The Youngest Hero (33 page)

“Thank you for telling me that.”

“And how about you, ma’am? Can I be of any assistance to you in that regard?”

I assured him Elgin and I were born-again Christians and in a good church.

“Then you know God cares personally about you. I’m sorry Neal’s life ended this way, but I know he was very thankful he got
to see you both again. If you’re unable to get to the funeral, I’ll send you whatever documents are appropriate.”

I could take no more time off, and I couldn’t afford airfare anyway. I thanked Chaplain Wallace and sat to collect myself.

“I have to go to the funeral,” Elgin said.

“Please don’t make this more difficult,” I said. “We cannot and we will not be going. Don’t pretend I have a choice. You saw
him, you talked to him, and you both got things said that needed to be said.”

It was a sad trip home from the train station. I let Elgin grieve for the only father he had ever known, for the man Neal
Wood-ell might have been, for the ballplayer he could have been. He remembered special times when it was just him and his
dad, throwing, hitting, pitching, fielding, running, talking, listening, learning.

Elgin clenched and unclenched his fists, his eyes dark and narrow, lips pressed tight. I didn’t want him to grow bitter.

“You understand why we can’t go to the funeral,” I said as we approached the hotel.

“Uh-huh. I know.”

“You gonna be okay, baby?”

“I’m not sure. This really feels weird.”

“Ah! You’re back! And how was the trip? Let me help you with those!”

“Thank you, Ricardo. I’m afraid we suffered a death in the family, however, so we’re not much in a talking mood.”

“Oh, how horrible! May I ask whom?”

“Elgin’s father.”

“Not an old man. Sudden?”

“Heart attack and complications.” I put my finger to my lips and glanced at Elgin, who was studying the floor.

“Well,” Mr. Bravura said, and I would always be grateful he left it at this: “I am so sorry.”

He helped carry our suitcases from the elevator to our apartment, set them in the middle of the floor, bowed to me without
a word, and slipped out. Just as I was wondering if he’d had a transfusion of sensitivity, he knocked and poked his head back
in.

“Forgive me, I almost forgot. A small but heavy package came for your son from Lucky’s Secondhand Shop. May I run it up?”

I had undressed and was sitting on the couch when Momma brought me the heavy shoebox wrapped in brown paper. A note inside
read:

Master Woodell, Mr. Harkness has already paid me $120 for this rebuilt motor with the clutch and gears you desired. You’ll
notice that it can be run with or without engaging the gears. If it works as you hope, you may settle up with him. Any problems,
call me at the number below. It’s been a pleasure.

I set the box aside and thought about turning on the television but decided against it. I didn’t even want to talk to my mother,
who seemed to be watching me carefully.

Well
, I thought,
Daddy won’t make it to my first big-league game. But he’ll be the reason I’m there
.

M
y sympathy card to Neal’s parents crossed a scathing note from my own mother about my not getting Elgin “to his own father’s
burial. I can understand your not wanting to go, but to keep that boy away is shameful.”

My own grieving for Neal was a strange, unpredictable progression of emotions. Sometimes I was overcome with melancholy. The
memories didn’t seem so distant now. The man I had prayed to be rid of was now more a part of my life than when he was alive
and in prison. He dominated my thoughts, reminded me of how things had been.

When I found myself weeping, sometimes sobbing, I knew it wasn’t over missing him or longing for a man in my life. I wept
for the sad, frustrated, miserable lonely man he had become before he died.

I found it difficult to draw out Elgin now. His face was more sober, his eyes darker. He was nearing puberty. I looked forward
to how manly that would make him, but I dreaded the mysterious new interests and passions. I prayed he would keep his sweet
innocence, though I knew I was dreaming.

Every time I thought of Daddy, I reminded myself of my goal. I wanted to be the best baseball player I could be. My dad had
drilled into me: “Find your level, find your limit, push it until you know. Only when you’ve done that will you be the best
you can be. Don’t worry about who’s better or different. Your job is to be the best you can be, because you can’t do more
than that.”

I was the best ballplayer of my age I had ever seen. I wondered if there were any others like me anywhere. If there were,
I knew what they were thinking. They didn’t want to compete with kids their own age any more than I did. They would want to
get on a team—of teens, college kids, adults—where they could forget who was ahead for his age and just play some ball. Competitive
baseball. That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I missed.

I worked every day at Lucky’s and worked out every night in my private batting cage. The new motor for the pitching machine
was so good it was scary. Not only did I use it with the gear sometimes engaged and sometimes not, but I also figured out
that I could tighten a screw halfway and cause the machine to throw hundreds of pitches with no predictability.

