MONDAY WAS GORGEOUS. ONE of the great things about being in Boston was that, just as soon as you got the feeling in January or February or March that the weather was brutal and would remain brutal for the rest of your life—a feeling you could get pretty frequently in January or February or March—then bang came a day to make you walk around with wow in your stomach and a mad itch in your feet. To get out there and play a game.
Which we did at lunchtime. Every kid in the school was climbing over every other kid to get through the door, still chewing, still slurping, bits of ham or apple or jelly falling down our shirts as we rushed the exit.
There was no doubt what I was intending to do. Not on a midwinter day when it was nearly sixty degrees and the sun was throwing brightness over everything. My dream, a dream I had over and over again during the previous three hours while the teachers were probably discussing math or god or poetry, involved swinging some sort of stick at some sort of sphere.
“You know what’s been running through my head all morning, Napoleon?” I asked as we scooted across the asphalt toward the back of the Sisters’ four-car garage. That was where the odd old broom handles were stashed, and we all knew what odd old broom handles were good for, so you had to get there early or lose out.
Napoleon snorted. “The whole world knows what has been running through your head all morning. Baseball has been running through your head all morning.”
“Well, ya, of course, but I don’t even have to say that. I mean, along with baseball.”
“Apparently there is a great deal of room up there,” he said, reaching over and tapping the side of my head. Like he expected an echo.
“Because I am in such a good mood,” I said, picking up the first thick, strong broom handle, “I won’t even mind that you did that. And I will tell you that what has been running through my head is the theme to Hawaii Five-O.”
I was very serious, and very excited.
“I’m holding a big stick, Napoleon. You better cut that out.”
He was laughing.
“You mean the theme music. From that television program with the police officer with the metal hairstyle.”
“That’s not the point,” I snapped. “It’s the music, the sound.” I jumped into my batting stance, and began my rendition of the surfy, coppy song—Ba-ba-ba-ba-BAH-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-baaaaa—swinging my bat as hard as I could in either direction every other beat. “It’s the perfect baseball soundtrack, and I was brilliant on the field all morning. In my head.”
I could not stop moving as I talked, and Napoleon could not stop smiling. It was the kind of thing that I knew was contagious, and that I knew all along he would eventually catch from me. And then we would be off into history, the Gold Dust Twins.
In truth, I wasn’t the only one with the fever. Various strains were happening all over the schoolyard. There was mad motion in every direction and even the yard monitors, Sister Esther and Sister Margaret, couldn’t seem to keep from grinning as they patrolled the grounds telling everybody to cut it out. Games of tag were crisscrossing each other so that one kid from one game would tag another kid from another game and then the two games would merge. The one painted hopscotch in the corner of the lot closest to the building became less like a game, in a place, and more like a through-station half the population was going to pass on their way to further fun someplace else. Hop one, two, three-four, five, six-seven, and away, never turning to hop back to one.
It would be tough enough under these conditions to get any kind of ballplaying done in the crowd, but there was no way we were not going to try, and no way anyone would try and stop us.
“You did pretty well with the snowballs,” I said to Napoleon, “but have a look at this.” As I said it, I drew a pimple ball out of the pocket of my jacket. It was the next best thing, the pimple ball, even though it bore very little resemblance to a baseball. It was small, and though it was white it was filled with air and covered with little bumps that had the added benefit of making it do strange little unpredictable fishtaily things when you put enough English on it. Life with the pimple ball was an important step on the baseball ladder, since we spent so many of our important hours in school, and real baseball was never going to happen on school grounds. It was also critical, skillwise, in that with a stick that was a lot skinnier than a bat, you were required to zero in on a ball much daintier than a hardball.
And about one tenth the size of the fat iceballs we had been murdering over the weekend.
He took the ball, squeezed it, tossed it up in the air a couple of times, then pointed.
He did that very well, I had to say. Silent and grim when he did it, Napoleon Charlie Ellis pointed me into the corner, farthest from the school building, where a weird small nook of the massive red church came together to form our natural St. C’s home plate area. He had never yet played here but he knew. Another good indicator of NCE’s instincts.
