Nobody knew why Leroy Maxfield was called Bus. No one except Milt. And he wasn’t about to tell a soul that it was because when the head umpire was six, he had set fire to the family home while using his mom’s kitchen matches to see if twigs would heat the oven. After all, his mom used the matches to light the burners on the stove, and the stove in the living room was heated with wood… His pa’s cries of, “He’s busted me! He’s busted me!” had jarred the neighborhood, and Leroy was “Bus” from then on.
None of the Hutch Cubs players kicked Carey Park Diamond dirt onto Bus’s umpire slacks, no matter how mad they were. Even the no-good low-downs who’d been known to sneakily spit tobacco juice on the back of second base ump Dickie Kerr’s slacks when he “went blind” gave Bus a wide berth. The other umps, who could often be found drinking or bowling with the team, did little more than tip their hats to Bus, and when they had to discuss a close call at whatever base, what Bus said usually went. He was older than all the players and most of the umps, but this wasn’t why they steered clear. He was a Golden Gloves middleweight champion, but that had nothing to do with it, either.
Bus had been to the war. He had seen things, and you could tell. Things that the boys who were too young to have gone—or the “eggheads” who had wrangled college deferments—couldn’t allow themselves to imagine, let alone ask him about. Things that put Bus in another league altogether.
For his part, Bus didn’t mind being half-feared and totally ignored, because he was only half there himself. If that. He had seen things. Still saw things in the dead of night. But not the kinds of things the others were afraid to imagine. Having been a combat engineer in the army, he’d spent most of his time either building or blowing up bridges and hadn’t really seen much frontline action. But he had seen the cost of victory. He had set off C-4 in the Ante river to bring up fish so his battalion could feed the people of Falaise, who’d been bombed to starvation by the Allies in their effort to cut off German communications. It was the gaunt frames of the people of the town, living in the blackened rumble of their normal lives, sheltering kids too weak to even stand and ask for candy, that kept him from being fully present back home. Especially now, when he was having so much trouble finding steady work he may have to bomb the Arkansas River to feed his own wife and three sons.
Milt “Majors” Majercik was closer to Bus than anyone because he squatted between Bus and the baseball. They’d begun chatting during time-outs, and Milt liked to think they were friends. Bus hadn’t really thought about it, although Majors was the first guy he’d been close enough to to call by his nickname since losing Packrat and Scope on two separate bridge collapses in France. He’d told Milt about his own nickname on the night the Clary house burned down. Everyone in town had seen the smoke, if not the flames, and he’d been transported back to that moment of choking on smoke and contempt.
The Cubs had lost on the night of the Clary fire, Bus remembered. But this night, the sixth playoff game with the Fort Smith Giants, with the Hutch up 3–2 in the series, the Cubs led by 2 in the bottom of the 7th. Milt caught a foul tip, and the runner at first took that as his cue. The ball shot toward second, where it nicked Jack Paul’s glove and hit umpire Dickie Kerr smack in the sternum. As Kerr staggered backward and fell, Bus took off toward him and caught the play at the same time. “Safe!” he signaled while still on the run.
Two steps from Kerr, Bus began to sputter. It felt like someone had tried to talc his tonsils—with talcum powder that moved! He grabbed his throat. Kerr was getting up under his own steam, and by the time Bus reached him, it was the umpire who needed help. Kerr froze for a second, and Bus managed a slow inhale through his nose. Then he coughed for dear life—and out flew a very confused gray moth, winging its way free in crazy loop-de-loops, spotlighted in the stadium lights. A Hutch News photographer captured both the moth and Bus’s platter-sized eyes. Kerr slapped Bus on the back to stem his coughing and laughed as he watched the moth fly away. Bus bent over double and Milt held his breath. He could see the umpire’s back shaking. Was he angry? Still choking? Kerr slapped him again and Bus stood up, chuckling through tears.
And that’s how ol’ Motheater Maxfield became a man who was fully there.
Author’s Note: Leroy “Bus” Maxfield was my grandfather, and everything in this story really happened to him. The Clary house fire was real as well, and the Hutch Cubs won the regional title in 1946. Milt “Majors” Majercik played for that 1946 team and Dickie Kerr was actually the team manager, but there wasn’t a role for him in the story, so he became an umpire.
Written for Daybreak Press blog, by Anse Najiyah Maxfield, Head of Publishing