Oonagh made it difficult for Gormley to fall asleep, but Gormley knew that she had to if she was going to find out what Fedelma was up to. Gormley took deep breaths, swelling up her chest with air and then letting it go, ever so slowly. She thought of quiet things: the days before they came to Fenway Park, before they were kicked out of Ireland with a false promise. The Great Famine was over, and the potatoes had been pushing their heads up from the soil again—the soil surrounded by green grass. The soft rains. She thought of the time when she was in love. Her human was so kind and gentle, but not brave. No, not brave enough to be in her world with her. She shook her head. No, she didn’t want to think of the human leaving her and her boy. She thought instead of her father with his strong wings, her mother so beautiful but so fragile in her humanness.
And Gormley no longer heard her sister’s anxious babbling and hiccupping. She could see only the tunnels, and Weasel-man working to untangle leashes. Bodiless, her soul was growing cold. She had to act quickly. She was hovering above the weasels, trying to look for one that seemed healthy and quick. They were hard to keep track of, and Weasel-man was so massive that it wasn’t easy to see around his girth. And then she heard her sister’s voice: Fedelma shouting for Weasel-man.
Weasel-man dropped his work. “Fedelma?” he whispered. “Could it be?”
Gormley saw a weasel with warm eyes, a gentle expression, and a muscular body. She dived into the weasel’s small form quickly. She felt her way into the new, wiry shape. She enjoyed the way the weasel darted amid the others, the tussle, the reach of her paws, the lengthening of her back, the kick of her hind legs. She kept her new weasel eyes on the heels of Weasel-man. Her soul warmed.
Weasel-man’s eyes were wide-open. He tugged the leashes anxiously. “Come, come,” he said. “It’s my Fedelma, calling for me!” He took off running, and Gormley kept pace with the rest of the weasels. Her weasel body was young. It had no arthritic soreness, no creaking of bones. She felt lithe and agile and quick. She stayed at the head of the pack, rounding the twists and turns of the tunnels. The other weasels were yapping and calling out. Gormley followed suit. She yapped and yapped, the breeze tunneling through her ears.
Her sister called out again, sharply and urgently. “Weasel-man? Weasel-man!”
Finally, they turned the last corner, and she saw her sister standing right next to the front door. Gormley knew that her sister was afraid that if she were to wander too far from home, she might not be able to find her way back, what with the winding halls and her weak and clouded eyesight. She watched her sister step away from the door, toward the sound of yapping. “Weasel-man?” Fedelma said. She took fifteen steps—only fifteen—counting them carefully.
Weasel-man was so breathless from running that he could barely speak. He bent down, putting his hands on his knees for a moment to catch his breath, and then he rose up—my, my, the enormous bulk of the man! “Fedelma!” he said. “You’ve come out! You’ve come out to see me! To thank me for the cooler! It was a gift. I can get you anything you want from Concessions, just ask! I was going to stop in today—drop off a fresh box of hot dogs; but here you are! Here you are!”
“Hush, Weasel-man.” Fedelma was blushing, but she spoke in a scolding tone. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything,” Weasel-man said tenderly, leaning in close. “You know that.”
The other weasels were jumping around the hem of Fedelma’s skirt. Gormley situated herself between their shoes. “Rein them in, would you?” Fedelma said.
“Of course, it’s just that they get excited. They love you so!” He tightened the leashes by wrapping them around one meaty fist. Gormley was choked back and now had a less-than-perfect view from between Weasel-man’s frayed pant legs.
“I need you to take a message to the Pooka.”
“The Pooka?” Weasel-man was alarmed. Gormley was too. She knew her sister was up to no good—but this? “Why would you want to do that? No, no, not a good idea!”
“Don’t tell me my business!” Fedelma said. “Just do what I tell you.”
“But the Pooka?” Weasel-man’s eyes glazed over. “I saw him once with my own eyes. His shaggy horse head, his glowing eyes, his enormous legs, and—worst of all I tell you, worst of all—his hefty pink hands, just like a young man’s. It was awful to behold. And how he didn’t say a word, just raked his hoof in the dirt and stared at me.”
“Are you too scared? What kind of man are you?”