And when he did that, he looked like the Grim Reaper, ready to mow me down. No, more than that. He looked like Vida Blue of the Oakland A’s. Now that was grim.
I stood in, and waited, scuffing the feet, gripping the bat, leaning.
And leaning, and leaning.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he backed farther and farther away from me, so far away that some of the space between us was being filled by a game of keepaway with Arthur Brown’s shoe.
“Just stay in position,” Napoleon said to me. I did, and then he finally stopped backtracking, leered in at me...
And started running my way.
I was stumped. I straightened up, started shouting at him to cut it out, but then instantly was shut up myself. After four or five long powerful strides, Napoleon’s arm hanging behind his back, he left the ground and came over the top with a vicious whipping motion. I was then frozen, by the loud whizzzz of the pimple ball buzzing right past my face, ricocheting off both walls behind me, then rolling back out to Napoleon Charlie Vida Blue Ellis.
“Holy smoke,” was the best I could do.
That was the fastest anything had ever passed me without a driver inside it.
“What in the world was that?” I said, trying not to sound overly impressed.
“Bowling,” he said, squeezing the ball, as if he was checking to see if he’d hurt it.
“Ah, excuse me, but I’ve been bowling lots, and it’s much slower than that.”
“Cricket. That’s called bowling. Although if I had been properly bowling I would have bounced the ball off the ground before it reached you. I was trying to give you a chance.”
“Try—” I could not even manage to finish the thought. I put that stick right back on my shoulder and planted. “Bowl,” I said, nearly speechless at the thought of somebody having to give me a chance.
He took the ball, backed up, backed up, and came at me, hard.
In the ball came, spinning and wobbling and—
Whiffing. I lost my balance in the gritty wet pavement as I swung with everything to get that ball.
“Bowl,” I yelled, as the ball reached Napoleon Charlie Ellis again.
“It does take some getting used to,” he said kindly. “But you will learn to love it, I am sure of it.”
“Bowl,” I growled.
Bowl, he did.
Whiff. I was now losing my composure very quickly.
“I think maybe you need just to relax,” he said.
A crowd began to gather around him. Tag games stopped. Arthur Brown got his shoe back. And Napoleon Charlie Ellis got his audience, just like when the photographers all surround the first pitchers to start their throwing down in Winter Haven.
I was hot. Yes the sun was out, and yes I was straining, but that was no excuse. I was hot, as in a sweaty brow, and damp armpits and there is no excuse for that kind of thing on a beautiful baseball day in February. I could sweat in a fancy restaurant because I didn’t belong there. This was unacceptable. I belonged in this situation.
I became suddenly aware of being at the center of something, something that should have been great, that had always been great before. The sun was doing its job so well, melting the snow wherever it could, after Mr. Mendelson had done his job, plowing the whole yard down to nothing but watery icebanks along walls and fences. The whole place had a feel now like the base of a mountain when the winter was letting go and everything was wet with the snow being converted to crystal waters running down from the slopes. The ground everywhere was shiny.
And then I was unaware of it all again.
“Bowl,” I said, and heard the odd little word repeated here and there in the crowd.
He looked at me without emotion. He nodded.
He stepped back and back and back, then forward, faster, faster, long went the stride, sling, over the top came the arm.
And zzzzzip, past me came the ball. I swung. But I was swinging at sound. I couldn’t even see the pitch.
Napoleon bowled again, like I told him to. And bowled me out.
There was a lot of muttering out in the crowd, no laughing really, and no cheering. Because this was not the way things worked. I was supposed to be hitting these balls, for the whole school population probably as much as for myself. It was like the pond freezing solid in January, and the crocuses poking through the crust in March. I was supposed to be tattooing some poor pimple ball right now.
“Bowl,” I said. Napoleon Charlie Ellis was trying to hold his game face, to show nothing, but the crack of a wince was coming across his tight lean skin.
“Maybe we should take a break, Richard,” he said.
