“‘I WANNA GO HOME. I wanna go home. Oh, how I wanna go home.’”
The drunk in the black cowboy hat on the barstool to E.A.’s right had played Bobby Bare’s classic “Detroit City” on the tavern jukebox six times. The same song Gypsy had sung on the water tank the day she’d told E.A. about Teddy racing the train. Now the drunk began to sing along.
“I wanna go home. I wanna go home.
Oh, how I wanna go home.”
E.A. knew exactly how the guy in the song felt. He, too, wanted to go home, home to the Green Mountains of Vermont. What’s more, he wanted to stay there for the rest of his sorry life. Never mind that the Alien Man, sore arm and all, had come in and shut down New York for eight innings, until Sally’s three-run homer in the ninth won the game and the Eastern Division championship for the Sox. Never mind that the entire city of Boston was now going crazy. For Ethan E.A. Allen, this was the worst night of his life. He’d gone from pitching a perfect inning to pitching like what he now knew he was, a hick woodchuck from the sticks who’d almost certainly never throw another ball off a major-league mound in his life.
‘“I wanna go home,”’ the drunk started up again. “I wanna nother roun’. You ready for another roun’, old buddy?”
Staring at the faded autographed pictures of old Red Sox stars over the bar—Earl Wilson, who in June of ’63 was the first African American to pitch an American League no-hitter, Johnny Pesky, the great manager Dick Williams, and several dozen others—thinking that his picture would never be there, E.A. nodded.
He whirled around on the barstool. Somehow Teddy and Gypsy had located him in this alleyway dive off Boylston Street, wedged in between a pawnshop and a bail-bond office, a place so out of it that the only other customer, even on this night of all nights, was the singing drunk.
“Listen, Ethan,” Teddy said, slipping onto the stool to his left. “You might not think so, but you done fine out there tonight. You had a great inning your first time out. Then you had an off inning. That’s all. That’s baseball. Don’t shake Sally off from now on.” Teddy grinned. “That’s why he’s catching for the Boston Red Sox and I’m running a lathe in a bat factory in Vermont.”
“Who’s this guy?” the drunk in the hat said, leaning out around E.A. and staring at Teddy. “Some homeless? He looks like some homeless.”
“Ethan,” Gypsy said, giving him a hug. “Listen to your dad. He knows what he’s talking about.”
E.A. had never heard Gypsy refer to Teddy as his dad before.
“Sweetie,” Gypsy said, taking a sip of his beer, “you know what I think you should do next time they start up with that woodchuck bullshit, pardon my language?”
E.A. was pretty sure there wouldn’t be a next time. The next time he pitched a baseball game would probably be for the Outlaws, back in Kingdom Common.
But Gypsy said, “I’m going to tell you how to get an edge on the crowd, honey boy.”
“Hey,” the drunk said to E.A., “you drinking with me or talking with them?”
“I thought getting an edge on people was Teddy’s department,” E.A. said.
“What you do, hon,” Gypsy continued, “next time that woodchuck business starts, you spit in their soup. That’s what Gran used to tell me when kids at school ragged on me. You spit in their soup by enjoying it.”
“Enjoy having thousands of maniacs calling me a woodchuck?”
“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck,” Detroit City sang at the top of his lungs.
Teddy was staring straight into the mirror behind the bar at the drunk.
“Absolutely, baby doll,” Gypsy said. “Here’s what you do. You remember who you are. You’re Gypsy Lee Allen’s boy, which makes you one-quarter Gran Allen’s grandboy. That gives you twenty-five percent pure WYSOTT Allen meanness to draw on when you need it. Do you think Gran would care what the grandstand shouted at her?”
“She’d probably like it,” E.A. said.
“If woodshuck could shuck wood,” warbled the stumblebum. Teddy’s eyes, the color of ice on an asphalt road, had not left the florid countenance of the singing drunk in the mirror.
“Gran would definitely like it,” Gypsy said. “She’d enjoy hearing those idiots holler at her and make fools out of themselves.”
“Who you calling fools and idiots?” the drunk said.
“Were you at that game tonight?” Gypsy said.
“ ‘Course I was,” the guy in the cowboy hat said.
“Were you calling my boy here a woodchuck?”
“’Course. Everybody was.”
“Well, then I’m calling you an asshole.” Gypsy turned back to E.A. “Red Sox fans are all as mad as hatters, Ethan. I’ve always suspected it, but I never truly realized it until today. Turning on their own players. Shouting derogatory epithets. Even we WYSOTT Allens don’t do that to our own. If the Sox ever should win the Series, hon, their fans will burn this city down. I really believe they will, the crazy sons of bitches.”
“Who you callin’ sons bitches?” the drunk said. “You callin’ the goo’ people of Boston sons bitches?”
Teddy leaned out around E.A. and gave the drunk a hard, direct look.
“What you staring at?” the drunk said to Teddy. “What you staring at, mister? You don’t like my hat? Why don’ you try knock it off?”
The drunk grabbed a fistful of E.A.’s shirt and said, “Drink up, Slick.” As Teddy started to stand up, Gypsy yanked the drunk off his stool. He swung at her wildly and missed, and she knocked him cold with an uppercut to the jaw.
The barkeep reached for the phone. But Teddy laid a twenty-dollar bill beside E.A.’s beer glass and said they were gone.
On the way out, E.A. said to Teddy, “Well, you going to pump me sober?”
“Nope,” Teddy said. “Way I figure, son, after a night like the one you’ve had, a man deserves a few beers if it’ll make him feel any better.”
Then Teddy and Gypsy and E.A. headed out into the packed streets of the celebrating city, whose team not even the most devoted members of the Red Sox Nation could have predicted would beat the Yankees and reach the playoffs.