Things Invisible to See (27 page)

“Clare!”

In Paradise, the Lord of the Universe tosses a gold ball which breaks into a green ball which breaks into a black ball, and on the Burma Road, a child carried on his mother’s back quietly gives up the ghost (his mother will not discover this till morning), and Ben pitches a high fastball to Charley, who hits a line drive down center field and lopes to second.

The players have not said much to each other since they stepped into their old places, Tom at first and Henry at second, Sol on third and Louis at shortstop, Tony shading his eyes in right field, George chewing a licorice stick in left field, and Stilts behind the plate, sweating in the awful armor of the catcher.

Charley takes center field, and Louis steps into the batter’s box. He loses his sneaker halfway to first and flies out. What does it matter? They are not playing to win. Today they are playing to be healed, to let the eyes and mouths of the dead fall away from them, to step back into the eternal present of summer the way they lived as kids, playing till darkness came; to find the timeless space that turns ordinary men into heroes, where the only real world is the game itself, as old and reliable as the stars.

At home Ben wanted to get away, to be with Clare, but Wanda had set the kitchen table for three and spent all her blue ration tokens on a pot roast. She’d made brown gravy and biscuits and strawberry junket; how could he rush off? Had she not made all these delicacies for him? Willie, who cared for none of them, was eating stoically, the way he had eaten fried chicken in the Y camp when they were kids, moving systematically through each item in turn and stacking his dishes in a neat pile when he’d finished. Only when he was truing the edges of his dishes did Ben say, “We’ve got a game coming up, Willie. We might need you to sub.”

“I haven’t played baseball since ninth grade,” said Willie.

“Come on, Willie, you’re not that bad. We need you. It’s an exhibition game.”

“Against who?”

“An out-of-town team. The Dead Knights.”

He could not go on, though both his mother and Willie were waiting for details. Death, you stingy bastard, you might have sent the subs a dream, too. Let Sol tell them. It’ll have to be done just right. If they don’t believe us, they’ll blow the whole game.

After dinner Ben went to his room to put on a clean shirt and was aware of Willie hovering around the doorway.

“I don’t know if Mother told you,” he said. “Marsha and I are seeing a lot of each other.”

“That’s all right,” said Ben.

“I didn’t want any surprises or hard feelings.”

“No, that’s all right. I’m happy with Clare.”

“I thought maybe you’d called Marsha about me.”

“Why would I call Marsha? We’re through.”

What was it, then? Willie wondered. She had been so available to him, and now she was so evasive, so secretive. When he called her, her mother answered and said, “I’ll give her the message, she’ll call you back,” which she never did, and when he finally reached her, Marsha herself found excuses for not seeing him, finally blurting out, “I don’t need to give you reasons for the way I live my life.”

He’d asked her right out, “Is it Ben?” There’d been a story about Ben in the newspapers, the hero coming home. But Marsha had said no. How did Ben find that easy happiness? How did he live his life that he could say so quickly, “I’m happy with Clare”? How could he set such store by this crippled girl?

“Are you using the car?” asked Ben.

“Yes,” lied Willie. “I have a date with Marsha.”

“Okay. I’ll take the bike.”

His bicycle felt like a stranger to him; Willie had lowered the seat for his own use. The headlight, too, was out. The air was hot and still, the streets nearly empty. He could be happy here again; Cooper would no longer nudge at the edges of his sleep. Danger was far away.

As he turned down Orchard Drive, the lights in Clare’s house greeted him, and had he not been so eager to see her, he would have lingered under the trees and watched life passing in the windows, like a traveler, alone and in love with the familiar graces of strangers.

He walked his bike to the front door, threw it into the honeysuckle bush (the kickstand was gone), and knocked. After a long time the porch light flooded on, and Helen pushed open the screen door.

“Lord, it’s Ben! And you’re all out of breath!”

“Is Clare—?”

“She’s on the back porch,” said Helen. He heard her running through the house like a crier. “Ben’s here! Ben’s here!”

Clare was sitting with Davy on the glider, and she reached out her arms and Ben knelt and gathered them both into a hug.

“Davy,
” called Nell from indoors.

“No!” screamed Davy.

“Bedtime,” said Helen, peeking out at them.

