Bebout offered Hoey a pinch of Wedowee snuff, to cheer him up, but Hoey knocked Bebout’s tin to the floor.

On Thursday night, without Hoey, we beat LaGrange seven to one behind the pitching of Fadeaway Ankers. The next day we traveled to Cottonton, where we swept a three-game series from the Boll Weevils. Meanwhile, the Gendarmes lost two of three to Opelika, sending us home tied for first with them.

We had almost four full days of rest before our next home game-against the Eufaula Mudcats. During that time, Mister JayMac got busy, mostly over the telephone. On Thursday, Henry took me aside in the parlor to spell out the latest personnel developments as transmitted over the club grapevine.

“Mister JayMac received permission from the Phillies to trade Mr Hoey,” Henry said. “He has done so.”

“Tr-trade Buck Hoey? Where’ll he g-go?”

“Scuttlebutt”-Henry was proud of this word-”Scuttlebutt has it that the Gendarmes have bought him for a handsome sum of cash and a utility player.”

I had a sudden edgy heart thrill. Buck Hoey, gone! The last guy on the club who still called me Dumbo, the only one who remembered-who held a grudge about-the incident that’d resulted in him wearing boot-blacked carpet slippers for a few days. Why, though, had Mister JayMac traded him to a team in a nip-and-tuck pennant race against us?

“Because Mr Sayigh offered him the most lucrative return on his property,” Henry said.

I wondered about Hoey’s family and their rented house. What would happen to Linda Jane? To Matt, Carolyn, Ted, and Danny, my accidental namesake?

“As a concession to the hardship spawned by this trade,” Henry told me, “the Hoeys and their children may stay in their dwelling rent-free until September. Mister JayMac proffered Mr Hoey this compact, and Mr Hoey took it, albeit bitterly.”

“If he’s a Gendarme, he c-can’t live in Highbridge.”

“A gravel-quarry owner in LaGrange who admires Mr Hoey’s aggressive style has refurbished a shotgun hovel only blocks from the Prefecture. Mr Hoey will dwell there rent-free.”

During my talk with Henry, I’d heard a muffled hammering and some other peculiar noises. Suddenly, Worthy Bebout stood in the parlor, a carpenter’s belt cocked on his hips.

“Think Mrs Hoey’d like a man around the house while her hubby’s living away?”

We stared at Bebout, like he’d just asked our opinion of baby eating or nude evangelism. “I mean nuthm smutty. Jes thought she might want to rent the bed space and cook me some meals while our season lasts.”

“Mrs Hoey likely doesn’t have any b-bed space,” I said. “The Hoeys got f-four younguns.”

“Then I reckon I aint been wasting my time.” Bebout picked up a rucksack next to a parlor sofa. “Come see.” McKissic House had a storm and potato cellar you reached through a door set under the staircase to the second floor. Bebout’d spent his morning down there transforming one end of that clayey hole into a bed chamber. Seeing it, Henry and I understood why he’d asked about boarding with the Hoeys. A Spanish dungeon would’ve been cheerier.

“Sorta pneumonia-y,” I said.

“Sorta buggy too.” Bebout yanked the overhead bulb so it threw a splash of light into one corner. Camelback crickets clung to the pocked clay wall and sproinged around the floor. A row of blackened canning jars sparkled on a plank shelf at shin height. The jars held gloopy sludge. I began to quease.

Henry and I beat it out of there as fast as politeness would let us. In the parlor we found Kizzy sprawled in a cushy chair, the hem of her dress hammocked between her legs and a mortuary fan tick-tocking away in her hand. She never used the parlor. She hardly ever sat down.

“Kizzy, you s-sick?” I asked her.

“I zausted, that’s what I am. Used out. Nigger-weary.”

“But why?”

“Bless you, Mister Danny, cause I aint got no hep. Look like the McKissics trying to chase me into a tirement home. Wunst upon a time, I could count on Miss Giselle hauling herself over here to hep do breakfuss. No mo. She aint showed here five days running, and the ony scuse she got is, the heat done prostrate her. Like it’s a e-lixir to me.”

Henry said, “Mrs Lorrows, you should recruit some of us to help.” He kept glancing into the foyer, though, like expecting Bebout to trudge into view with a dug-up cadaver.

“I awready gots me two of you ballplayers a week, but this week’s two is good-fo-nuthin clumses.”

I looked at Henry. “We c-could help, c-couldn’t we?” I liked to cook. Mixing up biscuit dough reminded me of arts and crafts in grade school back in Tenkiller.

But Henry’d already turned away. “I must borrow Mister JayMac’s automobile. I must take a trip.” He waved good-bye with a stiff flapping motion and lurched through the dining room on his way to the McKissics’ bungalow.

“Darius was mo hep than Miss Giselle ever knew,” Kizzy said. “I sho do miss him.”

51

Hoey’s replacement from the Gendarmes-I never did learn how much cash money Mr Sayigh had to ante up too-arrived on the Friday before our weekend homestand against Eufaula. Friday the thirteenth, a bad-omen day… if you bought into such malarkey. The replacement player turned out to be Wilbur “Fat Boy” Fortenberry, a bookend, physique-wise, for Pete “Haystack” Hay. Mister JayMac introduced him to us at a breakfast I’d helped Kizzy fix.

“Say it aint so,” Quip Parris said. “The Brown Bomber’s gonna need a new pair of shocks.”

“Don’t fry no mo chicken fo dinner!” Muscles shouted towards the kitchen. “Take Fat Boy here out to the nearest coop and let him inhale-at’ll save everybody time!”

But Fortenberry had only one plump biscuit and two slotted spoonfuls of yellow scrambled eggs before bidding us farewell and riding out to Cotton Creek with Mister JayMac. He had a family-a roly-poly wife and two Fortenberry doughboys-and Mister JayMac had arranged for him to rent Charlie and Vera Jo Snow’s old house.

Henry said not a word, either during Fortenberry’s debut or afterwards when Muscles second-guessed adding a thirty-year-old tub of bear grease to our roster. Henry’d veered off into Cloud-cuckoo-land, like he hadn’t come all the way back from Alabama yet. His business over there yesterday had somehow stalled his swim through the summer. Or else Friday the Thirteenths didn’t agree with him.

Anyway, I spent the morning after Fortenberry’s arrival washing dishes with Sosebee and Fanning and cleaning snap beans for the pregame meal we’d eat at two. Kizzy worked nonstop to turn out this ritual feast. Even married Hellbenders had invitations, although usually only Sudikoff and Hay bothered to come. Mister JayMac almost always ate with us too, but after helping the Fortenberrys settle in, he’d posted home to see about the heat-fatigued Miss Giselle.

Even with Mister JayMac absent, the dining room was louder than a party suite in the Tower of Babel. Pork chops, chicken, country-fried steak. A dozen different vegetables. Four kinds of pies. Given the direction of the wind-south-by-southeast-every person in town must’ve had a saliva buildup.

Suddenly Phoebe burst through the swinging door from the kitchen. I hadn’t seen her for nearly two weeks, and some of the words she’d spoken then still chimed like breaking soda bottles in my memory: “I hope I never see you-or another slimy willie-long as I live!” (Just for instance.)

My appetite died. My inner organs blended themselves into an ebony glop like that trapped in the storm celler’s canning jars. Phoebe probably hadn’t come to testify to my tenderness as a lover. I didn’t know why she’d come, but her presence-to one side of Muscles’s head-of-the-table spot-put everybody, me especially, on notice our meal would cause bigger problems than gas and oversnug belts. She let Muscles finish saying grace, bless her, and Muscles offered her his chair.