33

On the ferry ride back from Wainwright, Schwartz sat by himself, listening to the battered old tape of carefully chosen Metallica and Public Enemy songs he listened to before every game. The game had ended, ended badly—he was listening not to pump himself up but to drown out his thoughts. The sun was down, and a cold steady wind flowed through the unsealed joints of the old ferry cabin. He’d popped three Vikes with a handful of Advil, bundled up as best he could, and was preparing to recede from consciousness.

Somehow, despite the blaring music and his closed eyes, he sensed a presence at his shoulder. He thought it would be Henry, but it turned out to be Coach Cox.

“You seen the Skrimmer?” Coach Cox asked.

“I think he’s out on deck.”

“On deck? It’s frickin’ freezing out there.” Coach Cox sat down, rubbed his hands together, blew into his cupped palms. Schwartz took off his headphones and shut the book he hadn’t been reading. The rest of the team was belowdecks by the snack bar, playing poker for packets of salt. “You talk to him?” Coach Cox asked.

“A little.”

“He’s hanging in there?”

Schwartz shrugged. “Seems like it.”

“His wing’s okay?”

“Wing’s fine.”

Coach Cox stroked his mustache, pondered the situation for a while. “Well, hell.”

Bottom of the ninth. Two outs, runner on second. Westish ahead 7 to 6. Loondorf threw a good heavy curve, and the batter rapped a ground ball right at Henry. All he had to do was throw it to first and the game was over. Instead he patted the ball into the palm of his glove once, twice, again, side-skipping toward first as if not-so-secretly wishing he could side-skip all the way there and hand the ball to Rick. He patted the glove a fourth time and, needing to hurry because the runner was nearing first, uncorked a way-too-high, way-too-hard throw that Rick barely bothered to leap for. It cleared the low fence behind first base and, because there weren’t any bleachers or fans to stop it, skidded across the street that abutted the park and rattled into the wheel well of somebody’s truck. The tying run scored. The next batter singled to end the game, the Harpooners’ first loss in weeks.

“He looked good before that last throw,” Coach Cox said. “I thought he had it turned around.”

“Me too.”

“Listen.” Coach Cox’s gruff voice sanded the gaps in the wind. “I heard you were low on cash.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nobody told me. Something I heard.”

“Did Henry say that?”

Coach Cox shrugged. “Let me loan you a few bucks,” he said. “Man’s gotta eat.”

Schwartz had a ten-meal-a-week pass for the dining hall. Lately he’d been eating ten meals a week, plus whatever he could sneak out in his backpack, which wasn’t much. The check-in ladies had never warmed to his charms—his size, an asset in other situations, roused their suspicion. Pella brought him ham-and-cheese sandwiches after her dishwashing shifts. She also offered to take him to dinner on her father’s credit card. Schwartz gobbled down the sandwiches but declined the dinners out. It was embarrassing, having your girlfriend provide for you. Mostly their dates consisted of holing up in Schwartz’s room, eating saltines and drinking Lipton tea while they read their books. Sometimes on dollar-pitcher night they went to Bartleby’s. Now that they’d started having sex he was spending a couple bucks a day on condoms. Condoms were expensive. Not that he was complaining.

“I don’t need any money,” he said.

“Bullshit.” Coach Cox began peeling hundreds off a fat wad held folded by a rubber band. He slipped some number of them against Schwartz’s palm.

“I can’t,” Schwartz said.

“The heck you can’t. Stick it in your pocket.”

Since long before Schwartz’s time, it had been rumored that Coach Cox had a couple million dollars socked away somewhere. “He fits the profile,” Tennant used to say. “Never wears anything but free WAD gear. Eats all his meals at McDonald’s. Drives a car with three hundred thousand miles on it. I’m telling you, the guy’s loaded.”

Schwartz had never been sure one way or the other. Coach Cox hardly ever talked about anything but baseball. A third baseman in high school, he was drafted by the Cubs and played a few years in the low minors, retired at twenty-two because, as he put it, “I didn’t have the stuff. Hell, I couldn’t even fake the stuff.” He moved to Milwaukee, became a line repairman for the phone company, got married, had a kid, became the Westish baseball coach, had another kid, got divorced, quit the phone company, and opened his own two-truck operation. Which, if you believed Harpooner lore, had netted him millions.

