Mordecai Brown by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Mordecai Brown

Page 171

The reporter scribbled that down like it was scripture.

Before he left, he asked Brown to pose for a photograph. Brown obliged, standing beside the pump with his cap low over his brow. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t frown either. He looked like a man who had made peace with the shape of his days.

Afternoon

Business was slow. It often was in the middle of the Great Depression years. The oil company teams he managed on weekends paid a little, and the tiny dividend from his stake in the Terre Haute Browns paid even less. But he wasn’t hungry, and he wasn’t idle. He tinkered with an old Ford that needed a new fan belt, humming tunelessly as he worked.

Every so often, a customer would recognize the name on the sign; M. Brown, Proprietor, and ask, “Say, are you the pitcher?” Brown would nod, and the customer would grin, shake his hand, and tell him about a father or uncle who’d sworn by that curveball of his.

He never tired of hearing it, though he pretended to.

Evening

Around six, when the sun was dropping behind the grain elevators, he closed up shop. He locked the pumps, swept the pad