Taking Lottie Home: A Novel

ONE

I CANNOT SAY, as fact, this is what happened, or how it happened, yet it is, I believe, fairly close to the truth—truth being what it is, a piecemeal kind of thing best told with enough stretch in it to fit more than one certainty.

Some of it was revealed straight to me in the straight kind of way that you trust without the slightest thought of doubt. Some of it was hearsay from so many voices in so many tellings, it was like an echo that is far off and mystic. Some of it was taken from a journal written in the thin cursive strokes of a young woman who was in love, and from letters tied in a stack by a green ribbon, then tucked away in the corner of a trunk to become dry and brittle over dry and brittle years. Some of it—most of it, to be honest—is nothing more than my imagination playing fancy with could-have-beens.

I know this: it was important to put it all together, to discover the things—good and hurtful—that have had me on a search for much of my life, like an old and addled prospector following a bogus map in his hunt for gold, gold so pure that the touch of a pickax would cause it to seep from the earth like honey.

Some things sound so good it is impossible not believing in them.

Gold flowing like honey.

Home.

I HAVE CHOSEN to begin in 1904 with the dream-ending sorrow of two men who are as embedded in me as bone marrow, one through his blood, one by his presence. It is the most likely place I know to begin. In the odd way that life, or circumstance, bumps people around, sends them colliding into one another, they would find themselves in the company of a girl-woman named Lottie, and she would change them forever.

As she would change everyone who knew her.

TWO PLAYERS WOULD be cut from the team and Foster Lanier would be one of them.

Foster knew it.

He had known it for three weeks, in the same way animals could sense terror, and now it was the night before the cuts and he had taken a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and walked alone to the bridge that crossed the Savannah River, separating South Carolina and Georgia like a steel hyphen.

The night was black and hard, thick with unmoving heat and the urine smell of the river sliding through the back streets of Augusta. Foster did not like the river and the sour odor and the heat and the plague of bugs crawling at his face and neck to drink from the perspiration that oozed from him. He did not like Augusta. He could not breathe clean, sweet Kentucky air in Augusta. Augusta air lodged in his throat, leaving him choking and weak. But he would soon be on a train for Kentucky—tomorrow night or the day after—and there would be a pickup game with a pickup team and he would hear people in the stands muttering his name with surprise, telling their children, There’s Foster Lanier. You never saw nobody as good as Foster Lanier. The thought pleased him. He smiled and drank a full swallow from the bottle. It was good bourbon. Kentucky on the label and Kentucky in the taste. It was to be his last night in professional baseball. He deserved good bourbon.

He walked below the pilings of the bridge to the river shore, to a weeping willow with dying limbs. He sat in the grass and stared across the river at the row of tiny homes with eyedots of kerosene lamps glowing in windows. River shanty homes. He was twenty-nine years old. He had collapsed during wind sprints on the first day of workouts. His legs ached. There was a sore on the shin of his right leg where the blade of a spike had sliced to the bone. The sore had not healed in two years. It stayed scabbed and bled on touch and the skin around it had begun to crinkle like cigarette wrapping paper. The sore leg had made him sick. He had lost weight and he could hear sloshing sounds in his abdomen when he tried to run. There were mornings when he struggled to pull himself from his bed.

He was twenty-nine years old and he had played professional baseball for a dozen years. Not with the big teams. Not with the New Yorkers or for Boston or Detroit. But he had played against the best—by God, the best—from Kentucky to Louisiana, including one season in New Jersey. He had seen the big leaguers come and go, had played with them and against them, and, by God, he had been as good as any of them on the best of his days.

The best of his days were over, he thought. Tomorrow he would be cut. Cut from a team of boys who had played lately on sandfields and in pastures. God-o-mighty. Boys who were not long weaned from dragging at their mother’s milk-swollen tits while he was turning double plays for a team in Lexington, like a New York stage dancer fancy-footing a tap dance that made hearts race with gladness.

He scrubbed the perspiration from his face with the forearm of his shirt, swallowed again from the bourbon, and the fire of the alcohol burned his throat and he sucked for air—open-mouthed, slow, deep, wheezing. The bourbon seeped into his brain and into the bloodless ash coloring of his face. He sat quietly, knees up, his wrists locked over his kneecaps, holding the bottle in the fingers of both hands, gazing at the sliding river, thinking of the games he had memorized.

