“Ben, you got it! You got it!”
“Goda’mighty, Ben! You got it!”
He had never been so magnificent. He knew he would die with that vision in his eyes, like an aged cataract, with the sound of voices screaming in praise: “Ben, Ben, you got it! You got it!”
He closed his eyes and leaned against the seat and reached instinctively inside his coat and touched his baseball cap. Everything about him had changed, and he knew it. He could feel the boy he had been passing out of him, dissipating in the steam and smoke of the train. He did not care. For one moment, quicker than a breath, he had been magnificent. Magnificent.
EVEN WITH HIS eyes closed, Ben knew when Foster Lanier stumbled past him in the aisle. Foster was drunk, had been drunk since early evening, Ben guessed. He pretended sleep. He could sense Foster leaning forward, toward him, and he was afraid that Foster would speak. The train swayed. He heard Foster mutter something and then stagger away.
“What was wrong with him?” Ben heard the girl ask the man from across the aisle.
“Drunk,” the man answered. “You could smell it. Smelled like he’d slobbered some down his shirt, or something.”
Ben listened, straining to hear the conversation.
“You don’t drink much, do you?” the girl asked.
“Not much. Won’t at all, if you don’t like it.”
“Just so it’s not much.”
“Not much. You got my word on it,” the man said.
“All right,” the girl said simply.
Ben could hear the man shift in his seat. His voice lowered. “Some folks say a man that drinks can’t last laying up with a woman.”
The girl did not reply.
“Depends on the man, I’d say,” the man said confidently. “Now, me, it don’t bother me none. You didn’t hook up with no quitter. I’ll say that much and leave it there. No need to start bragging.” There was a pause and more shifting in the seat and the man added, “You see that boy sleeping over there?”
“What about him?” the girl asked.
“You think he could last with a woman?”
For a moment, the girl did not speak, and Ben believed she was looking at him. Then: “He looks nice to me.”
“That boy,” the man declared, “get one look at you in the flesh and he’d faint dead away. I guarantee it. He wouldn’t last two minutes with you. That’s the difference between a man and a boy.”
“I don’t know,” the girl said absently.
“Damn,” the man exclaimed quietly. “Damnation.”
“What is it?”
“Just thinking about it makes me fidgety.”
Ben wondered about the girl and the man. Why was she with him? He was older. Where were they going? Where did they meet? He heard a low sigh from the man, heard the girl whisper, “No, not here.”
The man said, “I never been good at waiting.”
“When will we be in Knoxville?” the girl asked.
“Tomorrow, sometime.”
Ben wiggled in his seat and opened a slit in his eyes, playing his eyelashes like a shade. He could see the man trying to fondle the girl’s breasts and the girl resisting him with her hands. He thought the girl saw him watching through the slits of his eyelash shades. Thought the girl looked directly at him and smiled. He closed his eyes again and rolled his head sleepily toward the window and opened his eyes and looked into the mirror of the darkened window. He could see the man and the girl behind him, and the girl was pushing away the man’s pawing hands. Then he looked deeper, through the abstract, pale images of the mirror, and in the distance he saw a forest of pines with feathered tips. He wondered if Milo would miss him. No, he thought. No, Milo would not miss him. And knowing it, he began to ache.
BEN DID NOT know how long he slept. A few minutes perhaps. He woke to the monotonous droning of the train, steel speeding on steel, and to Foster pulling at his arm.
“C’mon, Ben, damn it, wake up,” Foster said in a loud voice. “God-o-mighty, you can sleep anytime.”
Foster’s felt hat was pushed back on his head. His face was limp, his eyes filmed. Ben could smell the strong bourbon Foster had been drinking.
“Foster,” Ben said. “What—what is it?”
“Nothing. Damn noisy train. Can’t sleep a dab,” Foster said. He settled into the seat beside Ben and pulled a bottle from his inside coat pocket and offered it to Ben.
“Me and you, we ought to be toasting something,” Foster said. “Old Arnold Toeman, by God.” He laughed easily. “All my years of ballplaying, Ben, and I never seen a son of a bitch like him.”
