The House of Daniel Read Free

into farm country without quite knowing it’s doing that. My pa, he lit out for California year before last. A carpet came by heading west, he hopped on, and he was out of there. He took all the money in the place, too. Seven dollars and some-odd cents, I think it was.
    Can’t say I miss him much. We didn’t get along while he was here, which is putting it mildly. No note or anything to tell me where he’d gone—he doesn’t have his letters. The old lady across the street let me know the next day. I was doing something or other for Big Stu, so I wasn’t around when he hightailed it.
    Hell, if I had been I might’ve gone with him. Then this’d be a different story. I can’t say how, but different for sure.
    It’d be a different story if my ma were still around, too. I just barely remember her. I was five, I guess, and I was all excited on account of I was gonna have a new baby brother or sister. He would’ve been a brother if he’d lived. That’s what Pa told me. Only he didn’t, and neither did Ma.
    So it was Pa and me, and then it was only me. I went back to the place to sleep, and to eat when I couldn’t afford Big Stu’s or one of the other joints, and that was about it. Some guys on their own make pretty fair housekeepers. Not me. Pa used to say I could burn water when I boiled it. I won’t tell you he was wrong, exactly, but I will say he was one to talk.
    When I got inside, I lit a kerosene lantern. That let me find my beat-up old cardboard suitcase. It’s longer and thinner than most, so it’ll hold a couple-three bats. I put them in—two Louisville Sluggers, one Adirondack—and my spikes and my glove, and the gray flannel uniform with ENID EAGLES across the shirtfront in red fancy letters. Then I put in some ordinary clothes, too.
    And, since I was supposed to send this Mitch Carstairs a message, I dropped a blackjack and some brass knucks into the suitcase. Big Stu’s plan looked pretty good to me—get in the first lick and make it count. They’d help. Where’d I get ’em? You do things for Big Stu, you get stuff like that, just in case. I hadn’t used ’em much before, but I had ’em.
    Across the road, the old gal who’d told me Pa’d headed west had the radio on so loud I could hear Amos ’n’ Andy inside my place. She’s deaf as a brick. She had power in her house, though. We never did. If we had, they would’ve shut it off ’cause we couldn’t pay the bill.
    Power. I laughed, not that that was real funny, either. With any kind of power, I would’ve been good enough to play pro ball, maybe claw my way up to the bigs, even. I can run. I can catch. I can throw. You play center field, you’ve got to be able to do those things. But my hitting’s on the puny side. Always has been, dammit. I went to a tryout for the Dallas Steers once. Soon as they saw me with a bat in my hands, they said, “Sorry, sonny,” patted me on the head, and sent me on my way. They reckoned they could find better.
    Worst of it is, they were right.
    After I packed, I didn’t have a thing to do till I caught the bus for Ponca City the next morning. I carried the lantern into my room, blew it out, and went to bed. I could still hear Amos ’n’ Andy from across the street. I didn’t care. With a full belly and a little cash, I didn’t care about anything, no more than a dog would. You’re poor enough, life gets pretty simple.
    *   *   *
    I ate stale bread for breakfast instead of coughing up another quarter at the diner. Then I lugged my sorry suitcase to the Red Ball Bus Lines station on East Maple. The bus wouldn’t set out for another hour and a half after I got there, but I could do nothing at the station as well as I could at home.
    Better, even. They set out newspapers in the waiting room—today’s Enid Morning News and