“Kind of busy in here. Got to go.”
Goddamn rib cage. Those things took forever to heal, and by then you’d lost your timing. He could have killed Burrows.
Gil changed the station, tried to get into the music, think about something else. But he couldn’t. After a while, he called information, got the press-box number at Soxtown. He entered it on his speed dialer, then rang it.
“Yeah,” said a man at the other end.
What was her name? “Jewel,” Gil said. “Jewel Stern.”
Background noise. Gil thought he heard the crack of a bat. A woman was saying, “… bored out of my mind.” Then the same woman was on the phone. “Yeah?”
“Jewel Stern?” Gil said.
“Speaking.”
“What’s wrong with Rayburn?”
“Who’s this?”
Gil thought of giving his name, but what was the point? “Just a fan.”
“Listen, fan. This is a working press box, not twenty questions.”
“What’s your problem, lady? I’m asking one simple-”
Jewel Stern hung up the phone. “Getting crazy out there,” she said.
The Herald guy said, “Prodigious isn’t in my goddamn spellcheck.”
“Or in your readers’ vocabulary,” Jewel said, before spelling it for him.
By five o’clock, the snow had turned to rain. It soaked Gil’s hair as he stood outside the middle door of the rented South Shore triplex, waiting for someone to answer his knock. After a minute or two, Ellen opened the door. She was still in her office clothes, wore her hair in a new cut, had lost weight.
“You don’t have to pound like that,” she said. “I was in the john.”
“Where’s Richie?”
“With Tim.”
“What do you mean-with Tim?” Tim was the boyfriend. “I told you I was taking him to the movies.”
“Please don’t raise your voice in public.”
Gil lowered it. “What do you mean with Tim?”
“Little League tryouts are tonight. I couldn’t reach you.”
“They won’t have tryouts in this.”
“Wrong. It’s indoors, at the high school.”
“When did it start?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Please don’t raise your voice.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried. Didn’t I say that already?”
“The office can always get me. You know that.”
Ellen didn’t reply. She stared at him, eyes made small by the lenses of her glasses. He noticed she had new red frames, the kind that made a statement, although he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t say anything either, just walked back to his car and drove off.
The high school was three blocks away. Gil hurried into the gym, rain dripping down his face. A man with a whistle around his neck hit a ground ball to a boy standing at center court, the number twenty pinned to his chest. The ball bounced off the boy’s glove. He chased it down and threw a two-hopper to a teenager standing by the man with the whistle. “That’s the way,” said the man with the whistle. He tossed the boy three fly balls, two of which he caught. “Nice job. Off you go.” The boy ran off, joining a woman in the stands. The men on the sideline wrote on their clipboards.
“Twenty-one,” said the man with the whistle. Twenty-one emerged from a group of fifty or sixty kids waiting at the far end of the court.
“Hustle.”
Gil moved down the near side, his eyes on the numbered kids. He spotted Richie: twenty-six. He was chewing on the rawhide lace of his glove. Gil took a seat in the stands.
The drilclass="underline" three grounders, three flies, six throws. Twenty-one missed them all, and threw poorly, but twenty-two fielded every ball cleanly and had a strong arm. Twenty-three’s arm was even stronger, and this time when the man with the whistle said, “Nice job,” his tone said it too. Twenty-three was a big kid, not possibly the same age as Richie.
Gil was aware of a man stepping down through the stands, sitting beside him. “Hi, Gil,” he said. “Aren’t they cute?”
Gil turned. Tim.
“Who?” Gil said.
“The kids. It’s the best age.” Tim held out his hand. “How’re you doing?”
Gil shook hands. “They’re not all nine, are they?”
“Supposed to be,” Tim said. “The tens are next, then the elevens and the twelves. The draft’s in a couple weeks, not that it matters where Richie’s concerned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only a handful of nines make the majors. The rest play in the minors. No pressure.”
But Richie was good. Gil remembered how they’d rolled a tennis ball back and forth across the floor while Richie was still in diapers. “He’ll be right up there,” Gil said.
“Sure.” Tim opened a file. Inside were sheets of paper with five or six lines of handwritten W s on the top half and crayon drawings of wigwams, willows, and winter below. Tim made a red check mark on the first sheet and wrote, “Wonderful!” underlining the W, then turned to the next one.
“Twenty-six,” called the man with the whistle. Richie came forward, chewing on his glove.
Hustle, thought Gil.
“Hustle,” said the man with the whistle.
Richie jogged to center court, his right foot glancing out to the side slightly on every stride. “Does he always run like that?” Gil said.
“Like what?” asked Tim, looking up from his papers.
The man with the whistle hit the first ground ball, right at Richie, but much harder than any of the other ground balls yet hit, Gil thought, and picking up topspin on the composite floor.
Glove down, glove down.
Richie stuck his glove down, but too late, and the ball went through his legs.
“Oops,” said Tim.
“No problem,” said the man with the whistle, and hit Richie another. Again: harder than the balls he’d hit the other kids.
“Glove down.” This time Gil said it aloud, but quietly, he was sure of that.
Richie got his glove down a little faster, deflecting the ball to the side. He ran after it, bobbled it, scooped it up, threw a sidearm rainbow that bounced a few times and finally rolled to the feet of the teenager.
“Much better,” said Tim.
“How long have you known about this?” Gil said.
“About what?”
“This tryout.”
“A few weeks?”
“Have you been practicing with him?”
“In this weather?”
The third grounder was on its way. “Look how hard the asshole’s hitting it,” Gil said, not loudly, and, not much louder, “Butt down, butt down.” Get your butt down and the glove comes down automatically. Had Richie heard him? Probably not, but he did get down for this one, and the ball popped into his glove.
“All right, twenty-six,” said the man with the whistle. Richie threw the ball in, a little more strongly this time, but still a sidearm toss that didn’t come close to reaching in the air.
“Crow-hop, for Christ’s sake,” Gil said. But quietly.
Richie looked into the stands.
“Here we go,” said the man with the whistle, and tossed the first fly ball.
Richie turned from the stands, realized what was happening, tried to find the ball, glancing up wildly at the gym ceiling.
“Get your fucking glove up.”
“Hey,” said Tim. “Easy.”
Richie got his glove up, but never saw the ball. It arced under the gaudy championship banners for basketball, football, wrestling, and hit him on the head.
Richie collapsed screaming on the gym floor, holding his head, jerking around in agony. The coaches with the clipboards, the man with the whistle, the teenager, all ran to him, but Gil got there first. He knelt, put his hand on Richie’s shoulder, felt his boniness under the sweat shirt.
“Richie, it’s me. You’re all right.”
Richie kept screaming and jerking.
“You’re all right. Control yourself.”
Gil pushed Richie’s hands aside, felt his head: a little bump sprouting on the side. Nothing.
“Come on, now,” Gil said. He squeezed Richie’s shoulder, not too hard.
Richie quieted. “It’s your fault,” he said, so softly Gil hardly heard. Maybe he’d imagined it.
Gil grew aware of the people standing around. He reached for Richie’s hand, helped him up. Applause from the stands.