“It’s just that most of those he’s snatched never came back. Remember the Cursed Creature with the lazy eye? And that one with the nasty cough? One day there. Next day not.”
“You said you’d do anything for me! Anything! Did you lie to me?”
Gormley tried to make out Weasel-man’s expression, but she only had a view up his nostrils. He shook his head. “No, no, of course not. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
Fedelma rummaged in her pocketbook, pulled out her small date book—from 1912—and tore an unused page from the back. She found a pen and started writing. “This here,” she said. “I want him to get the message. Do you hear me?” She spoke through gritted teeth, almost as if she were grinding her words. “That boy thinks he’s going to break the Curse!”
“That boy? The one I saw with Old Boy?”
“Yes, that one! He’s up to no good.”
“Do you think he can—,” Weasel-man started to say.
“No, of course he can’t! He’ll only make it permanent. He’s useless.”
“But what if he can…,” Weasel-man said, a bit dreamily.
“He can’t. But mark my words, Weasel-man: We know this awful life. And what we know is better than what we don’t know. Trust me. As a girl in Ireland, I thought we were going to live in the promised land. And what did we get? Worthlessness. You can’t trust change.”
“Well, I don’t know. What if…”
“Weasel-man!” She grabbed him by his shirt. The weasels surrounding Gormley hunkered down and began to growl. Gormley joined in. It felt good to growl at Fedelma at this moment. Fedelma hadn’t always been this way—so bitter, so fearful. Why had she changed so?
Fedelma loosened her grip and patted Weasel-man’s buttons, but didn’t change her tone. “You exist because of the Curse. Who knows what would happen to you? You could simply disappear! Horns and all! And we’d never see you ever again. Just like…”
“…your father, the one who’d done the cursing? Keeffe?”
Fedelma shook her head. “Look, just get this message to the Pooka. Understand?”
Weasel-man nodded. “I will,” he said, his voice cracking with a mix of love and fear, already weighted with regret.
Fedelma nodded her sharp chin; and Gormley watched her turn around, count her fifteen steps, and, soon enough, disappear through the nettle-and vine-covered door.
Weasel-man sighed deeply. He looked over the pack of weasels at his feet and fiddled with Fedelma’s note in his large hands. “One of you will have to do me a favor,” he said. “I can’t go to the Pooka. I can’t look him in his shining eyes.” A shiver ran through his body.
This was Gormley’s chance. She had to know what was written on that slip of paper. Some of the weasels started to dance over one another and preen, but Gormley didn’t. She stood still and stuck her weasel chin up high.
“You, there,” he said, pointing to a weasel with a boxy head.
No, no, thought Gormley.
She shuffled quickly over to the boxy-headed weasel, and while Weasel-man was rummaging through his pockets for something, Gormley slapped the boxy-headed weasel on the back as if he were choking and she was just trying to help.
Weasel-man looked up just as the boxy-headed weasel started to yap at Gormley and, oddly enough, the banging on his back induced some coughing. “Oh, my, well there,” Weasel-man said. “You okay?”
The boxy-headed weasel nodded; but his eyes were watering, and he didn’t look good.
“You should take a rest,” W
easel-man said. He pointed to Gormley. “How about you?” She nodded brightly and sprinted to his shoes. “So, go through the tunnels toward left field, take the tunnel that leads into the Green Monster. Find the Pooka in the scorekeeper’s room in the wall. No game today, so the Pooka will be there. Give him this message. And wait for a response.”
Weasel-man handed her the piece of paper, which Gormley clamped in her teeth. Weasel-man gave her a nudge, and she ran off as swiftly as she could.
Gormley was terrified. Her tiny weasel heart was rattling in her chest while she made her way through the tunnels under the field, but eventually she felt a safe enough distance from Weasel-man to pause and read the note.
She unfolded it with her paws and spread it out on the dirt floor.
Dear Pooka,
With deep respect, I bring to your knowledge the presence of a no-good boy living amongst us. My Old Boy calls him by the name Oscar. He is clearly an Other from the Outside World—an orphan, if truth be told. He has proclaimed that he is going to try to break the Curse. You must take him for a ride and deposit him far, far away, perhaps in a deep, dark wood. I throw myself at your mercy.
