A Quality of Light (7 page)

“Easy,” he said. “Soon enough. Let’s have a sandwich.”

I slid the plate and jug his way, far too excited to eat. “Come on. Let’s see!”

“Okay, okay. But you gotta be sworn to secrecy. At least for now.”

“I can keep a secret. I never told my folks about what we’re doing.”

“That’s only ’cause you didn’t
know
what we were doing. Once you know it’s harder. You gotta pledge.”

“Pledge?”

“Yeah. Make a solemn oath,” he said, gravely.

“Okay. I pledge.”

“Not solemn enough,” he said, chewing and digging into his pack. “It’s gotta be official. Since this is your special place it’s perfect. You Indians always did solemn things in special places.”

“We did?”

“Yeah. Vision quests, sun dances, those sorts of things. Always in a special place. So this is kinda right up your alley, being Indian and all.”

He produced a needle from a little packet of about a dozen. He licked it and then turned to me.

“Pledges gotta be done in blood. Blood’s the most magical ingredient. So, I’m gonna prick your finger and prick mine at the same time and we’re gonna rub our fingers together. We’ll smear the blood around and promise each other to secrecy and loyalty. Blood brothers.”

“Blood brothers?”

“Yeah. Indians do this all the time. I saw it on TV.”

“We don’t have a TV. Mom says books are better.”

“Smart, your mom. But TV’s good too sometimes. Ready?”

“I guess.”

“Get serious. This is important.”

“Okay,” I said, trying hard to sound solemn and serious.

He took my finger and with the tip of his tongue pressed between his lips, he pricked me hard with the needle. I jerked back in pain and a little drop of blood appeared. Then, closing his eyes and grimacing, he pricked his own. He looked at me then with that wide-open gaze, took my hand in his and pressed our bleeding fingers together, mashing them around and smearing our blood around.

“Got a warrior name?” he whispered.

“No.”

“Me neither. I’ll give you one and you can give me one. Then we can pledge. Okay?”

“Sure. What’s a warrior name?”

“You know … like Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull. Something fierce like we have to be.”

“Fierce. Hmm. Can it be anything?”

“I think so. As long as it’s strong. Animal names are best.”

“Animal names. Okay. How about … Laughing Dog!”

“Laughing Dog? Laughing … 
dog
? You wanna name me after a dog? What the heck is a laughing dog, anyway? Dogs don’t laugh,” he said, sounding rather disgusted.

“Well, our neighbors on the north side, the Dietzes, have this big collie dog. He never barks. But when strange people come into their yard he just sits there looking at them with his mouth open and his tongue waggling around. Like he’s laughing. They get all comfortable figuring he’s quiet. But as soon as they get out of their car, that dog’s snarling and growling like a demon. Scares everybody. He did that to my mom one day. My mom says there’s nothing scarier than a laughing dog.”

“Hey, I like that! Cool. Laughing Dog.”

“What’s my name?” I asked.

He looked away through the branches for a moment, serious looking and deliberate. Finally, he nodded a few times and looked at me. “Your warrior name is … Thunder Sky!”

“Thunder Sky? That’s not an animal.”

“No. But it’s cool. And it’s strong. Maybe not fierce but it’s really strong.”

“How?”

“What’d you say?”

“How?”

“And you told me your weren’t really Indian!” he said and we laughed. “I picked Thunder Sky ’cause, well, thunder’s really loud. Everyone listens. And I think one of these days everyone’s gonna listen to you, Josh. Really.”

“Wow,” I said, humbled. “Thanks.”

“Okay, let’s pledge. Say like me, only use your warrior name. I, Laughing Dog, pledge to keep this and every secret of my blood brother and to always be loyal and good and kind. Except in battle ’cause that’s different. Now you.”

“OK,” I said slowly, “I, Thunder Sky, pledge to keep this and every secret of my blood brother and to always be loyal and good and kind. Except in battle ’cause that’s different.”

We looked at each other, uncertain of what was next and lost in the importance of the moment. I had never had a brother and now, through this strange ritual, I was tied by the solemn oath of friendship to the heartbeat of my blood brother, John Gebhardt, Laughing Dog. I knew that I would do anything in my power to stay loyal and kind and good to him. He smiled, licked his finger clean and reached for another sandwich.

“Cool,” he said. “Ready?”

“Ready? I’ve been ready since you phoned me!”

“Okay, then. Here it comes!”

He opened the plastic bag and placed two books face-down on the plank. In my mind he’d discovered a strange and wonderful device that maybe could alter gravity, or some magnetic force that attracted horsehide to wood, or a magical glove that caught anything. Mere books were a let-down.

“That’s it? We’re going to
read
about baseball?”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do. Look,” he said and turned the first book over. The title spread in huge red letters across the cover with the figure of a man swinging a bat at a ball.
Baseball in Words and Pictures.
“This is going to unlock all the doors. It tells everything about everything about baseball. Look.”

We spent the next half hour or so paging slowly through that book, casually munching sandwiches, sloshing lemonade and lifting our eyebrows towards each other in emphasis at certain images. For the first time we saw diagrams of proper throwing technique, how to perform a hook slide, the correct positioning of feet for infielders, the dip and kneel required for blocking ground balls with the body, how to lean while running to scoop grounders, how to take a proper leadoff once you’d reached base, the best way to grip the bat, how to swing and the elements required to lay a bunt down along either foul line.

“Wow,” I said finally. “Baseball’s like a world.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And a world’s gotta have rules. Science. As long as there’s science to it, how dumb can it be?”

“There’s math too. Look at all the measurements.”

“Science and math. I figure, since we’re good at both of them and Ralphie and Lenny and those guys are such clods, we study this book, practice this stuff, we can’t help but be better than them. Am I right?”