“Ya, Richard, take a break before you hurt yourself,” Manny said, and a few people laughed.
I could feel the redness in my face, and was sure it could be seen from the cheapest seats in the house.
“Why are you lettin’ him cheat?” Jum McDonaugh asked.
Napoleon turned to face him. “I do not cheat at anything,” he said.
“You ain’t supposed to run like that before pitching.”
“It’s okay,” I said, frozen and probably looking crazy in my tight stance.
“Look,” Jum said, walking up and taking the ball from Napoleon. He set himself, wound up, and slung one at me.
I have to confess, when I hit that pitch, when I hit the absolute guts out of that pitch, I almost cried with relief and excitement. I saw myself circling the bases, heard the theme to Hawaii Five-O blasting over the massive Fenway sound system, and felt like somebody had just pulled me up out of a pit of alligators.
“See,” Jum said, as if he had accomplished some outstanding sports feat rather than giving up the biggest tater of the young season. “That is how to pitch a baseball.”
“We were not playing baseball,” Napoleon said. He took the ball again, as Arthur Brown ran it back from the far outfield. “We were playing cricket.”
That’s right, I thought. That’s right, we weren’t playing baseball. We were playing cricket. Oh, yes. God, yes. I was not failing at baseball, I was messing around with stupid old cricket. Yes. Yes. It was just cricket.
And the last time I would be playing cricket.
Jum screwed his face all up. “Why?” he asked.
“Because,” Napoleon said, “Richard and I are thinking men, and so we play the thinking man’s game.”
Butchie stepped in and snatched the ball away from Napoleon. “Ya, well nobody plays that here.”
“Some guys play it over at Franklin Park, every Sunday,” Glen Solar said.
Butchie pointed at the ground under him. “But nobody plays it here,” he said. “We play baseball here. Or stickball, but using baseball rules. Meaning, you don’t run at the guy when you pitch to him. Cricket,” he announced like some kind of authority, “is a stupid game.”
“Cricket is not a stupid game,” Napoleon said. “In fact, I believe that your inability to understand cricket is even further proof of the fineness of the game.”
There were small titters of laughter that faded out as Butchie scanned the crowd. Then he trained his look back on Napoleon, who wasn’t going anywhere.
I took a few steps toward them, caught Butchie’s eye.
He upnodded at me. “Ya?” Then he ripped the stickbat out of my hand, and stared back at Napoleon.
“We got something to settle, Jiminy Cricket?” He waved the stick just slightly in Napoleon’s direction.
“He probably can’t even play baseball,” Jum yelled, “that’s why he has to play his retard game.”
Butch laughed and nodded. I waited for Napoleon to say something, but instead a look of disgust came over his face and he started looking around, like he couldn’t remember how he got into this.
Napoleon didn’t much care what they thought. Whether he could play baseball or not. He was above that.
I wasn’t.
“I pick Napoleon,” I said.
Butch paused, grinned. “I’ll take Jum.”
“Manny.”
“Glen.”
“Quin.”
“Arthur.”
“My ball. We’re up first.”
The music was so loud in my head now, I could barely hear my teammates speaking to me.
“You’ll do fine,” I said to Napoleon. “You’re a natural, remember? And you’ve been learning from the best.”
I didn’t notice, and didn’t honestly care very much, what my other teammates had on their minds. The sun was out, I had the fever, I wanted to hit. I wanted us both to hit. Gold Dust moment.
And hit I did. Butchie was leering at me as I leaned in; he leaned back and let it fly. I don’t think anyone was even surprised when I sent the thing back so swiftly and so hard that it caromed back off the highest bit of the school’s four-floor face and came right back over Butchie’s head and landed near home plate. I was already making my unnecessary trip around the bases—slap the fence pole for first, step on the joint between the two big pavement cracks for second, the rusty sewer grate for third—waving to the crowd and working on my spring tan. Good. Life. Good.
I did my bit. Normally after my bit I relax, calm down, lose interest. But my stomach now remained fluttery, my reflexes keen. There was more. I was waiting for it. Everybody was waiting for it.
