With Hugh firing from the right side and Keith terrifying batters from the left, Biloxi was the solid favorite to win another state championship. After a week of practice, their coaches loaded the team into three pickup trucks for the twenty-minute drive west along Highway 90 to the state tournament in Gulfport. Hundreds of fans followed in a rowdy caravan.

  The tournament was dominated by teams from the southern part of the state: Biloxi, Gulfport, Pascagoula, Pass Christian and Hattiesburg. In the first game against Vicksburg, Keith threw a one-hitter and Hugh hit a grand slam. In the second game, Hugh threw a one-hitter and Keith returned the favor with two home runs. In five games, Biloxi scored thirty-six runs, gave up only four, and walked away with the state title. The town celebrated and sent the boys off to Pensacola with a party. Competition at the next level was a different matter because the Florida teams were waiting.

  Nothing thrilled the boys more than a road trip, with motels and swimming pools and meals in restaurants. Hugh and Keith roomed together and were the undisputed leaders of the team, having been named co-captains by their coaches. They were inseparable, on the field and off, and all activities revolved around them. On the field, they were fierce competitors and cheerleaders, always encouraging the others to play smart, listen to the coaches, shake off errors, and study the game. Off the field, they held team meetings, led the pranks, approved nicknames, decided which movies to watch, which restaurants to go to, and propped up teammates who sat on the bench.

  In the first game, Hugh gave up four hits and Biloxi beat a team from Mobile, the Alabama state champs. In the second, Keith was wilder than ever and walked eight before being pulled in the fourth inning; Biloxi lost to a team from Jacksonville by three runs. Two days later, a team from Tampa scored four runs off Hugh in the bottom of the sixth inning and walked away with the win.

  The season was over. The dreams of playing in the Little League World Series in Williamsport were once again crushed by the State of Florida. The team retreated to the motel to lick its wounds, but before long the boys were splashing in the pool and trying to get the attention of some older girls in bikinis.

  Their parents watched from under poolside umbrellas and enjoyed cocktails. A long season was finally over and they were eager to get home and finish the summer without the hassle of daily baseball. Almost all of the parents were there, along with other relatives and a few die-hard fans from Biloxi. Some were close friends, others only friendly acquaintances. Most were from the Point and knew each other well, and among that group there were cracks in solidarity.

  Hugh’s parents, Lance and Carmen Malco, were feeling a bit shunned, and for good reason.

  Chapter 3

  When Hugh’s grandfather got off the boat in New Orleans in 1912 he was sixteen years old and spoke almost no English. He could pronounce “Biloxi” and that was all the customs official needed. The boats were filled with Eastern Europeans, many with relatives along the Mississippi coast, and customs was eager to move those folks along and send them somewhere else. Biloxi was a favorite destination.

  The kid’s name, back in Croatia, was Oron Malokovic, another mouthful. Some customs officials were patient and worked tediously to record the correct names. Others were hurried, impatient, or indifferent, or maybe they felt as though they were doing the immigrant a favor by renaming him or her with something that might adapt easier in the new country. In all fairness, some of the names from “over there” were difficult for English speakers to pronounce. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast had a rich history dominated by French and Spanish, and by the 1800s those languages had melted easily into the English. But the consonant-laden Slavic tongues were another matter.

  At any rate, Oron became Aaron Malco, an identity he reluctantly embraced because he had no choice. Armed with new paperwork, he hustled up to Biloxi where a relative arranged a room in a barracks and a job shucking oysters in an “oyster house.” Like his countrymen, he eked out a living, worked as many long, hard hours as possible, and saved a few bucks. After two years, he found a better job building schooners in a shipyard on Biloxi’s Back Bay.The work paid more but was physically demanding. Now fully grown, Aaron stood over six feet tall, was thick through the shoulders, and manhandled massive timbers that usually required two or three other men. He endeared himself to his bosses and was given his own crew, along with a pay raise. At the age of nineteen, he was earning fifty cents an hour, a top wage, and worked as many hours as the company offered him.

