Waiting for Teddy Williams Read online

  “Well,” Early Kinneson said, watching from the hotel porch, “now we’re going to see what this boy is made of.”

  As the old men watched, as half the village of Kingdom Common watched, E.A. struck out the next two batters on six fastballs.

  “There,” Early said, sitting back in his folding canvas chair. “What does that tell you?”

  “Not much,” Late said.

  Fletch said nothing.

  E.A. set Ticonderoga down again in order in the second, but they got three hits and two runs in the third. In the bottom half of that inning, the Outlaws tied the game on E.A.’s single with men on second and third. By the fifth, with the game still tied 2–2, the Commoners were honking their horns and cheering every time E.A. struck out a batter, now mixing his fastball and curve like a veteran.

  It was apparent to everyone that the boy had uncanny control. Cyrus rarely had to move his glove more than two or three inches. It was astonishing to see a fifteen-year-old pitcher moving the ball up and down and in and out, hitting the corners, issuing no walks but rarely giving a batter anything good to hit, either. And E.A. was sneaky-fast, faster than he looked, with that curve ball Teddy had taught him that dropped straight down instead of swerving to the side. At the end of the seventh, the Outlaws were up 3–2.

  “The kid’s dealing today,” Cy told the boys. They nodded, and some of them repeated what Cy had said.

  Now the Common was cheering and honking for every out. Gran rang her cowbell, Bill blared the horn on the rig.

  “How’s the wing, E.A.?” Earl asked as Ethan came in for the bottom of the eighth with the Outlaws still ahead 3–2.

  “It’s fine. I could go another nine.”

  “Well, that ain’t going to be necessary. If you can last another half inning that’s enough.”

  E.A. had no doubt about that. But he decided to checkin with Teddy to see if he had any advice for getting the final three outs. Earlier he’d been surprised to see Teddy talking between innings with Ticonderoga’s manager. Now he was back by the elm again.

  “Well?” E.A. said.

  “Well what?”

  “What do you think? Eight strikeouts, no walks, only four hits given up. Do you think I’ve got a shot?”

  “One game at a time. Mr. Leadoff Shortstop got two of them three hits. What I think, Ethan, is you don’t want to see him up at the end of the game with runners on base.”

  “He isn’t going to be up. Seven, eight, and nine in their order are up, and they’ll be going down.”

  Teddy shrugged. “If one of them bloops a hit, you’ve got the shortstop. He’s a hitter. A decent journeyman ball player. You’ve got to find his weakness and get that edge I told you about.”

  “Curve on the outside corner. He nearly broke his back trying to hit that last one. Other than that, I can’t see that he has one. He tagged my fastball good in the first inning.”

  Through his cigarette smoke, Teddy looked at E.A. “Every hitter has a weakness. Guerin—his name’s Guerin—his weakness is he’s scairt of the ball. That’s what ended his pro career. He was beaned down in Alabama one night playing A ball and never could hit pro pitching again.”

  E.A. couldn’t believe his ears. Guerin stood with his head right out over the strike zone.

  Teddy lit another Lucky. “He crowds the plate ’cause every time he goes up to bat he has to prove to himself he ain’t afraid, even though he is. Down to Birmingham he was three weeks in the ICU with a concussion. Anymore, it’s not about hitting for him. It’s about proving something. Move him back off the plate, Ethan, if he comes up again. Then you can throw him your curve on the outside corner, he’ll never reach it.”

  “How do you know all this? About Guerin?”

  Teddy shifted his cigarette. “I told the manager I done some scouting,” he said. “He has a nephew, the first baseman, he wants signed. So him and I got to visiting.”

  E.A. frowned. “But that was a lie. About you being a scout. You said you wouldn’t ever lie again.”

  “I said I’d never lie to you,” Teddy said. “Besides, it wasn’t a lie. I was scouting all the time I was jawing with him. Scouting his team.”

  E.A. laughed.

  “You see Guerin in the top of the ninth, Ethan, brush him back with your first pitch.”

  “What if I hit him?”

  “That’s okay. Then he can’t hit you. He’s the only fella you have to worry about.”

  “I’m not worried about him.”

  “Good. Tell your catcher you’re going to move Guerin off the plate so he don’t let the pitch go by to the screen. If he comes up.” E.A. told Cy what he’d do if Guerin came up, and Cy shrugged. Brushing back a hitter was fine with him. Earl did it all the time.

