NINETEEN
They met him at the ballpark. Bertie wore a great wide straw hat on account of the sun, Emma wore a long lavender dress and they sat in the bare bleacher stands, watching while Mr. Walker pitched to Wolfman from the peach basket full of balls they had taken from Bertie's closet.
They waited for Jack and Molly.
Mr. Walker wore the new white suit, the second one, the spare, and he kicked his leg up high as he pitched, the paper crinkling with his crazy corkscrew motion. Wolfman used the ironwood bat, the grey wood smooth as soap and probably all of forty ounces. It slowed him enough to keep him from getting an edge on the old bird dog. He too wore a white suit, it was like old fashioned baseball seeing the two of them there, the ball cracking off the heavy bat and sailing far skyward, off high over the fence with its ragged edge of blue flax.
Some boys stopped to watch and laugh, but they cheered the high blasts. The ball rose from deep in the green meadow, the white leather cover spinning slowly in the high air, higher than the towers of the hospital, light and lofting above their gaze.
Willard threw one at the black man's head and he fell back, the red dust exploding in a puff, streaking the back and arm and legs of the suit, rising in a thin cloud as he laughed and slapped it off.
"Gonna put the next one in your teeth, old man!"
It was high and tight and Wolfman tomahawked it at him, hitting it with a dull clunk and setting it rocketing. Now Willard too bit the dust, setting a cloud rising and the boys laughing.
He pulled off the hood from his bony head, his hairs smeared madly with sweat, wound up and threw another which Wolfman set riding.
The boys began to shag them, running out deep in the field and climbing the chainlink fence, the fence making music as they climbed.
Willard stripped off the top of the paper suit and the shirt underneath. There was a great tattoo covering his chest and shoulder, a snake.
Wolfman swung with a grunt, unwinding like a great cat, the ball twanging against the chainlink behind him.
Willard cackled at the missed swing and stripped the rest of the suit off, down to his boxershorts and the highbacked slippers. He was oiled with perspiration but moving slow and easy.
Jack and Molly arrived in a rusted red taxi. Emma came down from the seats to greet them. Wolfman set his bat down and walked toward her.
"No," Wolfman said to her, "He's mine first. We got a long thing to settle."
The sweat rolled from his dark brow, he smiled for her eyes. His eyes were bleary from the night, but with a little fire within them like the coke had made in the early hours of the morning, although she knew he hadn't taken any after that. He walked slowly toward Flynn as Emma signalled for Molly to come. Willard watched them from the mound, his skinny body gold with sweat, a new ball in his hand and ready to pitch.
"Yo Blood," Flynn called from a distance. He too was weary.
"Bush," Wolfman acknowledged, nodding slowly.
"I got to..." Flynn said.
"I know your story, Flynn," he said. He was huffing from the hitting, sweaty all over his body, the dust still staining the suit.
"What's it about, man?" Flynn said, "You tell me what it is..."
Wolfman spat into the dust.
"Ain't about nothing, Flynn. About you... About us..." He took them all in with a sweep of his arm, Flynn saw them watching him, the young boys gathered by the backstop far away.
"It about going on..." Wolfman said, "That's the point, my man. That is, as they say, the certainty of existence, do you understand?"
Flynn nodded. Bertie sat there in the stands, she looked worried and tired, as if she thought it would start between them again. He wanted to go tell Bertie about the motel where they had the skiff tied, wanted to tell her she could live there summers if she wished, that he had had Lenny buy it afterall.
But they had work to do.
"Been a long time, Wolfman..."
"Ain't about nothin', Jack, ain't about nothing..."
"You go with me, Wolfman?"
"Why I'm here, jujuman, why I'm here."
So, in time, they went down to the water. The young doctor had waited for them in the staff room, faintly apprehensive when he heard them laughing as they came along the tile corridor. He was surprised to see the black man.
"Vitals are stable," he answered when the black man asked.
Flynn seemed relieved. It was impossible to tell what he had decided.
"Are you Mr. Flynn's attorney?" the doctor asked. He did not want to be double-crossed, it was not their agreement.
"Of a sort," Wolfman said, "Consider me a family advisor."
The doctor shook him off. "I'm sorry but I can't..."
The black man extended a hand, slowly, gently cutting him off.
"Not to worry, son," he said, "The family has agreed in conference to ask your opinion about the possibility of granting Miss Esther Flynn a day pass for an outing."
The young doctor searched the black man's eyes. It was clear that he meant what he meant. Still he had to have them say it.
"I'm sorry," he said, "But I need Mr. Flynn to tell me that he appreciates the risks of any action with this patient. I need him to state that he absolves this institution of any peril which might result coincidental with a day pass."
"I..." Flynn said.
Wolfman cut him off.
"Doubtlessly, the good doctor has a release for such occasions."
The doctor nodded.
"I think what you are doing may be best, Mr. Flynn," he said, "There should be little suffering."
"Will she...?" Flynn could not say.
"He can't say that, sap," the black man said. Then, more gently, "It isn't really some plug like in you toaster oven, Bush. Don't nobody just keel over and drop when you loose them from these things, ain't that right doc?"
"Generally..." the doctor began, but Wolfman was orchestrating things his own way.
" It's just a little sugar water on one end, a drain on the other. A little oxygen to keep the respiration, a little electrolytes to keep the ticker pumping. It take some time to die, Flynn, maybe never..."
The doctor nodded grimly.
They went in to see her. "She's a beautiful girl, Flynn," the Wolfman said and hugged him. It was like standing over a coffin and Flynn didn't like it. She was alive.
"She's alive."
"That the point, chump! Didn' I say she's beautiful?"
Flynn nodded. He was still missing the point, even after what the girl showed him. He and Wolfman walked down together arm in arm and waited in the dayroom while the nurses prepared her, got her sitting in the wheelchair dressed in a blue cotton dress. Flynn cried all the while as Wolfman held him.
"Like old times, Bush," Wolfman murmured, "Old times... I be laying awake at night in some chump-change hotel hearin you cry over your hurting arm..."
Flynn didn't know. He hadn't thought the pain showed then. He had remembered it in mornings.
So they went down to the water, Flynn and Wolfman and Esther in the Maserati, the air conditioning seeming to ease her weary breath. Emma, Molly, and the other two followed behind them in Emma's rented car.
The motel was stucco over concrete block and green trimmed, fairly down on its luck but a bargain nonetheless. Sea Breeze Inn it was called and Flynn thought he would leave it at that.
They carried her down to the water in a fireman's carry, their linked arms under her for a seat. She was wide-eyed still and breathing fairly well, and not dead weight although unable to move to help herself. Bertie put the wide hat over Esther's head when they had her on the skiff in the foreward facing woven chair.
"I'll go with you," Wolfman said.
"No, someone has to row them," Flynn said, "The old two..."
Willard spat at the insult, he was dressed again in trousers and shirt, the white paper suit under his arm.
"Emma can sit in the other chair," Flynn said, and Emma nodded. Molly clung to her side, her eyes on Esther's eyes.
"And Molly will crew for me in the bow..."
She scampered on without him saying, and began to free the ties from the sail. Wolfman got Bertie and Willard into the rowboat from the motel.
"Just one time out and around," Flynn said and Wolfman nodded.
Bertie was crying as Molly rigged the sail.
"Wait!" Flynn said, before they pushed off.
He pulled the heavy bullhead from the water on the stringer and tied it to the dock. "Supper," he said and then seated himself, poling carefully away from the dock. Wolfman rowed out beyond him and waited while Flynn adjusted the rig of the sprit, nodded to Molly, and climbed aft, letting the sheet out from the line in his hand. The breeze caught with a tug and they shot off. There was a big freighter out in the channel, heading downriver to the locks, the Selena Marie, heading home.
(Flynn is laughing with the memory, his eyes glazed.) We shot out from my landing, you see, the spray kicking high into thin rainbows drifting down in a mist, the skiff turning under our weight and facing full to the breeze, rocking hard on the chop from the freighter, the girl moving in time with me each time we tacked, sliding the centerboard up and down like she was born to it, and I'm leaning into the wind and letting the sheet out full, Emma talking all the while to Esther, encouraging her and telling her what they're seeing and holding the straw hat down on her head so it wouldn't fly off.
Wolfman rowed behind us, pulling the boat in long strokes, Willard whooping across the water, Bertie sitting primly, her eyes always on us.
"We're taking you sailing, Esther," I said, "In our father's boat, we're sailing."
She met the spray with blinking eyes, but did not acknowledge the words. Emma kept talking to her, but I hadn't the patience. I just wanted to say it before we were done, wanted Esther to hear. She sat stiffly in the cane seat, her eyes wide and her blue dress flapping; Emma whispered to her as we went. She was a sweet thing, my sister, and it was over, really, it was over but not quite anything.
The game taught me some things, you see, things which are useful, things which have their uses. I remembered feeling that way at least once before, one time coming to my mind. We were in Detroit my last season, a jewel of a ballpark, you know, with true infields and dark seats and a beautiful high sky and fair winds. It just smells like a ballpark there, between the lines, no chickens in Disney feathers, no gimmicks, only a happy black guy named Herbie Redmond dances when they dress the infields, pushing his broom and waving his cap and skip-dancing as they groom the basepaths.
I was going good, better than good for that last year. Allowed only two hits into the eighth, one a four-seamer Parrish takes a mile. Still we're even coming into the home half of the eighth, one to one after we leave enough stranded Canadians on base to upset immigration. I get the first two on strikes and a long foul. I'm sailing and young again, but I let Whitaker get away from me. They bring in Wockenfuss and you can smell hit-run in the air. I take my time and watch the shadows settle halfway from the mound. I send Whitaker back once slow and then again fast to show him what I got. Each time he takes another walking lead, like he's hanging on me, you know, going to ride my shoulders. I shrug it off and line up Wockenfuss. Waste one way outside to see if he'll reach or Whitaker will go. Nothing doing. Take a guess he'll hit and run after one strike, so give him heat down the chute. The entire stadium groans with the strike call. It's tallying time and I give him a slider down damn near on his shoes. He turns that silly foot out and inside-outs it, golfs it with Whitaker running all the way. It hits the gap and skids but Bailor's over and cuts it off clean, except he never throws. Whitaker's motoring all the way and he's home clean.
Wockenfuss stands right on top of the bag, kicking dirt from his spikes. It's over, but it's not; it's over but it's not anything, you know. You just keep going on, get the next guy on a ground ball to short and run on in.
Knowing it's over. Three hits and a damn nice cut-off by Bailor and nothing to be done. Best damn hit-and-run man in the major leagues, Wockenfuss. Morris takes us one, two, three because no one cares, including him, now that it's over.
Won twenty games five times lifetime. It's over.
You learn that way, you know, how life is.
It was a fair day for sailing, a high sky, clouds careening, Esther dreaming.
You see. (He says this as if it is the whole statement, not a question, not a habit of speech. Even so he continues.)
You see, there are happy endings.
(There are tears in his eyes. We sit awhile in silence. I ask him if he has ever heard the quatrains which some claim to be the first mention of baseball in American writing. He shakes his head and I ask if he minds if I recite them. He looks toward me, as if encouraging me to go on, but I know he is watching elsewhere. I recite them nonetheless.)
The Ball once struck off,
Away flies the Boy,
To the next destin'd Post
And then Home with Joy.
Thus Seamen for Lucre
Fly over the Main,
But, with Pleasure transported,
Return back again.
(He sits as if struck, but then says yes.) "It's a good place, Sea Breeze," he says.
A beautiful morning he thought she said.
It's a beautiful morning, Esther, the men all in white and the waves dancing. They tip their caps like little Dutchmen then duck under one another, hurrying off like Willard in a rush. Aunt Bertie is here and my Molly too, and Bertie's cheek already has some color, no more than the blush on a ivory rose, and the sun is rising gradually now high in the sky, and Molly works the lines and dances with Flynn, turning the skiff about. Feel it drop beneath us, see her shake the wind off and sigh, she too now hurrying on, the spray glistening in the sun sheen, she would make your father proud.
Oh you would too, dear, don't be afraid. See the Selena Marie, she's outward bound, hurrying to Surinam, and she carves a single furrow of overturning silver. It echoes to either shore in a diminishing series like distant yawning. And Mr. Hunt is climbing now, working the oars as he works up the side of the swells, the dark wooden sweeps desperate and briefly empty at each peak, and then they slide down.
Now our skiff is rising, Esther, rising with them to meet the swells, each time easing into the breeze. We are aloft, my darling, gently rising, and you're not alone. None of us has slept this night, none of us sees.
It is a peaceful morning for sailing off, my friend, a soft and swollen feeling overtaking us all. Peace, my darling, the wave swirls are chrysanthemums, the shore birds cry. We are beautiful and fortunate, hurrying off.
The End