“It’s good you came,” Bill Sutez told him. “We got a present for you.”
Karel laughed it off at first. He wasn’t really listening. Light-headed from the beer. Blood rushing through his ears because he was in a saloon with the brothers Sutez and Jap Marceau. The best the Southside had to offer in the way of baseball players. And they got Karel a beer because he was one of them. They circled around him, said, “It’s the truth, kid! Here!” And handed over a package wrapped in tissue paper. “Go on. Tear it apart. Nothing to be scared of.” Ducky put his arm around Karel and shouted in his ear, “It’s a present, dummy! Open it!”
Karel put his glass on the bar and tore the tissue in two. Out fell a set of wool clothes, pinstriped and white, with a black-brimmed cap. He recognized it immediately but didn’t quite believe. It was the uniform of the Southside.
“That’s for all you done to help the team,” Jimmie Collins said. He was the manager and was compelled to speech making on occasions like this. “You’re a member as far as we’re concerned. Now you are.”
Sure, Karel thought. He was around all the time. He practiced. He went to the tavern. Karel was one of them.
“Well. What do you think?”
“Yeah. Say something, kid.”
Ducky held the jersey to Karel’s chest. “It’ll fit,” he said.
“Goddamn,” Karel said. “Let me have that.”
He jumped from his stool and right there at the bar ripped his shirt over his head so he could try on and button up his jersey. The men cracking up in laughter, saying, “I guess he likes it.” Karel dropped his pants so he could get the rest on then tucked the jersey into the knee-highs. “This is great,” Karel said. “I mean it.” Fastening the rest of the buttons so it spelled OMAHA across his chest. Then “Another round.” “A toast.” They had Karel climb up to the bar top from a stool and raised their glasses to him. The men were so happy for Karel, to see him in their uniform, the baggy hat on his head, the pinstriped whites all crisp and fit, maybe a little tight, tucked into black socks. Karel looked sharp. He smiled back at his compatriots, his teammates. Bill and Ducky and Jap and Ralph and Claude Nethaway. Their hair combed back in a paste made with sweat and dust from the infield. Muzzles black with stubble and grease.
Karel was in a saloon because he belonged there. He too was swarthy. His hair black, hand-swept off his forehead. His broad shoulders stretching a uniform, his tanned skin and palms swelled thick from the beating they took catching fly balls.
He was late to supper that night. That was unavoidable. Usually he cut it close, with rushing up from the field, but going to the saloon put a kink in things. Supper began without him. Karel heard from behind the kitchen door. Forks and knives working in the dining room. Before they noticed him, he lingered to take in the aromas—broth reducing with a wisp of steam above it, fresh bread cooling, a skillet browned by meat. Maria wasn’t in the habit of setting a plate for those who didn’t bother showing up on time, but she let Karel eat in the kitchen. There was some gravy left. She spooned it over bread for him, pulled an apple from a box where she kept them. Karel ate with his hands, standing at the counter in his new Southside uniform.
“You stink like beer,” Maria said, her eyebrows raised as she dunked a saucepan in soapy water at the sink. “You drink with the ballplayers?” He nodded. “Well. What do I care?” Maria said. “This doesn’t surprise me. The age you are. Boys always want to drink beer. Beer doesn’t bother me. So you work it out with your father.”
“I’m not going to tell him.” Karel sopped the last bit of gravy with his bread and stuffed it in his mouth.
“Ah. I see.” Maria took his plate and put it in the sink. “And he isn’t going to notice? Sure. You bet.”
The girls were at the table when Karel went by, leaned back in their chairs to talk and digest. Karel wanted to rush by them to the stairs, but there wasn’t much chance of that.
“What in the world?” “Look at him!”
“Where did you get baseball clothes?” Theresa asked. “Let me see you,” Silke said. The two older ones cornered him at the stairwell. They took his hat to examine it, felt along the pinstripes of his shirt to see if they were sewed on or were a print. Grabbed the bundle of clothes he’d worn out of the house that morning and tossed them out of the way.
“Look at you,” Anna said. “Did you make the team after all?”
Of course they would notice him in that baseball uniform. Of course they would notice there was beer on his breath.
“Little brother,” Theresa laughed. “Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?”
“Piss off,” he told her, then leapt up the first three steps to get away. The girls chased him, Theresa and Silke on his heels, Anna pulling up the rear. What did Karel think? His sisters would just let him come home in a getup like that and not pester him?
“Where did you get that outfit?” Silke asked. “Did you buy it?”
“They were a gift.”
“From who?”
“The team.”
“What team?”
“Omaha!” Theresa shouted. “It says right on the front.”
“The Southsiders,” Karel corrected. “I’m part of the team. A real ballplayer.”
“No, you’re not,” Theresa teased him. “The clothes don’t make the man. The boy!”
“There’s this.” Karel plucked his baseball from the back pocket of his new pants. “I got this from a guy. He gave it to me, from his own hand. Said if I wanted to be a ballplayer I needed to carry a ball with me everywhere. I’m a real ballplayer. It’s a hell of a lot better than cleaning streetcars all day.”
The girls gasped. “Klutz! Don’t be cruel!”
Karel went red as they laughed at him. He couldn’t convince them of anything. “Josh gave me this ball. The Southsiders gave me this uniform. They took me out for a beer. How’s that for you? Does that sound like a real ballplayer or not?”
That was a dumb thing to say and he knew it. Their father was there in the attic, as he almost always was. Tinkering away while he munched his dinner, his back turned to them. Herr Miihlstein ate sardines most nights, a slice of bread with hard cheese and mustard. Food he could eat with one hand while he worked. “What are you shouting about?” he asked, finally disturbed by the commotion. He talked over his shoulder as he painted a music box. The same music box he painted over and over, one textured by the overlaying designs he made. Miihlstein set the music box on his worktable and screwed shut the lids to his jars of paint.
“What’s the hubbub?” he asked, walking to the staircase. He liked when they teased each other, smiled at them with pride, so long as they were laughing. As a matter of fact, on the occasions he happened to look up from his table, Miihlstein seemed to like having kids around.
“Someone tell me what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t want to have to guess.”