Ironweed (1984 Pulitzer Prize) - William Kennedy [74]
“Isn’t that funny,” Peg said, the fork still in her hand. “I don’t remember writing that.”
“Probably lots you don’t remember about them days.” Francis said. “You was only about eleven.”
“Where did you ever find it?”
“Up in the trunk. Been saved all these years up there. Only letter I ever saved.”
“Is that a fact?”
“It’s a provable fact. All the papers I got in the world was in that trunk, except one other place I got a few more clips. But no letters noplace. It’s a good old letter, I’d say.”
“I’d say so too,” Annie said. She and Billy were both staring at Peg.
“I remember Toronto in nineteen-ten,” Francis said. “The game was full of crooks them days. Crooked umpire named Bates, one night it was deep dark but he wouldn’t call the game. Folks was throwin’ tomatoes and mudballs at him but he wouldn’t call it ‘cause we was winnin’ and he was in with the other team. Pudge Howard was catchin’ that night and he walks out and has a three-way confab on the mound with me and old Highpockets Wilson, who was pitchin’. Pudge comes back and squats behind the plate and Highpockets lets go a blazer and the ump calls it a ball, though nobody could see nothin’ it was so dark. And Pudge turns to him and says: ‘You call that pitch a ball?’ ‘I did,’ says the ump. ‘If that was a ball I’ll eat it,’ says Pudge. ‘Then you better get eatin’,’ says the ump. And Pudge, he holds the ball up and takes a big bite out of it, ‘cause it ain’t no ball at all, it’s a yellow apple I give Highpockets to throw. And of course that won us the game and the ump went down in history as Blindy Bates, who couldn’t tell a baseball from a damn apple. Bates turned into a bookie after that. He was crooked at that too.”
“That’s a great story,” Billy said. “Funny stuff in them old days.”
“Funny stuff happenin’ all the time,” Francis said.
Peg was suddenly tearful. She put the fork on the sink and went to her father, whose hands were folded on the table. She sat beside him and put her right hand on top of his.
After a while George Quinn came home from Troy, Annie served the turkey, and then the entire Phelan family sat down to dinner.
VII
“I look like a bum, don’t I?” Rudy said.
“You are a bum,” Francis said. “But you’re a pretty good bum if you wanna be.”
“You know why people call you a bum?”
“I can’t understand why.”
“They feel better when they say it.”
“The truth ain’t gonna hurt you,” Francis said. “If you’re a bum, you’re a bum.”
“It hurt a lotta bums. Ain’t many of the old ones left.”
“There’s new ones comin’ along,” Francis said.
“A lot of good men died. Good mechanics, machinists, lumberjacks.”
“Some of ‘em ain’t dead,” Francis said. “You and me, we ain’t dead.”
“They say there’s no God,” Rudy said. “But there must be a God. He protects bums. They get up out of the snow and they go up and get a drink. Look at you, brand-new clothes. But look at me. I’m only a bum. A no-good bum.”
“You ain’t that bad,” Francis said. “You’re a bum, but you ain’t that bad.”
They were walking down South Pearl Street toward Palombo’s Hotel. It was ten-thirty, a clear night. full of stars but very cold: winter’s harbinger. Francis had left the family just before ten o’clock and taken a bus downtown. He went straight to the mission before they locked it for the night, and found Pee Wee alone in the kitchen, drinking leftover coffee. Pee Wee said he hadn’t seen, or heard from, Helen all day.
“But Rudy was in lookin’ for you,” Pee Wee told Francis. “He’s either up at the railroad station gettin’ warm or holed up in some old house down on Broadway.