Bill Davis - "White Shoes"

After I began working on Don's crew
I discovered there were only three of us
employed by the Boston Red Sox
who were not Catholic.
Don, myself and Billy Clark,
one of the supervisors.
We were all Protestant, of course.

It occurred to Billy
that we needed to stick together,
to look out for each other.
Billy was an Episcopal.
He sang in the choir
and turned completely red at roll call
if someone asked him to sing,
or mentioned his shoes.

Don was a Unitarian who smoked Tampas under the stands
and talked to me for hours about his garden,
about the committees he served on at church,
about how good the Sox looked, about Thoreau,
about what an asshole Nixon was.
He would wave me out to go home sometimes
after the seventh inning.

One night
when I was helping Don
get Billy in his car
before he passed out completely,
he asked me if I believed in God.
Before I could answer,
Billy rallied, broke into
"Have Thine Own Way Lord"
and puked on his shoes.


Local 254, 1976