Floodwaters Receding

Floodwaters Receding

The baseball team was in Mankato, and Hank James had been told he couldn’t join them. It was part of his suspension for assaulting George Swede when the HooseCows played the Ugly Birds and Swede pegged Hank in the head with a fastball. If he were back in the majors, as he was hitting well enough to be, Hank would probably be out of a job. But in the HooseCows’ league, all press was good press. People would gladly come in to see the hard-hitting Hank James, criminal or not. So the league decided to suspend him for one series, and it didn’t hurt the series they suspended him for was in a town where, the last time Hank was there, he had watched one of their relief pitchers burn to death in front of him.

The trouble was Hank was running out of things to do. He had already gone to two movies at the bigger theater near the Crossroads Mall. He had used his truck to drive out to Taylor Nickles’ land and dig the holes the manager had required him to out in the fields. Hank had a hunch that, when the team returned, his next assignment would be to fill in those holes.

At nights, Hank drove around the places Mickey Danz told him the ghostly children could be found, but he never saw them. He had a hunch that, when it was all said and done, what he had done on that pitching mound had offended the boys. On his nightly trips, he was mostly thinking of apologizing to them. He had even tried contacting the Swedes, the family who represented most of the Ugly Birds’ team, but he got no response. He feared they would take revenge on his teammates, and that also hang heavily on his shoulders. At least it didn’t look like the team was pressing criminal charges.

Desperate for answers about the phantoms, Hank James found himself touring a tiny local museum near the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center, which had been renamed in 1988 to commemorate the brothers who had all been killed in action on the same boat in World War II. At the museum he asked, sheepishly, if anyone knew anything about baseball at the museum. The volunteer at the front desk, who looked bored senseless in her combat boots and Pearl Jam T-shirt, motioned with a jab of her head for him to follow her. As she led him to an exhibit, he noticed the back of her T-shirt proclaimed that kids preferred crayons to guns; he had seen this T-shirt many times over the summer.

Hank was surprised to see a man in his late twenties setting up an exhibit on townball in Iowa at the turn of the century. He straightened a blown-up picture and then turned and greeted Hank by name.

“Mr. James, my name is Ron Leeman” the man said, avoiding the nickname “Tombstone.” Hank hadn’t realized how used to that nickname he was getting.

“I was wondering if you could help me find information about some kids on a baseball team all dying at once, maybe thirty or forty years ago? Some of the players heard something, and a bunch of us wondered if we could do something in their honor at the stadium. You know, if it really happened,” Hank said. He had practiced the lie to the point of nearly believing it himself.

Ron smiled and began talking, the words smooth but perfectly placed. He seemed like a man who would be more comfortable behind a radio microphone than in a nearly-empty museum. As he talked, he gestured frequently by shrugging his shoulders and extending his hand, palm up, as if he was always welcoming Hank’s opinion.

“The museum doesn’t have much about baseball. This is what I brought in from the school and my research. The museum called the University looking for someone to put together a baseball exhibit. They said it’s because of the new league, but it’s really because everyone’s still mad the Waterloo Diamonds are gone and they don’t have a minor league team. A couple of the guys in the English department worked with the team, and I’m surprised they didn’t run me over to put up their own display about what a glorious, grand old part of Waterloo minor league baseball was. They used to just go on and on like that all the time, even though they couldn’t make enough money at the front gate to keep a minor league team interested, what with the new rules going through.”

“Oh,” Hank said. He nodded.

“But I bet I can tell you exactly what you’re talking about, because it’s an urban legend around here,” Ron continued. He motioned Hank back to a small office. Ron stopped the cassette deck from playing something by Otis Redding and motioned for Hank to sit down in a folding chair. “Mike could’ve told you more, but he’s in Des Moines doing some research. He was supposed to be back by now, but any time he gets to a city bigger than Waterloo he shows up late and blames it on traffic and red lights.”

“Other teams talked about a group of kids dying?” Hank redirected. Ron nodded.

“It’s been one of those things a lot of teams in this area drag out to motivate bad teams. I don’t get it; it’s too weird for me. When I first heard it, the story started out with about five kids from three different families living in the poorer neighborhoods of Waterloo, down by the river. This was in the 50s or 60s.Their families had forbidden them to play baseball.”

“In the 60s?” Hank asked.

Ron shrugged again.

“Right? Supposedly there was a really strict religious group with a church out in the country that didn’t let them play baseball, watch TV, or anything else. Most of the church members lived in the country, but these guys had jobs at the factory and wanted to live closer. There could be some truth to that. Down in the Amana Colonies, baseball was a no-no until the 20s, so it’s not entirely ridiculous.

“One summer it starts flooding down there, like it always does. These five kids realize it’s going to take out this tiny little tree fort, and that’s where they stored all of their baseball gear. They’re not from wealthy families, and it was hard enough to buy the stuff in the first place with their parents watching and disapproving. They sneak out while the rest of the family was heading for higher ground — they were from big families, supposedly. They make it out to the tree fort just in time for it to work free from the tree and send them all down river, with their moms screaming for them in the distance.”

“Horrible,” Hank said. Ron nodded. He leaned in, folded his arms, and set his elbows on the table.

“That part, at least, is probably true. My buddy John has been researching this just about as long as I have, and he says he’s even come across newspaper articles and obits. If you like, I can introduce you sometime. He’s kind of a geek, but he knows his stuff.”

Hank nodded.

“The next part is probably just something they tell kids to get them all fired up to play baseball. Sort of like all of those coaches talking about their grandmother with a wooden leg. The story goes that, in the few minutes the boys had before the raft got pounded into bits in the floodwaters, they were most worried their parents would blame the game. They had a big red colored pencil in with their stuff — story never explains how that got to be there — and they started writing on their T-shirts. Supposedly they wrote all of this stuff like ‘Please Mama Don’t Blame Baseball.’ And supposedly it was still there when they found them, and pulled their drowned bodies free from the brush and debris.”

“I have to say, I can kind of see it,” Hank said. He thought about it slowly, breathing  like each inhalation would hold a reason for why these dead children were contacting him. “The game must mean something to me, or I wouldn’t be here after everything.”

“You might not be here for long,” Ron said. “My friend Seth keeps track of all the minor league teams in the Midwest, and he says the scouts have already noticed what you’re doing down here.”

Hank winced and said nothing. Ron immediately knew what the hitter was thinking.

“They know about what you did to George Swede. Seth says the teams that are interested just think that’s scandal enough to keep you from asking for much money. I’ve seen you play a couple of times, and your swing looks great. You deserve a second shot at it. Everybody knows you weren’t in on that drug thing.”

“Thanks,” Hank said.

“So that’s some incentive to keep yourself on the straight and narrow. That and those ghost kids.”

“What do they have to do with it?” Hank asked.

“That’s the other part of the whole story,” Ron finished. “Supposedly they still watch over the team that plays in your stadium, protecting their sport. Like I said, one of those stories coaches tell their players. The whole thing probably got started because their bodies washed up right by where the stadium is now.”

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