  The Outlaws didn’t score in the bottom of the eighth, and in the top of the ninth E.A. got the first hitter on a grounder to Moon, the second on a strikeout. Now everyone in the grandstand was on their feet, cheering for another K to end the game. E.A. got two strikes on the number-nine hitter, was one strike away from a victory Cy signaled for a curve away, off the plate, and E.A., overeager, hung the pitch on the outside corner. The batter blooped a flare over first base, bringing up Guerin.

  “Time,” Cy said.

  Judge Charlie K held up his hands for time, and Cy went out to the mound. “You still want to knock him down, E.A.?”

  “I don’t want to knock him down, just move him back.”

  “All right. I’ll set up high and inside, over the letters. Don’t slip and throw it down the middle.”

  “Play ball, gentlemen,” Judge Charlie barked.

  Guerin stood in, crowding the plate. He did not look like a man who was afraid of a baseball or of anything else.

  E.A. came to the set and checked the runner. Cy flipped him the bird for the fastball. Guerin waggled his bat, leaned over the plate further. E.A. kicked and threw.

  As Teddy told E.A. later, it wasn’t a bad pitch for a brush-back. It just wasn’t quite high enough or quite close enough to the fists. It was slightly above the letters, on the inside part of the plate, and Guerin took a short step and hit it over Patsy Cline. It landed on the asphalt pavement in front of the brick shopping block, took one high bounce, and smashed through the plate-glass window of the Kingdom County Monitor.

  Ticonderoga, 4–3.

  E.A.’s first coherent thought, about the time the home-run ball hit the pavement, was that this must be what dying was like. The moment when the wheels of the car hit the black ice on the bridge and you see the railing coming at you. It was the most helpless feeling he’d ever had, even more than when Orton and Norton got him down, or when Gypsy had told him who his father was. Some things in life are final, the Colonel had once told him. A home run was one of those things. A home run in the ninth inning off a pitch that was intended to brush back the batter was not only final, it would be impossible to live down.

  The next hitter struck out, but so did Cy, Moon, and Earl in the bottom of the ninth, and E.A.’s pitching debut was over. The players lined up at home plate to shake hands with each other. Most of them, including Guerin, warmly congratulated E.A. when he went through the line. But it was like running the gauntlet, and E.A.’s face was still hot with mortification, though he defiantly looked every ball player in the eye.

  “Ethan.” Teddy appeared beside him as he headed across the Common. “That was still the right pitch for that situation. Fella just hit it.”

  “If he hit it, it wasn’t the right pitch.”

  “Yes it was. I’d tell you to throw it again in the same situation. I’d tell you in a heartbeat. Don’t be second-guessing yourself.”

  “If it was the right pitch, how come he hit it?”

  Teddy put his arm around E.A.’s shoulder, stiff with rage and shame. “I know how you feel, Ethan. Winning’s what matters, and a real ball player hates to lose even more than he loves to win. I never told you this was going to be easy. It’s the last thing in the world from easy. But.”
r />   “But what?” E.A. said.

  “But that’s baseball,” Teddy said. “Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Today you lost. Suck it up. In the meantime, we’re going on a trip.”

  “Where?” E.A. said, caught off-guard.

  “Cooperstown,” Teddy said. “Get your traveling shoes on, son. We’re going to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

  25

  “YOU PITCHED a wonderful game yesterday, honey boy,” Gypsy said the next morning at breakfast, removing her blond Hillary Clinton wig. The chairman of the Kingdom County Democratic Party had just left, and he liked to see Hillary do a striptease while giving a spirited talk on universal health care.

  “I’m thinking of writing a song about a boy from Vermont who wants to play for the Sox,” Gypsy said. “Actually, I’d like to work some baseball into ‘The Kingdom County Accident.’”

  “Work in the gopher ball he threw to that fella who took him over the wall in the last inning yesterday,” Gran said. “It was worth broiling out there in the hot sun for two hours just to see that home run.”

  “Teddy says a pitcher who throws a lot of strikes gives up more home runs than a wild pitcher,” E.A. said. “He says that’s baseball.”

  “That’s Bosox ball,” Gran said. “You give up a few more round-trippers like that, the Sox’ll be beating down our door by the end of the summer. Maybe they can bring Torrez back while they’re at it. And Butterfingers Buckner.”