No, not games. Moments of games. Fragments of rude, physical awakenings when the body moved faster than the mind, and the act, the feat—impossible to other men—was done.

Those moments called often to him, called to him from clear bell-voices of other years, and when he heard them he could feel an energy invade him like a parade of costumed marching bands.

He shuddered and ducked his head. His fingers played nervously along the neck of the bottle and he listened as the bell-voices of other years came out of the wind, came out of the waters of the Savannah, came out of the crying of cicadas, came out of the buzzing of flies and mosquitoes.

Their voices were mighty, telling stories that were legendary.

The great grand slam in Mobile on a September day blackened by rain-heavy clouds, and the curious timing of it, how the rain began to fall at the precise moment the ball he hit was falling beyond the desperate reach of a racing left fielder. The rain fell over the cheers of the great grand slam as he waved his god-wave to those who leaned out from the stands, leaned for him and for the moment.

The triple play in Dayton—the hated Daytons—when he leapt at the rifle-clap of the bat and the ball buried into the fat padding of his glove and he touched the dashing runner from first and then outraced the runner trying to get back to second, and the play was finished before the echo of the rifle-clap had ended.

Foster snuggled the bottle close to his chin and smiled pleasantly at the mind pictures, at the tuba beat and the singing trumpets of the gaudy, strutting parade of memory. The mind pictures were his eulogy to baseball, and his soul yearned—cried, shivered—for their return.

The river flowed in its jelly thickness before him, carrying bobbing wads of garbage which had been thrown in darkness from the tiny houses with kerosene eyedots lining the riverbank. He watched the river numbly, breathing in its acid gases. He tipped the bottle to his lips, swallowed. His throat began to deaden. He closed his eyes and was very still.

Arnold Toeman had announced that two men would be cut from the team tomorrow, and he knew that he would be one of them. He was twenty-nine years old, an ancient among boys, an ailing second baseman who could no longer bend and twist and run on a decaying right leg. He could no longer play the game, and he would be cut away from it, like a useless limb on a tree. It was the meanness of the game, but the game, in 1904, was mean. Only the quick and the strong survived. Foster was neither.

He swallowed again from the bourbon, a spilling swallow, and he said aloud, but not loudly, They gone cut me. He nodded in agreement with himself. Wonder who else they gone cut? he said. His mind searched the faces of his teammates, like an inspection. He laughed warmly, shaking the bourbon in the bottle. They all wondering the same thing, he said to the river. Yeah. They all wondering.

He knew there would be a terrible pain when Arnold Toeman cut him from the team. He had heard older men—players long disappeared—speak of it, and none of them had ever been able to take the pain without crying out. By God, they had said. It comes down on you like a ax. Cuts the guts right out, before you know you been hit. You ever seen a cow killing, you seen what it’s like.

And that is how it would happen, Foster thought. It would happen following the game with the Savannah Seagulls. Arnold Toeman would call out two names—Foster’s and one other—and tell them to leave his team. Arnold Toeman would tell the two, You’re finished.

FOSTER AWOKE LATE from his drunk-sleep, breathing hard, aching, and he missed breakfast and the early-morning workout with the team. When he arrived in uniform for the afternoon game at Hornet Field, Arnold Toeman stared at him—in surprise, thought Foster—but said nothing, and Foster went to a bench in the corner of the open wood shelter occupied by the Hornets. He sat leaning against the back of the shelter and watched his teammates perform the rote exercises of small pregame dramas which were staged as sacrificial offerings to Arnold Toeman.

They were young. God-o-mighty, they were young, Foster thought. He knew how they had arrived—knew it by his own life: each with a letter in his hand, wrinkled from too much handling, recommending his skills to the dark-faced Arnold Toeman, who wore black suits and a black hat and managed the Hornets with an evil voice that spoke only imperatives. None of the boys had ever known such a man as Arnold Toeman. He stood over them like a thundercloud, an ugly, boiling person, watching them from the slits of small, dark eyes. He had one obsession as a manager: Do it again. And again. And again. And again. His voice lashed leather whelps across boys who had never been away from their homes. His voice berated. His voice dehumanized. In the three weeks of spring tryouts, 1904, Arnold Toeman had not uttered a kind world to anyone. Ten boys had left the Hornets’ camp voluntarily, at night, when Arnold Toeman slept. If he slept.

Foster knew all these things. And he knew the strong young men who had stayed were tense and frightened and confused and homesick. He knew by their manners, by the impeccable courtesies of their voice, and by their posturing. They were abiding by promises they had made to their parents. Their parents had said, Be nice and that’s how you’ll be treated, son.

Their advice was an acceptable code of conduct for civilized people, but it did not apply to Arnold Toeman’s dominion.

At night, in the solitude of their beds, boys who believed their wrinkled letters were passports to dreams pulled covers over their heads and balled into a fetal knot of despair, praying prayers to God that were meant not for God but for the secure presence of their parents.

Foster knew what the strong young men felt, and how they would change, yet he also knew they were mesmerized by childish fantasies of Detroit or Boston or New York or one of the other far-off cities where the big leaguers played. Lord God-o-mighty. Jesus Christ, savior of man. They believed, all right. It was there for the taking, and they could do it. Their letters of recommendation were proof. Foster pitied the boys. One may make it, he reasoned as he watched his teammates. One. Maybe two. Maybe Milo Wade. There was something unique about Robert Milo Wade. He had skill. And he had anger. He would not easily be executed by the likes of Arnold Toeman.

Foster shifted on the bench, moved his back against the plank wall, crossed his left leg over his right knee to press down on the pain that burned in his shinbone. Milo Wade may make it, he thought. Maybe Nat Skinner. Foster liked Nat. He had arrived in Augusta from a small community in middle Georgia with the odd name of Fryingpan. Nat was a left-handed pitcher who threw with remarkable precision and speed, and he had become a favorite of his new teammates and the press. A newspaper reporter had written a story about Nat. The headline read: FROM FRYINGPAN INTO THE FIRE: WILL HE MAKE IT? It was a story about the young hopefuls of Arnold Toeman’s 1904 team of strangers.

Maybe Milo Wade and Nat Skinner, Foster decided. Maybe they’d make it. No one else. God, he thought, somebody ought to tell them. They should be allowed to return to their homes with dignity. At home they could play in the town leagues and become heroes. Why, he could’ve been playing with the big leaguers if he’d wanted to, the townspeople would declare. In the town leagues, they would be remembered. At Augusta, they would only be hurt, and Foster knew about hurt. It was in his leg, bleeding against his uniform. It was in his heart, and in his oldness at age twenty-nine.

He wanted to bellow out at them, wanted to say, Look at me.

He sat in silence, knowing they would not have heard him. They were boys from sandfields and pastures, boys with wrinkled letters in their pockets.

THE GAME BEGAN. It moved before Foster’s hurting eyes with the fury of a loner’s cry for praise, with anguish and with pleading. It was his last game in professional baseball and Foster had not walked onto the field; had not wanted to. He did not care to play in his last game in professional baseball. He wanted to sit and watch and to hold for all time that memory of seeing himself as he might have played the game, but did not. His last game would be a game of luxury.

The time was very near. Two men would be cut from the team and he would be one of them, and then he would be free.

Tomorrow, he thought, the team would be different. The team would feel safe, reprieved.

Tomorrow, the team would gather and speak of the two missing faces and join in an unknowing ovation to survival. Foster had heard that ovation often, knew it by memory:

"I thought I’d make it."

"Didn’t have no doubts, myself."

"Can’t have doubts and make it."

"Shoot, we got us a team now."

"Too bad they had to get the boot."

"Way it is."

Foster could hear the words.

THE GAME PIVOTED from inning to inning, scoreless, like an artless fencing match between amateurs. To Foster, it was a listless game, clumsy and unbalanced, tactics spoiled by blunders. He listened to the harsh song of boy voices and thought of Kentucky and the sweet, clean air that would let him breathe again.

