THREE

FEW PEOPLE SPOKE to Ben about his experience in Augusta. He had been away three weeks, and three weeks was not enough time to consider as leaving and returning. He had been away and now he was home and he was working for Arthur Ledford in the job that George Hill had had before deciding to attend the University of Georgia to study chemistry. If anyone had left Jericho, it was George Hill.

Only Coleman Maxey seemed interested in Ben’s short career in professional baseball.

Coleman operated a shoe repair shop and was the catcher for the Jericho Generals baseball team. He was a squat, crude man with a fondness for humor that hinted of unhealthy sex and, occasionally, he would binge-drink, two faults that were patiently tolerated by the citizens of Jericho because Coleman could take a pair of walked-down shoes and make them look new, and he could hit a baseball lopsided. Such a man was valuable, even if his manners lacked sophistication.

One week after Ben’s return from Augusta—and on the third day of his employment at Ledford’s Dry Goods—Coleman stopped him on his way to lunch at Brady’s Cafe.

“I heard you was back,” Coleman said. “What happened down there?”

“Just decided to give it up,” Ben answered quietly. “I had the job with Mr. Ledford waiting, and I thought I’d better take it before he gave it to somebody else.” And then he repeated something his mother had suggested: “Good jobs don’t grow on trees.”

“You got that,” Coleman said. “What about Milo?”

“Milo?” Ben said. “You don’t have to worry about him. He’s the best player on the team. There was talk about him making it to Boston or one of the other big teams in a couple of years.”

Coleman wagged his head in amazement. “That right? He’s good, all right, but I never thought he was any better than you, except maybe in hitting, and he’s a born natural at that. But you’re not far behind. Guess that’s why I was surprised when I heard you’d come home.”

Ben shrugged uncomfortably and looked away. He thought of Arnold Toeman and the silence of his teammates when they learned he had been cut from the team. “I thought about staying around awhile,” he said. “Some of the other players talked to me about it, but I had the job waiting.”

“Like you said, Ben, good jobs don’t grow on trees.”

“I learned a lot, though,” Ben said. “It’s a different game in the professional leagues.”

“Well, you got a place on our team,” Coleman told him. “I guess you know that. We playing the Anderson team on Saturday.”

For a moment, Ben did not speak. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, tugged at the bow tie around his neck. Then: “I’d like to, Coleman, but I guess I’m through with playing ball.”

“Why?” Coleman asked incredulously.

“I got the job now, and Mr. Ledford stays open late every Saturday. I can’t go asking for time off, just getting started like I am.”

“Well, damn,” Coleman mumbled.

BEN’S EXCUSE TO Coleman Maxey was only partly true. When he spoke to Ben of duties for the clerk’s job, Arthur Ledford had suggested that most of the better citizens of Jericho believed professional baseball was a sport for hardened men with habits of coarse language and drinking and dark living.

“In time, I think you’ll know you made the right decision,” Arthur had gently lectured. “Copy after your father, and you’ll be a man people look up to. Your father was good at baseball, too, when he was a young man. In fact, your father was one of the best athletes we ever had around here. Nobody was as fast. But he quit all of that when he took a job and a family.”

“Yes sir,” Ben had replied.

“I know you and Milo have been dreaming of playing baseball for a long time,” Arthur had continued. “And that’s fine. A person needs a good dream. I used to dream about sailing on the ocean, and that was before I ever saw it. I still think about it, but I’ve never been out of sight of land. It’s all right to dream. You just can’t let it get the best of you.”

No one in Jericho disliked Arthur Ledford. He was thought of as a kindly man who deserved every good word said about him, a diligent, almost obsessed worker, and a crusader for progress. He was driven, people believed, by an ambition to live up to the expectations of his late father, Alexander Ledford, who had established Ledford’s Dry Goods and had been counted as one of the ten most influential citizens of Caulder County in the nineteenth century—a questionable selection to many who had known him personally. Alexander Ledford had been a severe, unforgiving man who wielded the power of his presence like a weapon. Arthur was the opposite. Remembered by his contemporaries as a shy, gentle child who occasionally stuttered, he had become forceful enough to assume his father’s business only by patience and determination.

