Calico Joe

My third effort at beaning him was as unsuccessful as the first two. The pitch was high and inside, but not close enough to do the damage I wanted. To show his disgust, he reached out with his left hand and caught the pitch bare-handed. What an insult to a pitcher, but then I really didn’t care. I just wanted to get away from this madman. He flung the bat toward the house and came after me.

“You’re a coward, you know that, Paul? Nothing but a coward. It takes guts to throw at batters, but a pitcher has to do it.”

“Not in Little League,” I managed to say.

“In every league!”

I guess I was too small to punch, so he slapped me across the face with the back of his left hand, protecting, of course, his pitching hand. I screamed and fell down, and just as he grabbed me by the collar, I heard my mother yell, “Get away from him, Warren!”

She was standing ten feet away, holding the baseball bat, something she had probably never done before in her life, and aiming its barrel at my father. Jill was hiding behind her. For a few seconds no one moved, then, seeing the opportunity, I crawled away.

“Put the bat down,” he said.

“You hit him in the face,” she said. “What kind of animal are you?”

“He hit him with the baseball too,” Jill added.

“Shut up,” he snarled.

A few more seconds passed as everyone took a breath. We slowly made our way inside, each carefully watching the other. My parents went to the basement and fought for a long time, and when they got tired, he left.

(EXCERPT FROM “THE BEANING OF JOE CASTLE,” BY PAUL TRACEY, SON OF WARREN)

19

Killing time in the Atlanta airport, I call Clarence Rook. It has been slightly more than twenty-four hours since I said good-bye to him, but it seems like a month. “You’ll never guess who called me last night,” he says.

“Charlie or Red?”

“Charlie. Said he got a call from Joe, who said I showed up at the field with a stranger, and he was just checking in to make sure everything’s okay. That’s what Charlie always says—‘Clarence, everything okay?’ I said, sure, Charlie, just a nephew from Texas who wanted to see the field.”

“Why didn’t you tell him the truth?” I ask.

“Well, I did, later. I got to thinking about it, chatted with Fay, and so I called Charlie back, said I had something important to discuss with him and Red, and could we meet for coffee? We did, this morning, at a quieter place north of town. I told them all about you, your visit, and so on.” He stops talking, and this is not a good sign.

“Let me guess. They did not weep with sorrow at the news that Warren Tracey has terminal cancer.”

“They did not.”

A pause, another bad sign. “And the idea of him coming to Calico Rock to meet with Joe? How was that received?”

“Not very well, at least not at first. In fact, they didn’t like the idea of you being here.”

“Will they shoot me if I return?”

“No. They warmed up considerably, even promised to talk to Joe and see if he likes the idea. I pushed a little, but it’s really none of my business. What about the meeting with your father?”

I decide to spin it. “I got the door open, I think. We had some frank discussions, a lot of old family stuff, nothing you want to hear. The problem is that he is in denial about his cancer, and until he faces the prospect of death, he will be hard to persuade.”

“Poor guy.”

“Maybe, but I could not reach the point where I actually felt sorry for him.”

I ask about Fay, and the conversation runs out of gas. An hour later, I board the flight to Dallas.