Waiting for Teddy Williams (21 page)

He waved the folder, and some documents fell out on the floor. Charlie ignored them. “Is that what all this boils down to, deputy?”

“We have proof,” the warden said, “that Gypsy Lee Allen has been encouraging a minor to break the fish and game laws, stay out of school, and procure clients for her pornographic shows. Plus he don't eat properly and he's running wild all over town, driving without a license and talking to himself on the common and I don't know what all.”

“Well,” Charlie said, winking at E.A., “those are serious charges. Let's look at them one at a time. Is it true, Ethan, that Gypsy doesn't send you to school?”

“You know she doesn't, Charlie. Never has.”

“Moving right along, do you have enough to eat at home?”

“You bet I do,” E.A. said. “Venison every meal and all I can eat of it. Except for last winter when we ran out and had to eat moose instead. But that was just as good.”

“I don't believe this,” the warden said.
“Moose
. This is too—”

“Does Gypsy mistreat you, E.A.? Smack you around?”

“Of course not.”

“We aren't claiming outright abuse, Judge. It would be more like neglect. What we're saying here, the boy hasn't attended school a day in his life.”

“Warden, before I pursue this further, who is we?”

“We?”

“Yes. You keep saying we. ‘We' aren't claiming abuse. What ‘we're' saying. Who is this we? The royal we? You and God?”

“Why, no, Charlie, it's I and—I and the state. The state of Vermont.”

“Was it the state of Vermont that pronounced you truant officer?”

“No, sir. Elected at Town Meeting. Town officer.”

“Warden?”

“Yes?”

“Unless you have multiple personalities—a theory that I, for one, have never entirely subscribed to—I want you to stop referring to yourself as we.”

“Well, all right, but what about the psychiatric evaluation in that folder?”

Charlie leaned down and picked up a note, handwritten on yellow tablet paper, that had fallen out of the folder. “Do you mean this scrawled report, signed not by a licensed psychiatrist but by you, that on three occasions this past summer you observed E.A. talking to the statue of the Colonel out on the common?”

“Well, I did.”

“Ethan, do you talk to the Colonel's statue?”

“You know good and well I do, Charlie. I visit with everybody in this town, always have. Even the warden.”

“Does the statue talk back to you, boy?” the deputy said. “Tell you to set fires, does he? Hurt people?”

“You be quiet,” Charlie told his cousin. “I'll ask the questions this afternoon. To tell you the truth, Ethan, I've always been curious. What
do
you and the old Colonel talk about?”

“Baseball, mainly. He loves to talk baseball.”

“Well, he lives in the right town, then.”

“Charlie, I think at the least you should order the boy evaluated. He ain't right in the head, and you and I both know it.”

“No, you and I do not both know it. His mother schools him at home. He's well-fed. He seems well-adjusted. And he knows more about baseball than anybody in the county.”

“Look how skinny he is.”

Charlie reached over his head and pulled down the 1904 legislative report, a very thick volume. He put it on his desk in front of the warden. “Ethan, put your elbow up here and twist wrists with my cousin. He thinks you're undernourished.”

E.A. jumped up, took three quick steps, and set his elbow on the tome, with his forearm and wrist jutting up at a ninety-degree angle.

“What?” Warden Kinneson was saying. “I don't understand—”

Charlie stood up, took the officer's right hand, and placed it in E.A.'s. “One, two, three, go,” he said. E.A. slammed the back of the warden's hand down onto the desk so hard that the bronze bronc jumped. Gypsy cheered.

“He had a book to give him leverage, plus he was standing up,” the warden whined, rubbing the back of his hand.

“Switch places with him,” Charlie suggested. “You use the book.”

“Never mind.”

“That was a sorry display on your part, cousin,” Charlie said. “You let a mere lad beat you twisting wrists.”

“All this is about is the boy missing school, cousin. He isn't getting the right academics. I don't know if he's reading up to grade level. I don't even know if he
can
read.”

“Don't you?” Charlie picked up an envelope from the corner of his desk. From it he removed a typed letter, which he handed to E.A. “Ethan, would you please read the first paragraph of this letter aloud? To show this versatile peace officer that you're reading at grade level. It's a letter the local sheriff—your boss, deputy—showed me this morning. Addressed to him. From the sheriff of Washington County, over in New York State.”