“You’re a good person, Ben,” Arthur had added. “From the best family I know. They’re proud of you.”

“Yes sir,” Ben had said earnestly.

STILL, BEN COULD not desert the sport he loved so intensely. He could not play, but he could watch and dream the dream of his childhood.

In late afternoons, after work at Ledford’s Dry Goods, Ben would go to the park where the baseball team practiced and played, and he would sit under the gray shade of a sycamore tree far away in the outfield and watch as the team paraded before him in the exuberance of the game. He was eighteen years old. Except for Spencer Franklin and Wade Pilgrim and Charles Hill, the men he watched playing his game were all older—some in their thirties—and Ben knew that none of them had his skills. None were as fast or had made a catch such as the catch he had made in Augusta. None knew the secrets of the game he had learned in three weeks from Arnold Toeman. The Jericho Generals were a team of men crudely playing a game of grace, and Ben yearned to be among them, to shout at their blundering, to show them the game as it could—as it should—be played.

Each day Ben went to the park and watched and each day he found himself wandering nearer the field and nearer the players. He did not want to be so near them, but their presence was powerful, luring him with their teasing chants and with their oaths. It was a song of romance and Ben was in love.

“Damn, Ben,” Coleman Maxey said one day. “If you not gone play, at least come on down here and give us some of them tips you learned down there in Augusta.”

It was a joke, but Ben thought Coleman was serious.

“Well, maybe a couple of things,” Ben said cautiously.

Coleman winked at Bill Simpson, who played first base. “Anything you got,” he said to Ben in a grave voice.

“Yeah,” Bill Simpson said. He coughed to cover a laugh.

And Ben went among the players, talking to them, eagerly sketching in the red clay of the field the plays he had learned in Augusta, glaring at their failures with condemnation.

To the men of the team, Ben’s presence was grand amusement. They mocked him and he did not know it was mockery. He was eighteen. A boy. The men of the team listened with controlled delight to Ben’s instruction and then performed stupidly and then laughed secretly as Ben demonstrated again and again the art of bunting, of double-play pivots, of base-stealing. The players did not want Ben’s advice. They wanted his jester exhibitions.

“Goda’mighty, Ben,” Coleman would say, feigning frustration. “Damned if I know why we can’t do nothing right. Looks so easy, way you do it.”

“That’s all right,” Ben would reply. “It just takes work. Takes doing it over and over. That’s the secret. Do it over and over.”

“I guess you right,” Coleman would concede, clucking his tongue behind a buried smile.

Ben’s tragedy was classic, and it was universal: he believed he was unique among them.

He was eighteen. A boy.

He did not know the men of the team were making him their mascot fool.

Each week, he wrote a letter to Milo Wade in Augusta, describing what he was doing and how the men of the team were amazed.

Ben ended each letter in the same manner: Stick to it, Milo. Don’t come back home unless you have to.

He signed each letter: Your friend, Ben Phelps.

IN LATE AUGUST, the fifth month of his return to Jericho, Christine Wade invited Ben to supper. Ben accepted reluctantly. He knew he would have to talk of Milo, and he knew Martin Wade would question him carefully. He had never been comfortable around Milo’s father. There was an aura about Martin Wade, a quiet, serious superiority. He had worked at the bank founded by his late father following the Civil War, earning respect as a man of integrity, dignity, and fairness. He was also the most handsome man Ben had ever seen, and that handsomeness had caused the citizens of Jericho to jest among themselves that too many good qualities had been wasted on one man.

The men of Jericho also said that Martin Wade had met his match in Christine Cox Wade. She was feisty, the men contended in their gossip, saying the word crudely, with an emphasis that implied more than the word merited.