Sincerely,
Fedelma, Humble Daughter of the Curse
This was worse than Gormley thought. She knew that Fedelma thought the boy might fail, but she didn’t know that she wanted him to disappear—for good. Why would her sister want the Curse to be permanent? Gormley rolled up the note with her shaking paws. She could make the note disappear. She could chew it up with her weasel teeth and swallow it. She paused, sitting on her haunches. She thought for a moment. She knew that she had to go forward. She had to get the note to the Pooka. She had to allow things to take their course. Oscar was their only hope. He was the boy who could break the Curse. Everyone had to play his or her position. It was in the rules.
She placed the note in her mouth and scampered on. The tunnel sloped quickly below the roots of the wall. She skittered her way up a zigzagging ramp to the scorekeeper’s room.
She didn’t enter through the Pooka’s door. She shoved herself through a hole next to some pipes instead. The room was dark and musty, concrete and steel. It seemed empty. Gormley’s small nostrils tensed. She could smell sneakers and, most of all, horse. She ran along a low step, past a row of white placards, and darted around the legs of two chairs and a step stool. Now she could see the field lights peeking in through the slots in the wall. She stayed to the dark edges.
In the far corner, the Pooka lifted his heavy horse head. His nostrils flared. He then stood up clumsily and shook his mane. “Who is there?” he asked.
Gormley stepped out of hiding and stood before him. She was frozen now. The Pooka didn’t smell of fear or anger. He smelled of loss and sadness that glowed up from his stomach through the holes of his vacant eyes on either side of his horse head.
He walked toward her, his strong human hands hanging at the sides of his furred haunches. “What’s this?” he grunted. “You come for a tour, weasel? Want to see the signatures of the greats, or would you prefer a ride of terror?” He lunged at her.
Gormley flinched, shut her eyes, and then slowly opened one and then the other.
“You’ve come here with a purpose,” the Pooka said, leaning over her.
She dropped the note at his hooves.
“Is this for me?” he asked. He picked up the note and read it, his horse lips moving ever so slightly. Then he clattered quickly to one of the slits in the wall. He stared out over the field. “He’s here? He’s among us?” He pulled a pen off of the scorekeeper’s chair, flipped over the note, and wrote on the other side. Obviously, he wasn’t used to writing. He held the pen awkwardly in his hand and spoke the words as he scrawled. “Dear boy by the name of Oscar,” he said. “Meet me under home plate tomorrow night at the stroke of twelve. I have words for you and for you alone. The Pooka.” He then rolled up the note and held it up to the weasel’s mouth. She took it.
And although the thought of Oscar taking a ride through the night skies on the Pooka’s back made her stomach churn with worry, Gormley knew that Oscar had to take the ride. It was inevitable. Things were clicking together, making a new shape.
“Take this to the boy named Oscar. If you lose it, misery will follow you all of your days. Trust me, I know misery.”
And suddenly, Gormley wasn’t afraid of the Pooka. She felt sorry for him. He was cursed. They weren’t so different. She snapped her teeth and gave a nod.
“Be quick,” the Pooka said.
And this struck the weasel. “Be quick,” she said to herself. It felt familiar somehow. She stared at the Pooka, not wanting to leave him just yet.
“Go!” the Pooka said angrily.
Gormley turned, scampered to the hole, and, in an instant, was padding and clawing down the tunnels, retracing her own scent. She was haunted by the Pooka’s hollow, glowing eyes; and each time she blinked, they appeared like torches in her mind.
Then she heard the Banshee—the Lost Soul of the Lost and Found—moaning off in the distance. Weasel-man didn’t like the Banshee. No one did. He would run from her, and so would his weasels. So Gormley headed off in the opposite direction. She smelled popcorn and deep fryer fat and, most of all, other weasels. She followed the scent. The yips grew louder until finally she turned a corner, and there he was: Weasel-man, hunched over a delivery of sodas and beer.
She gave a loud chirp. The other weasels grew quiet, and Weasel-man turned. He looked at her, saw the note. She could smell his rising fear.
“Did you meet him? Eye to eye?” Weasel-man asked.