E.A. cleared his throat and read aloud.

 

“Dear Sheriff Cunningham,

I am writing to inform you that on the early morning of June 9, one of my constables, Fred Hawkins, stopped and searched a speeding vehicle with plates registered to Deputy Warden Kinneson, of Kingdom Common, Vermont, a game warden and a deputy in your employ. The officer, Constable Hawkins, was attacked by an unknown assailant, assisted by your deputy, in the back of Deputy Kinneson's vehicle, after which the Vermont officer fled the scene with two accomplices.”

 

“God Jesus!” the warden shouted. “I swear I haven't been in New York for twenty years. On June ninth I was—I was watching for walleye poachers up where the river comes into Memphremagog.”

“I don't care where you were or what you were doing,” Charlie said. “I'm going to let you and Sheriff Cunningham and the sheriff of Washington County, New York, thrash this matter out yourselves. It's none of my affair—yet. Now get up from my chair, warden, and get out of this room and don't ever come to me with charges like these again.”

“Charlie, I swear—”

“Skedaddle.”

Warden Kinneson gave his cousin the judge one last pleading look, then scurried out of the room. E.A. almost felt sorry for him.

“Well,” Gypsy said. “I guess he won't try that stunt again.”

“Do me a favor, Gypsy Lee. Lay off the poor guy for a few weeks. Give the deer and moose population and the lady's slippers a breather and lay off the whiskey smuggling and let the warden catch his breath.

“Stick around a minute, Gypsy. You, too, E.A. I want to ask you something. Don't take this wrong, Gypsy Lee. Ethan, would you like to go to school?”

“No. It suits me just fine not to.”

“Charlie—” Gypsy started, but he held up his hand.

“Let E.A. answer. He's old enough for this to be his decision.”

“I can't abide schoolteachers, Judge K,” E.A. said. “I don't have the slightest use for the whole pack.”

The judge thought for a minute.

“Charlie,” Gypsy said, “the reason I don't send Ethan to school is that kids are cruel. I know. I know exactly what it's like for a kid without a father to go to school. I was the frigging salutatorian and it still didn't matter. Can you imagine what Ethan would have been subjected to with a father who's in prison?”

“Teddy isn't in prison any longer, Gypsy.”

“No, but that wouldn't matter. They'd still call Ethan the B word. Our depraved neighbor, Devil Dan Davis, calls him the B word. One of these fine days when my Allen's up I'm going to shoot that wicked old son of a bitch. I swear to Our Father Who Art in Heaven I am.”

“Ethan, before your wonderful mom gets her Allen up with
me
, would you step outside for a minute. She and I need to talk some turkey.”

E.A. went into the small hallway between the judge's chamber and the courtroom. He shut the door hard, with the handle turned all the way to the right, then silently reopened it a crack. He heard Charlie say, “Gypsy, how much longer do you intend to protect Ethan from this town? Don't you think he's old enough now—”

“I don't protect him, damn it. He comes with me when I sing out. He grew up in honky-tonks and roadhouse dives. He plays with the Outlaws. He hunts and fishes all over Allen Mountain. He's well educated and you know it. But I will not subject him to the cruelties of that school or any school.”

“You going to let him go to college?”

“I'm going to
make
him go to college. If we can afford it, that is.”

“I'll make you a promise, Gypsy. Athena and I will see to it that you can afford it.”

There was a pause. Then E.A. heard the judge say, “So Teddy's been teaching E.A. baseball?”

“He has. When E.W. first showed up I wanted to shoot him. But Charlie, I just didn't see how I could deny Ethan the right to know his father. Even a father like Teddy.”

“People change, Gypsy. If Teddy's decided to do one decent thing in his life by showing E.A. how to play baseball, more power to him. Nobody knows more about the game than E.W. Williams. If Ethan pays attention—and knowing E.A., he will—nobody could show him more.”

“Charlie? How far could Ethan go with his baseball? I'm afraid his heart'll be broken.”

“Nobody knows the answer to that question, Gypsy. Only time will tell. But what about you? How do you feel about Teddy?”

“Well,” Gypsy said, “let's look at it this way. I got a couple of real good songs out of the son of a bitch.”

And right there in the judge's chambers, with E.A. listening at the door, she belted out the chorus of “Knocked Up in Knoxville.”

T
HE RAIN DRUMMED
on the barn roof. It beat down hard, puddling up at home plate and around the feed-sack bases at Fenway. On the mountaintop it began to freeze into sleet, glazing over Long Tom. Then it changed into snow. A snowstorm in July.

Teddy stood in the entranceway of the barn, the huge sliding door open to let in light, and watched as E.A. gave the treadless tire off Earl's eighteen-wheeler a push to start it swinging from the thick rope attached to the overhead hayfork rail. E.A. went back to the entrance. As the truck tire continued to swing back and forth, he went into his wind-up, calculating where the tire would be when the ball arrived, like a hunter leading a flushing grouse. He pitched. The baseball sped through the center of the swinging tire, into the backstop of hay bales. Three times E.A. threw. Three times he split the center of the tire.

He glanced at Teddy, standing behind him, the cold rain sweeping in and spattering his old suit jacket and shoes.

“How long did it take you to learn that?” Teddy asked.

E.A. shrugged. “A long time.”

Teddy nodded. That was all. But the next time he appeared he had with him a folded square of heavy brown canvas tarpaulin and a paper grocery bag. It was a hot day, a good day for throwing off the mound at Fenway, the heat fine for keeping a pitcher's arm loose. Instead, Teddy jerked his head toward the barn.

Inside the hayloft a million dust motes danced in the sunlight streaming through the entryway. The air smelled hot, like haying time. Teddy unfolded the tarp on the barn floor. It was about the size and shape of one of the kitchen windows in Gran's farmhouse. From the paper bag he removed, one by one, ten paintbrushes and ten pint cans of bright-colored paint: apple red, orange, light green and dark green, lemon yellow, pale blue, ocean blue, grape purple, cotton-candy pink, and black. He shook the little cans of paint. With his jackknife blade he pried off the lids, then took a photograph out of his shirt pocket. E.A. recognized it immediately. It was a photo of Ted Williams's strike-zone chart, which they'd seen in Cooperstown: a frame the size of the strike zone, filled with colored baseballs, each inscribed with a batting average in sharp black numerals. The number on each ball represented the average the great Teddy Ballgame estimated he hit when he swung at a pitch in that part of the zone, from the blue ball on the low, outside corner, inscribed with .250, to the red ball that read .450 in the heart of the frame.

With great concentration, Teddy began painting colored baseballs on the canvas tarp. As he worked he talked to E.A. “See, Ethan, what a pitcher wants to do, he wants to throw strikes. But he don't want to be wild in the strike zone.”

“What's wild in the strike zone?”

“Throwing too many pitches belt-high out over the heart of the plate. Even if you're quick and mix up your pitches, the better hitters'll get to you if you let 'em see too many good pitches. This'll teach you how to nick the comers, move the ball in and out, up and down. But”—he rounded out the orange ball, in on the fists of a righty—“mainly you want to keep the ball low. You'll see why when the colors dry here, and we take and paint in the averages in black. The lower down in the zone you throw, the harder the pitch is to hit.”

The dust motes danced in the sunlight. The air smelled like old hay and paint and a faint hint of manure. Overhead in the cupola, pigeons muttered and cooed. Teddy frowned, made a few finicky brush strokes to round out a light blue ball, grinned at his son. Later, after they'd inscribed the averages and hung the canvas from the top bale of the makeshift backstop, Teddy presented E.A. with two dozen brand-new baseballs to throw at the simulated strike zone.

Well before the end of the summer E.A. could hit any individual spot on the canvas more often than not. But he never felt any better than he had when Teddy looked up from the canvas with the baseballs painted on it and grinned at him. That was a moment he'd remember forever.

 

“Ethan.”

Teddy stood up and headed out toward the mound at Fenway. It was midsummer, and he was working out with Ethan every evening that the boy didn't have a town-team game.

“Remember what I told you about getting an edge on that pitcher? Old Ichabod? Finding his weakness?”