19

The Harpooners rumbled down a poorly maintained highway toward Opentoe, Illinois, for their noon doubleheader. Half the team slept. The other half stared out the windows at passing farmland, DJ-sized headphones clamped over their baseball caps. The cloud-clotted early light filtered through the bus windows and smeared itself on the drab pebbled olive of the seats. Schwartz’s temples throbbed with half a hangover. Eighty ounces of Crazy Horse wasn’t part of his usual pregame regimen. Still, he felt better than he had yesterday. Two games today, a rest day tomorrow, and after that, perhaps, another datelike evening with you-know-who. He wanted to try not to think about her, not even her name; wanted to keep the fact of her existence tucked in the back of his mind, like an extra thousand dollars in your bank account. Bad example: his bank account was officially kaput, his credit card killed off by last night’s dinner. If he wanted to buy a coffee at a rest stop, he’d have to ask Henry to spot him. Henry, all of a sudden, could afford it.

Okay, one quick thought about Pella: for someone who was supposedly a fierce insomniac, she certainly slept soundly. He’d neglected to set either his alarm or the backup alarm on his watch, and he didn’t wake this morning until Arsch drummed on the bedroom door and announced that he was ready to go. Which meant they were already late, because Arsch always overslept. Schwartz twisted out of Pella’s grip, threw on a pair of sweatpants, swept his dirty uniform back into his equipment bag (the Harpooners did, or were supposed to do, their own laundry), and headed for the door. On the way out, he paused to sweep a curl out of Pella’s eyes, not sure whether to wake her or not. She didn’t move a muscle. Maybe she’d stay there all day, sleeping and sleeping, her breathing the only sound in the house. The thought pleased him.

Now he pulled out his laptop and brought his thesis up on the screen. He felt, for the first time since he received his first rejection letter, like he might be able to work.

“High school!” called Izzy, pointing out the window at a long windowless structure of turreted gray brick.

“High school,” agreed Phil Loondorf.

Steve Willoughby leaned across the aisle to check it out. “That’s a prison,” he said. “That’s a full-on correctional center.”

As the bus shuddered past the building, a block-lettered sign confirmed that it was indeed the Wakefield Correctional Center.

“No fair!” Izzy said. “Steve saw the sign!”

“No I didn’t. Look at that place. It’s got sniper towers.”

“Who cares, man? So’d my high school.”

“That’s a point for Willoughby,” Henry said.

“Oh man.” Izzy slumped down in his seat. “Buddha wouldn’t give him that.”

“I’m not the Buddha,” Henry said, and that was that. In the absence of Owen, the usual arbiter of High School or Prison, Henry had agreed to serve as guest referee. Whichever freshperson scored the most points en route to Opentoe was exempt from equipment duty for the afternoon. “That makes the score two to one to one,” Henry announced. “To zero, since Quisp is asleep.”

“Who’s better?” Izzy asked Steve and Loondorf. “Henry or Jeter?”

“Oooh. Tough call.”

“I gotta take Jeter.”

“Henry’s better on D, at least.”

“On D, sure. But Jeter’s a better hitter.”

“Henry in five years, or Jeter?”

“You mean Jeter now, or Jeter in five years? ’Cause he’ll be washed-up by then.”

“He’s washed-up already.”

“Jeter five years ago. Henry in five years.”

“Are you guys insane?” Henry whacked Loondorf on the back of the head. “Shut up.”

“Sorry, Henry.”

Every guy on that bus, from Schwartz down to little Loondorf, had grown up dreaming of becoming a professional athlete. Even when you realized you’d never make it, you didn’t relinquish the dream, not deep down. And here was Henry, living it out. He alone was headed where they each, in the privacy of their backyard imaginations, had spent the better part of their boyhoods: a major-league diamond.

Schwartz, for his part, had vowed long ago not to become one of those pathetic ex-jocks who considered high school and college the best days of their lives. Life was long, unless you died, and he didn’t intend to spend the next sixty years talking about the last twenty-two. That was why he didn’t want to go into coaching, though everyone at Westish, especially the coaches, expected him to. He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn’t do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you. A bad coach made everyone suffer in the same way, and so was more like a torturer.

For the last four years Schwartz had devoted himself to Westish College; for the last three he’d devoted himself to Henry. Now both would go on without him. Thanks for everything, Mikey. See ya around. After draft day, Henry would have plenty of people telling him what to do. An agent, a manager, a battery of coaches and instructors and teammates. He wouldn’t need Schwartz anymore. Schwartz didn’t know if he was ready for that—ready to not be needed.

