Gold Dust (11 page)

I became suddenly aware of being at the center of something, something that should have been great, that had always been great before. The sun was doing its job so well, melting the snow wherever it could, after Mr. Mendelson had done his job, plowing the whole yard down to nothing but watery icebanks along walls and fences. The whole place had a feel now like the base of a mountain when the winter was letting go and everything was wet with the snow being converted to crystal waters running down from the slopes. The ground everywhere was shiny.

And then I was unaware of it all again.

“Bowl,” I said, and heard the odd little word repeated here and there in the crowd.

He looked at me without emotion. He nodded.

He stepped back and back and back, then forward, faster, faster, long went the stride,
sling,
over the top came the arm.

And
zzzzzip,
past me came the ball. I swung. But I was swinging at sound. I couldn’t even see the pitch.

Napoleon bowled again, like I told him to. And bowled me out.

There was a lot of muttering out in the crowd, no laughing really, and no cheering. Because this was not the way things worked. I was supposed to be hitting these balls, for the whole school population probably as much as for myself. It was like the pond freezing solid in January, and the crocuses poking through the crust in March. I was supposed to be tattooing some poor pimple ball right now.

“Bowl,” I said. Napoleon Charlie Ellis was trying to hold his game face, to show nothing, but the crack of a wince was coming across his tight lean skin.

“Maybe we should take a break, Richard,” he said.

“Ya, Richard, take a break before you hurt yourself,” Manny said, and a few people laughed.

I could feel the redness in my face, and was sure it could be seen from the cheapest seats in the house.

“Why are you lettin’ him cheat?” Jum McDonaugh asked.

Napoleon turned to face him. “I do not cheat at anything,” he said.

“You ain’t supposed to run like that before pitching.”

“It’s okay,” I said, frozen and probably looking crazy in my tight stance.

“Look,” Jum said, walking up and taking the ball from Napoleon. He set himself, wound up, and slung one at me.

I have to confess, when I hit that pitch, when I hit the absolute guts out of that pitch, I almost cried with relief and excitement. I saw myself circling the bases, heard the theme to
Hawaii Five-O
blasting over the massive Fenway sound system, and felt like somebody had just pulled me up out of a pit of alligators.

“See,” Jum said, as if he had accomplished some outstanding sports feat rather than giving up the biggest tater of the young season. “That is how to pitch a baseball.”

“We were not playing baseball,” Napoleon said. He took the ball again, as Arthur Brown ran it back from the far outfield. “We were playing cricket.”

That’s right, I thought. That’s right, we weren’t playing baseball. We were playing cricket. Oh, yes. God, yes. I was not failing at baseball, I was messing around with stupid old cricket. Yes. Yes. It was just cricket.

And the last time I would be playing cricket.

Jum screwed his face all up.
“Why?”
he asked.

“Because,” Napoleon said, “Richard and I are thinking men, and so we play the thinking man’s game.”

Butchie stepped in and snatched the ball away from Napoleon. “Ya, well nobody plays that here.”

“Some guys play it over at Franklin Park, every Sunday,” Glen Solar said.

Butchie pointed at the ground under him. “But nobody plays it
here
,” he said. “We play baseball here. Or stickball, but using baseball rules. Meaning, you don’t run at the guy when you pitch to him. Cricket,” he announced like some kind of authority, “is a stupid game.”

“Cricket is not a stupid game,” Napoleon said. “In fact, I believe that your inability to understand cricket is even further proof of the fineness of the game.”

There were small titters of laughter that faded out as Butchie scanned the crowd. Then he trained his look back on Napoleon, who wasn’t going anywhere.

I took a few steps toward them, caught Butchie’s eye.

He upnodded at me. “Ya?” Then he ripped the stickbat out of my hand, and stared back at Napoleon.

“We got something to settle, Jiminy Cricket?” He waved the stick just slightly in Napoleon’s direction.

“He probably can’t even play baseball,” Jum yelled, “that’s why he has to play his retard game.”

Butch laughed and nodded. I waited for Napoleon to say something, but instead a look of disgust came over his face and he started looking around, like he couldn’t remember how he got into this.

