Anna spit it out first. “Karel drank beer.”
Miihlstein glanced over to his son and nodded his head, like he wasn’t all that surprised. None of them were. With how much Karel was gone all the time, this was no shock.
“And the costume? Where’s it come from?”
“I was telling them,” Karel said. He’d backed to the stairs to run off if he needed to. But he didn’t need to. He stood his ground and told them, “These were gifts.”
“The ball too? Or is it stolen?”
“The ball? Look at it,” he barked, the outrage back in him all at once. “There’s stains all over it. It’s old. Who would I steal something like this from?”
“I don’t know.” Miihlstein turned half away from his kids. He straightened his tie and snugged it under the brass clip. “Who gave it to you?”
“Josh,” Karel answered. “He’s a friend of Emil Braun.”
Karel couldn’t help himself. It was the beer working him over, or maybe that he didn’t care what his father thought. He was thirteen, after all, his self-assurance budding, becoming arrogance. Drinking with the ballplayers, wearing the uniform home. Now uttering the name Emil Braun. Karel wasn’t helping himself at all. He was about to explain who Josh was, the great Negro hurler, but stopped himself there at least.
“Well,” Miihlstein deliberated. He picked his shoes off the floor, walked over to the sofa. “Given the origin of these items. Emil Braun, you say. I want them returned. They’ll bring trouble. You’ll see. Whether they’re stolen or not.”
“No,” Karel said. “I want to keep them.”
Miihlstein grabbed his suit jacket from the railing. “Let’s go, Karel. Take me to this man Josh. We’ll see what he has to say about it.”
“You don’t understand. Josh doesn’t live around here. We can’t just barge in on him.”
“You will explain on the journey. I’m quite convinced we’re leaving.”
They took the streetcar north. Caught the Lake Street line near the post office. Karel told his father where Josh lived once they were out on Clandish, but the reveal didn’t faze Miihlstein. “That’s no trouble” was all he said. “I know how to get there.”
Karel was surprised how calm Miihlstein was. Way up there past Cuming Street, what the boys called No Man’s Land. Karel didn’t think his father had ever been to this part of the city, but maybe Miihlstein had a surprise or two up his sleeve as well. And why wouldn’t he? Not only black people lived on the Near Northside—as Karel thought—but it had long been dominated by Eastern Europeans and Jews. For years the most common tongue spoken here was Yiddish. “Many clients live here,” Miihlstein told him as the streetcar rumbled north. Miihlstein reached up to raise a window sash and let a breeze in. “I know my way around.”
Once off the streetcar Miihlstein went to a little grocery shop in a corner brick building with green awnings. The shopkeeper knew him. Greeted him. “Shalom,” they said. Miihlstein asked what the shopkeeper knew about a Josh Joseph who lived around there. “Der schvartze?” “Yeah. The baseball player.” “No. He shines shoes.” “That’s him,” Karel said. They went on, Herr Miihlstein with his boy straggling behind, embarrassed, sluggish, to a shack set back in the weeds, one with a broken latch, so the door hung ajar.
Karel didn’t know what to think, headed here with his father. He shouldn’t have worn his new uniform up here, the jersey of the Southside team. He might get trouble for wearing the wrong color letters that spelled out Omaha, the white cloth and pinstripes, instead of the solid gray of the Northside. But this didn’t really matter. Nobody said a thing to Karel about it, even if he did get some second looks from doorways. It was no surprise, the jersey he wore. Was he—a Southsider—supposed to wear the jersey of the black Northside team? That made no sense. What did anybody expect from him? What was Karel to think? Going past these little shacks with Herr Miihlstein, his boxy hat, his straight-laced shoes and skinny black necktie. Kids on the corner watched with equal parts anger and amusement. Miihlstein didn’t seem to notice.
“Is the man of the house at home?” he asked when the woman answered.
This was the same woman as before, Karel was sure, though she didn’t wear the red kerchief over her mouth. She dressed nice this time, in a skirt-suit with brass buttons, her hair done up neat. “You mean Josh?” she asked, and waved them inside. “He’s here where he always is.” She led them in and pointed to Josh in the room, said to him, “I don’t know how they find you.”
Karel watched the woman. The kitchen was quiet this time. A carton of fruit on the table. The woman grabbed her bag and went in to say good-bye to Josh. Kneeled to where he sat on the floor, whispered something to him, then kissed the top of his head. “I got to get.” She smiled to Karel a moment, like she recognized him, or boys like him. “Nice shirt,” she said.
“We’ve never met,” Miihlstein said once the woman left.
“They call me Josh.”
“Do you know my boy?”
Josh looked Karel over but only shrugged.
Miihlstein wasn’t fazed at all being here or seeing a man like Josh, the two stumps where his legs had been, his long, bone-skinny arms. It was so muggy in the room that Josh went without a shirt, so they saw his ribs, a long pink mark across his stomach where he was scarred. Miihlstein kept his upright way even here. He sweat, anybody would have, it was wet in there, but he hardly acknowledged his perspiration, just pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away and that was that.
He elbowed Karel in the shoulder. “Give me the ball.”
Once Karel handed it over, Miihlstein gave the ball to Josh and asked if it was his. “I’m suspicious this ball was stolen.”
Josh smiled at the suggestion, like how did this man expect him to recognize one baseball from another after he’d held thousands of them in his lifetime? But Josh took the ball with his colossal left hand and looked it over anyway, perched by the seams on his fingertips like on a pedestal. Black Shinola was smudged on this ball, which gave away who its former owner had been.
“I gave the boy this ball. I remember. He came to see me one time.”
“Emil brought me,” Karel said. He turned so Josh could see the uniform he wore.
“Yes. That’s right. One of Emil’s kids. From the boat to a ballfield. I see you.”
Josh tossed the ball back to Karel then turned to what he was looking at, the latest weekly digest unfolded out over the floor. The Monitor, which was for black folks. His finger traced over the lines on the page, how the NAACP was having a campaign drive to enlist new members and how colored troops were going to be included in a military parade in Baltimore at President Wilson’s request. Josh’s brown-and-orange eyes going back and forth.
“Who is this Emil Braun?” Miihlstein wanted to know. “He introduced my Karel here to you, but I don’t know him. What’s Braun up to?”