RECENTLY LOUISIANNE had been running with E.A. before his daily workouts with Stan. One morning, just back from a five-mile circuit to Kingdom Landing, they sat on the Colonel’s pedestal on the village green, watching the sun come up over Allen Mountain, lighting up the Green Monster atop the baseball bat factory where Moonface was posting last night’s Sox score. Boston had been in Montreal, looking for a sweep of a three-game series with the Expos in the last interleague contest of the season.
Louisianne wore bright red running shoes and red shorts with a matching halter top, her long, dark brown hair tied back with a red ribbon. As they waited for the score to go up, E.A. told her about the WYSOTT Allens’ longtime feud with Devil Dan and Dan’s threats to dozer down Gran’s barn and house. But he couldn’t stop staring at her slender, coffee-with-cream-colored legs. Although Louisianne seemed interested in the feud, finally she kicked E.A.’s sneaker and said, in a perfect imitation of her father’s Cajun accent, “What you looking at, boy?”
E.A. turned as red as Louisianne’s running outfit. She laughed and told him in her own voice to be careful or she’d make him disappear. As Moon put up the score, Boston 7 Montreal 3, she said, “Actually, Ethan, it’s a lot harder to make someone appear than disappear.”
“Who’s going to appear?” he said.
She glanced up at the courthouse clocktower. “Stick around for a few minutes. You might be surprised.” Then she jumped down off the pedestal and jogged back over to the hotel, where she and Stan were staying.
“Hook, line, and sinker,” the Colonel said, as E.A. continued to ogle her bobbing dark ponytail and pretty legs. “I just hope she doesn’t break your heart in the end is all. I don’t mean to interfere. But you might better know now than later that women will generally do that to you. They will break your heart, or your spirit, or both.”
“I’ll thank you to keep your advice to yourself,” E.A. said.
“Time was when you were happy enough to receive it,” the Colonel snapped back. “I see those days are long—well, look at that, will you.”
A dark, expensive-looking car was pulling up to the hotel. It stopped directly in front of the porch just as Cajun Stan, dressed in white as usual, came out and waved. The driver, a heavyset man in his sixties, built as solid as the brick shopping block, got out and nodded to Stan, then looked around the village, his gaze stopping on the Green Monster atop the factory with last night’s score posted on it. He wore a Red Sox windbreaker and a Sox cap, and on his shoulder sat a large, multicolored bird.
As word began to spread that the Legendary Spence had appeared in the village, a steady stream of Sox fans appeared to get a look at him, get an autograph, take a snapshot, or just say hello. People like Gypsy and Gran and Bill and Frenchy LaMott, who ran the commission sales, and even Old Lady Benton, who probably wouldn’t have walked across the street to meet the president of the United States, were eager that August morning to see the famous Spence in person as he and Stan walked down the common toward the baseball diamond. E.A. was already warming up with Teddy, who’d appeared with their gloves and a ball just after Spence arrived. The elderly bat boys, sitting out on the hotel porch in the morning sunshine, did not walk over to the diamond. That would have been beneath their dignity. But Fletch and Early and Late leaned forward in their folding chairs and watched attentively as Stan and Spence headed down the green past the statue.
“It’s a nice pastime, Stanley,” Spence was telling his old bud. “It’s a very nice pastime when they can sell your franchise right out from under you the season after you’ve put an American League pennant banner over your home grounds and gotten to the last game of the Serious, not to mention we’re leading the AL East by a game as we speak. Is that the kid?”
“That him,” Stan said.
“He ain’t too big, is he?” Spence said.
“You gone be surprised,” Stan said.
“I doubt it,” Spence said.
E.A., warming up on the mound, felt good. A little nervous, but ready.
“Okay?” Teddy said.
“Okay,” E.A. said and threw a fastball, up and in on a right handed batter.
“You go, E.A.!” Gypsy shouted.
“Ninety-four, ninety-five miles an hour,” Stan said to Spence. “Hard to get a bat on.”
“Any pitch five inches inside is hard to get a bat on,” Spence said. “Tell him he’s supposed to hit the glove.”
“He sending the hitter a message,” Stan said.
“The umpire will send him a message,” Spence said. “Ball one.”
“You’re down on the count, kid,” he said to E.A. “I don’t like my pitchers getting down on the count. I don’t like leadoff walks. A pitcher wants to stay on my right side, he better stay up on the count and not be walking no leadoff batters.”
For the next ten minutes Spence watched E.A. throw. In only one instance—when a slider hit the dirt beside the plate—did Teddy have to move his mitt more than an inch or two.
The crowd of villagers, at least fifty strong now, was quiet. Everyone’s eyes were on Spence, to see how he was reacting. The Colonel, away up the common in deepest center field, seemed to be leaning forward, holding his broken-off sword at an expectant angle, waiting to hear the verdict. Even Gran seemed to be holding her breath.
Spence stood near the pitcher’s mound, wondering what exquisite new possibilities for disappointment this Vermont development offered. The night before, when he’d gotten back to his hotel in Montreal, a town where they didn’t even speak English as their first language and they played hockey as their main sport, something had made him pick up the phone and call Stan. And Stan had somehow talked him into renting a car and driving down to see the kid this morning, leaving his team to fly back to Boston on their own. Now he found himself wishing he’d gone with them, not because he wasn’t impressed with E.A. but because he simply didn’t know how much more heartbreak he could take in a single season.
“Well,” Stan said, “he can throw, him, yeah?”
“Oh, he can throw, all right,” Spence said. “I’m desperate for pitchers and he can throw. Now”—reaching reluctantly for the contract in his back pocket—“we’re going to find out whether he can pitch.”