“ANY CHANCE of enticing you over here to play for us, E.A.?” Prof asked. “We’d love to have you, you know.”
E.A. shrugged. He and Prof were standing in front of the trophy case in the foyer of the Academy. This was the first time he’d ever set foot in a school in his life, and he felt as if he were six years old and today was his first day of classes.
Prof grinned. “Well,” he said, “you can’t blame me for trying.”
As Prof led E.A. upstairs to the library, the scents of chalk dust and sweeping compound and generations of unwilling kids packed close together caused Ethan to stop and catch his breath.
Prof told him where the yearbooks were and asked him to turn off the library lights when he was finished and check in at the office before he left. Then E.A. was alone in the long room full of musty-smelling books. He had no trouble finding the yearbooks. Gypsy Lee’s was there with the others. E.A. had been afraid that through some terrible quirk it would be missing. He took it down, opened it, and found Gypsy’s picture. She didn’t look any different then than she did now. Long red hair, straight small nose, cat’s eyes. Gypsy Allen, class salutatorian. Nickname, Gypsy Lee. Hobbies, singing and baseball. Baseball? As far as E.A. knew, Gypsy had never had the slightest interest in baseball until he came along. Gran was the baseball fanatic in the Allen family. Gran and the Colonel. He flipped through the pages. René DeLabreure. The other boy who’d been killed.
Ferdinand Viens.
Fern was a slight, serious-looking, dark-haired boy. He appeared to be scarcely older than E.A. himself. Looking at him was more like looking at a picture of a dead brother. How could someone so young, so frail-looking, have been his father? Hobbies, baseball, 1, 2, 3, 4. Nickname, Lefty. So Fern Viens had been a southpaw.
E.A. realized that Gypsy’s listed hobby had nothing to do with sports. It was meant as a joke. Fern Viens was a baseball player, and he was her hobby.
Suddenly E.A. dropped the yearbook. His eyes swam. He made himself pick up the book again and open it to Fern’s page. Just across from his dead father’s picture was a photograph that could not have astonished him more had it appeared on a major-league baseball card.
“Edward ‘Teddy’ Williams,” the caption read. “Baseball, 1, 2, 3, 4.”
There was no doubt at all in E.A.’s mind, as he stared at the photograph of the young man with the buzz cut, pale eyes, and arrogant expression, that “Teddy” Williams, the driver of the car his boy-father Fern Viens had been riding in when he’d been killed at the crossing, was the drifter who’d been teaching him baseball.