The Art of Fielding: A Novel (10 page)

“Beautiful to watch,” L.P. opined from behind his shades.

Dwight nodded, his pale-blue eyes and pink-rimmed nose glistening in the cold. “He understands the game like a veteran major leaguer. And defensively there’s no competition. Today he ties Aparicio Rodriguez’s NCAA record for consecutive errorless games by a shortstop. Fifty-one and counting.”

Dwight’s BlackBerry bleated. He answered in a hushed, almost childlike voice and wandered off, phone pressed close to his ear. He was wearing a wedding band; Affenlight pictured a perky blond sales rep with a diamond of reasonable size, whispering PG-13 yearnings into her cell phone while she shopped at the Whole Foods in downtown St. Cloud. Perhaps she was wearing one of those complicated toddler holders strapped to her chest. Or perhaps she was pregnant and trying to decide which toddler holder to buy.

Affenlight didn’t glance back into the dugout, as if it might diminish the sensation to indulge it again. Or maybe he was just afraid. Either way, he turned his attention to Henry Skrimshander, who was back in the field. His pinstriped uniform was baggy, but it somehow suited him perfectly, suggested his entire existence, like the uniforms of the rowers and doctors in the Eakins lithographs that hung in Affenlight’s study. His navy socks were pulled to midcalf. His shoes were dirty white. Before the pitch he stood at ease, glove on his hip, his face round and windburned and open, delivering instructions or encouragement to his teammates with a relaxed smile. But as the ball left the pitcher’s hand his face went blank. The chatter stopped midword. In one motion he yanked his navy cap with its harpoon-skewered
W
toward his eyes and dropped into a feline crouch, thighs parallel to the field, glove brushing the dirt. He looked low to the ground but light on his feet, more afloat than entrenched. The pitch was fouled back, but not before he had taken two full steps to his left, toward the place where he anticipated the ball to be headed. None of the other infielders had moved an inch.

“Prescience,” L.P. said again.

In the bottom of the eighth, Henry batted for what would almost certainly be the final time. He’d already hit two doubles since Affenlight’s arrival, and the Milford pitcher looked reluctant to let him hit another. He walked on four pitches and sprinted down to first. Dwight and L.P. rose in unison and bagged their laptops. “That’s enough for us,” Dwight said. “We’ve got a flight to catch.” Affenlight offered warm presidential handshakes as the two men departed. The pumpkin sun had impaled itself on the spire of Westish Chapel and begun to bleed. He was so glad Pella was coming, overjoyed, but he dreaded it too—it had been so long since they’d seen each other, and so much longer than that since they’d gotten along. He glanced toward the Westish dugout one last time and felt himself growing sad.
O me, O life.
Perhaps, he thought, with a touch of melodrama, this whole thing was merely an old man’s last gasp. A late-life crisis, a doomed passade.

The half inning ended, and the Harpooners took the field for the top of the ninth. On his way out, Affenlight returned to the first-base bleachers to say hello to the last few shivering fans and to congratulate them on the valor of their sons and lovers. He was facing the field, buttoning his topcoat, when the Milford hitter slapped a grounder toward short. Henry closed on it quickly, absorbing it into his glove with the thoughtless ease of a mother being handed her newborn baby. His feet shifted into throwing position, his shoulders torqued, his arm became a blur. The ball left his hand on what looked, to Affenlight, like a true course.

But then, for whatever reason—a gust whipped up off the water, to be sure, but could even the strongest gust do this?—the ball, having already covered a third of its path, veered sharply. It tailed inland, tailing and tailing until Rick O’Shea, the first baseman, could only usher it by with a halfhearted lunge. Affenlight’s left hand jerked toward his tie’s half Windsor, where the twist of the knot made the little spearmen lie supine, as the ball sailed with frightening velocity into just that corner of the Westish dugout where he’d been directing his attention. The gust gave way to a hush. Mike Schwartz, who’d tossed aside his mask as he hustled down the baseline to back up the throw, stopped dead and swiveled his head in Affenlight’s direction.