It was like facing the monster for the first time again. I had no idea which pitch was coming, how fast, or from which angle.
The thing could fire a straight pitch at my head so fast I could barely evade it, then come back with a dancing, sweeping
curve that looked like it might hit me in the rear but would break across the outside of the plate. There was no more hitting
a half dozen or more solid shots for every bucket of fifty-seven balls. I tried to read the spin and location of each pitch
in time to dive for cover or get a bat on it. I was light on my feet, knowing I had to keep the back foot buried for a perfect
swing, yet always ready to jump out of the way of a fastball at the shins.

I used only my heavy, skinny fungo bat, but I fought through lots of hitless buckets knowing I would eventually catch on.
This would make hitting a baseball like breathing.

Lucky sometimes hit balls to me, but he couldn’t hit hard enough to challenge me. I compared everything with what I could
do in the cellar. Nothing would compete with that until I
found a whole team I could match in ability. Hector Villagrande had such a team, and my goal was to make that team the next
year when I was thirteen. What drove me crazy was that I knew I was ready now.

I stood at the plate in the basement with my glove on, trying to catch as many pitches in a row as possible. Once I caught
fourteen straight before a wicked curve skipped off my glove, banged off the wall, and hit me in the triceps. I jumped and
howled and rubbed my arm, then flung my glove at the machine.

Eventually I learned to catch fifty pitches per bucket, sometimes standing near the machine and catching the grounders and
liners after they came off the wall. I dove and lurched and reached and stretched until I sweat through my clothes, and I
was getting into great shape, matching my frame with muscle and coordination.

I took Raleigh Lincoln Sr. up on his offer to pitch batting practice. I needed the competition and especially some feedback,
some coaching.

By the middle of the summer I was hitting only a dozen or so balls solid from each bucket, but I hit Mr. Lincoln like I owned
him. The man shook his head. “It’s like facing a big leaguer,” he said. “I don’t want to puff you up, but you hit me like
nobody ever has, and I mean nobody. I can’t believe your eye. Where in the world did you develop that?”

“I guess I just have a sense of the plate,” I said. “My dad said good hitters walk a lot. And my stance gets both my eyes
on the pitch.”

“I need to have a talk with Hector,” Raleigh said. “He doesn’t know what he’s passing up.”

“His team’s doing okay.”

“I should say! They’ve only lost two and they’re going to win the state. But I never knew a team that couldn’t be improved.
You could start on that team, boy.”

“Maybe next year.”

“Maybe? You don’t make that team next year, and I’m gonna
get Hector fired and take it myself. You don’t make it next year, I’ll get you in the City League!”

I laughed. “You have to be eighteen for that.”

“You’d be one of the best hitters in that league, son, and I am not putting you on.”

That was the kind of encouragement I needed. How I wanted to play in a live game! I thought about pleading with Hector Villagrande
to let me work out with his team. I dreamed of being so dominating, so impressive that he would have to make room for me,
not just on the bench but in the starting lineup.

I continued to read and think and dream baseball. By the dead of winter, everything seemed to fall together for me.

A bad cold kept me away from the cellar for two days. That break made me sharp somehow. Though it had taken hundreds of thousands
of pitches, I seemed to succeed overnight. I was hitting consistently.

I began to focus on March and local tryouts.

I didn’t know what to think anymore about Elgin’s obsession. It was as if his devastation at not making the team and the loss
of his father had driven him deep into himself. There was a determination, a dedication in him that frightened me. Had anyone
anywhere ever been so committed to anything?

One night at dinner, as the snow outside turned to slush and the spring tryouts and his thirteenth birthday approached, he
said, “Momma, I’m ready for you to come to the basement and see something.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” I said. “What in the world have you been doing down there?”

“You’re not going to believe it.”

The basement was as dark as ever. Elgin’s skinny little bat looked heavy and impossible to hit with. The machine was ugly
and noisy. I had not seen it with the new motor, but I had heard him talk about it enough.

But what was this? The machine looked closer to the batters’ boxes. “Elgin?” I said as I approached it.

He nodded. “Yup. Closer. By more than ten feet.”

“You had it as close to the back wall as possible. You said—”

“I said it was only two-thirds of major-league distance. Now it’s half.”

He told me to stand with my body outside the doorframe, peeking in.

“Nothing should hit you, but be ready to duck,” he said.

E
lgin cleared the room of everything but himself, his helmet, his bat, and the machine, tossing everything else past me near
the stairs.

The machine whirred to life, but strangely, Elgin did not hurry to the box but merely moved left and strolled in that direction.
The first pitch slammed so hard off the wall that it carried all the way to the other end and whapped against the canvas drop.
I jumped, ready to get out of the way, but Elgin seemed to casually study the ball. He stood just outside the left-hander’s
batter’s box, his bat dangling from his right hand, as the next pitch swept at him and in over the plate.

He stepped into the box and set himself. The next dozen or so pitches flew all over the place. One started high and dropped
into the strike zone. One appeared to be ankle-high until the last instant when it flashed up to his knees. The only pitch
he didn’t swing at came in right under his chin. He moved only a fraction to elude it.