I turned the machine off and got a wrench so I could loosen the pitching wheels and set them closer together for the golf balls. For the first time I became aware that the rubber on those wheels was old, dried, and cracked, especially in the indented middles of the wheels where the ball was gripped. I wondered what effect that might have on the spin of the balls when they were thrust out and hurled toward the plate.
The pitching wheels were set flat like a pair of record turntables and spun close to each other. I squatted and closed one eye, peeking between the wheels as I drew them as close together as possible. Their outer edges almost touched, and there appeared to be just barely enough room for a golf ball to squeeze through with friction from each wheel. I forced a ball through by hand, and found I could hardly make it budge. I thought about trying it with the machine on and the wheels spinning, but I didn’t want to risk getting a finger caught between ball and wheels.
With the ball stuck between the two wheels, I turned on the machine. When it warmed up, I tilted the trough, which started the wheels. They stuck and grabbed, then they squirted the golf ball out, spinning it wildly. It landed about ten feet in front of the machine and bounced back and forth before rolling to the side.
I wondered if I should spread the wheels a bit, finally deciding that I wanted to see what would happen if the wheels were at full speed before the ball was fed through. If it still stalled, then I would allow more room for the ball. I tilted the trough until the wheels began spinning at top speed. With my other hand I held a ball over the far end of the trough and let it go.
The ball rolled quickly to the wheels where there was a loud phfft!
I had a fraction of a second to wonder if the ball had been launched. In fact, it had happened so fast I didn’t see it. I only heard it. It slammed off the wall nearly forty feet away and came hurtling back past the machine and right at my face. I jerked my head left without thinking, but the missile caught me on the right side at the top of my forehead and my head snapped back as my legs buckled.
The ball hit the ceiling and dropped on my ribs as I lay on my side, dazed, not moving, groaning. What had happened? All I was aware of was the cold cement floor on my cheek and on the back of the hand that was tucked under me. My other hand cradled the quickly rising bump on my forehead.
I struggled to my knees but felt dizzy and sat on the floor Indian style. The machine was still humming, but the trough had fallen back to its original position and I heard the wheels stop spinning. I blinked, feeling pressure on my right eye from the wound above it. How was I going to explain this to my mother?
Within seconds the bump on my forehead was hot and tender and felt an inch high and scared me. I knew I should get some ice on it, but how could I do that without scaring Momma and losing my privileges with the machine? I decided that though the bump was probably ugly and awful-looking, I was not really hurt. My name is Elgin Woodell and I live in Chicago, I told myself. I wouldn’t know that if I was hurt bad, would I?
I stood and staggered and wondered how close I had come to losing an eye or even getting myself killed. How fast must that ball have come off the wall? It had traveled more than thirty feet each way and had still knocked me off my feet. I chuckled at the thought of trying to hit or even catch a pitch like that. I had only heard it hit the far wall, so I didn’t know about the trajectory. The way it came back, though, made me guess it had hit high off the wall, the way the old baseball had.
I turned off the machine and looked for a way to adjust the trajectory. I finally found that the two front wheels could be raised and lowered. When I raised them, the front of the machine sat closer to the ground, and when I got behind the machine and lined it up, it was clearly pointing at a lower spot on the far wall.
I was tempted to try another pitch, but first I wanted to find a place to hide. How could I watch the pitch and still protect myself? I decided that if I let the machine deliver the balls automatically, the way it was designed, I wouldn’t have to be standing and could peek out from behind the machine.
I was still woozy when I dumped the bucket of fifty-six golf balls into the container and picked up the fifty-seventh and tossed it in too. Before turning on the machine, I walked around it, looking for the best place to stay out of the way and still be able to see where the balls hit off the wall. I was sure that once I could control where they hit and how fast they were going, I could stand in there with my new bat and take some hitting practice.
I decided to crouch directly behind the machine and peek out around the right side. If the first ball came back that way, I would just duck back in and stay there until the balls ran out. What I had not thought about, however, was the back wall, just six or seven feet behind the machine. That first pitch had not hit the back wall only because it had ricocheted off my head.
Something else I had not thought of was the difference in weight between golf balls and baseballs. When I turned on the machine, the container rolled and rolled, and I could hear the balls inside aligning themselves to be delivered one at a time to and from the trough.
However, because they were so much lighter and smaller than baseballs, rather than cooperating with the intent of the machine, they rolled in a steady stream from the container to the trough, which picked them up, tilted, started the pitching wheels spinning, and drew all fifty-seven balls through the apparatus in a straight line.
The wheels never slowed, and the trough never tilted back until all the balls had been sucked through and fired at the far wall, sometimes as fast as two a second. It was as if the pitching machine had been transformed into a submachine gun with golf balls as its ammunition and the far wall as its target. The bigger problem was that the walls were all concrete, and with nothing to get in the way of the balls except the basket on the ceiling, the cord hanging down, and the machine itself, most of the balls kept bouncing off the front and back walls until they had lost their momentum.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. It was deafening. I was sure I saw one ball bounce off the wall and then hit head-on the next one just a few inches behind. Two of the first five balls skipped off the cord hanging down in the center of the room and made it swing and sway, creating a weird shadow. Two balls banged on the wire grate around the light, and it came loose and began rocking.
But then the machine seemed to settle into a cadence and began firing the balls every half second or so, right to the same spot, low on the far wall. The balls smashed off the wall and rose quickly over the machine on the rebound. I kept watching until I heard a ball strike the wall behind me and in the next instant I felt the thud between my shoulder blades. I couldn’t believe it. The blinding power of the one that had hit my head was worse, because it had not hit a second wall, but this one stung. And here came another, and another.
I scooted away, but the balls that hit both walls also hit the sides and seemed to hunt me down.
I knew I should get in front of the machine because the balls were coming back over the top of it, but I couldn’t risk that. My best hope was to make a break for it and try to dive out through the doorway to the landing at the bottom of the stairs. But if I got hit with a line drive off the wall on the way, I would be hurting.
Six balls hit me hard in the seat and back and I covered my head and curled up into a ball behind the machine. I wasn’t going to just sit there and take that. I rolled to my left, getting hit a couple more times. Finally, I gave up caution and scrambled to the door, peeking at the far wall as I went. I had made the mistake of pushing off against the machine as I made my break, and I had redirected it to shoot into the far corner. Three balls struck me as I reached the doorway and three more bounced low off the far wall and came back high, two hitting what was left of the cage and the third knocking it loose and banging it into the light fixture.
Just as the last few balls were being fed into the wheels, two balls hit the fixture and the cord, bringing the whole assemblage crashing to the floor, cutting out the light, and shutting down
the power to the machine.
I lay there, dazed and hurting all over as I heard the machine slowly wind down to a hum and a whine and then stop.
That was unbelievable! I thought. When I get this thing figured out and adjusted, it’s going to be great!
24
I knocked on the basement door but didn’t hear anything at first. Then I heard footsteps coming up, and finally the door opened.
Elgin looked so terrible, I shrieked, “What happened to you?”
He shushed me and I was certain someone in the basement had attacked him. “Tell me!” I said.
“Upstairs,” he said, leading me to the elevator. As the doors shut, I examined his head under the light. “What in the world?”
“It’s just not working yet, Momma. It’s my own fault. I’ll get it right. Just don’t worry about me. My basket didn’t work either, and I broke the light.”
“Oh, no!”
“I’m sure it just needs a new bulb. I hope.”
“I hope so too, Elgin, because we’ve got no more extra money for this thing.”
“This thing was your idea, