Winky’s Hero

Joe Viola is Winky’s all-time favorite baseball player. When the Boston Believers went to the top of the bracket and all the way to the quarterfinals in the ’74 World Series? Joe Viola’s pitching was all and I mean all Winky could talk about. 1974 was very boring in terms of conversation with Winky. If I had a dime for every time I heard that Number 23 has a heart of gold and the soul of a saint and can throw a changeup like the devil himself, well, then I could have all the heating oil and hot water my cold little toes desired.

I said, “A slum—”

“Tsssssssst!” Winky hissed, flapping his hands in my face, “don’t say it out loud!”

“All right already!”

“It’s bad luck.”

“I got it!”

“The Believers will never make it to the playoffs if he doesn’t snap out of it. Last year during spring training he was throwing smoke and slurve clinch brutal-schedule heat Florida batting mathematically-alive…”

I wasn’t really listening at that point. I promise I didn’t mean to yawn, but baseball is wicked dull. The players stand around, they scratch themselves, they spit. It’s gross.

Let me explain that the whole town of Hamburg, Maine, is crazy for baseball. Hamburg is the home of the Hot Dogs, the farm team for the great Boston Believers. The Hot Dogs play down at Hot Dogs Field all summer long, and “goin’-the-game” is what everybody in town does for entertainment. Hot Dog! Why, even my own mother had a Number 23 Joe Viola baseball card, which sat on a shelf in the den in a red plastic heart-shaped frame, right beside a picture of the Pope.

Anyway, Winky was a super-fan, even now that he could barely see. “Baseball is all about connecting,” he says. “The eye and the ball and the bat and the heart.”

“Maybe Viola’s not as wonderful as you say he is,” I said. When he gets riled up, Winky’s hair really punctuates.

“You take that back.” Winky stuffed a fist under each armpit, probably to keep from reaching across the table and strangling me. “There is no player as great as Joe Viola.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I knew the next part by heart, so I said it: “Gives away his money, hole in his heart, charity machine…”

Winky kept speechifying right over me. “Joe Viola was born with a hole in his heart. He overcame his birth defect and became a great player. And he makes a ton of money for charity, too. All he has to do is show up.” With that, Winky pointed energetically at the ceiling, as if Joe Viola might be floating around up there like the Ghost of Christmas Past. (That is a reference to author Charles Dickens, who Mr. Mee keeps telling me to read.) “Car wash, fancy dinner, cocktail party, talent show, the money rolls in.” He put his hands together like a person praying. “I won’t say I’m not concerned about him losing his touch. But it’s temporary. I have faith.”

Winky has had lots of practice testing his faith. For the past six or seven months, his father had found the balding corduroy couch in the Wheatons’ front room a nice change from the job he lost at Sebago-Look Shoe Mill, and his mother suffered from diverticulitis. Her doctor said her condition was not serious, but she believed it to be and in that case what’s the difference?

And then there’s the legal blindness, of course. Basically, if Winky looked straight at me from the other side of the table, he could see my hair around the edges, but he couldn’t see my face in the middle. He didn’t need a white cane or, too bad, a seeing-eye dog. A dog at school? That would be wicked.

He used to see fine. He used to play baseball and watch baseball on TV and go to the games at Hot Dogs Field, live, breathe, eat, and drink baseball. Everything changed when he started to lose his eyesight at eight years old. Some days are better than others, but generally his vision gets worse and worse as time goes by. Maybe he’ll get that seeing-eye dog after all!

“I had my dream again,” he was saying.

“Yeah? The one with you and the ball and the glove and the amazing catch?” (Winky even sleeps baseball.) Wink hadn’t caught a ball since the second grade, but I didn’t have to tell him that. “That would be a miracle,” I said anyway.

“Yeah,” Winky said. “If only.”

He’d been having this same dream forever. In the dream, he was always a Major League Baseball player. He hits one outta the park and the fans go nuts. But nothing about Winky’s dream could ever come true.

Believe me, I can relate to that. Every night when I was little, Mom used to tell me a story about Amanda “Mandy” Mandolin, a made-up girl who traveled widely and had many adventures and mishaps. Mandy was above-average brave and smart. The stories all had happy endings. I dream all the time about Amanda Mandolin, and those dreams, also, can never come true.

“Finish up, children, no loitering!” said Mrs. Blyth-Barrow. “This is elementary school, not a bistro on the French Riviera!” She has a phlegmy rumble to her voice that makes me need to clear my throat. Everyone knew that old Mrs. B-B, widowed young, lived in an apartment over Kenerson’s Five and Ten in the company of several cats. Nobody knew how many.

Winky sat there loitering like a French person. “My dad says all of life is if-onlys,” he said, about our dreams, I guess. “Ifs, mights, too-bads, and buts.”

“You said butts,” said Bubba Davis, who just then tractored between the tables in his big green sweatshirt like a big John Deere and gave Winky’s head a shove while he was at it. Meanwhile, Becky Schenck spilled her water on my head.

“Hey!” I said, very reasonable.

“Becky!” rumbled Mrs. B-B.

“He bumped my tray!” She pointed at Bubba. Mrs. B-B turned her attention to Bubba, and Becky said, just to me and my wet head, “ ’Bout time you took a shower, Brillo.” She shot a look at Winky and made a kiss-face she knew he couldn’t see. “Has it ever occurred to you that Winky, here, would never sit with you in a million trillion zillion years if he could see you, Brillo?”

Becky slunk away like the weasel she is, and Winky, while ignoring Becky very thoroughly, passed me a paper napkin.

“Don’t listen to her,” Winky said. “You look good to me. Your hair is very recognizable.”