“Grab a shower and meet me under the grandstand in your street togs,” Mister JayMac said. “Dinner’s on me tonight.”

Why not Fadeaway, Junior, and Skinny too? I thought. Why not Jumbo, for that matter? He’d had another long home run and another errorless day at first. Did proving the shrewdness of Miss Tulipa’s judgment entitle you to dine every Sunday evening with the boss?

I met Mister JayMac in the concessions area. He stood next to Homer’s tank, talking to two people-females?-half-hidden by girder shadows. One of the females, I saw, was Phoebe. The other had to be her mama, the daughter of Mister JayMac’s dead brother. Made sense, I guess, but my heart double-clutched-I hadn’t seen Phoebe at any of our recent games-and my hands turned cold as ice tongs.

“Ah, Mr Boles!” Mister JayMac shouted. “Got some ladies here I’d like you to meet!”

I sauntered over. Phoebe was Phoebe, of course-but tonight she had on a dress instead of blue jeans, and a pair of tiny gold earrings instead of one gaudy exploded pearl. In her open-toed heels and her wide-brimmed straw hat, she looked like a miniature woman. Her mother… well, I reddened. My eyes glanced down to flit over the candy wrappers and dirty popcorn around the base of the aquarium.

“Mrs Luther Pharram, better known around here as LaRaina, and her lovely daughter Phoebe,” Mister JayMac said. “Ladies, Mr Daniel Boles-Mr Boles, Mrs Pharram and Phoebe.”

Not too long ago, LaRaina Pharram and I’d bumped into each other between the second and third floors at McKissic House, only she’d worn a towel and I’d worn shorts and an all-over blush. My blush’d come back, prickly as radioactive shellac. Miss LaRaina, despite the damage she’d wreaked on Curriden and Skinny, looked bright-eyed and amused. Every time I glanced up, she gave me a batted eyelash-mockery-and a smile halfway between a grin and a pout.

We have a secret, her grin-pout said. Aren’t you glad you can’t tell my uncle? “Sorry, Uncle JayMac,” LaRaina Pharram said aloud, “but I can’t call this handsome fella Mr Boles.”

Handsome! More mockery. I wanted not to like this woman-she had a husband overseas, she’d spent the night playing slip-skins with a ballplayer, she’d gotten a big kick out of my embarrassment, and now she was making mock of me-but I still felt more or less kindly toward her.

Mister JayMac said Miss LaRaina could call me Daniel, if she liked, but he’d stick to Mr Boles.

“My, such a fuddy-duddy,” Miss LaRaina said.

Phoebe’d picked up on my jitters, and my behavior struck her as rude or immature. Her pretty lips seemed to’ve wrapped themselves around a sour lemon drop.

“So how’s Miss Giselle?” she suddenly piped, then went back to sucking her make-believe candy.

“Fine,” Mister JayMac said. “Now. Where would you gals advise taking our hero for a victory supper?”

“Ast him where he’d like to go,” Phoebe said.

Mister JayMac said, “But he’s ignorant of his choices.”

“Ast him what he’d like to eat,” Phoebe said. “American, Eye-talian, Chinese.”

Mister JayMac lifted an eyebrow at me. At that moment, I had all the appetite of a spooked cat. I was trying to adjust to Miss LaRaina’s presence and cooling down from nine innings of sticky twilight baseball.

“The Live Oak Tea Room at the Oglethorpe,” Miss LaRaina suggested.

Phoebe looked at me. “Thass a nice place.”

“The Linenmakers booked rooms at the Oglethorpe,” Mister JayMac said. “The tea room’s going to swarm with em.”

Miss LaRaina smiled at her uncle. “I know.”

Mister JayMac’s jaw tightened. “Have a care,” he said. “For decency. For your daughter.”

“Phoebe’s not likely to put the mash on a Linenmaker. She hates ballplayers.”

“Not awluvem,” Phoebe said.

You could’ve fooled me. The pinched V between her eyebrows and the pucker of her mouth didn’t say fondness, not in any language I knew.

“The Oglethorpe Tea Room is out,” Mister JayMac said.

“Corporal John’s over on Penticuff Strip?” Miss LaRaina said. “It’s got an attractive clientele.”

“Absolutely not.”

“A joke. It’s closed today anyway. Sunday sure limits a body’s choices here in Highbridge.”

Mister JayMac herded us into the parking lot, where Darius had pulled the Caddy as close as he could to the main gate, given the fans still about. Darkness’d just begun to settle, and several groups of people smoked and gabbed in the parking lot. Dance music drifted from a radio through an open car window. Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller.

Before we could get in the Caddy, a hefty man in overalls and a frowzy woman in a print dress came over. Their clothes seemed to have as much dust as cotton in them.

“Jordan McKissic?” the man said. “Thass you, aint it?

“It is. How may I help you?”

“Show him, Sue Beth.”

The woman-Sue Beth-pushed a paper under Mister JayMac’s nose. He retreated a step.

“S from the War Department,” the man said. “Hit us a coupla days back. It’s our Donnie.”

“He aint coming home,” the woman said. “He done got kilt in North Africa.”

“I’m sorry,” Mister JayMac said. “A terrible thing.”

“You oughta be,” the woman said. “You done for him. You took him when he coulda had him-shoulda had him-a heping-job zemption. Eye-talians didn’t kill our Donny. You did it with a stinkm fountain pen.”

Mister JayMac said, “Please, folks, tell me yall’s names.”

“The Crawfords,” the man said. “Ira and Sue Beth. Little people, ordinary folk. Ordinary!” Crawford didn’t exactly shout, but his kettle-drum voice carried. Some loitering fans began ambling towards us.

“Donnie never shoulda gone!” Sue Beth Crawford did shout. “And you damn-all know it too!”

“Mrs Crawford, God bless your martyred son,” Mister JayMac said. “I’m sorry every American boy who dies has to make that sacrifice.”

“Yessir,” Ira Crawford said. “But the draft board had its quota to fill so you thew our innosunt young un in.”

“Every boy in the hopper’s innocent in one way or another. Thank God we don’t yet have an army of criminals and cynics.”

“Yore precious ballplayers don’t go!” Crawford accused.

“Not one Hellbender comes from here,” Mister JayMac said. “They’re too young or old, or their local draft boards exempted them. I pulled no strings for any player.”

“Mebbe you did, mebbe you didn’t,” Ira Crawford said. “But you cain’t say the same bout thatere black nigger. How come he aint on bivouac someres?”

Darius heard this-he had to’ve-but he opened the Caddy’s rear door and helped Phoebe and Miss LaRaina in.

“Mr Crawford, federal law forbids inducting Negroes in greater numbers than they appear in the general population. Hothlepoya County has almost as many coloreds as whites so we take more than most boards, but a limit exists.”

“Hog slop,” Ira Crawford said.

“Look, even if we loaded the Army with coloreds, they’d end up in service units-the quartermaster corps and such. They probably wouldn’t fight and die like you and the missus seem to want em to.”

Near the big Caddy, you could’ve heard a cricket poot. Sue Beth started to cry, Ira cursed. They joined hands and walked back through the dusty lot to a dented Ford pickup loaded down with feed sacks.

“I am sorry about your son!” Mister JayMac called out.

“I bet,” said somebody unseeable in the crowd.

The Crawfords slammed opposite doors and rattled away in their spavined pickup.

“Git in, sir,” Darius said. “I’ll drive yall to the Royal.” He meant the Royal Hotel, a place with a restaurant supposedly even better than the Oglethorpe’s.

Off we rode. Mister JayMac sat next to Darius, brooding. Miss LaRaina jabbered away, happy that the Hellbenders had won and made a move in the standings.