“Let him stay up a few minutes more,” pleaded Clare, who remembered the loneliness of her own banishment as a child when the grown-ups wanted to talk.

“I want Ben to tuck me in,” said Davy, sliding his hand into Ben’s.

“Davy,” said Helen, “Ben came to see Clare.”

“It’s no trouble,” said Ben.

Davy skipped up the stairs ahead of him, past the wedding photos of Vicky and Nell and the smaller, faded photographs of ancestors, of whom no one remembered anything except that they were part of the family.

Overhead a cracked voice sang,

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we first begun.”

“First we say good-night to Grandpa,” said Davy.

The light on the third-floor landing laid a golden path to Grandpa’s quarters in the attic. The floor lamp with the purple shade threw its glow over his bed, his books, and his chair, where he sat leafing through his hymnal. Like a moth he lived in a circle of light. The outer darkness bristled with the broken, the discarded, the out-of-season. Electric fans, cartons of outgrown clothes, boxes of puzzles marked “pieces missing.”

“Good night, Grandpa.”

Grandpa looked up.

“Who’s with you?”

“I’m Ben.”

“Clare’s Ben?” asked Grandpa.

“My Ben,” shouted Davy. “He’s
my
Ben!”

“On what evidence was Benjamin accused of theft by his brother Joseph?” asked Grandpa.

“Joseph hid a goblet in his sack and sent soldiers to search for it,” said Davy.

“Very good,” said Grandpa. “You may help yourself to a penny from my jar in the morning.”

“Good night, Grandpa,” Davy said again and raced to his mother’s room on the opposite side of the landing and climbed into bed.

“Aren’t you going to put on your pajamas?” asked Ben.

“Uh-uh. I always sleep in my bathing suit.”

Ben tucked the covers around him, averting his eyes from the bra and slip thrown over the back of Nell’s chair. His hand met something hard.

“You don’t want these in bed with you,” he said, pulling a half-filled book of defense stamps from under the covers.

“I do so,” said Davy. “Will you tuck me in tomorrow night too?”

“Sure,” said Ben.

He snapped off the light and hurried downstairs, afraid that Davy might call after him. He did not call. Grandpa stopped singing. Helen and Nell had disappeared. The house felt deserted save for Clare and himself. He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulder.

“Where is everybody?” he asked.

“In the basement,” said Clare. “They think we want to be alone.”

“We do, but I don’t want to keep your mother and your aunt shut up in the basement.”

“They’ll come up if we close the porch door.”

He rose and shut the door that joined the porch to the dining room.

“Ben, thanks for taking Davy upstairs. He doesn’t remember his father very well, and he’s always looking for a new one.”

“He had a book of defense stamps in bed with him,” said Ben.

“He’s scared of the dark. But he’s a lot less scared than he used to be, now that Grandpa’s back.”

Ben sat down beside her and pulled her toward him, but her body stiffened against his. Time. It would take time. He slid his arm around her waist, and she leaned her head against him. Close to them but outside the screen, a cricket chirped, regular as a heartbeat. Though it was still enough to hear time passing, now Ben did not notice the seconds ticking away like water. Cooper and his death were a thousand miles away. He can’t touch us, thought Ben. He’s powerless. He’s dead.

“When you came as a bird,” said Ben, “why didn’t Cooper see you?”

“He did see me. He just didn’t recognize me.”

“The next time your Ancestress comes, ask her if she’ll throw the dice my way,” said Ben. “Make me lucky.”

“She won’t do it,” said Clare. “She can’t give you anything you don’t already have.”

“Would she turn me into a gorilla?”

“You don’t turn into a gorilla. You go into the body of the gorilla.”

“Could I go into the body of a gorilla?” asked Ben.

“Maybe. But it’s better to start with something small. I started by going into the body of a cat.”

“I don’t want to go into the body of a cat,” said Ben.

“A bird’s, then.”

“No.”

“Whose?”

“Yours.”

