Local Color

“Yes,” assented Mr. Fluellen, “I reckon that’s no more than fair. Well, as I said before, J. Henry, I certainly wish I was going to be with you.”

The great day came and was auspiciously sunshiny from its dawning onward. Contrary to the custom of trains in certain interior sections of our common country, the train upon which so much depended slid into Barstow Junction at eleven-twenty, exactly on time. On the platform of the little box station, awaiting it, stood our Mr. Birdseye, impatiently enduring the company of a combination agent-telegrapher-ticketseller, who wore pink sleeve-garters with rosettes on them and a watch charm carved from a peach kernel to represent a monkey with its tail curved over its back.

Mr. Birdseye was costumed in a fashion befitting the spirit of the hour, as he sensed it. The main item of his attire was a new light-gray business suit, but lightening touches of a semi-sporting character were provided by such further adornments as a white Fedora hat with a wide black band, a soft collar held down trimly with a gold pin fashioned like a little riding-crop, and low tan shoes with elaborated gunwalelike extensions of the soles, showing heavy stitching. The finger tips of a pair of buckskin gloves, protruding from a breast pocket of his coat, suggested two-thirds of a dozen of small but well-ripened plantains. His visible jewelry included dog’s-head cuff buttons and a fob strap of plaited leather with a heavy silver harness buckle setting off its pendant end.

Looking the general effect over from time to time during that dragging forenoon, he had each separate time felt himself to be habited in accordance with the best taste and the best judgment, considering the nature of the occasion and the rôle he meant to play. An added fillip to his anticipations was afforded by the consciousness that no rival would divide the coming triumph with him. Anneburg had forty thousand inhabitants, including whites – that is, forty thousand by the United States census reports; seventy-five thousand by patriotic local estimates. By sight or by name Mr. Birdseye knew most of the whites and many of the blacks, browns and yellows. At the hotel no Anneburgian name was registered, saving and excepting his own; in the little knot gathered on the platform no familiar Anneburg shape now disclosed itself. He was alone and all was well.

The locomotive rolled in and gently halted, as though to avoid jostling its precious freightage of talent. Behind it, tailing along up the track, stretched two day coaches and sundry Pullmans. From these last dropped down dark-faced figures, white-clad in short jackets, and they placed boxes below every alternate set of car steps. The train conductor dismounted. Carrying a small handbag, Mr. Birdseye approached and hailed him.

“Hello, Cap,” he said, “have a smoke.”

“Thanks.” The conductor deposited the cigar with tender care in the crown of his uniform cap. “Smoke it later on, if you don’t mind. Nice weather.”

“Which car are the boys on?” asked Mr. Birdseye.

“Boys – which boys?”

“Why, the boys that are going to play Anneburg, of course.”

“Oh, that bunch? Back yonder.” He flirted a thumb over his shoulder toward the tail of his vestibuled convoy. If the conductor meant to say more he lost the chance through his own slowness. Already Mr. Birdseye was hurrying up the cindered stretch beyond the platform.

At the portals of the rearmost Pullman but one a porter interposed himself.

“Private sleeper, cap’n,” he warned.

“That’ll be all right,” stated Mr. Birdseye. “That’s the one I’m looking for – came out from Anneburg especially to meet the boys and ride in with ’em.” He proffered a small cardboard slip and with it a large round coin. “Take the Pullman fare out of that and keep the change.”

“A’ right, suh, boss – an’ much obliged.” The porter pouched dollar and ticket with one hand and with the other saluted profoundly. He aided the generous white gentleman to mount the steps.

Within the door of the coach, at the mouth of its narrow end passage, Mr. Birdseye halted to take swift inventory of its interior. It was a sleeper of the pattern familiar to all who travel much and widely; it looked its part and smelled it, giving off the inevitable torrid aromas of warm plush and heat-softened shellac. It contained fifteen or eighteen occupants scattered through its length, some sitting singly, some paired off and, in one group, four together, playing cards – all young or youngish men, all smartly dressed, all live-looking. At first glance Mr. Birdseye told himself he was in the right car. At second glance he told himself he was not so absolutely sure. For one thing, the persons here revealed seemed so quiet, so sedate; there was no skylarking; no quips flying back and forth; no persiflage filtering out of the open windows. Still, for one initiated, it should be an easy task to make sure, and very sure at that.

Almost in arm-reach of him two of the passengers faced each other from opposite seats with a checkerboard upon their knees. The one who had his back to Mr. Birdseye, a tall, light-haired person, kept his head bent in deep study of the problem of the next move. His opponent looked up. Barring the cut and colour of his costume he might have passed, with his smooth, rosy cheek and his round, blue Irish orb, for a Christian Brother. Full well did Mr. Birdseye know that Gigs McGuire, foremost of all second-basemen, had studied for the priesthood before he abandoned the seminary for the stadium. Indeed, he knew all about Gigs McGuire that the leading chroniclers of baseball had ever written for publication. He advanced half a pace, his right arm extended, a greeting forming on his lips.

The ensuing conduct of the blue-eyed man was peculiar, not to say disconcerting. He stared at Mr. Birdseye for the brief part of a brief second. Then he twisted his head over his shoulder, and, without addressing anyone in particular, rapidly uttered the word “Cheese!” thrice in a tone of seeming impatience. And then he picked up a red disk and with it jumped a black one. Mr. Birdseye felt constrained to step along.

Across the aisle diagonally were the four who played at cards. It was to be seen that bridge was the game occupying them. And bridge, properly played, is an absorbing pursuit, requiring concentration and silence. None of the quartet bestowed so much as a sidelong look upon Mr. Birdseye as Mr. Birdseye, slowly advancing toward the middle of the car, passed them by.

Thus progressing, he came close to one who spraddled in solitary comfort over two seats. This one was interred nose-deep in a book.

“Hello,” said Mr. Birdseye tentatively, almost timidly, for increasing doubt assailed him.

“’Lo,” answered the reader in a chill monosyllable without lifting his face from his book. Mr. Birdseye noted that the book contained verse printed in German, and he regretted having spoken. It wasn’t in the nature of things for a ballplayer to be reading German poetry in the original, and he had no time to waste upon any other than a ballplayer.

In that same instant, though, his glance fell on the next two passengers, and his heart gave a glad upward leap in his bosom. Surely the broad man with the swarthy skin and the straight black hair must be the Indian. Just as surely the short, square man alongside, the owner of that heavy jaw and that slightly up-tilted nose, could be none but the Richelieu of managers. Mr. Birdseye almost sprang forward.

“Well, Chief!” he cried genially. “Well, Swifty! I thought I’d find you. How’s everything?”

Coldly they both regarded him. It was the short, square man who answered, and the reader behind put down his volume of Heine to listen.

“Everything would be all right if they’d only keep these car doors locked,” said the short man, and he didn’t speak as a true sportsman should speak – tone, inflection, pronunciation, all were wrong. Enthusiasm was lacking, joviality was woefully missing. He continued, in the manner rather of a civil engineer – an impassive ordinarily civil engineer, say, who was now slightly irritated about something: “I figure you’ve made a mistake. This gentleman is not a chief – he’s my private secretary. And my name does not happen to be Swift, if I heard you right. My name is Dinglefoogle – Omar G. Dinglefoogle, of Swedish descent.”

He disengaged his gaze from that of the abashed Birdseye and resumed his conversation with his companion at a point where it had been interrupted:

“Have it your own way, John. Abbey for yours, but Sargent and Whistler for mine – yes, and Remington.”

“But where are you going to find anything to beat that thing of Abbey’s – The Search for the Holy Grail?” It was the swarthy man taking up the issue. “Every time I go to Boston – ”

Moving onward in a small, self-generated fog of bewilderment which travelled with him, Mr. Birdseye heard no more. So moving, he passed in turn a young man who was bedded down in a nest of pamphlets and Government bulletins dealing in the main apparently with topics relating to forestry or else with intensive farming; and a young man who napped with his hat over his eyes; and another young man intently making notes on the back of an envelope; and two young men silently examining the mechanism of a gold watch which plainly was the property of one of the two; until at the far end of the car he came to one more young man who, casting aside a newspaper and straightening to get the kinks out of his back, showed Mr. Birdseye a profiled face of a clear pinkish colour, with a calm, reflective eye set in it under a pale yellow eyebrow and, above, a mop of hair so light as to be almost white. Verily there could be no confusion of identity here. Coincidence was coincidence, but so unique, so distinctive, a physical aspect was not to be duplicated outside of a story book.

“Say, I’d know you anywhere by your pictures,” said Mr. Birdseye, and extended the right hand of fellowship.

“That’s the main objection to those pictures – they do look a little like me,” replied the young man with a smile so grave as to verge upon the melancholy. Half rising, he shook hands with the other. “Have a seat?” Hospitably he indicated the cushioned expanse in front of him and drew in his knees.

