It was the wrong call, wasn’t it, but who was to say? The ump, surely, and he said out. Now the ump was running off the field. It was over. The Northside manager chased after to beg a fair ruling, but it was no use. Once the ump crossed outside the foul line, the manager couldn’t grab his arm to slow him down. Once the ump made it to the grandstand, with the other stunned thousands, the manager couldn’t even quarrel, for then the ump was a white man.
The ballplayers remained on the field, all out of the dugouts, palms up in question, unsure what to do. It wasn’t fair. Nobody was sure if the game was really over.
“Three outs,” Jap screamed, throwing his glove into the air. “That’s all you get!”
The Northsiders weren’t convinced. “You can’t do that. You can’t knock a guy out like that.”
“Sure can. He did it, didn’t he?” “Would of been an inside-the-parker otherwise. Not our fault your guy don’t look where he’s going.”
Both teams pressed together, one half against the other on the spot where Fowler had been flattened. The ballplayers were all over each other, trying to break up the fight or instigate, Karel couldn’t tell, the crowd on their feet shouting, no longer stunned, louder than they’d been during the game now that there was brawling. Alfred and Jimmy Mac screamed from the dugout too, flinging anything at hand out to the field. Paper cups, gloves, bats, the pine tar rag.
Fowler limped in the direction of his side’s bench, shaking out his legs as he went. There was something strange in how Fowler walked. He was in no hurry. He wasn’t agitated as he went down the steps to grab his mitt from under the bench then spun to the field. He pulled something from his mitt—a razor—and headed back to get Ducky.
“Shit,” the blacks shouted, backing out of the scrum as they saw. “You getting it now.”
Most Southsiders ran back to the dugout or scrambled to the outfield grass to watch. Fowler said he’d kill the guy who took a cheap shot. He held up the razor so sunlight caught the blade. He said he’d be happy to skin that thieving catcher if the thieving catcher wasn’t too chicken. “That’s fine,” Ducky shouted. “I’d like to see you try.”
Only a few players remained on the spot—Fowler and his shortstop, Ducky and his brother. Fowler and the Sutez brothers jawed, but nobody moved. The realization of what they were headed for dropped its weight over them. There was a sort of emptiness. Fowler looked like he wanted to put the razor back but couldn’t. He had to hold out the blade and explain his anger with more anger. He had to hold a razor to a white man’s throat, because that’s what had started.
Karel was out on the grass. He didn’t know why. Just found himself closer and closer to what would happen. He’d gone headlong and there was no reason, standing right next to the Sutez brothers. He peeked around and saw the blade. Fowler noticed him, the boy. Fowler stopped arguing to stare at Karel, to look him straight in the eye. Karel in his Southside uniform. Did they know each other? Was Fowler one of them he’d met at Josh Joseph’s funeral? Josh in his grays inside the coffin. Was Fowler the ballplayer who joked around with the boys?
How should Karel know? Fowler was nobody, out there holding a razor up to a man.
“Are you crazy? Put that thing down!” The Northside manager ran up to Fowler. He snatched the razor away and pushed Fowler and the others to their bench. “Going to get yourself killed! Your teammates too!”
They all came out of it then. The game was over.
Joe Meinhof spotted the boys after. “What were you doing on the field, Karel? Did you get a piece of the action? Is that what you were after?”
The boys laughed. “He’d of liked to,” Jimmy said. “They had it coming.”
“Pulling a razor? What in the world.”
Along with thousands of others they waited outside the park for a streetcar. They’d be stuck awhile in traffic. A barricade had been erected to ease the passage of black spectators and their team back to the Northside, with a police escort the whole way—so why not feel good for a while if you had to wait? Why not shout? Why not taunt those on the other side of the barricade?
Joe Meinhof chatted about the game and other things. He was a captain with the machine now. The delight of his position showed in his posture and how he combed his hair back over his head with a bump of pompadour. He wore an expensive suit, with a green silk tie and handkerchief, with shined dress shoes. A small man, short in height and slight in build, he wasn’t much larger than the boys. “I been trying to spot you guys,” he said. “No use pretending. I got something to tell you.” Karel didn’t pay attention. Meinhof was weird and uneasy. Karel didn’t like him, even if there was something about the man now. Some gravity.
Karel was lonely in that crowd squirming with glee. The scrum didn’t bring him the happiness it should have—not since he’d walked out on the field. People recognized him. Some of them slapped his back and congratulated him for being so brave, facing down that Fowler with his razor. Others despised Karel for being stupid, thinking they knew what was going on, that he’d moved only dumbfounded, following his eyes. But how could anyone know what went on inside Karel? He didn’t know himself. It was embarrassing to have strangers wonder if he was stupid, brave, whatever. Nobody should think about him at all. How the game ended was unfair anyway. Ducky had cheated. Fowler should have been awarded the run and the game resumed. Karel knew that. Nobody except black people seemed to care that the result was fraudulent. This bothered Karel too. He thought about Josh Joseph and the ball Josh gave him and insisted he keep, which was in his back pocket right then. The baseball with shoe polish rubbed in its hide.
“Listen,” Meinhof said. “No trolley is coming, not in this mess. Let’s walk. My place isn’t far. I got something to eat.”
Sure, the boys agreed. They went along. Karel didn’t have anywhere else to go, nothing better to do. He went along.
The walls of Joe Meinhof’s room were plastered with posters he filched from around the Ward. Advertisements for wrestling matches from years ago, menus from places he ate at, ads for women’s athletic clothing, for Norma Talmadge movies, for comic operettas. There were doodles Joe penciled in lunchrooms and Happy Hooligan cartoon strips he tore from the World-Herald. The papers were yellow and curled at the edges, this fossil record of things that caught his eye. Joe layered posters and clippings over each other, three or four deep.