  “Teddy’s taking me to Cooperstown,” E.A. announced. “To the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

  Gypsy frowned. “I don’t know, hon. I don’t know that I want you riding the roads with E.W.”

  “I need to see that museum, ma. If I’m going to go all the way.”

  “Gypsy Lee went all the way down under the trestle, and that’s how we got saddled with you,” Gran reminded him.

  Bill said, “I’ll go along with the boys. To Cooperstown.”

  “All right,” Gypsy Lee finally said. “As long as Billy goes, I guess it’s okay, Ethan.”

  “I’m going to get me one of them Big Macs,” Bill said. “Them are good eating.”

  They started out in the pale light before sunrise in Patsy Cline. Teddy drove, with E.A. in the middle and Bill by the door. In the village they drew up in front of the hotel behind Warden Kinneson’s green state truck. E.A. went inside. The warden, several of the Outlaws, the judge, the editor, and Prof Benton were having coffee.

  “Hey, E.A. That was some game you pitched,” Judge Charlie said. “I was proud to call it.”

  “I didn’t win,” E.A. said.

  “You will,” Editor K said. “You’ll win your share and then some.”

  E.A. glanced out the window. He could see Teddy and Bill doing something in between Patsy and the warden’s truck. E.A. sat across the table from Warden Kinneson so that the officer couldn’t see out the window. From his Outlaws baseball jacket he took a tin can. He said, “Officer Kinneson, you want to make a donation?”

  The game warden sat up straighter and squared his shoulders. No man in the state of Vermont set more store in being called “officer” than he did. “Donation to what, E.A.?”

  “To the Crippled Little Leaguers’ Fund.”

  The warden reached out and took the can. It was a Campbell’s soup can that Gypsy had rewrapped in a sheet of lined paper from her song-writing notebook. On it she’d printed, with a red flow pen, HELP A LITTLE CRIPPLE PLAY OUR AMERICAN PASTIME.

  “What is it, like the Jimmy Fund or something?” the warden said.

  “It’s like that,” E.A. said. “Only for kids without any arms or legs.”

  “Jesum Crow, how do they get around then?”

  “Very slowly,” E.A. said.

  Very slowly, the warden began digging for his wallet. “All I’ve got’s a ten—”

  “They won’t mind,” E.A. said. He reached out and plucked the bill out of the warden’s hand and put it in the soup can.

  Outside, Teddy was handing something green to Bill, who took it around behind Patsy.

  “That ever gets to the cripples, I’ll eat my hat,” the warden grumbled.

  “I thank you, the legless Little Leaguers thank you,” E.A. said, and two minutes later he and Teddy and Bill were headed south on I-91 with the warden’s official State of Vermont license plate gleaming in the sunrise on Patsy’s derriere and ten dollars in spending money in E.A.’s pocket.

  E.A. liked sitting next to Teddy, who steered with one hand on the wheel and the other on the ledge of the open window, his cigarette smoke curling outside. E.A. wished Bill hadn’t horned in on their trip. He’d have preferred this to be exclusively a father-son outing. Things had gotten off to a good start, though. The license-plate switch and the Crippled Little Leaguer con had gone just the way Gypsy had said they would.

  Bill was peering out the window. Newly cut hay fields ran partway up the hillsides between darker green maple orchards, with blue-green spruce and fir higher up. A clear stream rushed beside the highway. The mountains were blue in the distance. “I don’t see why they don’t have a few nice billboards to look at along the way,” Bill said. “Something interesting to break up the scenery.”

  “Jesus, Bill, people in New York and Boston slave fifty weeks a year to come up here and spend two weeks looking at the scenery,” Teddy said. “Relax and enjoy the view.”

  “I can remember back when they had Burma-Shave signs all along the roadways,” Bill said. “It made touring the countryside interesting.”

  They cut across Vermont from White River to Rutland, where they stopped at a McDonald’s. Soon afterward they crossed into New York State, where they stopped to eat again. By noon Bill had consumed six Big Macs, washed down with twelve cups of coffee.

  Now they were driving on a secondary road southwest of Albany. The countryside looked like Vermont without mountains and with billboards, which should have made Bill happy but didn’t seem to. Teddy drove ten miles under the 55-mph speed limit. When they went around a curve and E.A. leaned against him, Teddy’s arms and legs were as hard as ironwood.