Milo was the only child of Martin and Christine Wade. From his birth, Milo’s father had believed his son to be gifted. His son had promise, he privately asserted to friends. His son was bright and inquisitive. His son had the eyes and hands—the eyes and hands mattered—of someone who would accomplish great things. Hands meant for a musician, perhaps. The eyes of a statesman able to see visions of change and progress. No question about it, Martin Wade had pronounced: the mark of greatness was on his son. He had the eyes and hands for it, and the spirit. “All of them from his mother,” he confessed. “He’s got her in his blood, all right. But there’s more. I don’t know what, but I can sense it in him.”

In the presence of Martin Wade, Ben had always felt that he was inferior, a tolerated outsider, though there had never been anything specific to justify his suspicions. Milo’s father had always been kind to him, had always included him in special moments to celebrate Milo’s special achievements, and when Ben had succeeded in the small school competitions of childhood, he had always been generous in his praise. Still, Martin Wade awed Ben, as he awed everyone.

The supper was as Ben expected—a strained formality, a stagy rite of passage. Christine Wade fluttered with the serving of the food, her gay, bright voice urging Ben to overeat, reminding Ben of simple episodes of the childhood he had shared with Milo. Martin Wade listened politely, his eyes avoiding Ben. He was, Ben thought, unusually subdued.

When the supper was over, Ben and Martin Wade retired to the living room in the ritual of men. It was a ritual Ben had never experienced as a guest, and he felt uneasy. He sat erect, in his best imitation of a man’s posture, and waited for Martin Wade to speak.

Martin Wade packed a pipe and lit it. The odor of the burning tobacco was sweet.

“Ben,” Martin Wade said at last, “Mrs. Wade and I invited you to supper to share something with you, something only two or three people in town know about at this time.”

“Yes sir,” Ben said.

“I have been given an opportunity to assume the presidency of a bank in Athens,” Martin Wade replied calmly. “Mrs. Wade and I have decided to divest ourselves of the interests we have in Jericho and move.”

“To Athens?” Ben said.

Martin Wade bobbed his head and drew from his pipe. “We wanted you to know because you’ve been very much like a son to us all these years.”

Ben was startled. “When?”

“Within the next month,” Martin Wade told him.

Ben slumped in his chair. He said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Of course, we’ve had grave reservations about leaving Jericho,” Martin Wade said. “We were both born here, and this is where we raised our son, but we also realize what we’ve been offered is the kind of challenge we both enjoy. Sadly, it means leaving our home.”

“It’s not too far away,” Ben suggested.

Martin Wade sucked on his pipe. “No, it’s not. Mrs. Wade keeps reminding me of that. I expect we’ll make frequent trips back.”

“Does Milo know about it?” asked Ben.

“He does,” Martin Wade answered. “I’m not sure how he feels about it. His letter to us simply said he wished us good fortune. But I also have some news about Milo that we haven’t shared with anyone, because we wanted to share it with you first.”

“Sir?”

“We received a cable yesterday that he’s been sold to the Boston Pilgrims, and he’ll be reporting to them in a few days.”

“The Pilgrims,” Ben said in a stunned voice. “I—I knew he was doing good.”

“Apparently, they’ve had some injuries on the team and they wanted a young man who wouldn’t cost too much as a beginner,” Martin Wade replied. “Good business, I suppose, and I’m proud of him, although I must confess I’d like to see him get over this obsession for baseball and come home. I only hope he’s not too young for the experience in Boston.”

Ben forced himself to sit forward in his chair. “No sir,” he enthused. “There was talk about it before I left Augusta. Lots of people thought Milo was the best player on any team in the league, and they were right. He’ll be playing right off, you wait and see.”

Martin Wade smiled.

“You think he’ll stop off on his way to Boston?” Ben asked eagerly.

