Eddie McKenna patted his large belly and breathed through his nose. “Well, now, I hope these Bolshies will be stripped of their Series medals. Just the fact that they give them ‘medals’ for playing a game is enough to turn the stomach. And I say, Fine. Baseball’s dead anyway. Bunch of slackers without the guts to fight for their country. And Ruth the worst of them. You hear he wants to hit now, Dan? Read it in this morning’s paper—doesn’t want to pitch anymore, says he’s going to sit out if they don’t pay him more and keep him off the mound at the same time. You believe that?”

“Ah, this world.” His father took a sip of Bordeaux.

“Well,” Danny said, looking around the table, “what was their beef?”

“Hmm?”

“Their complaint? They didn’t strike for nothing.”

Joe said, “They said the owners changed the agreement?” Danny watched him cock his eyes back into his head, trying to remember the specifics. Joe was a fanatic for the sport and the most trustworthy source at the table on all matters baseball. “And they cut them out of money they’d promised and every other team had gotten in other Series. So they struck.” He shrugged, as if to say it all made perfect sense to him, and then he cut into his turkey.

“I agree with Eddie,” his father said. “Baseball’s dead. It’ll never come back.”

“Yes, it will,” Joe said desperately. “Yes, it will.”

“This country,” his father said, with one of the many smiles in his collection, this time the wry one. “Everyone thinks it’s okay to hire on for work but then sit down when that work turns out to be hard.”

He and Connor took their coffee and cigarettes out on the back porch and Joe followed them. He climbed the tree in the backyard because he knew he wasn’t supposed to and knew his brothers wouldn’t call this to his attention.

Connor and Danny looked so little alike people thought they were kidding when they said they were brothers. Where Danny was tall and dark-haired and broad-shouldered, Connor was fair-haired and trim and compact, like their father. Danny had gotten the old man’s blue eyes, though, and his sly sense of humor, where Connor’s brown eyes and disposition—a coiled affability that disguised an obstinate heart—came entirely from their mother.

“Dad said you went out on a warship yesterday?”

Danny nodded. “That I did.”

“Sick soldiers, I heard.”

Danny sighed. “This house leaks like Hudson tires.”

“Well, I do work for the DA.”

Danny chuckled. “Juiced-in, eh, Con’?”

Connor frowned. “How bad were they? The soldiers.”

Danny looked down at his cigarette and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. “Pretty bad.”

“What is it?”

“Honestly? Don’t know. Could be influenza, pneumonia, or something no one’s ever heard of.” Danny shrugged. “Hopefully, it sticks to soldiers.”

Connor leaned against the railing. “They say it’ll be over soon.”

“The war?” Danny nodded. “Yeah.”

For a moment, Connor looked uncomfortable. A rising star in the DA’s office, he’d also been a vocal advocate of American entrance into the war. Yet somehow he managed to miss the draft, and both brothers knew who was usually responsible for “somehows” in their family.