The House of Daniel by Harry Turtledove

hadn’t buzzed me anywhere near that hard. I got up, picked up my bat, put my cap back on, dusted off my behind, and stood in again. If my head was thumping, their pitcher didn’t have to know.
    â€œDidn’t mean to throw a beanball,” he said. He sounded as though he meant it. But I bet the conjure man meant him to.
    I wanted to hit the next one nine miles. That’d learn both of ’em! I swung hard, and missed. Then I grounded to third. Yeah, what you want and what you get are different. If nothing else shows you that, baseball sure will.
    When I got back to the dugout, I was muttering to myself. “Hang in there, Jack,” Eddie said. Eddie’s all right.
    Harv was muttering to himself in there, too. Not the way I was. He was muttering things like, “‘And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his kingdom.’”
    Good Book talk. You heard it all the time in Enid. I used little bits and pieces myself sometimes. Harv talked as if he grew up going on like that. Well, he did. And it wasn’t just Good Book talk, I found out later. It was Book of Daniel talk. He was pickled in it like a cuke in vinegar.
    I looked across the field at the conjure man back of the Metros’ dugout. He was wiggling and twitching some more. Different now, though. When I wiggled like that, it was because I swallowed a big old dose of castor oil. And wouldn’t you know it? Right about then, he lit out for the gents’, and he wasn’t what you’d call slow about it, either.
    â€œHarv?” I said.
    â€œWhat you want, Snake?”
    â€œDid you have anything to do with that?”
    â€œWho, me? I’m just a dumb ballplayer.” Dumb like snow is black , I thought. That old pawnshop man’s crack came in handy all kinds of ways. Harv went on, “Anyways, whatever happens, I’d sooner chalk it up to the Lord. He gets the credit. I get the blame for not being good enough.”
    All at once, without the conjure man there, the Metros’ pitcher wasn’t good enough. Oh, he still had smarts. But now his curve was just a wrinkle, not an old-time drop. He lost some giddy-up off his heater, too. You could hit him. We scored two runs, and then two more. I bunted those last two along. I thought I was safe at first, but they called me out. I jawed a little. You won’t win—you never win—but you feel a little better afterwards. And maybe they’ll get the next one right.
    Then the conjure man came back. He looked drug through a knot-hole, but he was still game. And I’ll be blamed if he wasn’t carrying a live chicken. I thought about the Amarillo Greys and their notion of after-the-game fun.
    Whatever the conjure man did with the chicken, he held it down so we couldn’t see. I don’t know that he killed it, but the Metros’ moundsman started throwing bullets again, and the ball took some more funny bounces off their bats. They closed to 4-3 on us.
    â€œâ€˜That we would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret,’” Harv muttered in the dugout. Book of Daniel says they , but he was talking about us. “‘He revealeth the deep and secret things; He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him.’”
    I watched the conjure man. I hoped he’d get the trots again, but he didn’t. I don’t believe he did any more conjuring after that, though. His head kind of lolled back and to the side, the way your head will when you take one on the button and you’re trying to recollect who you are. He was a good conjure man, mind, same as the Metros were a good ballclub.
    But the House of Daniel was better that day. And Harv might not’ve done anything to a chicken, but he was better that day, too. He didn’t do anything to the Metros, or I