Here was proof, added and cumulative. The voice of the pale-haired young man was as it should be, a gently modulated r-slurring voice. Was it not known of all men that Albino Magoon, the Circassian Beauty of the outfield, owned allegiance of birth to the Sunny Southland, Mr. Birdseye’s own land? Bond and double bond would they share between them. In a flutter of reviving joy Mr. Birdseye scrooged in and sat.

The young man, having done the courtesies, sat back modestly as though awaiting the newcomer’s pleasure in the matter of choosing a topic for conversation. Mr. Birdseye lost no time. He knew the subjects fittest to be discussed.

“Well,” he said, “what do you think about Chicago’s chances? Think she’s going to give New York a run for her white alley this year?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, suh.” Such was the first sentence of the astonishing rejoinder. “Chicago is growing, awfully fast – faster than any big interior city, I presume, but the latest figures show New York has a greater population now, including suburbs, than London even. It’s hardly possible, I reckon, for Chicago to hope to catch up with New York – this year or any other year.”

Puzzled, I must admit, but by no means nonplussed , Mr. Birdseye jibed and went about mentally. As the cant phrase goes, he took a new tack.

“Say, listen,” he said; “do you know what I think? I think the Federals gave you-all a rotten deal. Yes, sir, a rotten deal all the way through. Naturally down here nearly everybody feels that way about it – naturally the sympathies of nearly everybody in this part of the country would turn that way anyhow. I reckon you’d know that without my telling you how we feel. Of course a good knock-down-and-drag-out fight is all right, but when you sit down and figure out the way the Federals behaved right from the start – ”

The other put up an objecting hand.

“I hope you’ll excuse me, suh,” he said, “but I don’t believe in keeping those old sores open. I thought sectionalism was dying out everywhere – I hoped it was, anyway. My father fought the Federals for four years and he died reconciled. I don’t know why we younger men shouldn’t be. After all, we’re all Americans now.”

“I wasn’t speaking of the Federal Army,” explained Mr. Birdseye, desperately upset. “I was speaking of the Federal League.”

“Oh, the Federal League!” said the other. “I beg your pardon, suh. Are you – are you interested in baseball?” He put the question wonderingly.

“Am I interested in – well, say, ain’t you interested?”

“Me? Oh, no, suh. I make it a rule never to discuss the subject. You see, I’m a divinity student. I reckon you must’ve mistaken me for somebody else. I was afraid so when you first spoke. I’m mighty sorry.”

“Yes, I must’ve,” agreed Mr. Birdseye. He got upon his own feet and stumbled over the young man’s feet and ran a hand through the hair on his pestered head. “I guess I must’ve got in the wrong car.”

“That’s probably it,” said the pale-haired one. His odd-coloured but ingenuous countenance expressed solicitude and sympathy for the stranger’s disappointment. Indeed, it wrinkled and twitched almost as though this tender-hearted person meant to shed tears. As if to hide his emotions, he suddenly reached for his discarded newspaper and in its opened pages buried his face to the ears – ears which slowly turned from pink to red. When next he spoke it was from behind the shelter of his newsprint shield, and his voice seemed choked. “Undoubtedly that’s it – you got in the wrong car. Well, good-bye, my brother – and God bless and speed you.”

At this precise moment, with the train just beginning to pull out from Barstow Junction, with the light-haired man sinking deeper and deeper inside the opened sheets, and with Mr. Birdseye teetering on uncertain legs in the aisle, there came to the latter’s ears what he might have heard before had his hearing been attuned for sounds from that quarter. He heard a great rollicking, whooping, vehement outburst coming from the next car back, which was likewise the last car. It had youth in it, that sound did – the spirit of unbridled, exuberant youth at play, and abandon and deviltry and prankishness and carefreedom. Mr. Birdseye faced about. He caught up his handbag and, swift as a courier bearing glad tidings, he sped on winged feet – at least those extensive soles almost approximated wings – through the cramped passage flanking the smoking compartment. Where the two cars clankingly joined beneath a metal flange he came into collision with a train butcher just emerging from the rear sleeper.

Butch’s hair was dishevelled and his collar awry. He dangled an emptied fruit basket in one hand and clinked coins together in the palm of the other. On his face was a grin of comic dismay and begrudged admiration.

“Some gang back there – some wild gang!” he murmured and, dodging adeptly past Mr. Birdseye, was gone, heading forward.

