On Dewhurst’s first pitch, Bebout rippled again. Twirled, dropped his bat, fell on home plate. A groan went up. This at bat looked so much like his first one it gave us a powerful sense of deja vu. Bebout got up, though, and spanked the next pitch-a rolling curve-into the left-field bleachers, and we went on to defeat the Gendarmes five to two, winning the series and moving within two games of first place. So what if Bebout had celebrated his homer by skipping around the bases?

In the clubhouse afterwards, Junior asked Bebout why he dipped dirt.

Bebout took his snuff tin, screwed off the top, and studied its contents-rich black Alabama soil-like he expected to find fishing crickets in it.

“It’s Wedowee loam. Bacca gives you gum rot. Sides, a fella knows you got dirt in yore snuff tin, he aint keen to borry it. Mazes me.”

“What does?” I said.

“Fellas who aint afeared to slide in dirt act like it’s gunpowder when it comes to dippin it.”

Back at McKissic House, Mister JayMac met in the parlor with Worthy Bebout and all fourteen of his current boarders. He had to find a room for Bebout. Problem was, every room on every floor already had at least two guys in it, overcozylike.

“Any yall willing to triple up?” Mister JayMac said.

The parlor scarcely breathed.

“I cain’t have a room to mysef?” Bebout said.

“Think you’re so hotshot you deserve one?” Evans asked him.

“Nosir. Got habits could conflick with whosoever gits’ put with me.”

“Like what?” Curriden said. “You eat live roosters?”

“Nosir. I read my Testaments. I speak to my voices. I talk to my dead brother Woodrow.”

“Cripes,” Curriden said.

“Then jes give me a pup tent outside,” Bebout suggested.

And until he devised his own indoor answer to the problem, the pup-tent solution actually went into effect. He slept on the lawn in a tent from Sunday, August 1, to Thursday, August 12 (minus five days on the road in the homes of some of Mister JayMac’s friends). Then he moved into quarters unlike those of anybody else lodging in McKissic House.

Before that meeting ended, though, he asked Mister JayMac where we’d stowed his “dip fixings.”

“Kitchen porch. Nobody here’ll disturb em.”

Later, fetching a colander for Kizzy, I saw those fixings: a taped cardboard box full of ordinary-looking but fine-grained dirt. On the sides of this box, with a black Crayola, someone had crookedly printed

WEDOWEE SNUFF.

50

Early in August, Lamar Knowles knocked on Henry’s and my door. Henry’d missed breakfast and lay in bed, face down, one arm hanging off the mattress. As soon as Lamar saw Henry, he apologized and tried to retreat. He had that morning’s issue of the Highbridge Herald rolled up in one hand, and he bopped himself in the forehead with it for coming up so early.

“C-cmon in,” I said. “It’s not early, Henry st-stayed out awful late, that’s all.” I dragged him in and sat him at my desk; I plopped down on my bed. Fan noise had covered Lamar’s entrance. It would’ve taken a cattle prod to goad Henry awake, and I told Lamar so. That news seemed to reassure him. He opened out his newspaper.

“You try to keep up with our parent club?” he asked.

“The Phutile Phillies?”

“Yessir. No other.”

“Only to n-n-notice they aint doing so great.”

“Well, on Sunday, their owner-president, Mr Cox, canned Bucky Harris as manager and hired Freddie Fitzsimmons. Take a look.” He passed me the sports page.

I read the story. The Phillies had dropped to seventh in the National League standings. This lurch towards the cellar had so irked William D. Cox he’d given the press an eight-page statement accusing Bucky Harris of calling his players “those jerks” and writing them off as losers. Harris had learned of the statement on Sunday evening. On Monday he said if anybody in the Phillies organization qualified as a jerk, it was Cox: “ ‘And he’s an all-American jerk. If I had said any of those things,’ ” the Herald quoted Harris, and Lamar read out loud, “ ‘I certainly would be the first to admit them.’ ”

“Whaddaya think?” Lamar said.

I shrugged. “B-b-business as usual.”

Lamar tapped my knee. “Mebbe so, but the way you and Jumbo been playing, it could mean a heckuva break for yall.”

“Uh-uh,” I said.

“Sure. Look, the Phils’ first baseman and shortstop aint playing worth used ration stamps. In fact, Harris kept switching out different guys at those spots. It could happen, you and your roomy getting a call-up.”

“It could n-n-not happen too. Or it could happen to Henry and not to m-me.”

“Or vice versa. I don’t say this to amp up the pressure, Danny, jes to remind you your play here has two goals, winning us the CVL pennant and training yourself for the bigs. Don’t forget that second one, kid.” When Lamar offered me the paper, I shook my head. “Fitzsimmons might ask the Phils to call yall as replacements for Jimmy Wasdell and Gabby Stewart.”

“Charlie Brewster plays short for the Phillies too,” I said. “So does Babe Dahlgren.”

“Yeah, but Stewart and Brewster’ll be lucky to hit.220 together. Dahlgren plays more first base, subbing for Wasdell, than shortstop. He could use yall’s help.”

Going up to the bigs from a Class C club seemed about as likely as Hitler catching the Holy Spirit and joining the Pentecostals.

“Even if it happened,” Lamar said, “you could end up warming the bench like I do now, or gitting two or three starts in throw-away games towards the end of the season. Still, those games could set yall for starters’ roles next year, specially if this stupid war’s still on.”

“I hope it aint.”

“Well, if it happens, yall’ll deserve it.” Lamar blushed. “It’d tickle me silly.” He stood up and laid the Herald sports page on my desk. “Show that to ol Jumbo Hank. Tell him what I said. If he ever wakes up.”

Later, I showed Henry the paper and told him what Lamar’d told me, that the Phillies’ new manager, Freddie Fitzsimmons, might try to call us up. Henry read the story. His licorice-whip lips curled into a smile. He slapped his craggy knees.

“Wouldn’t that be delicious?”

If I’d ever wondered about Henry’s desire to hop from the CVL to the neon glare of the majors, his behavior now made me see how deeply he’d planted the roots of his hopes. Maybe Lamar’d known Henry better than I had.

On Wednesday night, we played the Gendarmes the opener of a two-game series in the Prefecture. Strock started Sundog Billy Wallace, the ace of his staff, and Sundog Billy, on better than four days’ rest, hurled a flawed masterpiece.

I say flawed because the umping team, with Happy Polidori over at first, blew call after call in the Gendarmes’ favor. If a break could go to the homies, Polidori and his crew made sure it did. During the middle-fifth changeover, a bunch of us discussed the situation.

“These officials will home-cook the flesh from our bones,” Henry said. “We will disintegrate in their pressure cooker.”

“Hit one out to dead center, Jumbo,” Muscles said. “No way they can overrule that kind of shot.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Hoey said. “Plate ump’s likely to say he stepped out of the batter’s box.”

“Knock off the alibiing,” Mister JayMac said from the dugout’s edge, “especially before these guys’ve beaten you.”

“These guys?” Hoey said. “You talking about the Gendarmes or the umps?”

“Hush, Mr Hoey. We’ll win or lose this one based on what we do on the field, not on the umpires’ whims.”

“Trout tripe,” Hoey said. “Mr Sayigh’s promised Polidori and his pal a pipe-job from his lovely A-rab daughters if they gyp us a time or twelve this evening.”

Mister JayMac jabbed a finger at Hoey. “Knock it off. You impugn a friend, slander his kids, defame the character of CVL officials, and degrade yourself. Enough.”