Waiting for Teddy Williams (24 page)

“I can't do it, can I? It was all a lie, me going all the way. What I am is just another Kingdom County loser.”

“You're not a loser,” Teddy said. “You listen to me, Ethan. You was hung over today and I had my batting shoes on. Ordinarily, you'd get me out half the time, maybe more.” Teddy glanced up at the dooryard, where Gypsy stood watching, still holding the deer rifle. Speaking louder, Teddy said, “Now. No more breaking training. No drinking. No smoking. No staying out to all hours.”

“You drink.”

“I haven't touched a drop in five months,” Teddy said. He reached into his bat bag and pulled out his catcher's glove. “We'll toss now. Then we'll run.”

“I don't feel so hot,” E.A. admitted.

“I don't imagine you do.”

Somehow E.A. made himself head back out to the mound.

E.A.
WENT TO WORK
at the bat factory, tailing saws, sweeping up sawdust, stacking lumber. The Common was surprised. Gypsy had publicly vowed that her son would never set foot in the factory, which she feared would trap him, doom him to small-town life forever. Teddy said he'd see to it that didn't happen, but by God, E.A. was old enough to have a job where he had to show up every morning at seven and couldn't stay out all night drinking the night before. It was part of Teddy's plan.

Making a good wooden baseball bat, E.A. learned, was an art, from selecting the right ash tree in the woods to shaving the handle of the bat to the right thickness to give it maximum whip and strength. E.A. liked the heady, sweet scent of the varnish applied to the finished bats, which filled the whole village like the scent of bread near a bakery. He liked the thump and clack of the stamper impressing the words
GREEN MOUNTAIN REBEL
on the barrel of each bat. Best of all he liked watching Teddy shape a bat on the lathe, his big hands as capable and delicate as a surgeon's as, magically, the round barrel began to appear out of the wood. He worked to the rhythm of the throbbing belts and pulleys and shafts in the old mill. The planer screeched, the molders grumbled. Out in the factory yard the big log saw added its heavy rasping to the medley. The ripsaw whirred and Teddy's lathe buzzed, and the result of all this humming and whirring and roaring was the steady music of a wooden baseball bat being produced.

At noon Teddy ate on the bleachers or under the old elm on the south end of the common. Occasionally E.A. ate with his father, but they didn't talk much. Even when he was working with the other men at the factory, Teddy was a loner. Sometimes Baxter Benton, the foreman, would bring him a finished bat that didn't seem balanced correctly, and Teddy would shave the handle a little thinner with a shard of glass from the bottom of a broken beer bottle, taper it just a little finer. “How do you know when it's right?” E.A. said.

And Teddy said, as he'd said of the ash trees on Allen Mountain, “Oh, I know.”

At seventeen, E.A. could not imagine anything better than working days with his father in the bat factory and playing town-team ball in the early evenings and on weekends. Except, of course, playing for the Sox. In Baxter Benton's office was a glass display case. Inside were a dozen or so bats with white smudges on them, like some of the famous bats at Cooperstown, including one that Teddy Ballgame had hit a home run with, one that Pudge Fisk had used, one of Johnny Pesky's, and one that had belonged to the Little Professor, Dom DiMaggio. E.A.'s favorite was a forty-inch Green Mountain Rebel wielded by none other than Babe Ruth himself, before he was traded to New York. E.A. always paused for a few seconds to gaze at the Babe's bat when he went into the mill in the morning and left in the late afternoon.

No one, least of all E.A., made much money at the baseball bat factory. But it was important work, which helped maintain the tradition of wooden bats for the great American pastime, and E.A. regarded it as part of the apprenticeship that would lead to the day he walked out to the mound at Fenway Park and threw his first pitch in a Red Sox uniform.

 

E.A. had always loved everything about the Kingdom Fair, especially the early morning of opening Saturday. He loved the smells of the trampled hay field where the fair was held, the fried food, the animal barns. He loved the calliope music and the wheedling, singsong spiels of the midway barkers, like the tall, pretty girl at the baseball-throw booth chanting into a hand-held microphone, “Hey, hey, can't do no harm to try your arm against Cajun Stan the Baseball Man.”

