“DRIVER,” SPENCE SAID from the back seat of the taxicab, hunkered down in his fishing hat and sunglasses. “What’s all this hullabaloo?”
“You don’t know? God love you, man, where you been? The Boston Red Sox have just won the World frigging Series.”
“Well,” Spence said, holding out his first pounder of the long trip south for the Curse to open and feeling the tension begin to drain away from him with the air whooshing out of the beer can. “Will wonders never cease.”
The cabdriver, who’d picked Spence up on Boylston Street and agreed, for a thousand dollars and expenses, to take him to Florida, twisted the dial of his radio. The ebullient Voice of the Sox came into the cab. “. . . punched the owner . . . in front of an estimated fifty million television viewers . . . unconfirmed reports that he’s being held at precinct headquarters on assault charges . . . the people of Boston threatening to march on the station to free the Legendary Spence . . . Bastille Day . . . mayhem . . .”
“Punched the owner?” Spence said. “I never heard of such doings. What is this fella, some kind of raving psychopath?”
“Oh, yeah,” the driver said happily. “Oh, yeah, he is.”
As E.A., now in his street clothes, drove over the bridge, he could hear the victory procession behind him, winding downtown like a great, happy dragon. He threaded the car he’d borrowed from Spence through the complicated back streets of Cambridge into Somerville, where he picked up I-93. An hour later, in the slant late-afternoon sunlight of this perfect October day, he was in New Hampshire. Cars were still honking madly, drivers and passengers giving each other thumbs-up, the tollbooth operators at Manchester giving the drivers high-fives.
Two hours later he got off the interstate at Littleton and stopped at the state liquor store he and Gypsy and Gran used to visit on their wrong-way whiskey runs. He spoke briefly with a guy in a hunting jacket headed into the store, then gave him a bill. On the street, cars and pickups with GO SOX banners and CURSE OF THE BAMBINO bumper stickers were lining up for a parade. Three or four minutes later the man in the hunting jacket came out of the store and handed E.A. a brown paper bag.
Crossing the Vermont state line, he felt good to be heading home.
The sun dropped behind the Green Mountains. Off in the distance sat a farmhouse with a sideways window under the eaves, like his window at home. He would cut some wood for winter, he thought. Set up a better place to throw in the barn. Maybe hunt partridge. Get in touch with Louisianne if he could.
He stopped for gas in St. J, his cap pulled down over his eyes.
The guy at the counter shoved his money back at him. “Gas is free to anybody wearing a Red Sox cap, dude.”
“Why’s that?” E.A. said.
“You don’t know? Local kid, an Allen from up in the Kingdom, just won the World Series for the Sox. He got the Mets’ big hitter with a change-up, but you know something? I’ve seen the replay of that pitch maybe thirty times. You ask me, I’d say it looked as fast as his other pitches.”
“It’s supposed to, I reckon,” E.A. said. “That’s the trick.”
“Oh, we got an expert here,” a guy beside him said.
E.A. grinned at him. “Get a bat,” he said.
“What?”
“Have a good day,” E.A. said.
“Say,” the guy said. “Ain’t you—”
E.A. was on his way to the car.
He didn’t get back on the interstate. He drove the rest of the way up old Route 5, wanting to immerse himself in this homecoming, in the experience of home, feeling the pull north as surely as the geese now going south would feel that pull in the spring. The mountain villages were pretty in the falling darkness. He’d played town ball in some of these hamlets just a year ago. Here and there pumpkins sat on lighted porches, and colorfully dressed harvest figures slumped in wheelbarrows. Outside the towns he kept his speed down to about forty-five in order to savor coming home, so he was surprised to see flashing blue lights coming up behind him just south of Kingdom Landing. The cop approached the window in the dark, a tall man, a few years older than E.A. Ethan had his license out and ready. The policeman looked at it, looked back inside at E.A., then began to laugh.
“E.A. Allen,” he said. “You don’t remember me.”
“No, sir,” E.A. said. “I sure don’t.”
“Well, I don’t blame you,” the cop said, giving him back his ID. “I’m Orton Horton.”
“Good God.” E.A. got out of the car and shook hands with Officer Horton. Now they were both laughing.
“I heard the game on the radio,” Orton said. “It was great.”
“I didn’t feel so great standing out there wondering what to throw Jacks after he’d just hit that four-hundred-foot foul home run.”
“E.A.,” Orton said, getting out a ballpoint pen and tearing a citation out of his book. “I’ve got a boy, his name’s Travis—no more Ortons or Nortons. He’s three and he likes to toss with me. I wonder . . .”
E.A. took the pen and the citation. Then he had a better idea. He handed the citation back to Officer Orton Horton, got something out of his jacket pocket, and wrote on it “To Travis Horton, a heck of a ballplayer. E.A. Allen.” He handed the Series-winning ball to Orton and told him what it was, and at first the policeman couldn’t say a word. Then he wanted to give E.A. an escort into the Common, lights flashing, but E.A. said no thanks, he had some private business to take care of, so they shook hands again, and E.A. got back in the car.
Orton started toward his cruiser. Then he came back and said, “E.A., Norton and I were a pair of little pissants, weren’t we?”
“Nah,” E.A. said.
“We weren’t pissants?” Orton said.
“Oh, you were pissants, all right,” E.A. said. “You just weren’t little. Good luck to Travis.”
He pulled into the Common about eight o’clock. It was full dark now. The stars were out, and a great round orange harvest moon was coming up behind the courthouse. The air smelled like smoke from the celebratory bonfire just burning itself out on the baseball infield. Now and then a car driving through town blasted its horn. The hotel barroom was jammed with people watching a rerun of the game. Tattered banners still hung from the brick shopping block. The lights were on in the Monitor office, and through the big window E.A. could see Editor Kinneson typing at his desk.
He parked in front of the courthouse, across from the east side of the green. He wondered if he’d regret giving the ball to Officer Horton. He thought not. He’d already decided to give his Series ring to Louisianne if she’d take it. He put the paper bag from the Littleton package store into his jacket pocket and headed across the common.
“Here,” he said. “It’s from Barbados.”
“I gave all that up a long time ago,” the Colonel said. “It was what killed me, you want the truth.”
“One bottle won’t hurt. To celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
“You know good and well what.”
“Oh. That. They rang the church bell over yonder for twenty minutes. You’d think the British were coming again. Set it down here by the pedestal. I’ll see it doesn’t go to waste.”
“I bet you will.”
“They say you got Jacks with a change,” the Colonel said. “That’s right.”
“Everything changes. Even here in the Kingdom.”
“Like what?”
The Colonel thought. “Devil Dan has his place up for sale,” he said. “Since they ran off with that Blade of his. Of course, you wouldn’t know a thing about that.”
E.A. grinned in the dark.
“Things change,” the Colonel said again. “They did for me. They will for you. Don’t expect it always to be this way.”
“I don’t.”
“I hope not. Because you’ll have good seasons and off seasons. Good games and off ones. The team won’t all stay together, and you may or may not stay in Boston. You might like the new manager, you might not. Change, boy. It’s what you can count on. Thankee for the rum.”
“I’m the one who ought to thank you,” E.A. said. “For sending me Teddy.”
“Whoa,” the Colonel said. “I never sent you Teddy.”
“Of course you did,” E.A. said. “You said you’d send me a fella. To teach me baseball.”
“And so I did,” the Colonel said. “But it wasn’t Teddy. Good Jehovah, boy. Is that what you’ve been thinking all these years? I never said a word to Teddy. The fella I sent was Stan.”
“Stan?”
“Stan,” the Colonel said. “Teddy came on his own, son. Because he was your pa.”