It seemed right. Studying was second nature to us both and the practice part was just the discipline my parents had taught me. “Yeah. That’s right. Study and practice. Let’s do it!”

“Okay, but first. Look at this!”

He turned the second book over slowly, reverently almost. It had a pale green cover with a photo of a man swinging a bat. His swing had twisted him around so that his ankles were crossed and the bat came to rest far over his shoulder. It gave the impression of great power. The word
Boston
was splayed across the front of his gray jersey. The title read
The Science of Hitting, by Ted Williams.”

“Wow,” I said. “The
Science
of Hitting.”

“Yeah. And this guy was the best! He batted for a four hundred average when most guys fight to hit two fifty.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means he hit the ball more often in the same amount of chances as everyone else. In here he says it’s the hardest thing in the world to do. To hit a pitched baseball.”

“Why?”

“Because you gotta hit one round thing with another round thing.”

“It says science, Johnny.”

“That’s right. This book shows you everything about hitting. We study this and we’re gonna be like Ted Williams.”

And we disappeared into the diagrams and explanations of that book. The answer to baseball, apparently, was baseball itself. We looked into another world that afternoon. A world filled with wonder and possibility. A world as full of precise laws and rules as our own. Laws and rules that could be studied, mastered and conquered. We saw it as a world that could be navigated with those two books as our maps and charts, and a world that was far more than some simple game for simple minds. The mathematics and the science coupled with the resounding echoes of
those schoolyard catcalls, were the enticement to try, and somewhere in our young boy minds was the belief that this game could make us more, lift us above and beyond the fields and concrete around our lives and on into the realm of magic. Science was reality, the explainable and the game itself, the magic that we hungered for.

“Wow,” I said when we’d been through both books twice.

“Wow is right. Who’d have figured it was so complicated? I gotta try this stuff,” Johnny said. “Oh, yeah. Here’s a present.”

He pulled a glove out of his pack. It was new and redolent with possibility like new gloves are. Sliding it onto my hand felt as natural as warm mitts in winter.
Wilson
was inked in big curly letters and the deep, shadowy pocket seemed to call out to flying objects like a siren to disoriented sailors. My first glove.

“Wow,” I said again. “Thanks, Johnny. Where’d you get it?”

“My dad’s store. There’s a bunch of stuff in boxes in the basement and I found them. I got one too. And a couple balls,” he said, slipping his new glove on.

“Wanna go try?” I asked rhetorically.

“Yeah. But where?” he asked. “I mean, I wanna look like I know what I’m doing before anyone sees us. You know?”

“Yeah, I know. No one ever goes behind the equipment shed. My dad sometimes but usually in the mornings. Let’s go there.”

“Okay. Josh?”

“Yeah?”

“Blood brothers, right?”

“Blood brothers,” I said and we shook hands solemnly before climbing out of that tree and down into a world that seemed bigger somehow, more focused, brighter, backlit with possibility.

T
he paint, it turned out, was for outlining a strike zone on the wall of the shed. We got the general dimensions from the words and pictures in the book, and I stood close to the wall as
Johnny described a rough rectangle with the whitewash between the height of my knees and my chest. Then we scouted around the outbuildings for a piece of board, which we cut into a seventeen-inch length that we whitewashed as well. “The plate,” Johnny said quietly. “We can use what’s left as the pitcher’s rubber.” He’d brought a tape measure, and we measured out sixty feet, six inches from where we laid the plate and placed the pitcher’s rubber down. Then we painted a similar rectangle on the wall of the shed on the opposite side of the new plate. “Lefties” was all Johnny said, and I nodded in agreement. By the time we’d finished we were splattered with whitewash, dusty and hot. But it all looked like the diagrams in the book. My dad had passed by a few times, whistling jauntily and pretending not to notice what we were carrying, where we were going or the paint that covered us.

That first afternoon we tossed the ball back and forth for about an hour and a half. Each time it prescribed a loose arc between us and we spent a lot of time chasing it down before returning the throw. The words-and-pictures book was laid in the shade of a chokecherry tree by the fence and we wandered over to it again and again to peruse the section on proper throwing technique. What seemed so natural on the page was much harder to realize once you’d gotten ready, thought about it and then tried to do it. Slowly through that ninety minutes, we traveled the distance between what the mind wanted and what the body could achieve. The throws became throws. Our catches were fumbling, awkward efforts, but by the end of that first afternoon we were both making adequate grabs at least half of the time. I knew that the look of grim determination that slowly transformed itself into joyful satisfaction on Johnny’s face was mirrored in my own.

“Okay. The book says that the pitcher looks at where he’s going to throw,” Johnny said. “Then he steps in that direction. Right?” We were headed towards the house and the supper he’d agreed to readily when I’d mentioned it.

“Right. Pushing off with his back foot,” I answered.

“And the throwing arm follows his weight forward over the line of the shoulder.”

“Yes. Over-hand delivery. Using the shoulder, elbow and wrist. Stepping forward keeps it straight,” I said.

“Right. You did good.”

“Hey, you too.”

“Tomorrow?” he asked.

“You bet. Do you think we should play at school on Monday? You know, get some practice?”

“Are you
crazy!”
he shouted, arms beginning that erratic flapping. “We don’t play at school until the tournament. That gives us six weeks to tune up. Remember, you pledged.”

“Wow. So all we do for six weeks is get ready? Every day like today?”

“Yeah. Training.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“But remember, Josh, you can’t tell anyone. Not your parents, not anyone. For a while anyway.”

“I got it. How long?”

“Till we’re good.”

“How long will that take?”

“After today? Not too long,” he said. “Not too long at all.”