She was about E.A.'s age, and with the hand not holding the mike she was juggling three brand-new baseballs. Her skin was the tawny color of E.A.'s old baseball glove and her hair, a deep, rich brown, hung straight to her waist. She wore a spangled denim jacket over a dark blue blouse, with white cowboy boots and tight jeans accentuating her slim legs. Beside her, next to a netted pitching cage with a radar gun, stood a slender, gray-skinned man with graying hair, wearing an elegant white suit with a blue handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket, a daffodil-yellow shirt, a light blue necktie, and spotless white shoes. Sitting on his head at a jaunty angle was a wide-brimmed white hat.

The juggling girl handed the mike to Cajun Stan, caught two of the balls in her left hand, tossed the third up ten feet, and caught it behind her back, flashing E.A. a grin and making an elaborate bow.

At the far end of the cage hung a canvas backdrop with a man's head painted on it. It was Stan's head—gray hair, rakish white hat, and all. The head's mouth was open. Above the entrance of the cage was a radar screen. “Try your luck against Stan the Baseball Man,” the girl said to E.A. “Throw the ball faster than Stan, take all the money from the Baseball Man. Throw the ball in the Cajun's mouth, all Stan's moola going south. Five dollars to play, ten if you win. This is Stan, the fastest pitcher in all the land. I'm his daughter, Louisianne.”

Teddy, coming along behind E.A., got out his wallet. “Go ahead, Ethan,” he said, but before E.A. could step up to the cage, Earl No Pearl, already two sheets to the wind, shouldered his way front and center, handed Louisianne a crumpled five-dollar bill, and grabbed one of the baseballs.

“We got a pitcher here, folks,” Cajun Stan said. “Going to take Stan to school.”

Earl wound up and threw with all his might. The ball hit the white hat of the head painted on the canvas. The screen above the head flashed 79 mph. Earl shook his head in disbelief.

Stan took off his hat and handed it to Louisianne. He squinted in at the facsimile of his face, then lifted his hands high over his head once, twice, three times, like an old-fashioned pitcher from the early days of baseball. He kicked one skinny leg high and threw. The ball vanished into the mouth, and the radar screen said 92 mph.

Earl stared. “That pitch weren't no ninety-two miles per hour.” He reached out to snatch back his five-spot from Louisianne. Instead, to his further befuddlement, he found himself holding Stan's hat. The bill had vanished.

“Thank you kindly,” Stan said, taking back his hat.

“It didn't look
eighty
miles per hour,” Earl complained.

“Course not,” Stan said, readjusting his hat on his head. “A smooth pitcher with a smooth wind-up, no hitches, the pitch never gone look fast as it is.”

E.A. suspected that the radar was rigged. Yet Stan's windup and delivery had been as smooth as fancy-grade maple syrup, and the pitch had been dead-on accurate. Maybe it hadn't been 92 mph, but it was fast.

Louisianne was chanting again. “Five dollars to ask Cajun Stan any baseball question. Stump the Baseball Man, you get back ten in your hand. No trouble to double your money. Any query at all, ladies and gentlemen. You'll find Stan the Man to be a bottomless repository of baseball trivia. He's here to astound and delight you.”

Teddy handed her a five-dollar bill. “Try him, Ethan. Ask him a question.”

Ethan figured Cajun Stan would probably know every hitter's batting average and every pitcher's ERA back to Ruth and before. He decided to throw the Baseball Man a curve. “How high is the Green Monster in Fenway Park?”

Stan laughed. “Why don't you ast something hard? Thirty-seven feet.”

“Try again,” Teddy said, giving Louisianne another five-spot.

“Longest recorded home run in Fenway?” E.A. said.

“What all this Fenway business?” Stan said. “Nobody care 'bout Fenway, Home of They Losers. Answer you sorry-ass question, old Teddy Ballgame's five-hundred-and-two-foot shot to right field. Crushed a fan's straw hat. This like grabbing a Hershey from a baby.”

“Ask him something challenging, Ethan,” Louisianne said.

E.A. looked at her quickly. How did this girl know his name?

But Teddy had another bill all ready to go, so E.A. said, “How many different angles does the playing field around Fenway have?”

Stan adjusted his radar gun, not looking at E.A., who was certain that this time he'd stumped him. Then the Baseball Man said, “Same number you is old. Seventeen.”

“I can beat you throwing against that gun,” E.A. said. “Double or nothing.”

“Why, sure,” Stan said. “You the local
he
-ro, right? The go-all-the-way-to-the-top boy. You probably right. You beat me. Stand back, folks. Give the local he-ro room. He about to take Stan to school, him.”

