UnWrecked Press presents: Fiction Friday

This week’s Free Fiction Friday story from UnWrecked Press is “The Champ Escapes.”

UPDATE: Now that the free week is over, you can read the rest of this story by downloading an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords. Then you can read it on your laptop, desktop, Kindle, iPad, Nook, iPhone, or whatever device you use to read ebooks.

This story is part of my baseball/ghost/historical novel The All Nations Team, and it gives you a nice taste of the characters and the strange sense of America in the early years of World War I. You can also read a related story about the team: “A Miracle in Shreveport.”

I wanted to release this story today in honor of the upcoming World Series for Major League Baseball. Play ball!

The Champ Escapes

Once you’ve seen a man who’s larger than life, you never forget him. You can tell who is he even from across a ball field, just by the way he walks or holds his shoulders. Even if years have passed since you last were in his presence him and time has taken more and more from you, greedy as a spoiled child, you can still tell he’s someone special.

The sleeves of his borrowed Giants jersey looked ready to burst at the slightest movement, and his golden front tooth glinted in the sun whenever he smiled. Towering over the other colored men on the Chicago American Giants, he was hard to miss, and the Giants had some big fellows to start with, like John Henry Lloyd and Bingo DeMoss. Their coach and owner, cigar-chomping Rube Foster, was no slouch in the size department either.

But this man was bigger than them, with a laugh that echoed around the diamond and doused my hopes for victory today.

I took off my cap and wiped sweat from my forehead, feeling every one of my sixty-four years. We were going to be fighting for our lives today against the Chicago American Giants, whose roster now included the former heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson.

Thanks to my Cuban pitcher Mendez’s injury from earlier this week, the unreliability of my Mexican first baseman “Buddha” Rodriguez, and the sudden death of our former head coach Worrell, a sharp-tongued white man who had yet to be replaced almost four months after he took a line-drive foul tip to the head, I needed to remind the owner of the All Nations team once more just how badly we needed some new players.

“What the hell is this?” I demanded as my team entered the visitors’ dugout after their pre-game calisthenics. Most of them were unable to take their eyes off the champ. Young Boles even walked into the post of the dugout entrance while staring at the big bald colored man on the field, adding another lump to his head.

Within ten minutes, I’d gotten the whole story from Donaldson, who was pals with one of the Giants pitchers.

Johnson had been on the run ever since he’d been charged with violating the Mann Act for transporting his fiancée across state lines for what a judge called “immoral purposes.” I couldn’t believe there was such a law, until I heard that Johnson’s wife was white. Then it all made sense to me.

He’d been living outside of America ever since, though he’d just returned for a few days to attend the funeral of a relative. The cops had been on him in a heartbeat, until Rube took him in.

I glanced back at the big, still-growing crowd behind us. For a moment I saw a female face that I swore could’ve been my Maddie, or maybe even Lizbeth. My chest tightened up, just as the band wrapped up another song.

Then the crowd shifted, and I lost sight of the woman. Surely that wasn’t her; she hated the sport. And Lizbeth had said in her note that she wouldn’t be attending the game, so it couldn’t have been her. Just my imagination.

I stepped out onto the field again and nodded at Rube and the champ ambling back to their own dugout. I found myself frowning with irritation at the band’s version of “Over There,” made worse by the accompaniment by our skinny white pitcher Boles as he warmed up next to the dugout. I heard him muttering, “Make your daddy glad, to have had such a lad,” as he unleashed another fastball into No Small Foot’s glove.

I’d heard enough.

“Let’s go, men,” I shouted, tipping my cap at Carrie Nation. As my team gathered around me, I realized that we were missing someone.

“Charlie.”

I cursed myself for being so caught up in trying to figure out the champ’s story and staring at the crowd like a moony teenager.

“Boles!” I hissed.

“What?” He gave me an innocent look, but I’d seen him flinch. He knew something was amiss. “What’d I do now?”

“Where’s Charlie?”

“That crazy loon? Who knows. Maybe he’s out looking for more eagle feathers. Look, I got to get ready for the game.”

“Not if Charlie doesn’t show up. Because if he’s not here, I’m putting you in right field in his place. Again. Remember how well that went last time? Not too fun, was it?”

Boles’ cocky smirk was replaced by a bright sheen of fear.

“But I’m pitching today. He was just here, wasn’t he?” Boles turned to his teammates, desperate. “Houdini, didn’t you see the Chief just a minute ago?”

Art shrugged and tucked his dark curls under his cap. “Beats me. I’m just a dumb Jew ballplayer who thinks his brother can do magic. What would I know?”

“Listen, guys,” Boles said, looking from left to right in a panic. “Who here saw Charlie last?”

“Better check the stands,” I said. “Art, get warmed up. Mendez, I hope your arm’s feeling better, because I’m putting you at second and moving Carrie over to third while Art pitches. Got it?”

Mendez gave me a bright smile and nodded, while Carrie responded with a distracted nod. Houdini was already dragging our Cherokee catcher, No Small Foot, out to the bullpen to warm up.

With the way things were shaping up, I’d soon be back on the roster again. I glanced out at the stands and saw men my age, grandpas decked out in their Sunday best, and wished for a weak moment that I was out there, resting my sore knees and medicating them from a flask in my hip pocket.

But then I returned to my senses. Sixty-four wasn’t that old.

As I was scratching out and scribbling names on my roster, Mikado grounded to first and Phil the Philippine struck out; Cannonball Redding had his stuff today. Mack hit a dribbler to third that he barely outran, only to have No Small Foot strand him after three called strikes. The bat never left the shoulder of the squinting Cherokee; he needed spectacles like no one’s business, but I was not going to be the fool to tell him that.

“Ump’s strike zone is bigger than you and me put together, John,” I said in a voice loud enough for the rest of the team to hear. I watched Jack Johnson lumber in from second base and head right for the Giants’ pile of bats. I swallowed with a painful click. “Gotta be aggressive at the plate. All of you, including Charlie. Soon as we find the three-feathered fool.”

* * * * *

Read the rest of the story as an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords.

Interested in George and his colorful team? Read more in The All Nations Team, which is available as an ebook and a trade paperback book.