally picked up the Dodgers the year before. The Kid knew about MacManus. Everyone in baseball knew about him. Chap who put Columbus on the map, who started night baseball, who was forever scrapping with someone: Judge Landis, the umpires, or Bill Murphy; yes, his feud with the Giant manager was famous. That was MacManus all right. It couldn’t be anyone else. No wonder he walked that way, held himself like that. He resembled Mr. Haskins, the president of the First National Bank at home, who got the Kid his job in MacKenzie’s drugstore on the corner of South Main. All at once the difference became apparent. This man was the real thing. Mr. Haskins was small town and small time. An idol tumbled as those broad shoulders sauntered down the steps of the Fort Harrison Hotel into the deep Florida sun.
    If that was MacManus, and it couldn’t be anyone else, why not settle things immediately? A resolution seized the Kid. Beneath the porch, papers under his arm, his feet wide apart, the great man stood, regarding the sunny street through his dark glasses, and waiting for his car. Without further thought or considering what he was doing, or how he would be received, the Kid darted down the steps.
    “Mr. MacManus... I’m... I’m Roy Tucker....”
    He started and turned round. There was half a frown on his face, but the freckles on his nose were reassuring and through the dark glasses his eyes were blue and crinkly round the corners. He looked up quickly. “Who... oh, yeah... Roy Tucker... sure, the Kid from Tomkinsville... yeah, mighty glad to see you, fine to have you with us.” He held out a hand. It was a lean, strong hand and the grip was encouraging.
    “Why, sure, I remember the afternoon you pitched against those Cuban All-Stars in Waterbury last summer. Hope you’ll show us something like that down here.”
    “Uhuh. I sure hope. That’s what I wanted to ask, Mr. MacManus. If you... if the team... in case you can’t use me at all, do I come to get my fare paid home?”
    Another quick look. His eyes narrowed. “Your fare paid home? Wait a minute... didn’t he send you money for carfare down here? You should have had a check or a ticket to come down.”
    “Yessir. He sent me a check. It came last month. But we had to use it to put a new roof on the farm. That big storm last winter like to blow it off and I couldn’t leave Grandma. So when it came time to report I just borrowed the money from her.”
    “Off your grandma? You live with your grandma?”
    “Yessir. My father’s dead, and my mother died two years ago. So I sort of wondered if I’d get sent back... or