From nowhere, Louisianne produced a baseball and tossed it to E.A. “Presenting,” she said, “the one, the only, Ethan E.A. Allen.”

The ball felt too light in E.A.'s hand, but he went into his compact wind-up and threw it into the head's mouth. The radar screen registered 93 mph.

“Well, now,” Stan said. “Got us a regular Cy Young here. Got us a country boy can throw, all right.”

Stan flipped his hat to Louisianne and went into his routine, pumping once, twice, three times, kicking, pitching. The ball hummed like a swarm of bees, and the radar screen flashed 100 mph.

“That can't be right,” E.A. said.

“Oh, my,” Stan said. “We got one here. Yes, sir. A bona fide Mr. Know-all.” He looked at Teddy. “I ast you, Edward. How Stan gone teach this boy anything, he already know everything?”

Stan shook his head. “Yes, sir, E.W.,” he said. “You gots a regular Alfred Einstein here.”

“Albert,” E.A. said.

Stan looked at him.

“Albert Einstein,” E.A. said. “Not Alfred.”

“Case closed,” said Stan, and Louisianne picked up her microphone and baseballs and resumed her spiel, looking down the midway for another mark, as if Ethan had just fallen off the edge of the earth and she couldn't care less.

E
ARLY THE FOLLOWING
morning, just as E.A. loped into Gran's dooryard after a five-mile run, a battered pink limousine with a loud muffler pulled in behind him. Printed across the driver's door were the words
CAJUN STAN THE BASEBALL MAN
. One of its headlights was bashed in. There was a deep crease in the front right door. The back bumper had fallen off, and the limo was rusting out underneath like a Kingdom County junker. At the wheel was Stan, wearing his snowy white suit and hat, a powder blue shirt with a pink tie, and a matching pink handkerchief. Louisianne, beside him, wore a short yellow sundress and matching heels. Sitting in back was Teddy Williams.

“Ethan,” Teddy said, “this here is my old bud Stan. You met him yesterday. I and Stan played together in college. Back when I first broke in, I caught him.”

Stan got out of the limo rather stiffly. “How do, bub,” he said. “We meet again.” Stan had the longest fingers E.A. had ever seen. His handshake consisted of three formal tugs, like a trout biting.

Gypsy came out of the house, shook hands with Stan, and gave Louisianne a big hug as though they'd known each other for years. Then Teddy and E.A. and Gypsy and Stan and Louisianne all went down to Fenway.

Stan sat down on the Packard seat. “No poison serpents round here, is they, E.W.?” he said. “I and venomous serpents is on the outs.”

“It's too cold for snakes up here, Stan,” Teddy said as he squatted down behind the plate to warm up E.A. “It's too cold for baseball nine months of the year.”

“Oh, it never too cold or too hot for baseball,” Stan said. “Ain't that right, Louisianne?”

Louisianne winked one big, shiny, dark eye at her father. She stood beside the Packard seat and looked around the diamond with interest.

“I like your outfit, hon,” Gypsy said. “It's very becoming.” She grinned at E.A. “I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.”

E.A. threw hard to Teddy for fifteen minutes while Stan looked at Devil Dan's Midnight Auto, looked across the river, looked at Bill's license plates on the barn. Like a bored kid staring around a schoolroom. Finally he walked out to the mound and stood behind E.A. like a softball umpire officiating a game alone.

“Boy,” Cajun Stan said, “what you got to go with that heat?”

E.A. showed him his curve, showed him the slider Teddy had taught him.

“What you got for a straight change?” Stan said. “Can you get it over?”

“I can get any pitch over,” E.A. said. Teddy set up low on the outside corner, flashed four fingers.

Louisianne said, “I give you E.A. Allen and his straight change.”

E.A. hit the middle of Teddy's glove with a slow breaking pitch.

“No,” Stan said. “That a let-up curve. Bona fide straight change, he gone fool most hitters. Let-up, they hammer it right over that thirty-seven-foot-tall fence we talking about yesterday.”

“Nobody's ever hammered it yet.”

“Who is they
to
hammer it round here? We talking two different brands of baseball, son.”

Stan went back to the Packard seat, checking under it carefully before he sat down. “Throw from the stretch,” he barked out. “Like you got mens on base, which you gone have pretty much all they time.”