Still, he could not remove himself from the game that surrounded him with its panic for survival, and he sat in the asylum of the home team shelter and watched boys hiding their failures like scolded innocents, whining profanities, staring at their offending hands and feet as though the hand or the foot had violated a trust with the rest of their body. It was an exorcism Foster knew well. Damned leg, he thought. Damned leg that won’t let me run. Won’t run a lick, he thought. He wanted to show his leg to the boys who sat with him. Somebody ought to tell them. Somebody.

It was late in the game—the top of the eighth inning—and the Seagulls were at bat. Jordan Beasley, who played third base for the Hornets, misplayed a surprise bunt and Savannah had a player on first base. Nat Skinner struck out the next batsman, but Noble Winn, who was playing second base in Foster’s place, fumbled a slow roller, too late for a play at second, and then he threw the ball away at first. Two Seagulls were on base, at second and third, and the cries for Nat Skinner grew to a wail.

C’mon, Nat, you can do it!

Throw it by him, Nat! C’mon, boy!

Nat responded by striking out the next batsman on three pitches. There were two outs and two runners still on base.

One more, Nat!

You got ’em, Nat!

The batter at the plate was tall and powerfully muscled and he had a cocky, daring smirk on his face. Nat wiped his fingers across the front of his jersey, took the ball from his glove, rolled it in his hand, then began his pump-arm windup. His body pivoted over his left foot and his arm snapped in a quick half-circle at his shoulder. The batter lashed at the pitch and a cracking sound, like a flesh slap, spit from his bat. The ball soared toward center field, then began sinking. Foster sat forward on the bench. He saw Ben Phelps moving, sprinting. He saw Ben diving, his left arm extended in front of him, his body off the ground and falling. And, suddenly, there was a shrill cry from the stands and a man yelled, Great Goda’mighty! —yelled it like a proclamation—and the Hornets’ players spilled out of their shelter and rushed toward Ben, shouting.

You got it, Ben! You got it!

Great God, Ben, I never saw nothing like that.

You done it, Ben! You done it!

And they were around Ben Phelps, embracing him, pounding him, slapping at him, celebrating him with their awe.

Foster sat and watched. He could feel a bloodrush in his chest. He had known such moments. The great grand slam in Mobile, the triple play in Dayton. God-o-mighty, they had loved him for those feats. They had lifted him over their heads like a trophy and marched him around the field. On the day of the triple play, a newspaper artist had drawn a likeness of him pointing three fingers in the air. And that was the worth of all game, the worth of everything.

Foster turned his face and looked at Arnold the shade of the shelter in his dusty black suit, his arms crossed. Arnold Toeman’s mouth was curled in a half-smile, but he was not smiling. He was laughing, laughing at something only he understood.

A chill seized Foster. He stood at the bench. The team was moving toward him, herding Ben from the field, and Ben was yelping excitedly, touching the hands that reached for him. My God, thought Foster. Ben. It was Ben who would be cut with him. Foster knew it. Knew it with certainty. And it did not matter that Ben Phelps had made an impossible play and was being celebrated. Arnold Toeman had decided: Ben Phelps would be cut from the team.

Foster knew he was right. He had watched too many executions to be wrong. He turned again to Arnold Toeman, and Arnold Toeman was staring at him with warning, with eyes that dared him. Foster sat slowly and laced his fingers over his legs. Son of a bitch, he thought. Ben. Ben would be the second cut. Should have realized it, he reasoned. Ben, who could run, but could not hit. And he had tried. By God, he had tried. But he could not overcome the sickening fear of being struck by the ball. At first, it had been comical, yet there was something about Ben’s failure that was to be pitied, and his teammates had worked patiently with him, urging him. Still Ben could not hit. Still he fell away from the plate.

Ben would be cut, Foster thought again, and it would hurt. It would hurt because Ben and Milo Wade were from the same north Georgia hometown and had played baseball together for years. Yet Ben did not have the skills or the anger of Milo Wade. Ben had a child’s awe, and even his grace in the outfield—the grace of an untamed, running animal—could not save him.

Ben entered the shelter quivering with gladness. He sat beside Foster and Foster mumbled, Good play, Ben. Good play.

