The Man Who Killed by Fraser Nixon Read Free Book Online Page B

heavy man he skipped nimbly around the bases, to the crowd’s delight. This was what they’d paid for.
    Back in the dugout Ruth was handed a beer and emptied it in a swallow. He started signing programs and photographs, laughing and chatting with children, drinking some more. The game stayed tied through the end of the sixth.
    The Guybourg pitcher blew out his arm the next inning so Ruth stepped in and retired the side. Later, a nasty foul tip clipped the ump and knocked him out; for sport Ruth put on the official’s pads and called the game while his own team batted. It didn’t help Guybourg one whit. At the change during the stretch there spread a ripple of merriment through the crowd at some jape Ruth was up to. He couldn’t get out of the umpire’s pads and was struggling on the ground, cracking wise to the nearby fans.
    â€œWhat’s he saying?” asked Jack Sprat next to me.
    His wife sat nibbling Turkish delight.
    â€œHe ask Houdini to help him escape,” said a dark ferret on my other side.
    The eighth was a washout for both sides. Calcium spotlights were lit against the creeping dark and a sharp wind scraped across the diamond. The mobile vulgus contracted at this grim taste of winter, steam and smoke rising from the pinched crowd as it tensed against the chill. At last came the ninth, the score still knotted.
    Ruth got up. The Beaurivage pitcher was an amateur from town with his family loudly rooting for him to fan the big-leaguer. It didn’t work out. The local boy threw three pitches wide and then Ruth fouled twice for the full count. The next ball floated over the plate and Ruth pounded it out of the park. The diamond exploded and the Babe grinned like a happy hound as he rounded the bases for home where his team waited to clap and pound him on the back. The recovered umpire went over and talked to both sides’ managers and then they beckoned the announcer, who joined their consultation for a minute, then went to the loudspeaker.
    â€œLadies and gentlemen, we wish to inform you that the game has been called at the top of the ninth by agreement, the Guybourg All-Stars winning four runs to three thanks to a solo run by Babe Ruth.”
    A general huzzah.
    â€œMr. Ruth has, through the pre-game demonstration and this contest, now hit thirty-six balls out of the park and exhausted both clubs’ supply. We wish to thank you for your attendance today and please join us in three cheers for our visitors to Montreal!”
    The crowd did better than that, breaking into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and then for good measure “God Save the King” again. Ruth and his compatriots doffed their caps and a friendly mob swarmed the field. He signed a dozen autographs and was finally helped out of the throng and into a taxi that had been let onto the field to take him back to his hotel. I ran into the Jew again in the crush leaving the park.
    â€œAnother Exodus,” I said.
    He clapped my shoulder, red-faced and daffy with hooch.
    â€œThe old Babe’ll be swinging his bat on Bullion Street tonight,” he yowled, making an obscene gesture.
    The gate separated us and I was let back out on the mercy of the city. I started to feel like going on a tear of my own. The noise, movement, and temporary camaraderie had jazzed me. I could walk to Laura’s house and say goodbye. Get it over with. The way things stood my last friend in the world was gone, dead. Laura had probably been affianced off to a moneyed heir. Perhaps I could bury myself in some small Ontario town, play with a crystal set in the evenings trying to pick up signals from Texas. Crunch through blue snow at night to romance a cross-eyed librarian, become a clerk at a hardware store and sing in the Methodist choir, march in the Orangemen’s parade every July. I could do any number of things, but paramount I would find a saloon open on a Sunday on St. Catherine Street. After that I