Napoleon didn’t much care what they thought. Whether he could play baseball or not. He was above that.

I wasn’t.

“I pick Napoleon,” I said.

Butch paused, grinned. “I’ll take Jum.”

“Manny.”

“Glen.”

“Quin.”

“Arthur.”

“My ball. We’re up first.”

The music was so loud in my head now, I could barely hear my teammates speaking to me.

“You’ll do fine,” I said to Napoleon. “You’re a natural, remember? And you’ve been learning from the best.”

I didn’t notice, and didn’t honestly care very much, what my other teammates had on their minds. The sun was out, I had the fever, I wanted to hit. I wanted us both to hit. Gold Dust moment.

And hit I did. Butchie was leering at me as I leaned in; he leaned back and let it fly. I don’t think anyone was even surprised when I sent the thing back so swiftly and so hard that it caromed back off the highest bit of the school’s four-floor face and came right back over Butchie’s head and landed near home plate. I was already making my unnecessary trip around the bases—slap the fence pole for first, step on the joint between the two big pavement cracks for second, the rusty sewer grate for third—waving to the crowd and working on my spring tan. Good. Life. Good.

I did my bit. Normally after my bit I relax, calm down, lose interest. But my stomach now remained fluttery, my reflexes keen. There was more. I was waiting for it. Everybody was waiting for it.

Manny followed, getting cute by letting one slightly less than perfect pitch after another go past. He was antagonizing Butch, which was not only his right and normally satisfying, it was effective because Butch is easy to disturb. But I had no patience for it. This was not about Manny, and everyone was aware of that.
“Hit,”
I screamed at him. The next pitch he delivered with a nice liner double, which was his usual. Quin followed by striking out on three pitches, which was his usual.

By the time Napoleon stepped up, with Manny on second, me catching, and Quin in a tag game somewhere, I could see Sister Jacqueline coming out with the gong again. Rats. That meant that Butchie’s team wouldn’t get to hit, which was cool. But it also meant I might not get to bat again, which was very much not. More importantly, Napoleon wouldn’t get to show his stuff.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I said, hurrying everyone.

Napoleon was holding his bat very low, so that he’d almost have to lift it up off the ground to hit the ball. I told him to pick it up, but then it was back down again. Some defensive cricket thing I was still to train out of him, but this was not the time. There was no time.

Butchie leaned back twice as far as normal and let it go.

Napoleon had been so crouched up on the plate, and so kind of sheepish about the whole thing, he almost didn’t manage to fall out of the way in time.

The ball, buzzing at a serious speed, headed in on Napoleon, in farther, screwballing toward his head until it went even farther in, and behind him. Napoleon had to drop himself—and the bat in the bargain—to the ground in a jumble. The bat bounced, clattering tip to tip to tip, making a hollowed wood racket that echoed around the yard.

Napoleon got up slowly. He refused to give Butch the satisfaction of a look.

“Don’t worry,” I said when he looked to me. “That’s just a brushback. It’s his strategy. Look for the good one. He’ll straighten it out.”

Butchie smiled at the suggestion he might throw something hittable. He leaned back again. I took my eye off him for half a second when the sun flashed off the bell that Sister J. was just now raising. It was so unfair.

Plunk.
The second I turned back was the very second the pimple ball, coming awfully hard, was smacking Napoleon Charlie Ellis dead in the eye. It made a loud sharp sound, like if you slapped a raw chicken hard with your bare hand.

I jumped up. The bell was ringing
clang-a-lang-a-lang,
and the crowd was moving away.

“Jeez, sorry, man,” Butchie said, as he strolled toward the line to go back inside.

I looked at Napoleon’s eye. He tried to open it but it wanted to close, and did. Then he tried again, kept it open long enough for me to see it, pink with bloodshot, watery. And angry.

“He did that on purpose,” Napoleon said.

I didn’t answer. With most people I wouldn’t need to.

“He hit me on purpose, Richard,” Napoleon said, louder, covering his eye with his hand.

I found myself looking around, worried who might be listening. I couldn’t believe it but he sounded like he was whining. You don’t do that. You don’t
do
that.

“No, he didn’t hit you on purpose. He
threw
at you on purpose though. That’s his job.
Your
job, Napoleon, is to get out of the way, and then be ready when a good pitch comes along. Then you show him who’s boss. But you didn’t do that.”

It had to be clear. From the sound of my voice, it had to be clear. From Napoleon’s reaction, I gathered that it was.

He forced the eye to stay open as he glared at me. The bell clanged again for us. “So it was my fault, is that what you are saying?”

“Oh, come on. Really, Napoleon, he’s brushed me back a hundred times before.”

“I am not
you,
am I?” he said, and as he said it he poked me hard in the chest with his finger, as if he was angry with
me.

We walked to catch up with the rest of the line as they were filing in.

“Who cares who you are, all right? Pitchers throw at hitters. They don’t just throw at
you.
Maybe if you’d stop worrying about who’s doing what to
you
then maybe you’d be able to concentrate on playing, and not embarrass us both.”

That was not how I meant to put it. I do better when I don’t have a speaking part.

“I see,” Napoleon said. He shook his head, then quick-stepped to leave me behind.

“I only meant it’s just a regular part of the game,” I called. He didn’t answer.

I looked up at the blue blue sky. It had been such a perfect day before.

O
VER THE NEXT FEW
days, winter returned, school fell into an even deeper than usual winter funk, and nobody seemed to really be talking to each other more than they needed to. It may have been just my impression, my feeling that because I wasn’t right nobody was, but I don’t think so. Because it is clear enough that when you get hit with a weirdly glorious early spring day everybody is talking more and running more and just stupidly happy more than they are normally stupidly happy. So why shouldn’t it be that when that spring gift gets snatched away again, that good feeling goes right on out with it.

Anyway, I felt it. Maybe it was more, though. I suppose it could have been more.

Napoleon and I were okay, but not all the way. We saw each other a little less, which was fine since everybody needs to do that, to get out of each other’s way some of the time. And he saw more of Beverly. Which was fine. It was fine.

Friday morning was the next time anybody tried to get a schoolyard game of stickball going. That somebody wasn’t me, though. I squatted there on the sidelines, on my haunches, against the saggy ten-foot-high chain-link fence that separated St. Colmcille’s from the mainstream of Boston. Sort of like the Vatican was separated from Rome, Sister Jacqueline once told us, there but not there at the same time. The cold had refrozen a lot of the drippy runoff of the snow, but conditions were not all that bad for a game, considering.

Still I squatted, thinking about getting in, thinking about not. Until Napoleon came along. He never rushed himself through lunch, regardless of the weather or the outside activities. Lunch is finished when it is finished, he’d say.

He came right over and squatted next to me, watching along with me as the other guys carried on without us. A ballgame with both of the Gold Dust Twins sitting out. Didn’t make sense to me, but didn’t seem to trouble anybody else much.

“I don’t think we ever finished that discussion,” Napoleon said out of practically nowhere.

“What discussion?”

“From the last time we were out here playing ball.”

“Oh,” I said, recalling what I had been trying hard not to recall. “I know. I don’t want to talk about it, if it’s all the same to you. I don’t like talking about that stuff. I never have.”

“So you admit, anyway, that there is a problem there.”

“You think I could miss it? I just... would rather leave it alone, okay?”

Napoleon got very quickly and very seriously angry with me then. It took me by surprise.

“No. Richard. No, I don’t believe it is all right to ignore it and pretend if we leave it alone it will go away. It won’t, you know. It will only get worse, and you will have yourself very much to blame.”

I felt like one of those prisoners in an old detective movie, being grilled and grilled in a dark dirty sweaty room until he snaps.

“Fine,” I snapped. “I can’t
stand
to be struck out. By anybody. Not even you. I hate it, and you struck me out about a million times, in front of a million spectators. But I’ll get over it.”

He was struck dumb. He slowly straightened up, stretched, and stood over me. “You know I’m not talking about that, don’t you? You know I’m talking about what happened later.”

I took a long breath. “Well, I don’t
know
that, exactly... but I suppose I knew it was a possibility.”

“Why do you have to do that?” he asked, taking his seat beside me again. At least we had made that much progress. “Richard, what good does it do you to avoid the bad things?”