I
F THE TIGERS HAD NOT
defeated the Yankees the day before, if a twenty-three-year-old rookie right-hander named Virgil Trucks had not pitched eight innings of shut-out ball in Briggs Stadium, if the Dodgers and the Cardinals had not ended up in a free-for-all in the sixth inning after Ducky Medwick slid into second and spiked Marty Marion and if shortstop Creepy Crespi had not come between them, punching with both fists, more people might have noticed another story that appeared in the
Ann Arbor News:
the story of a local team, the South Avenue Rovers, whose members, through good luck and happy coincidence, had received furloughs and who had agreed to play an exhibition game with an unknown team from out of state, the Dead Knights. Proceeds to be given to the Red Cross.

Along with the story appeared a photograph of the contract. Many who read it found it disquieting. A new lease on life—what kind of trophy was that? And who was this challenger who called himself Death?

What one heart finds hard to believe, a hundred find easy.

It started with the sons, gathering every morning to work out, and it spread to the fathers, who had not played this hard since their boys were youngsters but who had never forgotten how. In slacks and undershirts they showed up on the field with their bats and gloves. Mr. Clackett was the first convert. He’d coached a church league when George was a kid, and he’d pitched softball for a couple of years till he fell on his knee and his body gave up running. But not hitting. And Mr. Clackett knew the game as well as if he’d invented it. When Ben asked him to coach the South Avenue Rovers, he accepted with pleasure. He made plans for a team picnic in Island Park on the eve of the game. He would hire a bus draped in bunting to carry them there.

“Make it the eve of the eve of the game,” said Mr. Lieberman. “I want that we should enjoy ourselves.”

When Mr. Clackett and Mr. Bacco and Mr. Lieberman closed their shops every afternoon to play ball, their customers took notice. By late afternoon there was a crowd, a gathering of the faithful. The bleachers filled up by four o’clock, and latecomers brought blankets and sat on the grass. The hot-dog truck, which usually appeared for evening games, opened at nine in the morning and stayed around till dark.

And word spread, from old to young, from husband to wife, from mother to daughter, from professor to car mechanic, from bank teller to tailor, that never had any team played for higher stakes.

This was the reason why Father Legg, who for five days straight never missed a practice and who had his own regular spot in the bleachers the way some of his parishioners had their own pews, took Ben aside one morning during warm-up and said, “Mr. Clackett is a fine coach but not, I think, the man for the job.”

“Who else is there?” asked Ben.

Father Legg held up a warning finger, as if Ben had just said something dangerous.

“You believe that if you lose the game, you and your friends will die. Of course that’s nonsense. But I have seen nonsense more powerful than sense. I have watched patients die because their doctors told them they would die. When I was a missionary in the Congo, I saw people die because an enemy had laid a curse on them—a promise that death would come to them on such and such a day. And if they believed that death would come to them on that day, they died, though they were in the best of health.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Let me be your coach. Clackett is a fine man for a game between the South Avenue Rovers and the Broadway Rangers. But I do not believe he is the man for a game between life and death.”

Ben was silent.

“I also know a lot about baseball,” added Father Legg. “Your brother may have told you.”

“No, he didn’t tell me,” said Ben. “I don’t know what Mr. Clackett can do if he’s not coaching. He’s got a bad knee.”

“Let me talk to him,” said Father Legg.

The next day Father Legg bustled into the job. He scolded; he praised, he made rules. He allowed Tom to anoint his glove with Fix-All, which filled the air around him with a smell like rancid meat. He forgave an injured knee but not an injured dignity, and he knew the difference between Mr. Clackett’s slow, painful gait and Mr. LaMont’s slow, portly one. For Mr. LaMont he borrowed a nippy terrier and released her at the crack of the undertaker’s bat. But with Mr. Schoonmaker, who was nearly as slow as Mr. Clackett, Father Legg was all patience, as if he knew without being told that Mr. Schoonmaker had never owned a new bat or ball in his life but always one handed down through four brothers. He could never lift the new bat he’d bought for Henry without pausing to admire it, to run his fingers over the satiny wood and to wonder: what kind of wood do they use that it hits so nice? And the glove—what kind of hide is this, and how is it tanned that it comes out so soft, fitting so good? And the ball—what do they stuff it with that makes it so strong that nothing breaks or loses its shape? Even in left field, he was shy at finding himself so near Mr. Lieberman, the jeweler, and Mr. LaMont, the undertaker with the pretty wife. Mr. Lieberman was so polite, so slim, so quick! Father Legg liked to kid him about being at home on any diamond.