Izzy, who was sitting a row ahead of Henry, draped himself over the back of the seat to command Henry’s full attention. “If you went to the majors next year,” he mused, “then I’d be the starting shortstop. That’d be crisp. But you wouldn’t be here.”

“It wouldn’t be the majors,” Henry reminded him. “Not even close. I’d be in rookie ball out in Montana or somewhere. I’d be riding a bus like this every day.”

Schwartz nodded to himself, pleased at this levelheadedness.

“Even in the minors you get mad pussy,” Izzy said. “I’m talking mad pussy, yo.”

“Sounds great.” Henry gazed absently out the window, spun a baseball in his right hand.

“Guys want to fight you too. You walk into a bar and some guy clocks you with a bottle. I read it in Baseball America.”

“Why would anyone want to fight Henry?” Loondorf looked hurt.

“Because he’s a ballplayer.”

“So?”

“So he’s a baller. He’s got cash, chains, crisp clothes. He’s got a hat that says Yankees and it’s the real deal, yo. He didn’t buy it at no yard sale. He walks into a bar and girls are like damn. Dudes get jealous. They want to get in his face, prove they’re somebody.”

“They want to take down the man,” Steve said helpfully.

“That’s right. Take down the man.”

Loondorf shook his head. “Henry doesn’t even go to bars.”

Henry slid into the seat across from Schwartz. “Weird without Owen here.”

Schwartz nodded. It wasn’t all that weird: the Buddha just read in silence on the bus and arbitrated the occasional High School or Prison dispute.

“Any word from your schools?”

“Not yet.”

“I wish they’d hurry up.”

“Me too.”

“I’ve been carrying this around for weeks.” Henry reached into his bag and produced a bottle of Duckling bourbon. “I figured I’d be ready when the good news came.”

A too-precise longing zipped down Schwartz’s spine. Duckling was his favorite, and he’d been craving it lately, in the absence of any money with which to buy a bottle. “Skrimmer—,” he began, but wasn’t sure how to continue. Henry didn’t have a fake ID, nor did they sell Duckling anywhere near campus. He must have gone to considerable trouble.

“Just take it now,” Henry said, pressing the bottle into Schwartz’s hands. “I’m sick of carrying it around.”

“I can’t,” Schwartz said.

“Call it a Passover present.”

“It’s chametz.”

“It’s what?”

“If I observed Passover I’d have to throw that in the trash. Or let the goyim steal it.”

“Oh.” Henry thought hard. “Then it’s an early graduation present.”

Schwartz was starting to get annoyed. He couldn’t tell Henry right now. The little guy had enough on his mind—an errorless game today meant he would break Aparicio’s record, and there were bound to be plenty of scouts in the stands. Once Miranda Szabo called you on the phone, you were big-time, and you had to perform.

“It can’t be long now,” Henry said. “I told you about Emily Neutzel and Georgetown, right?”

Schwartz ground his teeth together. The bus slowed to take the Opentoe College exit. The other Harpooners bobbed their heads to their pregame playlists, whittling down their thoughts to the ones that would help them win. Henry was still holding the bottle. “That stuff’s expensive,” Schwartz said gruffly. “You should keep it.”

“What am I going to do with a bottle of whiskey?”

“Drink it on draft day. Celebrate your newfound fame and wealth.”

The tone of this was wrong, mean, and a confused look crossed Henry’s face. In his mind it was Schwartz who’d be drinking bourbon on draft day, clinking a toast against Henry’s SuperBoost shake as they celebrated their departure from Westish into a bigger, better world. Henry tucked the bottle back inside his bag. He turned in his seat to gaze out the window.

Christ, thought Schwartz. He should have told the Skrimmer straight up, each time a letter came. Now he’d maneuvered himself into a real damned-if-you-do-or-don’t. The only reason not to tell him right now was to avoid distracting him right before the game—but he’d already distracted him by being so brusque and rude. Might as well come clean.

“I didn’t get in.” It came out sounding heavier, more melodramatic than he’d planned.

Henry looked at him. “What?”

Try to be lighter this time. “I didn’t get in.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

Henry shook his head. “That can’t be right.”

“It ain’t right. But it’s true.”

“You heard from Harvard?”

“Yup.”

“You heard from Stanford?”

To keep him from going through the whole list, Schwartz reached into his bag and pulled out the stack of envelopes. Henry flipped through them. He didn’t read the letters, just glanced at the fancy seals by the return addresses, ticking off each of the six in his mind. He handed the stack back to Schwartz, looked at him desolately. “Now what?”

The bus ground to a halt in the Opentoe lot. The Harpooners rose from their seats, stretching and yawning.

“Now,” said Schwartz as upbeatly as he could muster, “we play ball.”