Ben refused the bottle. He said, “I’ll be getting off before long. Wouldn’t help to go home having whiskey on my breath.”
Foster nodded his understanding and drank from the bottle. “I was that way, first time off from home. God-o-mighty, that was a long time ago.” He drank again from the bottle. “Old Arnold Toeman,” he added. “Yes sir, Ben, when he dies, won’t be a decent maggot in seven states crawl near him. That’s worth toasting, Ben. Damned if it’s not. I’ll toast it for me and you both.” He swallowed again from the bottle.
“You ought to go easy on that stuff, Foster,” Ben advised. “Make you sick.”
Foster held up the bottle and gazed at it. “Guess you right, Ben,” he said philosophically. “Does that sometimes. Makes me piss a lot, I know that. Piss the same, exact color in that bottle.” He shook the bottle. “What it looks like, Ben. Piss. Maybe that’s what I been drinking. Piss. Maybe that old nigger pissed in a empty bottle and sold it to me, knowing I wouldn’t know the difference. Well, it’s not Kentucky-made, but that’s all I know.”
Foster’s voice had become louder as he talked and Ben could see the girl and the man staring at them. He whispered, “Foster, better hold it down. They liable to throw us both off this train.”
Foster laughed. “Not enough people on it to throw nobody off, but they may try to, Ben. They may. God-o-mighty, I may have to walk my way back to Kentucky. Crawl, I guess. Goddamn leg.” He looked over to the man and the girl and smiled. “Offer you a little drink, friend?” he said, extending the bottle across the aisle.
“That cheap stuff or premium, neighbor?” the man said.
“Cost a penny, got a bite. Give you plenty, treat you right,” Foster recited. He smiled happily.
The man laughed. “I heard that one. Drunk my share of it, too.” He accepted the bottle from Foster and drank tentatively, getting the taste on his tongue. “Taste good enough to me,” he judged. “Fact is, I’d call it some cuts above decent.” He swallowed hard.
“Just not Kentucky,” Foster said. “Your lady, there. She want some?”
“Don’t know,” the man said. He turned to the girl. “Want to try it?”
The girl shook her head and let her eyes float to Ben.
“Young folks,” the man said, drinking again. “Guess they got time to learn what’s what, but they don’t know what they missing.” He handed the bottle back to Foster.
“That’s true,” Foster agreed. “Ben, here, and me, well, we’re baseball players. He’s starting and I’m quitting. He’s hell in the field, even if he can’t hit the ground with a stick and don’t drink a drop.” He punched Ben gently, laughed at his own humor.
The man’s face brightened. “Baseball players. Well, by shot. What’s your name, friend? Maybe I saw you somewhere. I’m a traveling salesman. I been to lots of games, all over hell and half of Georgia.”
“Lanier,” Foster answered. “Foster Lanier.”
The man’s eyes widened in surprise. He whistled softly and then he said, “Well, I’ll be damned.” He caught the girl’s arm and pulled her up to face Foster. “Honey, this man’s Foster Lanier. I saw him in Louisville. By God, you was something, friend. Something else, all right.”
Foster beamed. He jabbed Ben with his elbow. “Now here’s a man who knows a baseball player when he sees one, Ben. Not like Arnold Toeman.” He stood in the aisle and extended his han
d to the man. “What’s your name, friend?”
“Norman Porterfield,” the man said, standing. “This is Lottie Barton.” He grinned. “She’s a special friend of mine.”
The girl nodded to Foster.
Foster removed his hat. He said, “Glad to meet you, little lady. Glad to, indeed.” Then: “Norman, I’m about to step out at the back of the car and obey the urge. Let’s me and you drink to the night and leave the teetotalers to themselves.”
Norman looked hesitantly at Lottie. She said, “Go on. I’m tired, anyhow.”
“Be back in a few minutes, honey,” Norman said.
“Take all night. I don’t care,” Lottie told him.
“Ben, you mind your manners,” Foster said.
