suppose you’re in bed with your girlfriend.’
Roger Cash moved forward, hunching over the table, lowering his voice, because over behind the counter Mrs. Grover was doing her best to hear our conversation. Nothing went on that Mrs. Grover didn’t know about. And if there was a shortage of happenings, Mrs. Grover was not above creating some rumors just to get things fermenting.
‘Suppose your peter won’t do what it’s supposed to – you men do know about such things?’
We both nodded eagerly. My experience was more limited than I was willing to admit; but Byron, who was fifteen months younger than me, had always liked girls and girls had always liked him. Though we seldom talked about our sexual adventures, I suspected Byron had more actual experience than I did.
‘If your peter won’t produce that six or eight inches,’ our faces were in a tight triangle over the table, and Roger was whispering, ‘no matter how close you are to pussy, you might as well be 1,709 miles away, which is how far it is from Des Moines to Los Angeles.’
Roger laughed, and we joined in, though more from nervousness than appreciation. At the lunch counter, one ear still tipped toward us, Mrs. Grover smiled crossly.
‘The distances in baseball are perfect,’ Roger went on, ‘ninety feet from base to base, sixty feet six inches from the mound to the plate. Not too far. Not too close. But change any one of them just six or eight inches, the length of your peter, and the whole game’s out of kilter.’
Byron and I nodded, wide-eyed.
‘Well, since you men say you can get me a team, all we have left to do is find ourselves an opponent,’ said Roger. ‘Who’s the best pitcher in these parts?’
‘That would be Silas Erb,’ I said. ‘Chucks for First National Bank in the Division One Commercial League.’
‘Is he crafty or a hardball thrower?’
‘Strictly a thrower. Ninety miles an hour straight down the middle, dares anybody to hit it.’
‘Scratch him. I want a guy who’s a curveballer, maybe tries to throw a screwball, has a wicked change.’
‘That would be McCracken,’ I said. ‘McCracken Construction have been Division One Champs two years in a row.’
‘And he owns the company?’
‘His father does.’
‘Would he be the kind to accept a challenge from an elderly pitcher with a two-and-nineteen high-school team on the field in back of him?’
‘Who wouldn’t? McCracken thinks he’s the sneakiest junkball-pitcher since Hoyt Wilhelm. He throws a knuckle curve.’
‘If we were to set up this game with McCracken, get posters printed, and talk up this challenge game, what sort of attendance do you think we could expect?’
‘People are hungry for good baseball,’ I said. ‘I think we could get five or six hundred fans out, maybe more, with people from the new subdivisions.’
‘Would they pay three dollars a head?’
‘No problem.’
Roger Cash grinned, the right side of his mouth opening up to show his dice-like teeth. I noticed then, even through the suit, that his right upper arm and shoulder were huge, many inches larger than his left.
* * *
What he proposed to McCracken that night was a winner-take-all game, my high-school team with Roger Cash pitching, against McCracken Construction, Division One Champs and one of the best commercial-league baseball teams in the state.
‘I said to him,’ Roger told us later, ‘“I’ll be happy to cover any wagers you, your teammates, or the good citizens of this area might like to make, all in strictest confidence, of course!”
‘“At what odds?” McCracken wanted to know.’
Byron and I had waited in the cool interior of the Cadillac, outside McCracken’s sprawling ranch-style home, while Roger had done his bargaining and arranging.
‘“Even odds,” I said. “Roger Cash is not greedy.” And you should have seen him smile.
‘“I’d like to see you work out,” McCracken said to me.
‘“Oh no,” I said. “The element of surprise is all I’ve got on my side. I hear tell you played in Triple A for a year, so you’re not likely to be surprised by anything an old amateur like me can throw. Myself, I played a dozen games one summer for a Class C team in Greensboro, North Carolina; but they didn’t pay me enough to keep my mustache waxed so I moved on. Actually they suggested I move on, but that’s another story.” I smiled real friendly at him, and he didn’t give me any argument.’
Back in front of the Springtime Café and Ice Cream Parlor, after the game was set, Roger led us around to the trunk of the Caddy. Byron and I were on our tiptoes trying to stare over and around him. The trunk was almost as austere as the car interior.
It contained a black valise, very old, almost triangular, with heavy brass latches, and a canvas duffel bag with a pair of worn black baseball cleats tied around its drawstring.
A few garden tools were cast diagonally across the trunk: a rake, a hoe, a small spoon-nosed shovel, all spotless. Built into the depression where the spare wheel would ordinarily have been was a small, black safe, anchored in concrete.
‘We’re going to need some money to finance this operation,’ Roger said, and smiled slowly, lines appearing in the deeply tanned skin around his eyes. ‘I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to turn your backs while I operate on Black Betsy here. I’d be obliged if you kept the secret of her existence among the three of us.’
Though it wasn’t worded as one, Byron and I both recognized that the final statement was a command. We stared up and down the street and studied the windows of the Springtime Café while Roger turned the dial on the safe. It made little buzzy sounds like a bicycle lock.
‘You can turn around now,’ he said finally.
The safe was stuffed with money; from what I could see, mostly hundreds.
The deal Roger proposed was that each of the eight players to back him up was to receive twenty dollars for the game. Byron and I were to be paid extra for distributing posters to the downtown area, and over a thousand handbills to homes in nearby bedroom communities, and on car windshields.
And we were to be paid for selling tickets right up until game time. Roger also suggested that we arrange to sell hot dogs, soda, and popcorn, since I’d told him no one ever bothered to do that at the local baseball grounds.
He peeled off a few bills from a collar-sized roll, advancing us enough to buy and rent what supplies we needed, and to hire people for the concessions. In return, we were to split the profits with him. For the next few days Byron and I felt like real businessmen,