  When Aaron was twenty, he married Lida Simonovich, a seventeen-year-old Croatian girl who had been fortunate enough to be born in the U.S. Her mother had given birth two months after she and her father arrived on the boat from Europe. Lida worked in a cannery and in her spare time helped her mother, a seamstress. The young couple moved into a rented shotgun house on the Point where they were surrounded by family and friends, all from the old country.

  Their dreams were dashed eight months after their wedding when Aaron fell from a scaffold. A broken arm and leg would heal, but the crushed vertebrae in his lower back rendered him a near cripple. For months he convalesced at home and slowly regained his ability to walk. Out of work, the couple survived with the endless support of their family and neighbors. Meals were abundant, rent was paid, and the parish priest, Father Herbert, stopped by every day for prayers, both in English and Croatian. With the aid of a cane, one that he would never be able to fully abandon, in spite of his heroic efforts, Aaron began the difficult task of looking for work.

  A distant cousin owned one of three corner grocery stores on the Point. He took pity on Aaron and offered him a job sweeping floors, stocking goods, and eventually operating the cash register. Before long, Aaron ran the place and business improved. He knew all the customers, and their children and grandparents, and would do anything to help a person in need. He upgraded the inventory, discontinued items that rarely sold, and expanded the store. Even when it was closed, he would fetch items for customers and deliver them to their homes on an old delivery bike. With Aaron in charge, his boss decided to open a dry-goods store two blocks over.

  Aaron saw an opportunity with another expansion. He convinced his boss to rent the building next door and establish a bar. It was 1920, the country was in the grips of Prohibition and the Catholic immigrants in Biloxi were thirstier than ever. Aaron cut a deal with a local bootlegger and stocked his bar with an impressive variety of beers, even some from Europe, and a dozen brands of popular Irish whiskeys.

  He opened the grocery store each morning at sunrise and offered strong coffee and Croatian pastries to the fishermen and cannery workers. Late each night, Lida baked a tray of krostules, oil-fried cakes sprinkled with powdered sugar, and they became immensely popular with the early crowd. Through the mornings, Aaron hustled about on his cane, working the counter, cutting meats, stocking shelves, sweeping floors, and tending to the needs of his customers. Late in the afternoons, he opened the bar and welcomed his regulars. When he wasn’t serving drinks he scurried back to the store, which he closed after the last customer, usually around seven. From then on he was behind the bar pouring drinks, bantering with friends, telling jokes, and spreading gossip. He usually closed around eleven, when the last shift of cannery workers finally called it a night.

  In 1922, Lida and Aaron welcomed their first child and blessed him with the proper American name of Lance. A daughter and another son soon followed. Their shotgun house was crowded, and Aaron convinced his boss to rent him an unfinished space upstairs over the bar and grocery store. The family moved in while a crew of carpenters erected walls and built a kitchen. Aaron’s sixteen-hour days became even longer. Lida quit her job to raise the family and also to work in the grocery.

  In 1925, his boss died suddenly of a heart attack. Aaron disliked his widow and saw no future under her thumb. He convinced her to sell him the bar and grocery store, and for $1,000 cash and a promissory note, he became the owner. The note was paid off in two years, and Aaron opened another bar on the west side of the Point. With two popular bars and a busy grocery store, the Malcos became more prosperous than most of the immigrant families, though they did nothing to show it. They worked harder than ever, saved their money, stayed in the same upstairs apartment, and went about their ways as thrifty and frugal immigrants. They were quick to help others and Aaron often made small loans to friends when the banks said no. They were generous with the church and never missed Sunday Mass.

  Their children worked in the store as soon as they were old enough. At the age of seven, Lance was a fixture on the Point, riding his bike with a basket filled with groceries for home deliveries. At ten, he was sliding cold bottles of beer across the bar and keeping tabs on the customers.

