Last Orders: The War That Came Early Read Online Free Page B

it.”
    “It’s only the Browns,” Peggy answered. “They’re as rotten as we are, or just about. Half their guys are in the Army.” Half the Athletics were, too, but she didn’t dwell on that. She was a fan, not a sportswriter.
    In the top of the fifth, the first St. Louis batter took four in a row high and wide and trotted down to first base. The second Brownie up swung at the first pitch and missed. Over in the St. Louis dugout on the first-base side, the manager screamed “Shit!” at the top of his lungs. Everybody in the park must have heard him. In his shoes, Peggy would have said the same thing. If the pitcher was wild, you wanted to make him throw a strike before you started flailing away.
    He eyed the runner, went into his stretch, and delivered again. And the Brownie batter swung again. This time, he lofted a lazy pop foul. The third baseman ran toward the stands to see if he could get it. But he ran out of room—it came down in the seats.
    It came down, in fact, in the hands of the guy sitting a few seats away from Peggy. He made a smooth two-handed catch, a catch that said he’d played the game a time or three.
    “Sign him up!” yelled a leather-lunged fan a bit farther back. Any nice catch in the stands meant you’d hear that. With the goons the A’s had in the outfield, it might not even have been a terrible idea.
    The gray-haired man looked as pleased with himself as if he were seven years old. Peggy didn’t blame him. “I’m so jealous,” she said. “I’ve been coming to games since before the turn of the century, and I never once got a foul ball even before they started letting you keep them. This is about as close as I ever came, as a matter of fact.”
    He tossed the baseball up and down a couple of times. Then, to her amazement, he tossed it to her. She managed to catch it—not so neatly as he had, but at least it didn’t land on the concrete and roll away. “Enjoy it,” he said. “Give it to your son so he can play with it.”
    He could have said
grandson;
she’d admitted she was no spring chicken. But he was too nice. “I don’t have kids,” she said. She’d miscarriedwith Herb till her doctor told her she’d be putting herself in danger by trying again. After that, it was French letters and perversions. She wondered what kind of mother she would have made. She’d never get the chance to find out now.
    “No?” He raised a busy eyebrow. “Too bad.” He touched the brim of his fedora. “I’m Dave—Dave Hartman.”
    Peggy gave her own name. Meanwhile, the Browns’ batter struck out. Their manager gave him more hell when he glumly slammed his bat into the rack in the dugout.
    She and Dave kept talking while the game moved forward. She found out he was a master machinist currently between jobs because he had a bad back and the shop he’d been working for didn’t want to give him a chair while everybody else had to stand in front of a lathe.
    “Well, to heck with ’em, then,” Peggy said, full of irate sympathy.
    “That’s what I told ’em,” he answered. “ ’Course, I might’ve put it a little stronger—yeah, just a little.”
    “I sure hope you did.” Peggy nodded emphatically.
    By then, he’d slid over till he was only a couple of seats from her so they could talk more readily. When the fellow with the tray of beer bottles came by, Dave held up his hand with two fingers raised. He handed Peggy one of the bottles. “Well, thank you,” she said, and reached over with it. They clinked. They drank. They smiled.
    They talked through the rest of the game. She found out he was a widower with two grown sons and a granddaughter. She told him of her own status. He thoughtfully scratched his chin. “A guy who’d toss out a gal like you, he’s gotta be kind of a jerk, you want to know what I think,” he said at last.
    Peggy wasn’t used to thinking of Herb as a jerk. He’d always struck her as plenty smart. “I don’t know,” she answered after some