“Yarrah, go off, old man, and take that little drooler with you.” Jane flashed him a sparkling look.
Gently, he removed the child from his lap and set him on the floor. During the course of this latest story, the boy had stolen the cap and now wore it backward on his head. Clutching the lapels of his white robe, the old man straightened and bounced twice on the balls of his feet, thrusting out a defiant chest. “There is no call, ladies, for that sort of sedition. Adele has the floor as you once had, and we owe one another a modicum of respect—”
“Hear, hear,” Dolly amended.
“And what, might I ask, is the subject of your private disputation?”
They both eyed Adele, a mixture of disdain and pity in their gaze. Jane threw her arm around Alice’s shoulder. “We were only talking about the sad state of feminine affairs, and what a shame it was to swoon over a man, and such a man as that.”
Light flickered on the tiles and the music started with a few discordant notes, like a cat crossing a keyboard, and the silent movie began again. A wide-perspective shot of the ballpark from the vantage of an overlooking hill gave way to a panning shot from the outfield and into the diamond itself. Men in baggy uniforms ran the bases, fielded ground balls, and turned a double play. Against this backdrop, Adele picked up from where she had been interrupted by her more cynical sisters.
? ? ?
That first ball game, that whole June day, passed in a blur and yet in memory lasts a century. The Pirates won, 7–0, a shutout, the first of a record six in a row their pitchers were to post. She was at the ballpark for the last of the six, as well, and read all about it in the newspapers. In fact, everything about baseball could be found in the Post or the Daily Gazette, most important the scores, who won or lost, and how the runs came about, and the names of yesterday’s heroes and goats. She had never taken an interest in the sporting news before meeting Pat, but now her mornings began with a quick check of the league standings and over her toast and jam she deciphered the box scores.
On the screen were shots of the players relaxing. Two men clown before the camera, monkey-faces, and the taller grabs the hat off the short, stocky fellow and rustles his thick wavy hair. Above the man runs his name in black letters: Ginger Beaumont, outfield. The gangly fellow holds the cap out higher and higher as the redhead paws for it. Above his grinning face: Kitty Bransfield, first base.
Keeping up with the news about the Pirates occupied her days when Pat failed to call. But that occurred infrequently as the month wore on. Those first weeks of June when the Pirates were in town, he would fetch a hack two or three times a week to include her on the ballpark excursion. Other days he went by himself, but he would arrive at her home on the Bluff around six o’clock and take her out to dinner or promenade on the ridge above the Monongahela River. When the team left town, he had more freedom, and once they attended an afternoon at the movies. Alice in Wonderland thrilled her when the girl was trapped in the small house and had to reach through the tiny window for her magic fan. But on the same bill was Edison’s Electrocution of an Elephant, and she cried in her sleep that night, remembering the cloud of smoke and how the beast toppled at once as the volts pulsed through its body, and she wished that Pat had been with her in the bed to put his arms around her as he had done in the dark exhibition hall. She dreamt of him often, waking in the hot nights drenched in sweat, and wondering how he might touch her, what he might do to her, should they be married.
In sepia, the boys, still in their uniforms, file out of the park and climb aboard a horse-drawn omnibus. Across the street, storefronts advertise Milliners, Dry Goods, and the Benevolent Temperance Society of Chicago. The game is done, and the Pirates are on their way back to the hotel in a good mood. Two of the young men stand on the wagon’s running boards, and as it jostles on, they perform a mock arabesque, as if preparing to fly. Claude Ritchey, second base. Jimmy Sebring, outfield.