“I’m not sure,” Martin Wade answered. “Maybe. I’m not sure when he’s leaving Augusta. Not for a few days, as I understand it. If he decides to stop here on his way, we’ll let you know.”

“Yes sir. I’d like that. I’d like to see him,” Ben said.

Martin Wade dipped his head in a nod. His gray eyes were focused on the window. A pause billowed in the room.

“Yes sir,” Ben said after a moment. “I’d sure like to see him.”

Martin Wade’s eyes blinked. He turned his face to Ben. “I understand you’ve quit playing the game.”

“Uh—yes sir. Since I took the job with Mr. Ledford. Not enough time to do the job and play.”

“But you go watch the games? And the practices?”

“Uh—sometimes. Yes sir.”

“Ben, you need to be careful about that.”

Ben blushed again. He could feel his body sinking in the chair. He did not speak.

“I was talking with Mr. Ledford in the bank this week,” Martin Wade continued. “He told me that he planned to speak with you about consorting with the older members of the team. He doesn’t think it’s appropriate for someone in your position, and with the future you may have there.”

“Sir?”

“Seems he overheard some of the men talking about it. Now, you know how I feel about you, Ben. Like a son to me. Personally, I never had a gift for the playing of sports. Not like your father. In his youth, he was quite heroic, especially in the running matches we had. No one ever beat him, as I recall. He was quite good at baseball, also.”

“I don’t know much about that,” Ben said. “He doesn’t talk about it.”

“He wouldn’t,” Martin Wade said. “That would be boasting, and he’s too good a man for that.” He tapped his index finger over the tobacco in the pipe’s bowl and stared thoughtfully at the string of gray smoke, thin as a spider’s silk, that wiggled off his finger. “I always admired the skill and gamesmanship it required to be an athlete, Ben. Yet, I do have to say I’ve never cared very much for baseball. I’ve always been afraid it promoted the wrong influence. Of course, Milo’s playing, and I have to accept that, and I was always proud of you and Milo when you played together. You were good players, but you were also young. Some of the older men on the team are not the best citizens we have.”

“Yes sir,” Ben said timidly. He added, “But Spencer Franklin plays, and so does Wade Pilgrim and Charles Hill. They’re younger than I am.”

“And their parents keep a good eye on them, as we did on you and Milo, but not so close that you’d know it.”

The admission surprised Ben. He had never realized that he and Milo were being watched from a distance by their parents.

“I’m telling you this, Ben, so you’ll know. That’s all. I’ve heard some talk about Coleman Maxey making fun of you behind your back.”

“Sir?” Ben said in a weak voice.

“He’s that kind of man, Ben. Enjoys embarrassing people, and I don’t want to see you embarrassed. You’re a young man now. You’ll have to make your own decisions, as Milo is making his. Just be careful that you don’t put your job in jeopardy. You’ve got a fine future with Mr. Ledford.”

“Yes sir,” Ben said softly. “I appreciate it.”

The conversation ended with the appearance of Christine Wade. She swept energetically into the room and sat near Ben. She said, “No more men-talk. I want to know all about you, Ben. How’s your mother?”

“Uh—fine,” Ben said.

“And your father. How’s your father?”

“He’s fine, too.”

Christine Wade looked at her husband. “Did you explain things to Ben?”

“I did,” Martin Wade answered. “I told him about the move and about Milo.”

“I’m sure sorry about you leaving,” Ben said to Christine Wade.

“Oh, we’ll be back all the time,” Christine Wade replied happily. She reached to touch Ben on the hand. “And you’ll have to come to see us. We’re going to have enough room in that old house Martin’s buying to open a hotel. I can just hear Milo complaining about it, saying we’re giving up good enough for more than we could ever need.”

Ben smiled.

Martin Wade rose from his seat. “If you two will excuse me, I need to attend to the horse.” He extended his hand to Ben. “It was good to see you, Ben. I’m sure I’ll see you in town before we move.”