Norman laughed and followed Foster through the rear door of the car to the platform, and the two men stood urinating into the night and the wind, splattering the tracks below them. When they had finished, Foster handed the bottle to Norman and watched him drink.
“No need to worry none about the boy in there with your lady friend,” Foster shouted over the noise of the train. “He just got cut from a team. He don’t feel like nothing. He’s lower than a pile of worm shit.”
“Don’t matter,” Norman called back, handing the bottle to Foster. “She don’t mean nothing. Just a stray I picked up at one of the river houses in Augusta. Started to whore a little bit, but she don’t know nothing yet. I told her I’d take her with me. She’s got a body that’d stop old Satan in his tracks. Woman like that can be an asset in a traveling man’s business.”
“God-o-mighty,” exclaimed Foster. “Whoring? That young? She must be a nimpo.”
Norman smiled broadly. He said, “We working on it. Yes sir, Foster, we working on it.” Then he added, leaning close to Foster, “Look, if it wadn’t for the fact I just met her a couple of days ago—”
Foster waved away the thought with his bottle.
“Truth is, Norman, I’m not up to it, not that she’s not pretty enough to be tempting. I been a little under the weather and drinking too much of this damned stuff takes the want right out of a man.”
Norman remembered what he had said to Lottie about drinking men not lasting. Maybe he should have said they can’t even start, he thought. He laughed aloud and reached for Foster’s bottle.
BEN TRIED NOT to look at the girl. He sat erect, as an adult would sit, and stared into the back of the seat in front of him. None of the seats around him was occupied, and Ben felt trapped. He turned his head to the window, and in its mirror finish he saw the girl. She was gazing at him with a curious expression. Ben knew she was his age, perhaps younger, yet she seemed older, as much woman as girl. She wore perfume. He was sure of it. Perfume the odor of flowers. He could smell it, thin in the warm air of the train. She was pretty, he thought. Pretty in a sad kind of way. He had never seen anyone with eyes as soft. He guessed the color of her eyes to be brown, though the light in the train was too dim for knowing.
The girl said, “Ben. That your name?”
Ben turned to her and nodded. “Ben. Ben Phelps.”
“I’m Lottie,” she said. “Lottie Barton. My mama thought Lottie was pretty, and she could say it easy with my sister’s name. She’s Lila. Lila and Lottie.” She moved to the seat near the aisle.
“Glad to meet you,” Ben said.
Lottie looked at him and smiled. She thrust her face into the space that separated them. “You drink whiskey?”
“Uh—no,” Ben stammered. He remembered the conversation he had overheard between Norman and Lottie. “Well, I tried it one time. Made me sick. Somebody said it was bad makings.”
“Norman—he’s my friend—drinks too much,” Lottie confided easily. “I don’t know him that much, but I can tell. Says he don’t, but I know he does.”
Ben nodded politely. He did not know what to say.
“I think I’ll let him go his way when we get to Knoxville,” Lottie added. “He’s a lot older than I want, anyhow. Ever notice how old people seem to dry up? Like some old leaf hanging up on a tree. Just hanging there.”
Ben did not answer.
“They all right, I guess,” Lottie said after a moment. “I mean, they can’t help it, I guess. They got their place, but they don’t never seem to know when they get old. I don’t ever want to get old like that. Do you, Ben?”
“Uh, I guess it happens,” Ben said. “Not much a person can do about it.”
Lottie smiled at him patiently. “That’s right,” she agreed. “A person can’t. You’re a smart person, Ben Phelps. It’s easy to tell that.”
Sitting close, she smelled of sweet strong perfume. Ben squirmed in his seat and glanced out the window.
“I never been on a train before,” Lottie said quietly. “It’s pretty out there. Nothing but nighttime going by, like it’s water that we swimming in. You ever wonder who lives out there in all that nighttime, Ben Phelps?”
Ben answered without looking at her: “Just people, I guess.”
“What kind of people, you think?”
“Farmers, I guess. About all there is around here. Farmers.”
