Braun spoke with a sharper tooth that day and the days after.
In the packed church he told the boys to stick to the back, to leave pews open for those who must sit. Maybe there weren’t many folks who knew what became of Josh in Cuba, or when he returned from the hospital in Washington, DC, but most everyone of a certain generation remembered Josh Joseph from his prime. How he kicked his front leg shoulder height when he wound up to throw off the mound; how determined he was; how a grin broke across his lips when he busted a hard one in on a batter’s thumbs; that he was such an athlete, the fastest runner, the hardest puncher, the best dancer too, and he could have done anything, played any sport professionally (if that had been possible) and he would have been a star from coast to coast. Even if they didn’t grow up here, as most black people in Omaha didn’t, they knew somehow. They grieved. If not for Josh Joseph, then for someone like him. The prodigy back south they’d never see or hear of again. Karel watched amazed at all the mourners in their suits and dresses and hats—the way the choir swaggered up behind the coffin to sing—and wished he’d dressed better, instead of his high pants, dirty socks, a wrinkled shirt on its second week, one he’d played half-a-dozen school yard games in without washing. He had clean clothes folded in a stack at home but didn’t think to put them on. He’d never really been to a funeral before.
His mother’s was the only other, but he’d been too young to remember much. All he could picture about that day was unhewn dark, damp black, his sisters standing in their raincoats silent, embarrassed by it all, by his bawling. That was what Anna had told him. There were no red roses, no curtain call. Karel couldn’t picture what she’d looked like in the coffin. There was a photograph of his parents they had. Frau reared erect behind an easy chair where Herr sat, sunk into himself. One of Frau’s hands was clenched in a fist on the back of the chair.
That funeral would have been different than this one. No shouting and laughing, not in a sunken churchyard in Galizien. Nothing like Josh Joseph’s. Women wailing rounds. What Jimmy said were slave songs. Ballplayers from the Northside team made their way around to joke with people. One of them, a second baseman Karel thought was white at first, but was pale black, if that was a thing, asked what positions the boys played, then laughed when they told him. “If you boys ever come running at me,” he said, “you keep your spikes down.”
The line wrapped around the church, made of black and a few white men, Braun among them, waiting their turn to step up to the bier and pay some due. Many of them squeezed baseballs. A few had mitts they flipped around to stare at the stitching gone stiff, to give over to Josh. Here, my man. My ratty ole mitt. I want you to have it. But so many of them had mementos, the funeral director wouldn’t allow it. What was he going to do with all those relics? Put together a team? Give them away to the kids playing stickball down the street? “Of course! That’s exactly what you should do.” “What do I look like?” “Wouldn’t take much to do it.” “I say. What do I look like?”
Josh clutched a ball already, his hand did, inside the coffin. They’d put him in a uniform, a new set of solid grays donated from the Negro team. Karel felt better about what he was wearing when he saw Josh in uniform. There was no shame in having dirt in your clothes so long as that dirt came from a diamond.
Karel became dark watching: maybe the next funeral would be for Anna. How could he think these things? Did he want to make himself miserable? Did he want to put a bad omen on his sister? Dear Anna. How many people would even come pay respects? Maria, Jake. Only five Miihlsteins lived in Omaha—it would be four without her. Would there be music? Herr Miihlstein’s Parisians, his hurdy-gurdy friends. A client of his father’s might steer by out of duty. It would be nothing like this here at Zion. There wouldn’t be a service at a church but a wake in the parlor at home. Then a procession from the Eigler house, the family in the back of a rented truck with the coffin. Would traffic stop as her body passed?
Sadness closed in on Karel. The color drained from his face. “Karel? What is it?” Alfred asked. “You okay?” They thought he was broken up about the ballplayer and didn’t understand how that was, since he’d only met Josh once, as far as they knew. “Jesus,” Jimmy said. “Who knew you were so sensitive?”
“Listen,” he told Anna that night. “I want to give you something special.”
“What is it?” she asked, sitting up on the sofa where she slept. Her skin had gone dark around her eyes and mouth, her eyes grayish.
“I don’t know. A Kewpie doll. Or a pet to keep you company. A duck.”
“What?”
“I’m teasing. I don’t know. A new coat. Would you like that? A new purple overcoat?”
“Sure,” Anna said. She looked down, under the quilts, surprised that she was wearing her old lavender coat. The elegance had gone out of it. Holes had worn through the crease in the collar. “Can you get one?”