Manny followed, getting cute by letting one slightly less than perfect pitch after another go past. He was antagonizing Butch, which was not only his right and normally satisfying, it was effective because Butch is easy to disturb. But I had no patience for it. This was not about Manny, and everyone was aware of that. “Hit,” I screamed at him. The next pitch he delivered with a nice liner double, which was his usual. Quin followed by striking out on three pitches, which was his usual.
By the time Napoleon stepped up, with Manny on second, me catching, and Quin in a tag game somewhere, I could see Sister Jacqueline coming out with the gong again. Rats. That meant that Butchie’s team wouldn’t get to hit, which was cool. But it also meant I might not get to bat again, which was very much not. More importantly, Napoleon wouldn’t get to show his stuff.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I said, hurrying everyone.
Napoleon was holding his bat very low, so that he’d almost have to lift it up off the ground to hit the ball. I told him to pick it up, but then it was back down again. Some defensive cricket thing I was still to train out of him, but this was not the time. There was no time.
Butchie leaned back twice as far as normal and let it go.
Napoleon had been so crouched up on the plate, and so kind of sheepish about the whole thing, he almost didn’t manage to fall out of the way in time.
The ball, buzzing at a serious speed, headed in on Napoleon, in farther, screwballing toward his head until it went even farther in, and behind him. Napoleon had to drop himself—and the bat in the bargain—to the ground in a jumble. The bat bounced, clattering tip to tip to tip, making a hollowed wood racket that echoed around the yard.
Napoleon got up slowly. He refused to give Butch the satisfaction of a look.
“Don’t worry,” I said when he looked to me. “That’s just a brushback. It’s his strategy. Look for the good one. He’ll straighten it out.”
Butchie smiled at the suggestion he might throw something hittable. He leaned back again. I took my eye off him for half a second when the sun flashed off the bell that Sister J. was just now raising. It was so unfair.
Plunk. The second I turned back was the very second the pimple ball, coming awfully hard, was smacking Napoleon Charlie Ellis dead in the eye. It made a loud sharp sound, like if you slapped a raw chicken hard with your bare hand.
I jumped up. The bell was ringing clang-a-lang-a-lang, and the crowd was moving away.
“Jeez, sorry, man,” Butchie said, as he strolled toward the line to go back inside.
I looked at Napoleon’s eye. He tried to open it but it wanted to close, and did. Then he tried again, kept it open long enough for me to see it, pink with bloodshot, watery. And angry.
“He did that on purpose,” Napoleon said.
I didn’t answer. With most people I wouldn’t need to.
“He hit me on purpose, Richard,” Napoleon said, louder, covering his eye with his hand.
I found myself looking around, worried who might be listening. I couldn’t believe it but he sounded like he was whining. You don’t do that. You don’t do that.
“No, he didn’t hit you on purpose. He threw at you on purpose though. That’s his job. Your job, Napoleon, is to get out of the way, and then be ready when a good pitch comes along. Then you show him who’s boss. But you didn’t do that.”
It had to be clear. From the sound of my voice, it had to be clear. From Napoleon’s reaction, I gathered that it was.
He forced the eye to stay open as he glared at me. The bell clanged again for us. “So it was my fault, is that what you are saying?”
“Oh, come on. Really, Napoleon, he’s brushed me back a hundred times before.”
“I am not you, am I?” he said, and as he said it he poked me hard in the chest with his finger, as if he was angry with me.
We walked to catch up with the rest of the line as they were filing in.
“Who cares who you are, all right? Pitchers throw at hitters. They don’t just throw at you. Maybe if you’d stop worrying about who’s doing what to you then maybe you’d be able to concentrate on playing, and not embarrass us both.”
That was not how I meant to put it. I do better when I don’t have a speaking part.
“I see,” Napoleon said. He shook his head, then quick-stepped to leave me behind.
“I only meant it’s just a regular part of the game,” I called. He didn’t answer.
I looked up at the blue blue sky. It had been such a perfect day before.