And then all Affenlight saw were faces, Mike Schwartz’s big and nearby and twisted in a suffering grimace, Henry’s beyond it round and distant and blank, revealing nothing, as there came, from that corner of the dugout, a muffled but nonetheless sickening crunch, followed by a thud.

Owen.

9

H
enry wiped his right hand against his thigh, back and forth, back and forth. His index finger must have slipped off the seams. That must have been what happened. He misgripped the seams, and then his finger slipped, and then a gust of wind kicked up and carried the ball much farther off course than could have happened with finger-slippage alone. Finger-slippage could cause the ball to tail only so far, and wind could cause the ball to tail only so far, but finger-slippage combined with wind probably had some kind of multiplier effect, like smoking pot when you’ve been drinking. Henry rarely drank and never smoked pot, so he didn’t know about the multiplier effect firsthand. But something like that must have happened here, to account for what happened.

Which was that Owen was dead. Henry knew it. He kept wiping his hand against his thigh, back and forth across the cool, starchy warp knit of his uniform pants. Back, forth, back, forth. His index finger itched, just above the top knuckle crease, an itch that wouldn’t go away. The spot where the ball slipped off.

Owen was dead. No one had said so yet, but Henry knew. He didn’t need to go over there, by the paramedics and umpires and coaches who were crowded into the dugout around the body. He could stay right here on the infield, by himself. He squatted down, rubbed the itchy index finger against his thigh. Against the red-brown dirt of the infield.

The throw had struck Owen full in the face. He was reading a book, his battery-powered light clipped to the brim of his cap; he never saw it coming. His head snapped back and cracked against the concrete wall behind him. Bounced, like a ball made of bone. After the bounce he hung there, wobbly but upright, for a frozen moment, his eyes huge and white. He seemed to be staring straight out at Henry, asking him some wordless question. Then he slumped to the dugout floor, where Henry couldn’t see him.

Schwartzy, who’d been hustling down the first-base line to back up the play, charged down into the dugout. So did Coach Cox. A tall man in a suit—could it have been President Affenlight?—hopped the short fence beside the dugout, barking into a cell phone as he did so. The two umpires followed President Affenlight down the dugout steps. The five of them were down there now with the paramedics, crouched over Owen. Over Owen’s body.

It had been such an easy play, a topspin bounder two steps to Henry’s left. When he let go of the throw it felt fine, routine, indistinguishable from hundreds of other throws, all of which had been perfect.

The ballpark lights came on. Henry hugged himself and shivered. Behind him the scoreboard remained lit. Ninth inning. One out.
WESTISH 8 VI ITOR 3
. The players from both teams chomped their sunflower seeds or wads of gum and looked on in silence, though of course the silence did no good. Henry wished they would scream, throw their heads back and scream bloody murder until the paramedics strapped Owen to their pale-blue surfboard-looking thing and carried him to the morgue. That would at least have been something.

Schwartz emerged from the dugout and walked across the field—big, bowlegged, unhurried. He was still wearing his chest protector and shin guards, his backward cap. He turned to face the same direction as Henry, laid a hand on Henry’s shoulder.

“You okay?”

Henry bit his lip, looked at the ground.

“The Buddha’s out cold.”

“Cold?” This seemed like an odd way to tell someone that someone else had died. Odd but effective. What’s colder than death?

“Cold,” Schwartz confirmed. “You put quite a lick on him. He’s going to be hurting tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You know. Day after today.”

The two of them stood there, side by side in the yellowish, unreal light of the diamond that made distant objects seem near. After a while Schwartz said, “At least those two scouts left before things hit the fan.”

That thought had occurred to Henry, though he was glad not to be the one to voice it. The paramedics carried Owen out of the dugout, lowered the gurney’s collapsible legs into an
X,
and wheeled him toward the ambulance. The fans and Milford players clapped. When things like this happened on TV, the strapped-down athlete always lifted a hand to the crowd to show that he’d be okay. To show that the human spirit could triumph over any hardship. Owen did no such thing. President Affenlight clambered into the ambulance behind the gurney, and the ambulance screamed away.