Their palms were pressed together, neither of them holding the bills that were in between. It was a risky standoff, given the wind. Schwartz wavered. With money, he could take Pella to dinner tomorrow night. He could make up for all the tea-and-cracker meals they’d had, not to mention the nights he’d canceled their tea-and-cracker plans to go hit ground balls to Henry under the lights of Westish Field. He could take her to Maison Robert, the overpriced French place he’d only ever been to with his history adviser. They could drink wine. He closed his hand, just a little.

Coach Cox stood up and exited the forecabin. The bills threatened to slide out of Schwartz’s grasp; he slipped them into the pocket of his windbreaker, riffling their edges with his fingers to get a sense of his newfound wealth. There were a lot: nine or ten. He closed his eyes and surrendered to the slow roll of the waves like liquid Vicodin.

It might’ve been a few seconds later, or an hour, but suddenly Henry stood in front of him, his pale-blue eyes filled with what could only be called anguish. His lower lip quivered and his soft chin squinched into a web of small rolling lines as he tried to keep from crying. “Skrimmer,” Schwartz said.

“Hey.” Henry’s voice cracked miserably; he coughed to clear his throat.

“You okay?”

Henry nodded. “Yeah.”

“You played well today.” Schwartz removed his headphones from around his neck and tucked them into his jacket pocket. “Arm looked strong, everything looked strong. We’re right where we need to be.”

“I cost us the game.”

“One lousy play,” Schwartz said. “We should have been up twelve by then.”

“But we weren’t.” Henry sat down beside Schwartz, bounced back up as if the aluminum scorched his ass. He clapped both hands to the top of his age-blackened Cardinals cap like a long-distance runner warding off a cramp. “What can I do?” he said. “What can I do?” His voice was quiet and disbelieving; awed, even, at the circumstances in which he found himself.

He bent his head back toward the ceiling and breathed out a short pained sigh or moan. He dropped his hands, worried them in quick circles, clapped them to the top of his head again. His movements were spastic and strange, the movements of a person whose thoughts have become toxic.

“It’s okay,” Schwartz said, “we’re okay,” but Henry’s feet had already carried him through the cabin’s rickety metal storm door, which banged behind him, and out onto the deck. Schwartz hauled himself to his feet to follow. By the time he got outside Henry was out of sight. Schwartz leaned heavily against the railing. The darkness was total, neither a star nor a sliver of moon alive in the sky. The Vicodin, though it did almost nothing to mute the pain in his shins and knees, coursed through his brain in a wonderfully gentle way. All he wanted was to be home, off his feet, curled like a child in bed with one hand on the soft little swell of Pella’s belly.

A cabin door opened, and the dark outline of a person appeared. The figure yawned loudly, muttered a few pleasant curses, and, using the still-open door as a shield against the wind, struck a match, revealing the meaty, splotchy, amiably dissolute face of Rick O’Shea, his lips cupped around a home-rolled cigarette. “Schwartzy?” he puffed, squinting into the darkness and letting the door bang shut behind him. “That you, pal?”

“It’s me.”

Rick ambled over and leaned against the railing, blew a pensive smoke-shape into the night. “Bitch-tit of a game.”

Schwartz nodded.

“You talk to Skrim?”

Before Schwartz could decide how to answer, a patter of footsteps became audible in the distance and another figure hove into view, this one with its silhouetted hands atop its head, silhouetted elbows spread like wings. The head nodded up and down, keeping time with unheard music. As it drew closer, Schwartz could hear short sharp breathing that bordered on hyperventilation.

“Skrimmer.” Schwartz laid a hand on the slick fabric of Henry’s warm-up jacket, but Henry kept moving without slowing down. “I’m just walking,” he said breathlessly, still nodding. “I’ll just walk.”

“You okay, Skrim?” Rick asked. “You got a cramp or something?”

“Just walking,” Henry said. “I’ll keep walking.”

He continued down the deck toward the stern and was absorbed into the darkness.

Rick took one last drag before flicking his cigarette butt over the rail. The orange flame bounced once, twice, against the hull and vanished. “Panic attack,” he said.

“What do we do?”

“My mom usually drinks a couple screwdrivers. She says the orange juice has a soothing effect.” Rick, seized by a thought, took off after Henry. Schwartz tried to follow, but his legs wouldn’t let him.

Before long Rick and Henry reappeared, walking fast, Henry still nodding with his hands locked atop his head, Rick with his face tucked close to Henry’s own, whispering. Schwartz stepped aside to let them pass.

A few laps later, Henry’s arms fell down by his sides, and Rick flashed Schwartz a thumbs-up sign. They made seven or eight more orbits, each at a slower pace than the last, as Henry wound down like a toy. When they finally stopped, the ferry was in sight of the dock.