Ben stood. He knew it was the signal for him to leave. “Yes sir,” he said. “It was a good supper. When you write to Milo, tell him I said hello. Tell him I hope he stops by on his way to Boston.”

“Has he not written to you?” asked Martin Wade.

“No sir. I know he’s busy. Just tell him hello for me.”

Martin Wade frowned, then nodded once. “I will.” He turned and left the room, and Ben could feel a chill following him. It would be the last time Ben would ever see Martin and Christine Wade, except in photographs in newspapers. They would seldom return to Jericho. Martin Wade would become a state senator and a failed candidate for governor of Georgia. Christine Wade would die of a fall during a mountain climbing vacation in Colorado in 1915.

THE NEWS OF Milo Wade going to Boston to play for the Boston Pilgrims moved over Jericho like a flash fire from a comet that had tumbled unexpectedly out of a night sky. The Pilgrims, with the great Cy Young, had won the first American League Championship in 1903, and had beaten the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League in the first World Series between the two professional leagues. The Pilgrims were again leading their league, but had suffered from injuries to key players. Milo Wade, eighteen, strong, aggressive, a talented hitter and runner, was cheap insurance.

“Not been playing a whole year,” the townspeople bragged, “and he’s going to the Pilgrims.”

“Word is, they’ve been planning on this since the first few weeks after Milo got to Augusta.”

“If anybody can make it, it’ll be Milo. He don’t like to lose.”

“Not many boys his age can play like a man, but Milo’s different.”

“Once he gets there, they’ll have to drag him away with a team of horses.”

The talk was lively, bright, jittery with excitement. From the talk it seemed that Milo Wade was not going to Boston alone; he was taking an entire town with him.

To Ben, it was proof that he had prophetic vision. Milo Wade wore the destiny of greatness like a dazzling garment, something spun from threads of light. No one could see it as clearly as Ben. No one had been as close to it. When people asked him about the news, Ben answered proudly, “I always knew it. Always.”

“You think he’s going to stop off for a little while when he comes through on his way to Boston?” the people asked Ben.

“I’d guess so,” Ben told them. “I don’t know. Takes a long time to get to Boston. Maybe he won’t have a chance to, and with his mama and daddy getting ready to move to Athens, maybe it won’t work out.”

“Sure hope he does,” the people said wistfully.

“Me, too,” Ben agreed.

Each day, Ben checked the schedule at the train station, annoying Akers Crews, the stationmaster.

“Ben, it’s the same as it was yesterday and the day before,” Akers griped. “Only thing I can tell you to do is meet every train. I can’t go looking for him and drag him off.”

When his schedule at Ledford’s Dry Goods permitted, Ben was at the station for each train. He stood on the station platform, watching the doors of the passenger cars, excited, but also apprehensive. He had written to Milo faithfully, but had not received a response to any of his letters. At first he had dismissed Milo’s failure to write as the stress of playing ball and traveling, yet he knew it was a feeble excuse. In the three weeks he had been in Augusta, he had written daily to his parents. There was time to write.

His mother had cautioned him, “Ben, maybe Milo’s decided to cut the apron strings and start out on his own without looking back. A lot of people do that, and we just have to accept it when it happens.” It was an ancient apology to explain the conduct of people who left their homes and refused to communicate with their families. From all the stories he had heard, Ben believed that every Southern family had such a person. In his mother’s family, it was her brother Wendell. Wendell had disappeared in 1897, telling a friend that he wanted to go to California to find gold. He had never written, and no one knew where he was.

“Milo wouldn’t do that,” Ben had insisted. “We been together too long.”

“Sometimes people change overnight, son,” his mother had replied gently. “If that’s what he’s done, you have accept it and go on with your life.”

Sometimes, standing on the station platform, the words of his mother would come to him and Ben would realize that he had stepped into a shadow, out of sight.

ON THE FIFTH day of waiting and watching, Ben saw Milo Wade.

It was early evening, the eight-twenty stop.

Milo was sitting deep in his seat in the last passenger car, his face cloudy behind the window glass. He was gazing expressionless at the station.

Ben hesitated in the shadow. He looked around, but did not see Martin or Christine Wade, and he wondered if they knew that Milo was on the train.

Could have been a change in schedule, he thought.

Or maybe Martin and Christine Wade were in Athens, at their new hotel-big home.

Ben did not move. He saw Akers Crews busy with the loading of boxes on one of the boxcars. Akers was a small man who suffered from arthritis in his bowed back. The aggravation of pain colored his scowling face.

Steam hissed from the engine. A thundercloud of black-gray smoke boiled up like a tornado’s funnel, spread open in the humid air, settled around the station. Ben could smell the acid of the smoke.

In the train car, Milo turned away from the window.

And then Ben heard Akers shout something to the engineer. The engineer waved a hand from the cab of the engine.

Ben moved quickly, impulsively, from the shadow and stepped from the platform and crossed rapidly to the passenger car where Milo was sitting. He saw an older man, wearing a felt hat, peering at him from the seat opposite Milo.

“Milo!” Ben called over the noise of the train.

Milo did not look at him.

“Milo!” Ben called again. He waved his hand. He saw the older man lean toward Milo, reach for him, say something, and Milo turned to look through the window.

The train began to pull away.

“Milo!” The call became a shout.

Milo moved toward the window, then settled back. He lifted his hand.

“Good luck, Milo,” Ben bellowed. “I’ll be keeping up with you.”

The train lurched forward and Ben began to walk rapidly with it, waving to Milo. “Good luck,” he cried again.

IN THE TRAIN, the older man said to Milo, “Somebody you know?”

Milo glanced again out of the window. “We grew up together.”

“Looked like he was trying to tell you something.”

Milo turned back in his seat.

“That your hometown?” asked the older man.

“Was,” Milo said.

“Was?”

“My folks are moving,” Milo answered. He added, “So am I.”

“They still live there, your folks?”

“They do now, but not for long.”

“You didn’t get off,” the older man said. “They know you were coming through?”

Milo shook his head. “Didn’t tell them. Didn’t have time to stop off.”

“Well, they’ll know about it soon enough, I’d guess,” the older man observed. “Word gets about in a small town like that, and you being seen by your friend—”

“It won’t matter,” Milo said abruptly. “My folks are busy enough.”

The older man sat back in his seat. After a moment, he picked up the newspaper he had been reading and ducked his head to stare at it. The young man sitting across from him seemed detached and angry. Cold. The young man seemed cold.

“YOU SEE HIM, Ben?” asked Akers Crews.

“Yes sir, he was on the train,” Ben said.

Akers wagged his head in disbelief. “That boy should’ve got off that train, even if it was just for a minute. This is his home, where he grew up. A man ought never get too big to stand on the ground of his home.”

“I guess he didn’t have time,” Ben said softly.

“Time’s got nothing to do with it,” Akers argued. “He’s just got the big head because he’s going to Boston. You lucky you got out of that game when you did, Ben. Nothing worse than somebody that gets too good for his own kind, and that’s what’s happened to that boy.” He watched the train disappear around a bend. “I wonder why his mama and daddy wadn’t down here to see him?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said.

Akers began to climb the steps to the platform. He muttered, “Can’t understand why people turn against their home. Can’t understand it at all.” He stopped and cocked his head to look at Ben. “You not thinking about playing again, are you?”

Ben could hear the fading sound of the train vibrating in the tracks. After a moment, he said to Akers, “No sir. I gave it up. All that’s behind me.”

“Son, once you been somewhere, you don’t never leave it out of sight behind you,” Akers said solemnly. “You just drag it along with you, like a cranky old dog on a leash. You just better hope he don’t get to snarling and decide to bite you in the ass when you not looking.”

Akers Crews’s words were more prophetic than either he or Ben knew.