The main reason Davidson didn’t want to play us was politics. Like all the coal operators, Lytton Davidson hated Annadel. “Redlegs” was too tame a name for us, he said, because we was red right up to the tops of our heads. Besides that, it was humiliating to see Negroes and white men playing on the same team, and to risk seeing white men beat by coloreds. Sam Gore was our best pitcher, Doc Booker played first base, and five other Negroes was on the team as well. Davidson never would have played the game if there hadn’t been such a clamor from the fans. All the American Coal Company miners wanted to play us bad, and Davidson didn’t like to look a coward, so in late August of 1918, after we both had won our leagues again, a game was set. Davidson wouldn’t come to Annadel to play. That’s all right, we said, we’ll beat you anywhere.

The Davidson field is up Marcums Branch, not a quarter of a mile from where our cabin set. We’d had a canebrake in that field, I recalled, and a molasses wheel. It all looked so different now, with the ballfield, the electric wires, the houses climbing the holler and on out of sight. Lytton Davidson, the man who stole it all, set in the dugout and watched while his boys took warm-up. He was short, with a fleshy, babyish face. I tried to feel hate for him, but it didn’t seem worth the effort, like trying mightily to despise a worm. You aint got to hate somebody in order to whip them.

Nearly everybody I knowed in the world was at that ballgame, including Clabe Lloyd, who coughed and spat with every other breath. He stood with Talcott behind the outfield bleachers.

“How’s it goin, Clabe?”

“Hit aint, but I aint complainin.” His laugh ended in a wheeze.

“Workin hard?” I thought what a stupid question it was, but everybody always asked it.

“Hell, yes. That there youngun I got for a buddy aint as good to work with as this one here.” He put a purplish hand on Talcott’s shoulder. “Oh, Kerwin tries hard. I aint complainin. But you know.”

“Kerwin here?”

“Him and Mommy wouldnt come,” Talcott said. “Ball games is the Devil’s playground, Mommy says.”

“I seen that preacher Freeman from Felco over by third base,” Clabe said.

“He lives down the row from me,” Talcott said. “He dont believe in Hell so he can do anything he wants to. Wonder ifn we can git him to save Mommy?”

“You cant git saved but oncet,” Clabe said.

“Kerwin been saved six times,” Talcott answered. “He gits saved ever time nobody else does. Says it hurts the preacher’s feelins ifn nobody answers the altar call.”

Talcott was just back from the war, where he’d spent six months in the trenches. He hadn’t changed much, and when I asked him once what it was like over there, he shrugged and claimed they was nothing he hadn’t seen before, and that a German’s head was a lot bigger target than a squirrel’s.