“You weren’t supposed to,” Nutter told him.

We took the second game too, although this one evolved into a pitching duel between Fadeaway Ankers and a clever ex-major leaguer known as Smiley Clough. The game ended three to one. Lou Ed Dew probably wished Mr Roosevelt had watched it instead of our scalp-em-bald romp in the opener. Aboard the Brown Bomber, riding back to McKissic House, I kept hearing FDR say, “Swear to God, Clyde, that’s the most monsterish home run I’ve ever seen!” You could tell from that remark how he’d become president; he just had an instinct about him.

38

Angus Road and the McKissic House estate had guards-Camp Penticuff MPs and specially assigned soldiers in battle dress-posted all around them.

Darius drove us past this armed picket line and up the curving drive to the boardinghouse, then along the grassy track between the boardinghouse and the wood-shingled carriage house, then past that garage straight down the clovery slope towards Hellbender Pond. Every player on the team was aboard the bus, not just McKissic House tenants.

The pond’s grassy bank boasted three open-sided tents with striped roofs and several trestle-legged picnic tables set out under them. A bank of big electric fans, powered by a noisy gas-powered generator, flanked the tents to keep us picnickers cool and mosquito-free. FDR and his party had already claimed one of these tents, and Marines or a Secret Service detail had furnished it with dining-room chairs and the back seat of the President’s touring car, which they’d removed and set in front of a table draped with a linen cloth and laid with china and crystalware.

Kizzy and a rail-thin part-time butler had put out barbecue and Brunswick stew from the pits at the ball field-also cole slaw, pickles, olives, deviled eggs, and suchlike fixings-but not on FDR’s table. He had a basket packed with fried chicken, California wine, and French bread. He didn’t like the vinegary tang of Suthren-style barbecue.

Darius parked not far from the tents, but kept his hand on the door lever, holding us in. “Yall knew Mister JayMac had a to-do planned out here. He jes didn’t know if the President tended to stay fo it. Looks like he has. Last thing Mister JayMac told me, if Mister Franklin stayed, was to ast yall to behave yosefs and do ol Highbridge proud.”

Fadeaway Ankers said, “What would do old Highbridge proud is not have a uppity woolhead telling grown white men what to do. Jesus.”

Wham. Everybody on the Bomber went tight-jawed. Darius’d spoken by way of the rearview, about as boy-humble as he had it in him to be. Now he cut his eyes to one side, and all the rest of us Hellbenders could see of him in the mirror was the top of his head.

“As good as you throw,” Charlie Snow told Fadeaway, “you still aint made it to grown yet. And Darius wasn’t telling nobody nothing, he was passing a message.”

You expected Charlie Snow to field his center-field spot like a two-legged whitetail and to clutch-hit the team out of jams, but you didn’t expect him to open his mouth a passel, and ordinarily he obliged your expectations.

“I jes chunked a three-hitter at Opelika,” Fadeaway said. “How much more grown can a fella git?”

“Arm’s mature,” Snow said. “Head’s a baby.”

Muscles got up. “And the rest of us’re tired of listening to this hoo-hah. Let’s party with the President. Just mind your p’s and q’s, dammit!”

Darius levered the door open, and we began filing off the bus.

Off the Bomber, we edged towards the tents. Nobody had the nerve or the bumpkin grace to angle towards FDR’s roadster sofa and Park Avenue table setting, though. At the same time, no one could resist glancing over that way and trying to imagine what the President of the United States had to discuss with the McKissics, the Elshtains, or Miss LaRaina and Phoebe. Once or twice, the Great Man smiled and nodded or wagged his cigarette holder in a folksy greeting.

As Fadeaway sauntered around the Bomber’s nose with Evans and Sosebee, Darius put a hand on his shoulder. When he saw who’d touched him, Fadeaway’s nose wrinkled, and he triggered himself for curses, maybe even fisticuffs.

“Tell me what you think woolhead means.” Darius’s voice wasn’t much below its normal volume, but the generator and the box fans kept the other picnickers from hearing.

“Lemme tell you what uppity means,” Fadeaway said. “You could learn two new words jes by looking in a mirror.”

“I know more words than you got memories,” Darius said. “What woolhead means, Mister Ankers, is you aint got the belly to speak out nigger, or the class to call my name.”

Quickly and quietly, Sosebee grabbed Fadeaway’s arms from behind. “Easy, kid. Remember who-all’s here.”

“Remember this instead,” Darius said. “If it got figgered on sense and soundness stead of what it is, you’d come up the biggest nigger in town. Watch I don’t whup yo red ass black.” He stood glaring at Fadeaway when most folks, delivered of such a squelch, would’ve swaggered away.

Henry leaned over his shoulder. “Enough, Mr Satterfield. This is no time for a physical collision.”

“Sho,” Darius said. “Clision time jes never quite comes round, do it?” He pocketed his hands, backed away from the players stalled in front of the Bomber, and hiked up the slope to his apartment.

“Hey!” Kizzy called from one of the tents. “You, Darius, don’t you want no victuals?”

He just kept walking.

“Uppity nigger,” Fadeaway said under his breath.

Henry and I and the other Hellbenders ate. The family men had their families there, and more than a few-Buck Hoey and his boys, Charlie Snow and his childless wife, Turkey Sloan and his freckle-faced teenage daughter-ventured out on the pond in johnboats to fish.

At Mister JayMac’s prompting, Henry removed his kayak from the sawhorses near the buggy house, fetched it down to the pond under one arm, and demonstrated for the President how a man his size-the swatter of a “monsterish” home run-could paddle to and fro among the anglers’ boats with hardly a telltale ripple and not even one fish-disturbing splash. By this time, Mister JayMac’d coaxed me into the heart of FDR’s picnic circle, with the Elshtains, the Pharram females, and a few fussy suit types from D.C. All eyes followed Henry’s silken progress over the pond’s cocoa scum.

“Astonishing so large a man can move with that agility,” FDR said. “How’d he come by the kayak?”

“He says he built it,” Mister JayMac said. “And I’ve no cause to doubt him. Look how he handles it.”

“Indeed, if I could handle Congress half so well, I’d sleep more and haggle less with the likes of Senator George. God knows, I envy Mr Clerval’s finesse with the big stick, whether a ball bat or a kayak paddle.”

Mr Roosevelt had plenty of finesse with words. I milled about close enough to his car-seat divan to catch a lot of what he said, but the Elshtains and Miss LaRaina monopolized the time he didn’t give to the McKissics.

I marveled at Miss Giselle. With a glint in her eye, she watched Henry kayak and chatted with the President. How could she lap Mr Roosevelt in such honey-tongued politeness when his wife’s Christian name gagged her like ammonia ice?

“It’s my view Mussolini’s doomed,” Colonel Elshtain broke into their stateside chitchat. “Even he must know it. The air strike on Rome last month had to’ve told him so.”

“Il Duce’s an evil man,” Miss Giselle said, “but must we destroy the Holy See to uproot him? Is it necessary, sir, to bomb to rubble both the Vatican and the monuments of Rome to unseat this petty despot?”

“Not at all,” FDR said. “Nor shall we do so. I’ve urged the Vatican to try to get him to declare Rome an open city-to remove all military bases and personnel in and about Rome to the countryside, and to desist from using the city’s railroad facilities as reprovisioning conduits for either Hitler’s boys or the Italian infantry. If Benito listens to reason, Rome survives unscathed. If not, well, to my mind there’s not one Roman statue or one relic in the Vatican worth the blood of a single American soldier.”