EARLY THE FOLLOWING morning, just as E.A. loped into Gran’s dooryard after a five-mile run, a battered pink limousine with a loud muffler pulled in behind him. Printed across the driver’s door were the words CAJUN STAN THE BASEBALL MAN. One of its headlights was bashed in. There was a deep crease in the front right door. The back bumper had fallen off, and the limo was rusting out underneath like a Kingdom County junker. At the wheel was Stan, wearing his snowy white suit and hat, a powder blue shirt with a pink tie, and a matching pink handkerchief. Louisianne, beside him, wore a short yellow sundress and matching heels. Sitting in back was Teddy Williams.
“Ethan,” Teddy said, “this here is my old bud Stan. You met him yesterday. I and Stan played together in college. Back when I first broke in, I caught him.”
Stan got out of the limo rather stiffly. “How do, bub,” he said. “We meet again.” Stan had the longest fingers E.A. had ever seen. His handshake consisted of three formal tugs, like a trout biting.
Gypsy came out of the house, shook hands with Stan, and gave Louisianne a big hug as though they’d known each other for years. Then Teddy and E.A. and Gypsy and Stan and Louisianne all went down to Fenway.
Stan sat down on the Packard seat. “No poison serpents round here, is they, E.W.?” he said. “I and venomous serpents is on the outs.”
“It’s too cold for snakes up here, Stan,” Teddy said as he squatted down behind the plate to warm up E.A. “It’s too cold for baseball nine months of the year.”
“Oh, it never too cold or too hot for baseball,” Stan said. “Ain’t that right, Louisianne?”
Louisianne winked one big, shiny, dark eye at her father. She stood beside the Packard seat and looked around the diamond with interest.
“I like your outfit, hon,” Gypsy said. “It’s very becoming.” She grinned at E.A. “I’m not the only one who thinks so, either.”
E.A. threw hard to Teddy for fifteen minutes while Stan looked at Devil Dan’s Midnight Auto, looked across the river, looked at Bill’s license plates on the barn. Like a bored kid staring around a schoolroom. Finally he walked out to the mound and stood behind E.A. like a softball umpire officiating a game alone.
“Boy,” Cajun Stan said, “what you got to go with that heat?”
E.A. showed him his curve, showed him the slider Teddy had taught him.
“What you got for a straight change?” Stan said. “Can you get it over?”
“I can get any pitch over,” E.A. said. Teddy set up low on the outside corner, flashed four fingers.
Louisianne said, “I give you E.A. Allen and his straight change.”
E.A. hit the middle of Teddy’s glove with a slow breaking pitch.
“No,” Stan said. “That a let-up curve. Bona fide straight change, he gone fool most hitters. Let-up, they hammer it right over that thirty-seven-foot-tall fence we talking about yesterday.”
“Nobody’s ever hammered it yet.”
“Who is they to hammer it round here? We talking two different brands of baseball, son.”
Stan went back to the Packard seat, checking under it carefully before he sat down. “Throw from the stretch,” he barked out. “Like you got mens on base, which you gone have pretty much all they time.”
E.A. threw out of the stretch for five minutes. Then Teddy stood up out of his crouch.
“Well?” he asked Stan.
Stan sighed. He drew in his breath through his teeth and shook his head. “Boy got some old-fashioned heat, him. He got a good enough down-breaking hook, nice tight spin on the ball. Fair slider. Ain’t got no change is the whole trouble.”
“He learns quick enough, if I do say so,” Teddy said.
Stan snorted, a mirthless noise. “E.W., what you mean? I ever in my life see a young fella that already knowed everything, here he is in the flesh. I ain’t surprised. Apple don’t fall far from the tree. Got red hair besides. That a bad sign. That the worst. You wants the truth, I never knowed a redheaded pitcher keep his composure out there.”
Louisianne laughed. Everything her father said delighted her, and Gypsy seemed charmed by both Stan and his daughter. But E.A. couldn’t tell whether Cajun Stan was kidding or serious. All he knew was that if he could learn something about pitching from the Baseball Man, he intended to.
They were sitting on the stoop, Teddy and E.A. and Stan and Louisianne, drinking ice-cold root beer. Gypsy and Gran were inside making Spam sandwiches on Wonder Bread. E.A. was showing Louisianne his baseball cards.
“So,” Teddy said to his old bud. “Will you work with him?”
“Oh, I work with him all right,” Stan said. “But they going to be a steep price. Know-all smart aleck like this young fella? I ain’t studying no free teaching, no.”
“When you get him signed, take your cut,” Teddy suggested. “Fifteen percent.”
“I going to. I taking my full fifteen percent. Maybe twenty. Meantime, Louisianne and I need to live, us. Pass me that there cigar box, boy. Let’s see what you got.”
E.A. handed him the box containing his baseball cards. Stan riffled through them, muttering criticisms of the players. “Ted Williams,” he said, holding up Ted’s rookie card. “I strike him out in three pitches. Four at most.”
Stan examined E.A.’s Cy Young. “Winningest pitcher of all,” he read. “Huh. I take this. For payment.”
Thinking Stan meant Cy Young, E.A. reached for the cigar box. Stan yanked it away. “I take this,” he said, shaking the box. “Sell to a fella I knows down Shreveport, c’llects cards. In the meantime, my girl here hold on to it for me.”
Louisianne took the cigar box. “Let him keep one,” she said. She held the Cy Young out toward E.A. But when he reached for it, it vanished.