YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN. Thomas Wolfe
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Myrtle, Nebraska’s wife, was small and plump, and pretty in a doll-like way. Her corn-silk hair was frizzled in a halo about her face, and her chubby features were heavily accented by rouge and lipstick. But she was simple and natural in her talk and bearing, and George liked her at once. She welcomed him with a warm and friendly smile and said she had heard a lot about him.
They all sat down. The child, who was three or four years old by this time, and who had been shy, holding on to his mother’s dress and peeping out from behind her, now ran across the room to his father and began climbing all over him. Nebraska and Myrtle asked George a lot of questions about himself, what he had been doing, where he had been, and especially what countries he had visited in Europe. They seemed to think of Europe as a place so far away that anyone who had actually been there was touched with an unbelievable aura of strangeness and romance.
“Whereall did you go over there, anyway?” asked Nebraska.
“Oh, everywhere, Bras,” George said —“France, England, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy — all over the place.”
“Well I’ll be dogged!”— in frank astonishment. “You sure do git aroun’, don’t you?”
“Not the way you do, Bras. You’re travelling most of the time.”
“Who — me? Oh, hell, I don’t git anywhere — just the same ole places. Chicago, St. Looie, Philly — I seen ’em all so often I could find my way blindfolded!” He waved them aside with a gesture of his hand. Then, suddenly, he looked at George as though he were just seeing him for the first time, and he reached over and slapped him on the knee and exclaimed: “Well I’ll be dogged! How you doin’, anyway, Monkus?”
“Oh, can’t complain. How about you? But I don’t need to ask that. I’ve been reading all about you in the papers.”
“Yes, Monkus,” he said. “I been havin’ a good year. But, boy!”— he shook his head suddenly and grinned —“Do the ole dogs feel it!” He was silent a moment, then he went on quietly:
“I been up here since 1919 — that’s seven years, and it’s a long time in this game. Not many of ’em stay much longer. When you been shaggin’ flies as long as that you may lose count, but you don’t need to count — your legs’ll tell you.”
“But, good Lord, Bras, you’re all right! Why, the way you got around out there today you looked like a colt!”
“Yeah,” Nebraska said, “maybe I looked like a colt, but I felt like a plough horse.” He fell silent again, then he tapped his friend gently on the knee with his brown hand and said abruptly: “No, Monkus. When you been in this business as long as I have, you know it.”
“Oh, come on, Bras, quit your kidding!” said George, remembering that the player was only two years older than himself. “You’re still a young man. Why, you’re only twenty-seven!”
“Sure, sure,” Nebraska answered quietly. “But it’s like I say. You cain’t stay in this business much longer than I have. Of course, Cobb an’ Speaker an’ a few like that — they was up here a long time. But eight years is about the average, an’ I been here seven already. So if I can hang on a few years more, I won’t have no kick to make . . . Hell!” he said in a moment, with the old hearty ring in his voice, “I ain’t got no kick to make, no-way. If I got my release tomorrow, I’d still feel I done all right . . . Ain’t that so, Buzz?” he cried genially to the child, who had settled down on his knee, at the same time seizing the boy and cradling him comfortably in his strong arm. “Ole Bras has done all right, ain’t he?”
“That’s the way me an’ Bras feel about it,” remarked Myrtle, who during this conversation had been rocking back and forth, placidly ruminating on a wad of gum. “Along there last year it looked once or twice as if Bras might git traded. He said to me one day before the game, ‘Well, ole lady, if I don’t git some hits today somethin’ tells me you an’ me is goin’ to take a trip.’ So I says, ‘Trip where?’ An’ he says, ‘I don’t know, but they’re goin’ to sell me down the river if I don’t git goin’, an’ somethin’ tells me it’s now or never!’ So I just looks at him,” continued Myrtle placidly, “an’ I says, ‘Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to come today or not?’ You know, gener’ly, Bras won’t let me come when he ain’t hittin’— he says it’s bad luck. But he just looks at me a minute, an’ I can see him sort of studyin’ it over, an’ all of a sudden he makes up his mind an’ says, ‘Yes, come on if you want to; I couldn’t have no more bad luck than I been havin’, no-way, an’ maybe it’s come time fer things to change, so you come on.’ Well, I went — an’ I don’t know whether I brought him luck or not, but somethin’ did,” said Myrtle, rocking in her chair complacently.
“Dogged if she didn’t!” Nebraska chuckled. “I got three hits out of four times up that day, an’ two of ’em was home runs!”
“Yeah,” Myrtle agreed, “an’ that Philadelphia fast-ball thrower was throwin’ ’em, too.”
“He sure was!” said Nebraska.
“I know,” went on Myrtle, chewing placidly, “because I heard some of the boys say later that it was like he was throwin’ ’em up there from out of the bleachers, with all them men in shirt-sleeves right behind him, an’ the boys said half the time they couldn’t even see the ball. But Bras must of saw it — or been lucky — because he hit two home runs off of him, an’ that pitcher didn’t like it, either. The second one Bras got, he went stompin’ an’ tearin’ around out there like a wild bull. He sure did look mad,” said Myrtle in her customary placid tone.
“Maddest man I ever seen!” Nebraska cried delightedly. “I thought he was goin’ to dig a hole plumb through to China . . . But that’s the way it was. She’s right about it. That was the day I got goin’. I know one of the boys said to me later, ‘Bras,’ he says, ‘we all thought you was goin’ to take a ride, but you sure dug in, didn’t you?’ That’s the way it is in this game. I seen Babe Ruth go fer weeks when he couldn’t hit a balloon, an’ all of a sudden he lams into it. Seems like he just cain’t miss from then on.”
All this had happened four years ago. Now the two friends had met again, and were seated side by side in the speeding train, talking and catching up on one another. When George explained the reason for his going home, Nebraska turned to him with open-mouthed astonishment, genuine concern written in the frown upon his brown and homely face.
“Well, what d’you know about that!” he said. “I sure am sorry, Monk.” He was silent while he thought about it, and embarrassed, not knowing what to say. Then, after a moment: “Gee!”— he shook his head —“your aunt was one swell cook! I never will fergit it! Remember how she used to feed us kids — every danged one of us in the whole neighbourhood?” He paused, then grinned up shyly at his friend: “I sure wish I had a fistful of them good ole cookies of hers right this minute!”
Nebraska’s right ankle was taped and bandaged; a heavy cane rested between his knees. George asked him what had happened.
“I pulled a tendon,” Nebraska said, “an’ got laid off. So I thought I might as well run down an’ see the folks. Myrtle, she couldn’t come — the kid’s got to git ready fer school.”
“How are they?” George asked.
“Oh, fine, fine. All wool an’ a yard wide, both of ’em!” He was silent for a moment, then he looked at his friend with a tolerant Cherokee grin and said: “But I’m crackin’ up, Monkus. Guess I cain’t stan’ the gaff much more.”
Nebraska was only thirty-one now, and George was incredulous. Nebraska smiled good-naturedly again:
“That’s an ole man in baseball, Monk. I went up when I was twenty-one. I been aroun’ a long time.”
The quiet resignation of the player touched his friend with sadness. It was hard and painful for him to face the