Mister Cozy said this exhibition had begun in his head, his Dominicans had reached the ball field first, and if either team had the local crowd on its side, well…

“Flip a coin,” Mister JayMac said.

“Okay by me,” Mister Cozy said. “Do it.”

Major Dexter flipped a coin, it landed tails, and the Splendid Dominicans took the field with last bats in their baggy pockets and grins on their faces.

“Please stand for the National Anthem,” said the lieutenant at the press-box mike. Camp Penticuff’s flag pole, with the Stars and Stripes hanging limp in the sultry afternoon, grew out of a pile of stones on a hillock two parade grounds beyond the left-field fence. We flapped our caps over our hearts, and a black trumpeter with one stripe on his sleeve marched up into the press box and blew the clearest “Star-Spangled Banner” I’d ever heard, a cross between high-church music and Harry James. As soon as he hit those “home of the brave” notes, the GIs started a cheer that echoed in chilling sweeps to the barracks, the PX, the main gate.

I dug into the batter’s box while this unnerving roar went on. Turtlemouth Clark looked past me for his catcher’s sign like I wasn’t there. My Red Stix bat caught some libel from the crowd-“Hey, you gon hit with a Tootsie Pop stick?” “Boy from Californy, got him a bitty redwood bat.”-but Mister Cozy’s boys didn’t blink. I could’ve walked up there with a blue shillelagh without goading them to curl a lip. No more shadow ball, the life-or-death horsehide only.

Turtlemouth Clark wound up-except now, he hardly had a windup at all, just a quick pat-a-cake at his chest with glove and ball. Out of this business, he attacked me with sidearm smoke. His pitch had me looking for a doorway in the clay, to escape having a Fearless Fosdick hole drilled through me. I leapt at least four feet backwards.

“Steeeeeee-rike!” Major Dexter cried.

The Special Training soldiers laughed a load of wrinkles into their khakis. But I deserved it. I reset myself with a throb in my head and crushed chili peppers in my cheeks.

“Mebbe you’ll see the nex one,” the catcher said.

Before Turtlemouth could go into his stingy game windup, I called time and walked aside.

“Batter up,” Major Dexter said. “Now!”

I stepped back in. Turtlemouth struck me out, but put a couple of Band-Aids on my stigma by also whiffing Charlie Snow and Lon Musselwhite-to the noisy delight of the troops. Snow made him unleash seven pitches before chasing a sidearm change, but Muscles, like me, took three wild cuts at three stuttering speedballs and slunk back to the dugout mumbling about the legality of Turtlemouth’s delivery.

When Darius took the mound for us, a murmur spiced with a few profanities lapped the stands. If Darius heard, he made no sign, just cycled through his warm-up tosses to Dunnagin, then stepped back to let us infielders throw the ball around. Once in the field, Darius didn’t give a cucumber pip what color his opponents were; he wanted them out, the scairter the better, his whole devotion to the uniform on his back. In this case, our dingy Hellbender ash-browns.

In the bottom of the first, Darius matched Turtlemouth’s strikeout feat, and we had us a pitched battle-literally-of K’s and O’s, connipted hitters tossing away their bats after fruitless trips to the box.

Oh, a couple of fellas hit the ball. Charlie Snow tagged one on a pearl-bright clothesline right to the center fielder, and Henry cracked a pop-up that Turtlemouth himself, waving everybody else off, caught at shoe-top height from a ridiculous outhouse squat, a basket catch two inches from the ground. The crowd gobbled up this showboating like peanuts.

In the top of the fourth, I drew a walk-the first hitter on either team to reach base. It seemed near lunatic, but I wondered if Turtlemouth had put me on on purpose, just to wake the crowd. The four balls he’d shown me had all thwapped in too high to hit, too high even to lunge for.

Buck Hoey, in his boot-blackened bedroom slippers, left his coaching box to talk to me.

“What’d you do to deserve a free pass? Promise to suck him off after the game?”

“Up yours,” I said as plainly as I could.

“Think you can steal on the shine, Dumbo? We need a runner in scoring position.”

Sure I did. I always thought so.

“Play ball,” said the colored officer umpiring first.

Hoey ignored him. “Try to draw a throw. See what kind of move to first he’s got. Then watch for a pitchout. Waxahachie Beckland has the second best slingshot on this club.”

Waxahachie Beckland was the catcher, Turtlemouth’s battery mate. Hoey wanted me to measure my lead against both men and mind my p’s and q’s. He sashayed back into his coaching box.

I drew one throw from Turtlemouth. He had only a so-so pickoff move. (Or he showed me only a so-so pickoff move.) I got back to first a full second ahead of his toss. On his first throw to the plate, though, Turtlemouth pitched out to Beckland. If I’d broken for second, Beckland would’ve gunned me down by a yard or more.

“Way to go, Dumbo,” Hoey said. “Watch em again.”

I felt pretty smug about drawing a throw from Turtlemouth and then hoodwinking him and his catcher into pitching out to Snow. They expected me to steal. Mister Cozy and his boys had done their homework; they knew I could outrun the word God, they respected my foot speed. I lengthened my lead, feinting once or twice with my upper body.

Turtlemouth showed me the whites of his eyes, but didn’t tumble to my feints. He threw to the plate again, another pitchout. I strolled back to first and kicked the bag. The Dominican battery mates looked like fools. They’d risked two straight pitchouts, for nothing. Even worse, from their point of view, they’d run the count on Charlie Snow, the best hitter in the CVL, to two and zero. Only a madman deliberately put himself in the hole with Snow at bat and me on base.

As I took my fourth lead of this at bat, Hoey caught my eye. Behind his hand, he mouthed, Co. He also cradled his left elbow, our sign to steal. Turtlemouth, he obviously figured, had to throw Snow a strike to keep from moving within a ball of walking him. He and Beckland wouldn’t dare pitch out again. So, of course, they did.

I had a decent jump on Turtlemouth and second base looked stepping-stone close. Before I could belly-slide into it, though, Slag Iron Smith leapt in front of me, caught Beckland’s stinger from home, and let me tag myself out coming head-first into his floppy cold cut of a glove.

Three straight pitchouts. Stupid. Except the strategy’d nailed me dead. On the other hand, Charlie Snow, too surprised to try to queer Beckland’s throw by swinging at the last one, now had three balls on him. Maybe the Dominicans’ ruse hadn’t worked-not, at least, as slick as they’d’ve liked.

Forget that. Cool as ice, Turtlemouth worked the count to three balls and two strikes, then erased Snow on a nibbler back to the mound. He humiliated Muscles with another strikeout and slouched off the field to a standing O.

In the bottom of the sixth, Darius gave up the first two hits of the Camp Penticuff exhibition, back-to-back singles to Gator Partlow and Waxahachie Beckland. Nobody out. Partlow at third, Beckland at first.

“Push done come to shove, eh?” Fadeaway shouted from the bench. “Time to make sure us crackers don’t win our money.”

Mister JayMac went over to Fadeaway and spoke to him.

“Made it look good as you could for as long as you could, I guess!” Fadeaway shouted around the boss.

Mister JayMac got right in front of Fadeaway and quietly chewed the kid from Sea Island to Pensacola. Fadeaway shut up, and Mister JayMac sat back down again.

Darius struck out the third Dominican batter. The fourth hit a grounder to Junior, who snapped it to me for the force at second. I dragged my foot over the bag and threw to Henry at first. We got the runner there by half a step, and the double play wiped out the run that would’ve scored from third if my throw had hit Henry’s mitt a fraction of a second later.