My Most Excellent Year (14 page)

Dear Jacqueline,

I won first prize and fell for a premeditated “um.” All in the same evening. I played into his hands as though I were a viola. Whatever happened to my learning curve??

Lee insisted that I accompany her to Amory Park this afternoon, where Haller’s Hornets and T.C.’s Titans were evidently battling for the title of Most Appealing Butts. (One glance at the infield proved that the Hornets had no competition, but Lee insisted on keeping a detailed scorecard. She’s nothing if not thorough.) I’d begun to wonder if Lee’s pathological attachment to boys’ backsides deserved a conversation with a counselor, when Anthony’s name was announced as the lead-off hitter. As he grabbed hold of a bat and stepped confidently up to the plate, Lee promptly interrupted her own monologue on the Hornet shortstop’s crack to lean in conspiratorially and point toward Anthony crouched in the batter’s box.

“Does he look as dreamy to you in daylight as he did last night?” she whispered.

“For God’s sake, Lee,” I retorted impatiently, throwing her off the scent. “Nobody’s used the word
dreamy
since 1963!” Yes. He looked as dreamy to me in daylight as he did last night. So what?

That’s when I noticed the little blond boy sitting on the ground beside the on-deck circle, who’d been lost in a game of tic-tac-toe he’d been playing in the dirt with a Popsicle stick. But only until he looked up and realized that No. 25 was batting for the Titans. From that moment on, Anthony had his undivided attention. And Anthony knew it too. Before every pitch he glanced back over his shoulder nervously to check on the kid—and he went 4 for 4 while he was at it.

Ordinarily I would have been intrigued. But not today. I’d already been duped by an “um” and I wasn’t about to fall for another routine.

Oh, incidentally. Three sixth graders who were present at last night’s talent show came up to me between innings and asked for my autograph. I’m glad my fifteen minutes of fame are almost up. I do a lot better in the real world.

Fondly,

Alejandra

Dear Mama,

Augie and Alé got asked to audition for parts in the school play. They’re going to be stars but I’m not. I don’t care. I didn’t really want to be famous anyway. Why didn’t they ask me too?? I won second prize! Was it because of the JFK thing? Was it because
Kiss Me, Kate
has something to do with Shakespeare and they were afraid of my
Two Gentlemen of Veroner
accent? What a bunch of cheesers.

The little boy I told you about didn’t turn out to be you in disguise after all (even though I still think you had something to do with it). His name is actually Hucky Harper. For three games in a row he sat in the dirt by the on-deck circle and watched me play, and for three games in a row he kept shaking his head yes or no so I’d be able to tell whether to swing or not. It gets kind
of weird when you think about it too long. I’m the only guy in Brookline who’s hit safely in fourteen at-bats. Even the
real
Tony C never had a record like that. So of course I’ve gone looking for him after each game to find out how he did it, but he’s always gone by then. And since you couldn’t see him from Augie’s seat in the bleachers because of the green pads on the bottom of the backstop, my brother thought I’d finally popped my top. (To tell you the truth, I wasn’t so sure I hadn’t either.)

Nehi was the one who proved that I wasn’t making up mirages after all. It’s not just that he understands most of the things I say, but also that he saw the kid watching me too. So at the beginning of game four of my hitting streak, he hopped off the bleachers where he was playing “Catch the Snicker Snax” with Dad and Pop and trotted over to the dirt by the on-deck circle. At first Hucky looked sort of nervous (even though Hucky’s a little bit bigger than a cocker spaniel, he’s got smaller teeth), but all Nehi had to do was flop down onto his stomach and put his head in Hucky’s lap to prove that he wasn’t really a velociraptor in disguise. That made it easy for me to wander down the third-base line while our side was up so I could hang out with my dog. One way or another I was going to find out how the kid knew what pitches I should swing on.

At first I thought Hucky had issues with people in general or with me in particular, because after I plopped down on the ground next to him, I said all of the usual things you say to somebody who you never talked to before.

“Hey.”

“What’s your name?”

“How old are you?”

“I’m T.C.”

“How did you know the second pitch was going to be a fastball over the center of the plate?”

But he never said anything back. He looked up into my face with a kind of half frown as if he’d never seen another talking person in his life, and he tugged on the front of his hair until I thought he was going to pull it out. By then I’d pretty much decided he was flipping me off, until there was a loud bang from Parkman Street where they’re putting in a new sidewalk. Nehi and I both yelped at the same time, but Hucky never even noticed—he just yanked on his hair some more and looked like he was wondering why I’d just jumped a foot and a half into the air.

“Hey, are you deaf?” I wondered out loud. Which is probably the dumbest question I ever asked anybody in my life. When all I got back was a different brand of frown, I figured the answer was yes. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t still up a creek. What do you say to a deaf kid anyway? So I went back to the dugout and watched him play tic-tac-toe in the dirt and not pay attention to anything else until my fourth-inning at-bat—when he looked up long enough to get me to swing on a third-pitch slider that probably landed in Canada (assuming it
ever
came down). Then he went back to tic-tac-toe like all of this was supposed to be normal. By now I needed answers.

For the next three innings I sat next to him near the on-deck circle, drawing pictures in the dirt of things like bats hitting baseballs with big question marks on them, and writing in capital letters “H-O-W?” as if that was supposed to clear up his hearing.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I asked for the tenth time.
The look he gave me was the same one I got from Augie when I told him I could never tell the difference between Ethel Merman and Esther Williams.

But at the bottom of the seventh, a lady in a green dress came down from the bleachers and interrupted us before I had a chance to use the sign language I’d seen once on
Gilligan’s Island
when a native showed up out of nowhere. (How come visitors never had a problem finding that place, but those seven ginks could never figure out how to get
off
of it?) First she kneeled down in front of him, and then she pushed the tugged-on hair away from his forehead.

“Who’s this?” she asked him (meaning me), while she moved her hands and wiggled her fingers at the same time. “A new friend?” (Usually I hate how adults get singy-songy voices when they talk to little kids, but this time I didn’t mind. I mean, it’s not like Hucky could hear her anyway.) After he shook his head no (NO?!) and did the finger things right back to her, she told me that she was a social worker named Elizabeth Jordan and that she had to take Hucky home to the Boston Institute for the Deaf in the other half of Brookline so he could work on his arithmetic before dinner. She was also the one who filled in some of the blanks that Hucky couldn’t answer just with his face and eyes and hands. (1) His whole name is Hucky Evan Harper. (2) He’s six. (3) He was born without a father and when his mother found out he couldn’t hear, she gave him to the Institute because she didn’t know what to do with a deaf son. (4) They put him in three different foster homes that he liked a lot but they were only temporary. (5) Now he lives at the Institute in a big house with other kids, so he’s not alone anymore.

I guess I could have asked Mrs. Jordan how Hucky knew what pitches I should swing on, but I didn’t want to get him into
trouble—or piss him off—if he turned out to be one of those weird little guys who says things like “I see dead people.” I have enough on my plate already.

I love you,

T.C.

Dear Mama,

I may not know how to do the sign language thing, but I’ve definitely figured out how to tell when this deaf kid is cheesed off at
me. This afternoon I struck out four times by swinging on what he told me to swing on. And he did it on purpose too. In the army they call it giving false information to the enemy.

It was my own damn fault. Nehi and I got to the park an hour early so I could warm up with Glen Brunswick, who nobody told me threw up during fifth period and had to be sent home. Hucky was already there too, racing around the bases by himself (from third to first, by the way)—but as soon as he saw me, he stopped in his tracks and ran back to the bleachers to sit in the top row with Mrs. Jordan. I don’t get it. Do I smell or something?!

I guess that would have been the end of it if there hadn’t been a carnival on the south side of the park. Mrs. Jordan had this “great idea” that we should walk the kid to the midway for an ice cream cone. (She may not be deaf, but if she hadn’t noticed by then that Hucky had about as much use for me as another spleen, then “dumb” and “blind” were still up for grabs.)

So we made our way across the football-sized field between the bleachers and the red-and-white-striped booths, with me holding Hucky’s left hand (Mrs. Jordan’s idea, not mine) and Nehi hugging close to his right one. But because he can’t hear, nobody was saying anything (not that Hucky would have been shooting off his mouth anyway), and I really didn’t see much point in kicking off a bonding experience with Mrs. Jordan. But you know how it gets after a while—when the silence amps up so loud you’re afraid you’re going to break it by farting? So what kind of a choice did I have??

“Uh—how come he likes to watch me play but other times he runs away from me?” I asked Mrs. Jordan, who had bent down to re-tie Hucky’s sneaks.

“Because he’s not used to grown-ups who talk to him the way they’d talk to anybody else,” she answered back, standing up and steering us toward the midway. “He hasn’t figured you out yet.” It was the “grown-up” part I couldn’t wrap my mind around. I’m not even fifteen. What’s the “adult” cutoff for a six-year-old? Nine? Meanwhile, Hucky had turned around to make sure Mrs. Jordan wasn’t watching and then he yanked his hand out of mine. Which actually added to my short list of deaf gestures that I know now. Up until then, there was only one kind of Hucky talk I’d learned so far: