“I bat first too.”
“Well—you’re our cleanup hitter.”
“Bat first or nothin. Use my own bat too.”
“Well …” Again Will and Henry looked at each other. No choice. “Okay, Red. Now the—”
“And Leroy bats second,” Red went on.
“What?”
“If’n Leroy don’t play I don’t play.”
“Aw come on, Red, you know Leroy can’t play.”
“Them’s the rules, Lightcap. Leroy plays or I don’t.”
“He could be coach, Red. We’ll need a coach at first.”
“Leroy could be right field foul umpire,” Will suggested.
“You heard me,” Red says, picking up a bucket full of sour skim milk, potato peelings, corncobs, chicken entrails, turnip greens, chicken heads, eggshells, bacon rinds, assorted bones. He emptied the bucket into the wooden trough inside the fence. The huge sow shuffled in, snorting, and plunged her quivering snout into the swill. Red banged the bucket on her head to knock out the last bits and pieces of her dinner. Crunching on the bones and heads—best parts first—the sow gave the bucket no more response than the twitch of one hairy ear. The piglets hung from her udders, still suckling.
Henry and Will tramped homeward over the ridge, into the Big Woods, past the forgotten sawmill, through the gloom of the trees and approaching twilight. Mourning doves called from the shadowy depths. New bright fresh green spring leaves breathed in and out, in and out, silently, from the gumwood trees, the wild cherry, the beech and the locust and the poplar and the dogwood. A horned owl hooted from the darkness of a hollow sycamore, calling for its mate. Another answered from a faraway pine.
“You hear that, Henry?” says Will, as they paused before the split-rail fence that marked the Lightcap frontier.
“Hear what?”
“The owls.”
“The howls?”
“I said owls. What do you suppose they’re saying to each other, Henry?”
Henry listened carefully. The owls were silent. He threw one leg over the top rail, then his other. He waited on the far side of the fence, listening. The owls called again, first one, then after a few moments of thought, the second.
Will grinned at his little brother Henry; the bright teeth shone in Will’s brown honest face. Will said, “They’re a boy and a girl owl.”
“Baloney. How do you know?”
“Because the first owl says, ‘Hoo hoo, wanna screw?’ And the second owl she says, ‘Hoo hoo, not you.’”
“Come on.”
“No joke, that’s what they’re a-sayin.”
“Bull-loney.”
They went on, down the hill into Honey Hollow. And poor Henry, nursing in silence the secret of his grotesque, repulsive, disabling mutation, thought of Wilma Fetterman climbing into the schoolbus, of Elaine Kennedy draping her splendid cash-mere-sweatered breasts over the back of her chair as she turned to tease him for a bit, of Betsy Shoemaker turning cartwheels in her cheerleader uniform at the pre-game pep rally. A pang of agony coursed upward through Henry’s aching core, from the misaligned piston-rod of his groin to the undifferentiated longing in his heart. Never, never with a girl. He couldn’t even get his fist in there. What was he supposed to do, make love to his own umbilicus? Pound a hole through his stomach?
The owls hooted gently after him through the green tender cruelty of April, down the hills of the Allegheny. The ghosts of Shawnee warriors watched them from the shadows of the red oaks.
A light rain fell Saturday morning, leaving pools of water on the basepaths, but the sun appeared on time at noon. Henry and Will and Paul filled burlap sacks with sand and paced off the bases. Chuck Tait came soon after with a bag of lime to mark the batter’s box, the baselines, the coaching positions. They built up the pitcher’s mound, chased Prothrow’s cows into deep left and right field, and shoveled away most of the fresh cow patties from the infield. They filled in the pools with dirt, creating deceptive mudholes which only the home team need know about. They patched the backstop with chickenwire and scrap lumber. The Fetterman boys came with their gloves and a new bat, then the Adams brothers with their gloves and two fractured, taped bats. (Both were cross-handed hitters.) No sign of the Ginters. There was time for a little infield practice and Will batted high-flying fungos to Paul and Elman and Junior in the outfield.
Henry thought he was ready for his pitching duties; he’d spent an hour every day for the past year throwing a tennis ball at a strike zone painted on the barn door, scooping up the ball one-handed as it bounced back to him down the entrance ramp. Precision control, that was his secret. He only had three pitches: an overhand fastball, not very fast; a sidearm curve which sometimes broke a little and sometimes didn’t; and his newly-developed Rip Sewell blooper, a high floating change of pace which he pushed forward with the palm of his hand, no spin to it whatsoever, a tempting mushball of a pitch that rose high in the air and then drifted toward the plate like a sinking balloon. Weak pitches, all of them—but he had the control. He could hit the center of Will’s catcher’s mitt wherever Will called for it. And Will knew how to study the batter. They were ready, Red Ginter or no Red Ginter.
The Blacklick team arrived an hour late, Tony Kovalchick driving his father’s twelve-cylinder 1928 Packard sedan. The three smallest boys sat in the trunk, holding up the lid with a bat. Seven large blond Eastern European coal miners, fingering rosaries and wearing sacred silver medals around their necks, heaved themselves like wrestlers out of the front and back seats. Stump Creek surrendered the field to the visitors for a thirty-minute warmup.
Tony and Henry compared scorecards.
“Your guys are too old,” Henry complained. “Those are all highschool guys.”
“That’s our team,” Tony says. “You wanta play baseball or you wanta go home and cry?”
“Carci, Watta, Jock Spivak—those are all football players.”
“You got Will and Chuck, they’re varsity. And who’s this Red Ginter fella? Ain’t he the one got in the fight at the Rocky Glen Tavern last Saturday night? Near killed some guy?”
“Not Red, you got him mixed up with somebody else.” Henry pointed to a dark little fellow with a serious case of visual strabismus sitting on the Packard’s runningboard. “Who’s he? He’s not in your lineup.”
“That’s Joe Glemp. He’s our umpire.”
“Umpire? He’s cross-eyed!”
“Yeah, that’s right. Don’t make fun of him. He can’t play ball worth a shit, but he’s a pretty good ump.”
“You’re crazy. He can’t see anything but his own nose. Anyhow Mister Prothrow’s gonna be umpire.” Henry looked around; old Gilbert Prothrow was nowhere in sight.
“The visiting team always brings the umpire,” Tony said complacently. “You know that, Lightcap.”
“You’re nuts.”
“It’s in the rule book. Black and white.”
“Not in any rule book I ever saw. Let’s see this rule book.”
“Let’s see this Mister Prothrow.”
Henry looked again. No Prothrow in view. But there came the Ginters, Red and Leroy, tramping up the dirt road, Red carrying his giant axe-hewn home-made hickory bat on his shoulder. The one with the square shaft, like a four-by-four.
Henry and Tony made a deal. Joe Glemp and Leroy Ginter would work as umpires, one calling the pitches from behind the plate, the other calling the plays in the field, and changing places each inning.
Leroy was not persuaded, not with Red behind him. Leroy meant to play baseball. Henry had to bully little brother Paul into taking the field umpire’s position. He promised Paul that Leroy would soon get bored with the game, leaving a position open. Tears streaming down his rosy cheeks, Paul trudged slowly to his umpire’s place in the vacant area behind second base. The Stump Creek nine took the field, Red Ginter on first nonchalantly taking Chuck Tait’s rifle-shot throws from short, Henry on the mound, Will catching, the children at second, third, and scattered acros
s the outfield among a number of grazing milk cows.
“Play ball!” hollered little Joe Glemp with surprising authority, masked and armored and hunkered down behind the broad back of Will Lightcap at home plate. Tony Kovalchick, batting right-handed, stepped into the batter’s box, tapped some mud from his cleated shoes, made the sign of the cross before his chest, and dug in firmly for the first pitch. He gazed with insolent coal-dark eyes at the pitcher.
Henry, glove in his armpit, rubbed the sweet new unhit Spalding ball vigorously between moist palms and surveyed his team. All were in place, crouched for action, except Leroy in deep right field yelling hare-lipped obscenities at a thoughtful cow. No matter; Tony would pull to left.
Henry faced him. Tony was short but fierce, lively, eager, the pitcher, captain, and manager of the Blacklick team. Henry noticed at once that Tony was choking his bat by three inches. He waited; Will gave him the sign, fastball wide and low. Henry wound up and threw the ball exactly where Will wanted it, cutting the outside corner of the plate.
“Ball one!” shouted Glemp the umpire.
Will held the ball for a few moments to indicate his contempt for the call, then without rising tossed it back to Henry. Tony crowded the plate a little more. Will asked for another fastball, high and inside. Henry threw it precisely where wanted. “Ball—” began the umpire, as Tony tipped it foul back over their heads. “One ball, one strike,” little Joe Glemp conceded.
He can’t see but he can hear pretty good, thought Henry, rubbing the ball like a pro. Will called for the sidearm curve, low and outside. Backing off slightly (weakness!), Tony swung and tipped the pitch off the end of the bat. Two strikes. Now we got him, Henry thought, he’s getting mad. Will called for the floater, mixing them up, and Henry threw it, Tony waited, watching the ball sail in a high arc toward him, and lost patience, and swung furiously much too soon, nearly breaking his back. He picked himself up, brushing the mud from his knees, and stormed darkly back to the visitor’s bench. Will flipped the ball to third, Sonny Adams caught it, dropped it, passed it to Chuck who whipped it to Clarence Adams who caught it with stinging glove and passed it to Red and Red to Henry. One out.
A small fat Italian kid named Carci stood in the box, well away from the plate, twitching his bat nervously. He was a second-string center on the football team but proved to be afraid of a flying baseball, especially after Henry pitched his first fastball straight at Carci’s upper lip, as instructed by Will. Luckily for the batter he had a retractable lip. Luckily for the pitcher the batter was a placid, abstracted intellectual, not too bright, who made no protest. His manager had to do it for him. Tony Kovalchick rose from the bench shouting but accepted Henry’s apology for the wild pitch. He and Will struck Carci out with two more pitches, the batter drawing away from the plate as he swung, missing the ball by a foot. Two down.
Big Stan Watta, defensive lineman by trade, stood in the box. Stan was big but the next batter, Jock Spivak, fullback, was bigger. After a brief conference Henry and Will agreed to pitch to Watta and then, if necessary, walk the Jock. They returned to their places. Watta confronted Lightcap, standing close to the plate but relaxed, graceful, swinging his bat with practiced ease. Henry pitched him two fastballs low and inside. Watta ignored them, keeping his eyes on the pitcher. Two balls, no strikes. Will called for the sidearm slider, low and outside. Henry threw it, Watta stepped forward and drilled the ball smartly past Sonny at third, deep into left field. Watta trotted into second base with an easy stand-up double.
Jock Spivak stood deep in the batter’s box, measuring the plate with his slugger’s bat. Will and Henry, exchanging signs, stuck with their plan: a free pass to first for the big guy. (The next batter was a little pimple-faced punk known around Shawnee High School as Jerk-Off Panatelli—a fanatic onanist; his mother called him Pasquale. A sure and easy out.) But first they had to dispose of the menacing Jock.
Henry checked the runner at second, then threw the pitch high and outside into Will’s guiding mitt. “Ball one!” cried the ump. Watta returned to second. Henry repeated the pitch, Will standing away from the plate to catch it. “Ball two!” Quickly now, impatient to get at the easy batter, Henry threw the third ball. “Ball three!” Jock spat on the plate, moved forward a bit, and grinned ferociously at the pitcher.
Henry threw it, neck high and a foot outside. Laughing, Jock stepped forward across the plate and smacked the pitch true, hard, and high into far right field. Leroy Ginter was out there, somewhere, barefoot, wiggling his toes in the squishy delight of a fresh cowpie. He was watching a young heifer at the fence, his mouth agape. The Stump Creek team hollered for attention.
Leroy turned, saw eighteen faces facing him, eight mouths yelling, then a towering fly ball beginning its descent toward his barely-haired-over head. He wiped the drool from his chin and ran a few steps to the left, a few to the right, slipped in another pile of cowshit and fell to his knees. “Nom nam nun of a nitch!” he screamed, throwing his glove at the falling ball. It bounced into the high weeds along the fence. Leroy made no move to retrieve it. Junior Fetterman ran over from center field and hunted for the ball. Stan Watta crossed home plate. Laughing all the way, Jock Spivak jogged toward third. Junior found the ball and pegged it to Chuck Tait at short, who relayed it to Sonny Adams at third. Sonny dropped the ball. Half sick with laughter, Jock headed for home, running now. Sonny threw the ball to Will, trapping Spivak between home plate and third. Spivak stopped but didn’t stop laughing. Will faked a throw to third, Spivak reversed direction, hesitated, Will ran him down and tagged him out.
Blacklick one, Stump Creek zero, bottom of the first. The home team came to bat.
Red Ginter, about six feet four and two hundred twenty pounds, maybe seventeen years old, slouched into the batter’s box with the squared-off log on his shoulder. He took a few practice swings, like a golfer at the tee, and waited for the first pitch. He wore the same overalls, the same sweat-and-grime-gray undershirt he’d been wearing all through the winter. Like his old man, young Red knew only two seasons, winter and summer, and was indifferent to daily fluctuations in temperature. Let the weather change, not him. He waited, peering indifferently at the pitcher from beneath his dangling, reddish forelock, his pale and freckled brow. His little close-set eyes, pallid and blandly blue, resembled the eyes of a carp fished from the stagnant mudholes of Stump Creek.
The pitcher, Tony Kovalchick, faced this agrarian atavist with equanimity. Shaking off his catcher’s signal, he raised both arms above his head and began an elaborate, bewildering, Polish-American windup.
Ginter waited, legs far apart, waving his club in tight ominous circles behind his shoulder. The first pitch came in like a bullet straight down the middle, Ginter reared back, lifting his wrong, or hinder foot, and took a vicious cut at the ball, swinging eighteen inches beneath it. His bat scraped a groove through the dirt in front of the plate.
“Sta-rike!” yells Glemp, jabbing the air with his thumb.
The Blacklick catcher—squat square massive Dominic Del Poggio—chuckled as he flipped the ball back to Tony. The pitcher allowed himself a smile. Both could see already that this game was going to be such a laugher they might not make it through the fifth inning.
Untroubled, Red reassembled himself at the plate and casually awaited the second pitch. It came: a repeat of the first. He let it go by. No balls, two strikes.
Will and Henry glanced at each other; neither could find much sign of hope in the other’s face. The sharp-featured pink-cheeked bright-eyed Eagle Scout, Chuck Tait, rolled his blue Scotch-Irish eyes at the sky, conveying his disgust to the clouds.
Another baroque windup. Teasing the batter this time—anything for a laugh—Tony threw a careless slider inside and much too low, almost in the dirt. Red swung down and up, digging another furrow through the dirt, and golfed the ball foul in a sharp hook toward deep left, where it struck a cow and caromed back toward fair territory. Left fielder Panatelli scooped up the ball and relayed it to the
mound. The cow, hit on the side of the skull, stared for a moment with hurt, innocent surprise at the ballplayers, uttered one low moo-cry and sank to its knees, then to its side, where it remained for half an hour. The count at the plate, meanwhile, stayed the same: no balls, two strikes.
Red Ginter waited, the pale eyes flat and empty, his face showing less emotion than that of the unconscious cow. The pitcher and catcher, after quick consultation, played the next pitch safe: a fastball chest high across the center of the plate. The long-ball hitter’s dream pitch. Red watched it go by. Three strikes and out.
The next batter was Leroy Ginter, as per the order insisted upon by his brother. Bare feet green with moist cowshit, Leroy clowned at the plate, switching from one side to the other and waving a little taped stick crazily at the pitcher. Kovalchick waited for the clown to settle down.
As Red slouched back to the bench Chuck Tait, the next batter, rose to meet him. “Look, Red,” Chuck says, “you’re swinging way under the ball.” He imitated Red’s underhanded swing. “Now watch: you have to level your stroke. Watch.” He illustrated his words with a swift, beautifully smooth, perfectly level swing, in the manner of Williams and DiMaggio. “See? Like that.” He gave a second demonstration, pure grace and sweet perfection.
Chewing on his wad of Mail Pouch, leaning on his club, Red stared down at Chuck from some ten superior inches, some forty extra pounds, and spat a spurt of tobacco juice onto Chuck’s shoe. “You bat your way, baby-face,” he says, “and I’ll bat mine.” He tramped past Chuck and took a place on the bench.
Chuck stared at the brown stain on his clean new sneakers and said nothing. But to Henry and Will, later, he grumbled, “No team spirit. None of your guys have the real team spirit.”
Leroy struck out in three wild swings, two from the left and one from the right side of the plate. He slammed his bat on the plate—”Nom nan nun of a nitch!”—broke it again, and ran off toward the thicket beside the creek, where two heifers browsed on the elderberry bushes.
Chuck Tait took his left-handed stance at the plate and cracked the first pitch between first and second for a clean single. He danced back and forth on the base path as Will came to bat. Will let the first pitch go by and Chuck stole second. Will waited out a second pitch, then doubled Chuck home with a drive over third base. Henry Lightcap came to bat, anxious and eager, aware of Wilma Fetterman and some other girls watching the game—watching him—from the sidelines. Trying hard to be a hero, trying too hard, Henry popped out to second base.