The searcher rounded the jog of the compartment reservation, and inside him then his soul was lifted up and exalted. There could be no mistake now. Within the confines of this Pullman romped and rampaged young men and youths to the number of perhaps twenty. There seemed to be more than twenty of them; that, though, was due to the flitting movements of their rambunctious forms. Norfolk-jacketed bodies, legs in modishly short trousers deeply cuffed at the bottoms, tousled heads to which rakish soft hats and plaid travelling caps adhered at angles calculated to upset the theory of the attraction of gravitation, showed here, there, everywhere, in a confused and shifting vista. Snappy suit cases, a big, awkward-looking, cylindrical bag of canvas, leather-faced, and two or three other boxes in which, to judge by their shapes, stringed musical instruments were temporarily entombed, encumbered a seat near by.

All this Mr. Birdseye’s kindled eye comprehended in the first quick scrutiny. Also it took in the posture of a long, lean, lanky giant in his early twenties, who stood midway of the coach, balancing himself easily on his legs, for by now the train was picking up speed. One arm of the tall athlete – the left – was laid along his breast, and in its crook it held several small, half-ripened oranges. His right hand would pluck up an orange, the right arm would wind up, and then with marvellous accuracy and incredible velocity the missile would fly, like a tawny-green streak, out of an open window at some convenient target. So fast he worked and so well, it seemed as though a constant stream of citrus was being discharged through that particular window. An orange spattered against a signpost marking the limits of the yard. Two oranges in instantaneous succession struck the rounded belly of a water tank, making twin yellow asterisks where they hit. A fourth, driven as though by a piston, whizzed past the nappy head of a darky pedestrian who had halted to watch the train go by. That darky ducked just in time.

Mr. Birdseye lunged forward to pay tribute to the sharpshooter. Beyond peradventure there could be but one set of muscles on this continent capable of such marksmanship. But another confronted him, barring his way, a stockily built personage with a wide, humorous face, and yet with authority in all its contour and lines.

“Well, see who’s here!” he clarioned and literally he embraced Mr. Birdseye, pinning that gentleman’s arms to his sides. He bent his head and put his lips close to Mr. Birdseye’s flattered ear, the better to be heard above the uproar dinning about them. “What was the name?” he inquired.

“Birdseye – J. Henry Birdseye.”

Continuing to maintain a firm grasp upon Mr. Birdseye’s coat sleeve the stocky individual swung about and called for attention:

“Gentlemen, one moment – one moment, if you please.”

Plainly he had unquestioned dominion over this mad and pranksome crew. His fellows paused in whatever they were doing to give heed unto his words.

“Boys, it gives me joy to introduce to you Colonel Birdshot.”

“Birdseye,” corrected his prisoner, overcome with gratification, not unmixed with embarrassment.

“I beg your pardon,” said the master of ceremonies. Then more loudly again: “I should have said Col. Birdseye Maple.”

“Three cheers for the walking bedroom set!” This timely suggestion emanated from a wiry skylarker who had drawn nigh and was endeavouring to find Mr. Birdseye’s hand with a view to shaking it.

Three cheers they were, and right heartily given too.

“And to what, may I ask – to what are we indebted for the pleasure of this unexpected but nevertheless happy meeting?” asked the blocky man. One instant he suggested the prime minister; the next, the court jester. And was not that as it should be too? It was, if one might credit what one had read of the king-pin of managers.

“Why – why, I just ran over from Anneburg to meet you and ride in with you – and sort of put you onto the ropes and everything,” vouchsafed Mr. Birdseye.

“Well, isn’t that splendid – we didn’t expect it!” Once more he addressed his attentive fellows:

“Gentlemen, you’ll never guess it until I tell you. It is none other than the official reception committee bearing with it the keys of the corporation. I shrewdly suspect the Colonel has the words ‘Welcome to Our City’ tattooed upon his chest.”

“Let’s undress him and see.”

The idea was advanced by the same wire-drawn youngster who had called for the cheers. He laid hold on Mr. Birdseye’s collar, but instantly the happy captive was plucked from his grasp and passed from one to another of the clustering group. They squeezed Mr. Birdseye’s fingers with painfully affectionate force; they dealt him cordially violent slaps upon the back. They inquired regarding his own health and the health of his little ones, and in less than no time at all, it seemed to him, he, somewhat jostled and dishevelled, confused but filled with a tingling bliss, had been propelled the length of the aisle and back again, and found himself sitting so he faced the directing genius of this exuberant coterie of athletes. The rest, sensing that their leader desired conference with the newcomer, resumed their diversions, and so in a small eddy of calm on the edge of a typhoon of clamour these two – Birdseye and the great manager – conversed together as man to man.

“And so you ran down to meet us – that was bully,” said the blocky man. His mood was now serious, and Mr. Birdseye set himself to reply in the same spirit. “What’s the prospects for a crowd over in Anneburg?”

