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23

 

There were no more than two hundred people in the Opentoe ballpark, players and scouts included, but they made a lot of noise. They stood and stomped the bleachers, the cheers grew louder instead of dying out, and he realized they weren’t going to stop. He lifted his head guardedly and looked at Schwartzy, who was standing on the lip of the dugout, his expression drained and pissed but not unhappy, clapping his Schwartz-sized hands together. Henry blinked hard a few times. Elastic PE equals one-half K L squared, he thought. Gravitational PE equals mgh.

Schwartz pointed to the brim of his cap. Henry looked at him dumbly. Schwartz did it again, and this time Henry understood. He lifted one hand and tipped his cap. The cheering swelled and peaked and ended. Schwartz trudged back to the bus. Arsch hurriedly put on pads and a chest protector and lumbered out to take his place behind the plate.

Two innings later, Henry made another error. It resembled the first one: he fielded a routine grounder, double-pumped, and pulled Rick off the bag with a low wide throw. He pounded his fist in his glove, pulled his hat down as low as it would go. What the heck was happening? Was there something wrong with his arm? No, his arm felt strong, his arm felt fine. Don’t overthink it. Just let it fly.

After the game ended—the Harpooners won 8 to 1—he headed toward the bus to talk to Schwartz, but he was intercepted by a broad-shouldered blond guy in a dress shirt with a Cardinals logo. His nostrils were rimmed by a rheumy pink glow. “Henry,” he said as they shook hands, “Dwight Rogner. We spoke on the phone. Nice game out there.”

“Wish I could’ve played a little better.”

“Don’t sweat those errors,” Dwight said. “Gosh, you’ve made two mistakes in two and a half years? We all should be so lucky. I played in the minors for nine years, batted twice in the majors. And I’ll tell you something—pretty much every guy I ever shared a locker room with wound up becoming either an alcoholic or a born-again Christian. Booze or God. That’s what this game does to you. The name of the game is failure, and if you can’t handle failure you won’t last long. Nobody’s perfect.”

Henry nodded. Dwight, his rheumy eyes twinkling merrily in the cloud-strafed sunlight, shook his hand again. “So we’ll talk again soon,” he said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Henry said.

A few other scouts—Orioles, Phillies, Cubs—stopped over to say hello, and then Henry joined his teammates, who were arranged on the grass in a rough circle, relaxed and cheerful after the win, eating turkey sandwiches. Rick O’Shea lifted his valve-topped sports drink above his head. “To the Skrimmer,” he said, “whose name shall be listed alongside that of the great Aparicio, for as long as we all shall live.”

“Hear! Hear!”

“Go Henry.”

“Attaboy, Skrim.”

Instead of occupying the center of the circle, as he usually did, Schwartz lay a little ways off, doing stretches for his back—either he didn’t want to be bothered or he only wanted to be bothered by Henry. Henry, not sure which was the case, approached with hunterly care.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Schwartz said.

“Sorry you got tossed.”

“Bastard spit on me.” Schwartz swung his knees to the other side of his body. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner about my apps.”

“Maybe there was some mistake,” Henry suggested. “Maybe they messed up your LSAT scores or something.”

Schwartz shook his head. “I’m the only one who messed up my LSAT scores.”

“You did well, I thought.”

“I did okay.”

“And your extracurriculars, captain of two teams. Everything you’ve done for Westish. Everything you’ve done for me.

Schwartz stretched his legs out, massaged his kneecaps. “I don’t think they give me credit for that.”

They sat there for a while, saying nothing, the day cool and blue around them.

Schwartz hauled himself up from the grass, his ligaments popping and creaking in protest. “Let’s go,” he said. “Get a new streak started.”

THE HARPOONERS WON the second game 15 to 6. Only two balls were hit to Henry. Both times he double-clutched and made a soft, hesitant throw. Instead of rifle shots fired at a target, they felt like doves released from a box. He didn’t know which way they’d go, and he watched in suspense as each, somehow, found its way into the distant nest of Rick’s first-baseman’s glove.

That evening, on the long ride back to Westish, he dozed against the shimmying side of the bus, a sweatshirt tucked beneath his cheek against the cold. His teammates bounced from seat to seat, gleefully scheming, poised between a successful day and what promised to be, since tomorrow was a rare day off, a successful night.

“Melanie Quong,” somebody said.

“Kim Enderby.”

“Hannah Szailes.”

The names were plans and prayers and poems all at once. Henry’s right arm reeked of Icy Hot. An image surged into his mind and repeated itself at a rate both dizzying and monotonous—an image of a white ball veering off course and drilling Owen in the cheekbone, and of Owen’s white startled eyes as he stared out at Henry before slumping to the dugout floor. He did some math. In the space of fifteen innings he’d made the five worst throws of his college career—the one that hit Owen, the two errors in the first game today, and the two ungainly throws in the second game. All five came on routine and in fact almost identical plays: hard-hit balls more or less right at him, so that he had plenty of time to plant his feet and find Rick’s glove before making the throw. Simple plays, of a kind he hadn’t botched since puberty. Clearly there was something wrong with his mechanics. Tomorrow he’d sleep in, catch up on the homework he’d neglected since Owen’s injury. Monday at practice he’d work out the kinks in his delivery. The problem, like most problems in life, probably had to do with his footwork.

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