“My granddaddy’s a farmer,” Lottie said. “I’m glad I never lived on a farm. All that work to do.”
“It must be hard,” Ben mumbled.
“They don’t never do nothing but work. All day. Work. I never heard nobody in my granddaddy’s whole family ever laugh out loud. They all look like they just waiting around to die, or something.”
“Uh-huh,” Ben said.
“You really a baseball player, Ben Phelps?”
The question made Ben ache again. “I play some,” he answered. “Not good enough for the professionals, like Foster was, but I play some.”
“You like it?”
Ben thought about the question. He did not want to like baseball. The game had betrayed him, hurt him. He did not want to need the game, but he knew the game was in him like a terminal disease that could not be seen, only felt.
“It’s all right,” Ben said softly.
Lottie stretched in her seat and looked back toward the closed train door. She could see the outline of Foster and Norman, huddled close on the platform. They were drinking and laughing. She turned back to Ben. “What did you say?”
“I said baseball was all right,” Ben told her.
“Oh.”
“It’s nothing but a game, but it’s all right.”
“I never saw a baseball game,” Lottie said. “My daddy used to go see them, I guess. He never said much about where he went to.”
“Sometimes you get tired of it,” Ben said.
“Sometimes you get tired of everything, Ben. That don’t mean it’s all bad. That’s what my mama keeps telling me.” She looked thoughtfully past Ben to the sheen coating of the window. “I guess she was talking about my daddy. He’s not much of a man, to be honest about it.”
Ben did not know how to reply to her. She was not complaining. Was not angry. She was merely talking, as casually as she would talk about a dress. She was a woman, not a girl, Ben thought. A woman would know such things as the worth of a man.
“Where you getting off, Ben Phelps?”
“Jericho,” Ben said. “Not much longer to go, I’d guess.”
“Jericho? I never heard of it. Sounds like it’s from the Bible.”
“They say it is,” Ben said. “It’s not too big.”
“Must be little,” Lottie said. “I never heard of it. Must be a train stop and not much more.”
“Just about that,” Ben admitted. “A little bit bigger. Not much.”
“I said I was going my own way in Knoxville, but I probably won’t,” Lottie said with a sigh. “I guess I’ll stay with Norman a little while. I never been nowhere and he’s been all over.”
“Why’d your folks let you go off like that?” asked Ben.
Lottie shrugged slightly. She lifted her hand to touch her face. “I just left, way my sister did. One day, Sister just wadn’t there. Her name’s Lila,
like I told you, but I always just call her Sister. Didn’t nobody hear from her for two years. Then she come home one day and Mama said, ‘Where you been?’ and Sister said, ‘Out.’ And that was the end of it. Sister’s not left for nowhere since then. Just sits on the back porch in a rocking chair and looks at that old river. All day. All day rocking and looking at that old river, like she’s on a boat and it’s taking her somewhere she’s never been to. Don’t have good sense, I guess.”
Ben started to speak, but did not. He watched Lottie, as though expecting a fuller explanation. He could not comprehend anyone leaving home so casually, strolling away without guilt or fear. But there was no guilt or fear in Lottie’s eyes. She seemed aware only of the space immediately around her, and that space seemed innocent and pleasant.
“I kind of think my daddy found out I was leaving,” she said after a moment. “When we was pulling out of the train station, I thought I heard him calling me.”
Ben remembered suddenly the man at the station, running beside the train, looking into windows. He was shouting, “Lottie, Lottie, Lottie…”
“But maybe it wadn’t him,” Lottie added. “Maybe I was just hoping it was.” She paused, gazed out the window, and then she said in a small voice, “It’s funny what a person wants sometimes.”
Ben nodded. He wondered if he should tell her about the man calling for her, decided against it.
Lottie peered toward the train door. “Wonder what’s keeping them,” she said. She looked back at Ben and smiled. “Getting drunk, I’d bet. Me and you, we’ll wind up taking care of both them before morning.”
“Not me,” Ben said. “I’ll be getting off before long.”
“They’ll be drunk soon.”