  Early in his business career, Aaron witnessed the darker side of gambling and wanted no part of it. Illegality aside, he chose not to allow card and dice games in a back room. The temptation was always there, and some of his customers complained, but he held firm. Father Herbert approved.

  The Great Depression slowed the seafood industry, but Biloxi weathered it better than the rest of the country. Shrimp and oysters were still plentiful and folks had to eat. Tourism took a blow, but the canneries stayed in business, though at a slower pace. On the Point, workers were squeezed out of jobs and fell behind on their rents. Aaron quietly assumed the mortgages on dozens of shotgun houses and became a landlord. He took IOUs for past-due rent and usually forgot about them. No one living in a Malco home was ever evicted.

  When Lance graduated from Biloxi High, he toyed with the idea of going off to college. Aaron was not keen on the idea because his son was needed in the family business. Lance took a few classes at a nearby junior college, and, not surprisingly, showed an aptitude for business and finance. His teachers encouraged him to pursue studies at the state teachers college up the road in Hattiesburg, and though he harbored the dream, he was afraid to mention it to his father.

  War intervened and Lance forgot about further studies. The day after Pearl Harbor, he joined the Marines and left home for the first time. He shipped out with First Infantry Division and saw heavy action in North Africa. In 1944, he landed with the first wave at Anzio when the Allies invaded Italy. Because he could speak Croatian, he and a hundred others were sent to Eastern Europe where the Germans were on the run. Early in 1945, he set foot in the old country, the birthplace of his father and grandfathers, and he wrote Aaron a long letter describing the war-torn land. He ended with: Thanks, Father, for having the courage to leave home and seek a better life in America. Aaron wept when he read it, then he shared it with his friends and Lida’s family.

  As the Allies chased the Germans westward, Lance saw action in Hungary and Poland. Two days after the liberation of Auschwitz, he and his platoon walked the dirt roads of the concentration camp and watched in stunned disbelief as hundreds of emaciated corpses were buried in mass graves. Three months after the Germans surrendered, Lance returned to Biloxi, with no injuries but with memories so horrible he vowed to forget them.

  In 1947, he married Carmen Coscia, an Italian girl he had known in high school. As a wedding gift, Aaron gave them a house on the Point, in a new section with nicer homes being built for veterans. Lance naturally assumed his role in Aaron’s businesses and put the war behind him. But he was restless and bored with the grocery store and the bars. He was ambitious and wanted to make some real money in gambling. Aaron was still firmly opposed to it and they had disagreements.

  Thirteen months after their wedding, Carmen gave birth to Hugh and the family was ecstatic with the beginning of a new generation. Babies were springing up all around the Point, and Father Herbert was kept busy with a flood of christenings. Young families grew and the older folks celebrated. Life on the Point had never been better.

  Biloxi was booming again and the seafood business was more vibrant than ever. Luxury hotels were built on the beaches as tourism rebounded. The army decided to keep Keesler as a training base, thus ensuring a constant supply of young soldiers looking for a good time. More bars, casinos, and brothels opened, and the Strip became even busier. As was the established custom, the police and politicians took the cash and looked the other way. When the art deco Broadwater Beach Hotel opened, its lobby was filled with rows of brand-new slot machines bought from a broker in Las Vegas, and still quite illegal.

  As a father, Lance tempered his ambitions to plunge deeper into vice. Plus, Aaron was still firmly in control and serious about his reputation. The family business changed dramatically in 1950 when he died suddenly of pneumonia at the age of fifty-four. He left no last will and testament; thus, his assets were split in four equal shares among Lida and the three children. Lida was distraught and fell into a long bout of debilitating depression. Lance and his two siblings fought over the family properties and a serious rift ensued. They squabbled for years, much to their mother’s dismay. As her health slipped away, Lance, her firstborn and always her favorite, convinced her to sign a will that left him in control of the assets. This was kept quiet until after her death. When his sister and brother read it they threatened to sue, but Lance settled the dispute by offering each the sum of $5,000 in cash. His brother took the money and left the Coast. His sister married a doctor and moved to New Orleans.

  In spite of the family drama, and the accepted belief that Lance had managed to outmaneuver his siblings, he and Carmen continued to be well regarded on the Point. They lived modestly, though they could afford otherwise, and they were active and generous. They were the biggest contributors to St. Michael’s Church and its outreach programs, and they never failed to lend a hand to the less fortunate. He was even admired by some as the smarter Malco who was willing to hustle to make a buck.

  Away from the Point, though, Lance was yielding to his ambitions. As a silent partner, he bought a nightclub and turned half of it into a casino. The other half was a bar with watered-down, overpriced drinks the GIs were more than happy to pay for, especially when served by cute waitresses in revealing outfits. The upstairs rooms were rented by the half hour. Business was so good that Lance and his partner opened another club, larger and nicer. They called it Red Velvet, and erected a gaudy neon sign, the brightest on Highway 90. The Strip was born.

  Carmen retired from the store and became a full-time mother. Lance worked long days and nights and was often absent, but Carmen kept the home together and doted on her three children. She disapproved of her husband’s ventures into the darker world, but they seldom discussed his clubs. The money was good and they had more than most on the Point. Complaining would have no effect. Lance was old-school, his father was from the old country; the man ruled the house with an iron fist and the woman raised the kids. Carmen accepted her role with a quiet steadiness.

  Perhaps their happiest moments were at the baseball parks. Young Hugh became a dominant player as an eight-year-old and improved each year. During the annual draft, every coach wanted him as the top pick. When he was ten, he was chosen for the twelve-year-old league, a rarity. His only equal was his friend Keith Rudy.

  Chapter 4

  The Rudy clan had been on the Point almost as long as the Malcos. Somewhere amidst the paperwork in the New Orleans Customs House, Rudic became Rudy, not a common American name but more digestible than anything from Croatia.

  Keith’s father, Jesse Rudy, was born in 1924, and like all the other kids, grew up around the canneries and shrimp boats. The day after his eighteenth birthday, he joined the navy and was sent to fight in the Pacific. Hundreds of boys from the Point were at war and the tight community offered countless prayers. Daily Mass was packed. Letters from the troops were read aloud to friends and discussed by their fathers over beers, and their mothers at knitting clubs. In November of 1943, the war came home when the Bonovich family got the knock on the door. Harry, a marine, had been killed at Guadalcanal, the first death for the Point, and only the fourth from Harrison County. The neighbors grieved and helped in a hundred ways, as the dark cloud of war hung even heavier. Two months later the second boy was killed.

  Jesse served on a destroyer with the Pacific Fleet. He was wounded in October 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when his ship took a direct hit from a kamikaze dive bomber. He was pulled from the sea with severe burns over both legs. Two months later he arrived at the naval hospital in San Francisco where he was treated by good doctors and no shortage of pretty, young nurses.

  A romance blossomed, and when he was discharged in the spring of 1945, he returned to the Coast with two fragile legs, a duffel with all of his assets, and a nineteen-year-old bride. Agnes was a farm girl from Kansas who followed Jesse back home with great anxiety. She had never been to the Deep South and harbored all the usual stereotypes: shoeless sharecroppers, toothless hillbillies, Jim Crow cruelties, and so on, but she was madly in love with Jesse. They rented a house on the Point and went to work. Agnes was hired as a nurse at Keesler as Jesse hustled from one dead-end job to another. His physical limitations prevented him from even part-time work on a shrimp boat, much to his relief.

  To her surprise, Agnes quickly embraced life on the Coast. She loved the tightness of the immigrant communities and was welcomed without reservation or bias. Her Anglo-Protestant background was brushed aside. After eighty years in the country, intermarrying amongst the ethnic groups was common and accepted. Agnes enjoyed the dances and parties, an occasional drink, and the large family gatherings. Life in rural Kansas had been much quieter, and drier.