  Ahead they saw a dark shape in the road. It was a turtle, a snapper, weighing fifty or sixty pounds, and as big around as a bushel basket. The snapper did not appear to be injured; it had simply decided to rest on the solid white line. Teddy stopped in the middle of the road. On one side of the highway lay a swamp with stumps jutting out of the water. On the other side a lane led off into a sandpit. As Teddy and E.A. and Bill got out and walked up to the turtle, a Gray Line bus barreled up behind Patsy Cline and hit its whooshing air brakes. The bus stopped inches from the bumper and continued to blast its horn.

  The snapper shifted around to look at them. It was as big as any turtle E.A. had ever seen. He figured the animal liked the heat coming up off the macadam. A tractor-trailer crested a rise ahead. It, too, slowed down and stopped. The words CHRISTIAN LINE INC. VIDALIA, GEORGIA were stenciled on its side.

  “Here,” Teddy said to the turtle. “Move along.”

  Bill began telling about various ways to catch and cook turtles. The Christian trucker rolled down his window and hollered at the animal to get out of the road or he’d run it over. E.A. noticed that the turtle had algae between its legs and shell and mossy green pond scum on its ridged back and tail. It gave off a primeval stench of mud and rotting vegetation. Its eyes were dark and undaunted.

  The driver got out of the bus. He was a tired-looking older man wearing a gray suit and a blue necktie. “What’s the holdup?” he called. “I’ve got a busload of church ladies here to get down to Cooperstown.”

  “We got a situation on our hands is the holdup,” Teddy said. “We’ll deal with it.”

  Teddy maneuvered around behind the turtle, which turned with him, like a man and a snapping turtle doing a dance. Teddy reached for its tail, and the turtle whirled around faster than E.A. had ever seen an animal move. It shot out its head and neck and, had Teddy not been quick himself, would have taken off all five fingers of hi
s throwing hand. “Whoa!” Teddy shouted.

  “I got a pistol in my glove box,” the born-again trucker offered.

  Cars were queuing up behind the eighteen-wheeler and the bus.

  Teddy squatted down in front of the turtle. He stared at it and the turtle looked back at him.

  The Christian driver, a fat man in a Braves T-shirt, was getting down out of his cab, holding a gun.

  “You shoot this turtle, Bubba,” Teddy said, patting a bulge in his back pocket, “and I’ll shoot you. I won’t think any more about it than taking a piss.”

  “I have to take one myself,” Bill said. “It’s all that coffee.”

  “Over there in the swamp,” Teddy told him. He feinted with his left hand, trying to distract the turtle and then grab its tail. The turtle swiveled its shell around like a tank turret. Then it laid an egg. It was white and about the size of a golf ball.

  “I God,” said the trucker.

  A burly church lady in a purple blouse climbed down from the bus. The nametag on her blouse said DORIS HAKLEY, TOUR GUIDE.

  “Sir, sir,” she said. “We have a schedule to maintain.”

  “Maintain your water,” Teddy said.

  “I can’t much longer,” Bill whined.

  “Ethan,” Teddy said. “See that stick jutting up from the water over yonder? Fetch it here, will you?”

  E.A. brought the stick, which was about four feet long and as big around as his thumb. Teddy held it out to the turtle. Fast as a Doberman pinscher, the reptile bit it cleanly in two. Then it deposited another egg in the road.

  Teddy opened Patsy’s back door and got his thirty-eight-inch Louisville Slugger out of his bat bag.

  “Oh,” cried the woman in the purple blouse. “I’m going to report you to the SPCA if you harm that animal. I’ll use my cell phone.”

  Teddy extended the handle of the bat toward the snapper. The turtle grabbed it. Holding the big end of the bat, Teddy dragged the turtle, its back claws grooving the hot macadam, toward Patsy. Its tracks in the tar surface looked as if a great, prehistoric beast had crossed the road. The church woman dropped her cell phone on the pavement. Teddy told E.A. to get his bat bag and hold it open. He lifted the turtle, still clinging to the Louisville Slugger, and deposited it inside the bag, where it finally let go of the bat. Then he tied off the mouth of the bag and put it in the back seat, while E.A. buried the turtle eggs in the sandpit.