The Pooka’s eyes—oh, how they glowed! Gormley nodded.
“Did he take you for a ride?” Weasel-man went on.
There was no time for questions. She skittered through the crowd of weasels to his pant hem and dropped the note. He bent down with a grunt and picked it up. He wasn’t delicate; plus, his hands were shaking. Trying to open the note, he nearly ripped it in two. He read it to himself, and then he let out a great gust of air.
“Better him than me!” he said. “Oh, but still…too bad. I mean, poor kid. I wonder if he’ll survive it. I wonder if he’ll be strong enough. Hard to tell. Hard to say. Probably not, though. I’ll bring it to the boy myself.” He looked down at Gormley. “But won’t Fedelma be pleased with me!” He reached into his pocket and threw a bit of old pretzel to Gormley. She backed away and let the other weasels fight over it. She was thinking of the Pooka: the way he’d struggled with the pen; his lingering scent of loss; his empty, luminescent eyes—how he wasn’t what the legends made him out to be, not really.
CHAPTER TEN
Oh, the Cursed Creatures!
AS OSCAR STEPPED OFF OF the pitcher’s mound and followed his father to the backstop, he was wondering how they were going to enlist the help of the other Cursed Creatures. Every Cursed Creature has a position to play? Even the Pooka? “What’s the Pooka like?” Oscar asked.
His father paused at the on-deck circle. His jaw tightened. He closed his eyes for a moment and then said, “I suppose you need to know. Pookas have lived in Ireland for centuries. Sometimes they’re hairy beasts, sometimes goats. Our pooka took the shape of a third kind: a horse walking upright, with glowing eyes and the hands of an ordinary man.” Oscar met his father’s eyes; they were glassy with fear. He pulled open a door just beyond the on-deck circle. They both stepped inside. “A long time ago, there was no wall in left field, no Green Monster,” his father went on.
“I know,” Oscar said. “It was just a hill. People used to sit on it and watch the game. Called it Duffy’s Cliff, because Duffy was so good at playing bounces off of it.”
“Right. And pookas live in hills. So when Keeffe summoned a pooka in the Curse, it took up residence in the hill itself. And when the hill was leveled in 1934 and the Green Monster was built, the Pooka just took up residence in the small room within the wall.”
Oscar’s father took off his orange vest and clipped an old, laminated card wit
h his faded picture on it. The words PRESS PASS were written across the top of the card. They made their way to the ramps behind the Concession booths and headed up.
“The Pooka is a Cursed Creature,” Oscar’s father said wearily. “He once was a man, but he brought about his own ruin and was turned into a pooka. As a form of punishment, the Pooka always has a task he must perform—a thankless, endless task. I don’t know what his task is exactly. And pookas lose all their earthly goods when they change over: their food, clothing, shelter—their old lives. And like the other Cursed Creatures of Fenway Park, the Pooka shares his room with a human. During games, the scorekeeper sits in a room in the Green Monster itself. Chris Elias is in there these days. He looks out through a slit, which is like a rectangular mail slot in the wall. You saw it earlier, lit up by the Pooka’s eyes. When there is no game and no scorekeeper, the room belongs to the Pooka.” His father sighed mightily and put a trembling hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “I want to keep you away from the Pooka,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s going to be possible. He’s protective of the Curse. Who knows what’s in store?” He let his hand fall to his side. “That’s enough talking about the Pooka now.”
Oscar could tell that his father was shaken. Oscar had more questions—about the Pooka’s night rides through the sky—but he knew not to press.
They went through a green door and down a hallway covered with framed pictures of former Red Sox players, and then entered the .406 Club. It was a yawning, humming space filled with cushy stadium seats that overlooked the park from behind home plate. An organ stood in one corner. The club was named, Oscar knew, after Ted Williams’s batting average during the 1941 season—the last time any player in the major leagues had hit over .400. No one was there. Nailed to the wall just above the organ was a No Smoking sign.
They sat on the organ bench. Fenway Park stretched out before them like an exhibit at the Boston Aquarium. The field and the stadium had its own life, separated from them by the glass wall. Oscar stared out at the field, the glowing white lines, the vast green.
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