Ben answered with a slap to Foster’s shoulder. Didn’t think I’d get to it, but it was there. Didn’t even feel it hit. Ben was smiling and licking his dry lips with his tongue. He leaned toward Foster. Maybe that done it for me, Foster, he confided. I was telling Milo and Nat I didn’t think I’d make it. Maybe that done it for me.

Foster nodded. He stared across the playing field and watched the Seagulls complete their warmups. He knew that Ben Phelps’s heroics had inspired his teammates. There was a blood scent of victory in the restless chattering that swirled around him. To Foster, it was the music of operas, and it did not matter that the first two batters lifted weak fly balls to the infield. The music was strong, then grew louder when Jordan Beasley doubled to right field and Milo Wade approached home plate.

Milo Wade was only eighteen years old, yet he played baseball with the command of a man who demanded attention. In only three weeks, he had become the most feared and respected player on the Hornets’ team. In Milo Wade, there was always a possibility, always the simmering hiss of an explosion.

C’mon, Milo! Get him in!

Get a hit, Milo! Get a hit!

You can do it, Milo! You can do it!

Foster listened to the eager young voices, still shrill from childhood. He saw Milo step to the plate. Milo was tall and thin and muscled like a swimmer. His face was intense, his eyes clear and hard, the color of blue under ice. He had a habit of curling his lower lip between the bite of his teeth. He stood at the plate, clawing the ground with his cleated shoes. He lifted the bat and pushed it before him, his hands spread apart on the handle. Foster had never seen anyone stand so far up in the batter’s box, and he had asked Milo why he did it. That’s for curves, Milo had explained. They throw me curves, I get a lick at it before it breaks. It’s nothing but a fastball to me. Foster had tried it in batting practice, but he could not swing the bat fast enough, and he knew Milo Wade had a rare talent.

C’mon, Milo, bust it!

You got ’im, Milo! You got ’im!

Milo squeezed his hands on the bat. He looked at the infielders, playing him to hit the ball to right field as they had been taught to play against a left-handed hitter. There was a gap between third base and the third baseman. Milo moved his hands on the bat handle, making a calculation with his fingers.

The pitch was high and outside and Milo slapped it easily, almost casually, guiding the ball two feet inside third base. Jordan Beasley scored and Milo was standing on second base when the left fielder recovered the ball.

Way to go, Milo!

We got it now! We got it now!

Ben had been in the on-deck circle, still giddy from his catch and wildly waving Milo to second. Now he was walking toward the plate, swinging his bat.

Arnold Toeman spoke: Phelps. His voice was deep, blunt. Ben turned. Arnold Toeman was standing beside the shelter, his arms crossed. His dark hat shadowed his dark face.

Yes sir? replied Ben.

Come on in, commanded Arnold Toeman. He gazed down the bench at Foster. He smiled slightly. Lanier, he said, get a bat.

Foster knew that Arnold Toeman had ended Ben’s career, that in his grandest moment, a moment that had lifted Ben higher than wings could carry him, he had also been executed. He moved slowly off the bench. And this, too, was his execution, he thought. But there was nothing grand about the moment for Foster. He walked to Ben, took Ben’s bat from him. You guess it’s got a hit in it, Ben? he said gently.

Ben’s face trembled. He looked at Foster with a bewildered gaze, asking what Foster already understood.

It’s all right, Ben, Foster told him. It’s not what it’s made out to be, nohow.

Ben turned to stare at his teammates, now silent in the shelter. They, too, understood. He walked slowly toward them, then stopped and looked across the field at Milo Wade. Milo dropped his head and kicked at the second base bag.

Phelps, get off the field, snapped Arnold Toeman.

Foster moved to the plate. Ben and me, he thought. Now they know. Well, goddamn them, they ought to stand up and give us a bow, then they could hang us out on a clothesline to flap in the wind like useless rags. His mind throbbed with rage. He wanted to scream at the strong young men who would return to play another game, Look, damn it, look. Look at Ben. Look at me.

He caught the handle of the bat in his hands, curling his fingers for the warm feeling of the wood. He looked at the pitcher for the Seagulls, who seemed small and frail. Foster wondered if the pitcher was also on trial, if the manager of