Roy’s grandfather was watching a baseball game on television when his grandson came home from school.
“What’s on, Pops?” Roy asked.
“The White Sox are playing the Senators. Two outs in the ninth. Billy Pierce is pitching a perfect game.”
Roy sat down on the floor next to his grandfather’s chair. Ed Fitzgerald, Washington’s catcher, was the last chance for them to break up the no-hitter.
“Fitzgerald bats left-handed,” Roy said. “Since Pierce is a southpaw, shouldn’t he just throw breaking balls?”
“He might hang one, Roy, but Pierce is crafty. He’d probably do better to start him off with a fastball high and outside, then go to the curve.”
Fitzgerald lined one off the right field fence for a double.
“Pierce went with the fast ball, Pops.”
“It caught too much of the plate. He should have gone away with it.”
The game ended when the next batter made an out. Roy’s grandfather turned off the set.
“Too bad,” said Roy. “A pitcher doesn’t get many chances to throw a perfect game.”
“There have only been about twenty perfect games in the history of major league baseball. How was school, boy? What grade are you in now?”
“Fourth. I don’t know, Pops. I think I learn more important things talking to you and some other people. I like it when you tell me stories about your life.”
“Don’t ignore dreams, Roy. You can learn a lot from them.”
“I don’t always remember what I dream.”
“Write them down as soon as you wake up, even if you’re groggy and only half awake. For me, the most interesting dreams are the ones in which people who have died appear.”
“Like who?”
“I recently had a dream about a very old, close friend of mine who died about twelve or thirteen years ago, before you were born. His name was Warren Winslow. In my dream someone told me he heard that Warren was living in Chicago in the house of a person I didn’t know. He gave me the address so I went there and found Warren, looking much as he had when both of us were younger. He was calm, sitting on a couch with a blanket across his legs. I asked him how this could have happened, how he had recovered, why he hadn’t told me and let me know he was here in Chicago.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that he had died but come back to life and was rather embarrassed to have done so. He asked the doctors in the hospital where he had been treated not to tell anyone, and he left everything he owned and came to stay with a fellow he did not know very well who was willing to keep his existence and whereabouts a secret.”
“Why?”
“Warren himself was not entirely certain other than he felt satisfied that at the time of his death he was not displeased by the state of his affairs and his relations with those closest to him. I told him I had missed him and Warren said he had always valued our friendship highly. Now that I knew where he was, Warren told me, I could visit him if I chose to, but warned me that he didn’t know how much longer he would be there. It wasn’t so much that his attitude was one of indifference—at least I didn’t take it that way—so much as his having moved on from the past.”
“What did you do?”
“I left the house, then I woke up. This is the way the dead visit us, Roy, in dreams. It’s the only way we can be with them again.”
“That’s pretty spooky, Pops. See, this is the kind of stuff they don’t teach us in school.”