“Couldn’t be better,” Mr. Birdseye told him. “Everybody in town that can walk, ride or crawl will be out to see you fellows play.”

“To see us play – that’s good!”

“The Mayor is going to be there, and ex-Governor Featherston – he’s about the biggest man we’ve got in Anneburg – and oh, just everybody.”

“Whosoever will, let him come, that’s our motto,” stated his vis-à-vis; “entertainment for man and beast. You’ll be there of course?”

“In a front seat – rooting my head off,” promised Mr. Birdseye, forgetting in the supreme joy of this supreme moment that he owed first duty to Anneburg’s own puny contenders. “Say, you fellows are just exactly like I thought you’d be – regular hellions. Well, it’s the old pep that counts.”

“You said it – the old pep is the thing.”

“What kind of a trip did you have coming up?”

“Fine – fine from the start.”

“And where do you go from Anneburg?”

“Asheville, then Richmond. Anneburg is the smallest town we play.”

“Don’t think we don’t appreciate it, Swifty. Say, the Big Fellow certainly can pitch, can’t he?” Mr. Birdseye pointed toward the flinger of oranges who, having exhausted his ammunition, was now half out of a window, contemplating the flitting landscape. “How’s his arm going to be this year?”

“Better than ever – better than ever. I guess you know about the no-hit game he pitched last year – the last game he played?”

“Tell me something about that kid I don’t know,” boasted Mr. Birdseye. “I’ve followed him from the time he first broke in.”

“Then you know he’s there with the pipes?”

“The pipes?”

“Sure – the educated larynx, the talented tonsils, the silver-lined throat – in other words, the gift of song.”

“Why, I didn’t know he sang,” owned Mr. Birdseye, a mite puzzled.

“That’s it – let a fellow do one thing better than anybody else, and they forget his other accomplishments. Sing? Well, rather! And punish old John J. Mandolin, too, if anybody should ask you.”

So saying, the speaker drew forth a bulldog pipe and proceeded to load it from a leather tobacco case.

“I don’t have to keep in condition, seeing as I’m merely running things,” he explained. “But you bet I make my flock keep in condition – no boozing and mighty little cigarette smoking for them while their little papa’s eye is on them.”

“I’ve always heard you were strong for discipline,” said Mr. Birdseye, plastering the flattering unction on thickly.

“I have to be, with a rowdy outfit like this one. Look yonder – that’s a sample of the way they carry on when the bridle is off.”

Three of these temporarily unhaltered colts had captured the car porter. Two held him fast while the third massaged his woolly scalp with hard knuckles. Half a dozen more shouted advice to the operator. The porter broke away and fled, his expression betraying that he hardly knew whether to feel indignant or complimented. Mr. Birdseye saw that the volunteer masseur, now approaching them, had coal-black hair and snapping black eyes, and a skin the colour of polished cherry.

“That’s the Chief coming, of course?” opined Mr. Birdseye. His tone was filled with reverence.

“Sh-h, don’t let him hear you. If I had a big Indian whatyoumaycallim for a grandfather I’d advertise it, but he’s a little touchy on the subject. Great boy though – one of the best.”

“Part Pawnee, ain’t he?”

“No; Parsee, I think.”

Mr. Birdseye was going to ask where that tribe lived, but skylarking broke out in a fresh quarter and he forgot it. They talked averages then, or started to. Mr. Birdseye was made proud to find his companion agreed with him that Tris Speaker undoubtedly had a shade on Joe Jackson, and then was just about to take up the question of Honus Wagner’s ability to come back after his last season’s slump – a vital issue and one upon which he entertained decided views in the affirmative – when something occurred. Without being able to comprehend exactly how it came about, he discovered himself all of a sudden forming one link in a human chain of which six or eight more were likewise component parts. With arms intertwined and heads bent toward a common centre, they all mingled their lusty voices in snatches of song and glee and roundelay, and he – he perforce joined with them. One moment Merrily They Rolled Along, Rolled Along, Rolled Along – indeed they did; the next, From Aunt Dinah’s Quilting Party they were Seeing Nell-l-l-i-e Home. Then a single minstrel advanced the duly credited assertion of parties unnamed that A Nigger Won’t Steal, whereupon several others instantly and melodiously responded to the effect that be this as it may, I Caught Three in My Cornfield; One Had a Shovel and One Had a Hoe and if That Ain’t Stealing I Don’t Know! And so on without cessation for many fleeting, glorious, golden minutes. Once Mr. Birdseye, feeling certain he recognised the blithesome tenor whose wide shoulders his right arm encompassed, broke off his carolling long enough to say: