Waiting for Teddy Williams (13 page)

“Hogwash,” Gran said. “In both instances. I can explain the Virgin Birth and I can explain why the Sox ain't won a Series. As far as Mary goes, she got knocked up, same as you did with E.A., Gypsy Lee. Then she went and made up a story to tell that gullible young nail-driver. As for the Sox, it's all a plot to keep me wheelchair-bound.”

It was early in the morning. E.A. had grown two more inches over the past winter. He was thinking more about girls, especially before going to sleep at night. At times he almost wished he could go to school so he could get to know some girls.

“I always want you to pitch to me, ma. I haven't lost interest in baseball.”

They went down to Fenway in the morning dew, Gypsy still in her cowgal boots and fringed buckskin dress.

“Tiant's spinning a beauty this afternoon, folks,” Gypsy announced. “He's ready. Checks the runners. Twists, looks right up at the center-field scoreboard—
wow
, how's he do
that?
—delivers. How come you don't swing at so many pitches anymore, hon?”

“I'm learning to be patient, ma.”

Gypsy grinned out from under her cowgirl hat. “I'll try to do better. Get more pitches over the plate.”

“You do fine. It's good practice for me to lay off the ones out of the strike zone. Not get down on the count.”

Gypsy pitched. The ball was outside two inches. E.A. took his short stride, thought about it, held off.

“Good eye, hon. Walk's as good as a single, right? You want one from Eckersley? The Eck winds, hair flying, throws. Uh-oh. Good ducking, honey boy. We wouldn't want you to go through life with a metal plate in your head.”

“Don't worry about me, ma. I'll get out of the way.”

“That's what the Zim said,” Gran said.

Gypsy pitched. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “I had no idea you could hit a ball that far, baby. Well, twelve was the biblical age of manhood. The age of Our Lord when He went up to the temple and held discourse with the Pharisees.”

“It's the age you started going down to the trestle to hold another kind of course with Gone and Long Forgotten,” Gran said. Then she cackled. “I got you both beat. I started going to the trestle when I was nine.”

 

Gypsy and E.A. sat on the catwalk of the old water tower by the trestle, just below the osprey's nest, dangling their feet and legs in thin air, the hot tarry scent of the railroad ties in the air around them.

In the olden days, coal-driven steam locomotives had stopped here to fill their boilers. Forty steam trains a day had come through Kingdom Common on the Montreal-to-Boston line. Now only six daily freights, pulled by diesel engines, used the line.

Along with the high mowing meadow, Fenway Park, and Allen Mountain Brook, the water tower was one of E.A.'s favorite places. Ever since he was five, he and Gypsy had often climbed the rickety wooden ladder and sat on the catwalk next to the rusty metal spout. It was a fine place to view the surrounding countryside. Below was the siding where the steam trains had pulled off to take on water. To their left, the Canada Post Road crossed the tracks and joined the river road. The high trestle spanned the river to their right. Across the river, beyond the line of soft maples and willows, lay the big pasture behind the commission-sales barn. Then the village.

The water tower was covered with faded messages. The largest, in red letters touched up every two or three summers by Moonface Poulin, was the ever-present reminder of the last ultimate triumph of the Sox. Just below,
LYD PI K M
was all that was left of the old Lydia Pinkham patent medicine ad. At abandoned homesteads on the mountain E.A. had dug up a few large shards of Lydia Pinkham bottles, but none intact, though he had unearthed a Dr. Atwood's Bitters that was worth twenty-four dollars in his bottle book. Under the
LYD PI K M
were some initials in faded hearts. One was especially intriguing: G A + F V Ethan figured G A might be Gypsy Allen. But who was F V? Fred? Frank? He didn't have a clue. Maybe G A was Gloria Alexander, Bobby Alexander's mother over in the village. Except that she wasn't an Alexander until after she married Bill.

Gypsy strummed a chord of “Nobody's Child,” the song she'd been working on for a long time. Then she stopped playing and looked off toward Jay Peak. “When we go to Music City, sweetie, we'll mosey down through the Smokies. See some wild country. Go over to Merlefest, too, in North Carolina. ‘Nobody's Child' is the one I'm going to win Merlefest with. It's more geared for the festivals than the Top Forty.”

“It's a great song, ma. The songs in the Top Forty all suck.”

“Well, in general they do. Except when they play an oldie but goodie.”

The 9:30
A.M.
southbound whistled. A minute later the lead diesel pulled into sight. The water tank vibrated as the train passed below, mainly Burlington Northern and Canadian Pacific boxcars now, though a few Atlantic and St. Lawrence lumber flatbeds, the yellow boards stacked tall and partly covered with tarps. Three open automobile carriers went by, loaded with brand-new pickups straight from Detroit, being shipped east to Boston through Canada.

Gypsy's red cowgirl hat was tipped back now, and she looked like one of the Lovett Sisters on the cover of the
Big D Jamboree
CD of songs from the '40s and '50s that E.A. had gotten her last Christmas out of a music mail-order catalog.

“Detroit,” Gypsy said, shaking her head. “Reminds me of that old song ‘Detroit City.' That was one of his favorites.”

“Whose favorites, ma?”

“Gone and Long Forgotten's. He loved to have me sing it 'cause it's about a natural-born loser. Hometown guitar-picker lights out to make it in the big city. Detroit. Pardon me.
De
-troit. Let's get it right here, folks. Anyway, he goes up to
De
-troit from wherever, East Jesus or West Overshoe or Kingdom Common. And what happens? God love him, he falls flat on his face. What he forgot, see, was he was taking his own sorry self right along with him. Not that Mr. Nobody even got that far, come to think of it. He didn't have the guts to try. I'm sorry, hon. I shouldn't bad-mouth your relation. There's only one problem.”

“What's that, ma?”

“He was a no-good, gutless, self-destructive son-of-a-bitching loser, pardon my French.”

“Ma?”

“What, hon? I'm sorry I went to rant there for a minute. When I get my Allen up, I can't seem to help myself.”

“I know, ma. What I wanted to ask, when are you going to Nashville?”

“Not until you're grown-up, hon. Don't worry, I wouldn't ever leave you.”

“I'm not worried. But I'd like for you to go soon so you don't wait till it's too late. Gran and Bill and I'd be all right for a while. I want you to go, ma. Like the guy, the natural-born loser, in ‘Detroit City.' Only you'd make it. I know you would.”

“How do you know that, lovey?”

“Well, for one thing, Our Father told me. I mean the Colonel.”

“Oh, E.A. Maybe you just thought he said that.”

“He really did, ma.”

The train whistled at the crossing in the Common. Gypsy sang a line of “The Wreck of the Old Ninety-seven.”

“Ma, tell the story about you and Gone and Long Forgotten.”

“Oh, that's a sad, sad tale, darling.”

“I like to hear it.”

“Well, as young kids together, he and I would jump off the trestle into the big pool below. Sometimes we'd wait until a train was coming and the lead locomotive was on the trestle, whistle screaming, air brakes shrieking, then jump hand in hand. Just don't ever let me catch you doing such a foolhardy thing, sweetie.”

“That's where you and my pa went skinny-dipping, isn't it?”

“Yes, hon. We were as wild as two young birds of the air.”

“Weren't you afraid of tramps?”

“Not with Mr. GALF there. Plus that's where Our Father blessed me eternally by giving me you, hon. The best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I thought it was Mr. Gone and Long Forgotten who gave you me.”

“He was just the instrument of the Lord, hon. Only Our Father can give precious life, and all life is precious. I used to tell that to Mr. Gone and Long Forgotten when he killed snakes and frogs and pigeons. Anyway, you were conceived under that very trestle. Romantic, huh?”

“Well, it is, sort of.”

“Bobbi Gentry could've gotten a good song out of it.”

“You got two good songs out of it, ma. ‘Knocked Up in Knoxville' and ‘Nobody's Child.' I know you'll get the handle to ‘Nobody's Child.'”

“Yes. Companion songs, lovey. To showcase your ma's versatility. You see, Our Father gave me the gift to write them. It would have been wrong not to use it and multiply that gift, like the good steward. We're all stewards of our own gifts. You're the steward of your gift for baseball.”

“Did Mr. Gone and Long Forgotten have a gift?”

“I guess you'd have to say he was pretty good at what we did under the trestle, 'cause he helped me make a fine redheaded boy. Apart from that, anything else he was good at, he wantonly threw away.”

“Tell about racing the train, ma. Sing ‘The Kingdom County Accident.'”

“That's a sad and tragic song, hon.”

“They love it when you sing it out.”

“People have gruesome taste. Okay, here we go:

 

It was the summer of 'eighty-four.

We wasn't really kids no more.

When we took it in our dumb brains

To race the seven-thirty-five train.”

 

Gypsy stopped. “I don't know, hon. I can't go on. He had a souped-up jitney, and he'd start up on the mountain, on the Post Road, and race the train to the crossing. I did it with him just once. It was a big rush, an even bigger thrill than jumping off the trestle. We bounced over the rails a heartbeat ahead of the locomotive. To tell you the truth it scared me half to death. You know what scared me most? That if we lost I'd never write all the songs in me. Finally I got Gone and Long Forgotten to promise he'd never do it again, but one evening when it was raining he did it one time more.”

“And he's buried under the marker?”

“Mr. Nobody's buried beneath the marker, all right.”

“Ma? How come sometimes you call him Mr. Nobody?”

“Because he was afraid of being somebody, hon. Afraid to be a father, a husband, and a success. Afraid to use the talent Our Father in His infinite wisdom had given him. Afraid to pay the price of his talent. Oh, hon. He was a low-down coward like the dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard and laid poor Jesse in his grave. Pardon me for badmouthing him, baby. But he was no man.”

“Do you think Mr. Nobody ever would have changed?”

“I don't have much faith in change, baby. He was a son of a bitch through and through. Start to finish. I'm sorry. I guess that's the
WYSOTT
Allen in me.”

“Old Lady Benton says I'm a bad seed. I guess I get that from Mr. Nobody.”

“Old Lady Benton can go screw herself, sweetie pie. I'm sorry for the language, but she can. I'll tell her so next time I see her. You aren't a bad seed, you're the most precious gift a mother could ever receive. I shouldn't have told you all this, baby doll. It isn't right for a ma to spill the beans to her only begotten boy about getting knocked up by a no-good, low-down, two-timing loser.”

Gypsy laughed and sang:

 

“Knocked up in Knoxville.

Made up in Memphis.

Hitched up . . . in Nashville

. . . Tin-nessee.”

 

E.A. hummed along. But he never did have much of a singing voice, and besides, he had an idea. A good one. Sitting on the water tank in the hazy morning sunlight, listening to Gypsy warble “Knocked Up in Knoxville,” he believed he'd hit on a way to find out what he most wanted to know.

P
ICKUPS WITH BIG
, dark, heavy-antlered bucks in their beds cruised slowly around the sere common, displaying their trophies. It was late in the afternoon of the opening Saturday of deer season in Kingdom County. Men, and some women, too, in red-and-black-checked or hunter-orange jackets and pants went in and out of the hardware store and the IGA and the hotel. E.A., who had already gotten his deer with Gypsy several nights before, was talking with the Colonel. But not about hunting.

All villages hold many secrets, the Colonel was saying, and Kingdom Common was no exception. In the Common, many years before E.A. was born, there had been a murder. The murdered man, Orie Gilson, was a farmer who was mean to his help. Everyone in the village knew that the murderer was his hired man, assisted by a few of his drinking cronies. For more than half a century the
Kingdom County Monitor
had offered a standing reward of $10,000 for information leading to the killer's conviction. But no one would talk to the police. To the outside world the murderer's identity remained a mystery, though the greater mystery was how an entire town could keep such a secret for so long. Sooner or later, you'd think, somebody would talk. A world-class busybody like Old Lady Benton. The Reverend, only slightly less proficient at gossiping and casting blame. Or Judge Charlie K himself, at the time a young defense lawyer just out of law school. But no Commoner had ever breathed a word to anyone beyond the county line, and no arrest was ever made. The reward went unclaimed.

The Colonel loved to natter on about the village's other mysteries. What had become of the loot when twenty Confederate soldiers had ridden hell-for-leather out of Canada in 1864 and robbed the First Farmers' and Lumberers' Bank of Kingdom Common of nearly $100,000? Most of the raiders got away, and the money never turned up. How had the Colonel's sword been broken off, and why hadn't it been replaced? Some said Noel Lord, as a boy, had cut it off with a hacksaw after the sword severed his hand when he drove his father's moonshine cart into town and the oxen ran into the statue. But the Colonel wouldn't say.