The Fade-Away by George Jansen

Author:George Jansen [Jansen, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: California, 1900, baseball, love, greed, America's descent, historical fiction, modernity
Publisher: Fool Church Media
Published: 2017-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Calvin Elwell

Bartender and Second Baseman

With the Chief, I never knew if anything he said was ever genuine. With Doc and Long John, you always knew they were being straight with you. Sophie was almost always devious, but was so bad at it that it generally turned out harmless enough. The Chief was another kettle of fish altogether.

The day after the Benicia game, where he cut Tony Rossi’s leg real bad, the Chief stepped up to the bar where I stood in my bow tie and white shirt. I was getting the free lunch ready, most likely. He made his voice low and conspiratorial.

“We’re blood brothers, kid. You know what that means, don’t you?”

“I suppose,” I said, although I did not.

He asked me if I’d do him a service and I told him I’d do whatever he wanted, within reason. He told me to meet him in his room at the Railroad Inn after my shift was over, and I said I would, so I did.

The upshot was this: He wanted me to go into Oakland for him, and go to a certain pharmacy there and buy him a jar of leeches.

“Leeches?” I said.

“For my elbow, kid. It’s killing me.“

I told him he ought to see Doc about it, but he said doctors didn’t understand about leeches. “Only Injuns and Chinamen understand leeches.”

Besides that, he said, he didn’t want it spread all over town that his elbow was hurting. “Don’t tell Doc. And whatever you do, don’t tell that sweetheart of yours.”

“I don’t have a sweetheart.”

“Well, don’t tell her, anyway.”

When my shift was over, I took the train to Oakland and, after getting lost among the maze of streets downtown, managed to find the so-called “pharmacy” that had the leeches. It was in Oakland’s Chinatown, where there wasn’t supposed to be any plague, but I scurried along quick as I could, trying to hold my breath as much as possible. It took me a while to find the pharmacy, which was all full of Chinamen, and even longer to get the Chinaman there understanding what I wanted. But once that was done, there it was—a glass bottle filled with water and a whole score of the creatures.

It was a sickening sight, but the Chinaman wrapped the jar in newspaper, so I didn’t have to look at the leeches on the train. Once back home, I found the Chief in his room, reading one of his dime Westerns, and swigging at a bottle of bourbon whiskey but using his right hand for it. His shirt was off and his left elbow looked all swollen and blue and disagreeable.

He offered me the whiskey and, even though I didn’t really want any, I didn’t want to look like a baby, either. So I took it. He got up, went over to the wash basin and scrubbed his elbow, wincing all the time from the pain of just touching it. Then he got an empty jar he had and a pair of tweezers, came back to the bed again, sat on it and opened the leech jar.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.