Page 157 of Never Flinch

The leatherlung: “She’s cheating!”

Dingley: “Check the ball for grease, ump!”

Lew Warwick, coming to his own foul line on the other side of the diamond: “Sit down and shut up, Darby! Quit being a poor sport!”

Dingley: “Poor sport, my rosy red ass! She’s throwing a fucking SPITBALL!”

Izzy ignores all the noise. Takes a breath. Looks in for the sign. Cos has one finger down, wanting the straight fast one.

Izzy throws it, and everything goes to hell.

6

7:28 PM.

George Pill connects and hits a bouncer along the infield grass between first base and the pitcher’s mound. For a moment Pill just stands at home plate, transfixed. Then he runs. The Hoses fans rise to their feet, anticipating their team’s first hit.

The Guns first baseman is a young patrolman named Ray Darcy. He fades toward second and barehands the ball on the third bounce.

Izzy Jaynes knows that if the first baseman is pulled out of position, it’s her job to cover the bag and take the throw. She’s off at thechinksound of the aluminum bat and is standing on the first-base line to take the feed. Darcy’s throw is on the money, and she spins to tag George Pill out, aware he may try to slide under her.

He doesn’t. With a scowl on his face, Pill redoubles his speed, lowers his head, and crashes into Izzy, his shoulder digging into her breasts and his helmeted head into the socket of her shoulder. She hears a dullcrrackas her shoulder parts company with her upper arm, and hers is the first shriek that everyone—here and at the Holman Rink—hears. The ball bounces out of her glove and Pill stands on first base, helmetless now, oblivious of the screaming woman on the ground. He’s grinning and—incredibly—making thesafesign. He’s still making it when Ray Darcy hits him with a flying tackle, straddles him, and begins punching his lights out.

The Guns and Hoses players sprint from their benches and light up a full-fledged, fists-flying donnybrook. The field ump tries to get between them and is flattened. The Guns fans begin erupting from the bleachers. On the Hoses side, Darby Dingley is waving his fists above his head and screaming, “Get em, you firemen! Fucking GET EM!”

Lew Warwick runs across the field, grabs Dingley, and shoves him onto his butt. “Don’t be an asshole, quit throwing gas on the fire,” he says, but the damage is done.

The Hoses fans pour down from their bleachers, ready to rumble. Some fall and get up, some fall and get stomped on. Gunners meet Hosers at midfield. The loudspeaker squawks and remonstrates before being cut off in a howl of feedback. Calls to reason wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. The crowd, many of them fueled by beer, wine, and the harder stuff, begin to whale on each other. It’s not like the pallid kerfuffle at the Mingo Auditorium; this is serious shit.

In foul territory, just south of first base, Izzy rolls back and forth, cradling her broken shoulder in agony, forgotten until Tom Atta scoops her up.

“Getting you out of here,” he says, and to Ray Darcy, as he goes by: “Stop hitting that fireman, Officer. Fucking poor-sport dickbrain’s unconscious.”

A police car rolls slowly onto the field, jackpot lights flashing and siren gobbling. Hoses fans surround it, halting its progress. Other Hoses fans begin to rock it, and eventually turn it over on its side in left field.

Bedlam.

7

Betty Brady walks past piles of uniforms and soccer gear and peers out the door. She doesn’t know what has happened and doesn’t care. What matters is the way is suddenly clear. Mighty Jesus has heard her prayer. For the time being, even the autograph hounds seem to be gone, but she knows they’ll be back. There isn’t a second to waste.

She takes a last look around to make sure she’s okay, then sets off at a lumbering jog for the round roof of the rink rising above the surrounding trees, holding her purse to her bosom with one hand. Trailing her is one final and extremely dedicated eBayer, a bespectacled man Holly would have recognized from Iowa City, Davenport, and Chicago. In one hand he’s got a poster of a much younger Sista Bessie standing outside the Apollo Theater. He’s calling to her:Just one, just one.

Betty can’t hear him. The noise of the crowd—angry voices, terrified voices, cries of pain, a din of yelling men and women—redoubles. At the edge of the trees she stops and grabs her vial of heart pills out of her bag. She takes three, hoping they’ll hold off the heart attack she’s been dodging for the last eight or ten years of her life, at least until she does what needs doing.

Hold on, you old rattletrap, she tells her heart.Hold on a little longer. She takes Red’s gun out of her purse.

“Sista Bessie!” the bespectacled eBayer calls. “I’m a huge fan! I couldn’t get a ticket to your show! Would you sign—”

She turns, gun in hand, and although it’s not pointing at him—not exactly—the bespectacled eBayer decides he’s not such a huge fan, after all. He turns tail and runs. But holds onto the poster. Signed, on eBay or one of the other auction sites, it would fetch four hundred dollars.

Four hundred atleast.

8

Before Jerome can enter the scrum (which now covers the whole field) and start pulling people apart, Red Jones grabs his arm. “Betty,” he says. “If she’s gone, I guess maybe you better go after her.”

Jerome looks at him, frowning. “Why would she be gone? She’s still in her dressing room, right?”

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