The umpires and coaches gathered at home plate, conferred for a few moments, and exchanged handshakes. As he walked back toward the rest of the team, Coach Cox beckoned Henry and Schwartz with a wave. Schwartz put a hand in the small of Henry’s back, guided him toward the huddle.

“We decided to call the game.” Coach Cox smoothed his clipped black mustache, spoke in clipped black words. “So good win. I know you’re worried about Dunne. But we can’t have twenty of us dinking around the hospital. Go home, shower up. As soon as I hear anything, I’ll send out word. Understood?”

Rick O’Shea raised his hand. “Off day tomorrow?”

Coach Cox pointed at him. “O’Shea. Watch yourself. Three o’clock practice. Now let’s get out of here before we freeze our asses off.” As the players dispersed he squeezed Henry’s shoulder. “I’m headed to the hospital. You need a ride?”

“We’ll go in my car,” Schwartz told him. “So you can hit the road afterward.”

Coach Cox lived in Milwaukee, two hours south, and commuted through the season. “Goddamn Dunne,” he muttered, stroking his mustache. “Him and his goddamn books.”

Henry waited off to one side, goose-bumped and shivering, while his teammates collected their equipment. They slapped him wordlessly on the back and set out across the early-spring mud of the pitch-dark practice fields, toward the campus proper. When they were no longer visible, even to Henry’s 20/15 vision, he took a deep breath and headed down the dugout steps.

The dugout was low and long and dark. The concrete walls exuded an ominous coolness, like the hold of an arctic ship. A narrow beam of fuzzy-edged light streamed through a few feet of grayness and illuminated a small patch of wall. Owen’s reading light, still clipped to his Harpooner cap. Henry clicked it off and zipped the cap-light combo into Owen’s bag. Then he slung one big bag over either shoulder—Owen’s with the number 0 stenciled on the side, his own with the number 3. Halfway up the dugout steps he thought to check for Owen’s glasses. He unslung the bags, dropped to his knees, and felt around the sticky floor in the darkness beneath the bench: Small mucky puddles of tobacco spit. Tooth-printed wads of gum. The plastic caps of Gatorade bottles, their spiny underedges like tiny crowns of thorns. Plain old clumps of mud. Owen’s glasses had been kicked all the way to the far end of the bench. Henry picked them up and wiped the lenses clean against his jersey. One arm wobbled on its hinge.

When he and Schwartzy arrived at St. Anne’s, President Affenlight was pacing up and down the ER waiting room, head bowed. He devoured the checkerboard floor with six strides, turned, and did it again. Schwartz cleared his throat to announce their entrance. Affenlight’s expression, weary and disarmed when he thought he was alone, changed instantly to a bright presidential smile. “Michael,” he said. “Henry. Glad to see you.”

Henry hadn’t expected President Affenlight to know his name. They passed each other often on the sidewalks of the Small Quad, because Phumber Hall was right beside the president’s quarters, but they’d spoken only once, on Henry’s very first day at Westish, while Henry was blending in with the tent poles at the Freshperson Barbecue, nibbling his fourth or fifth hot dog:

“Guert Affenlight.” The older man sipped his drink, held out a hand.

“Henry Skrimshander.”

“Skrimshander?” Affenlight smiled. “It’ll be the seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay for you, I’m afraid.” He was wearing a silver tie that matched his hair. His sleeves were rolled midway up his forearms—the way they hung unwrinkled from shoulder to cuff, their lines crisp and pristine, suggested a man at ease with his surroundings. When Sophie had asked Henry to describe Westish, the first image that came to mind was that of Affenlight’s perfectly rolled-up sleeves.

“Any news?” Schwartz asked now.

“He woke up for a moment in the ambulance,” Affenlight said. “Out cold, and then suddenly his eyes popped open. He said,
April.
”

“April?”

“April.”

“April,” Henry repeated.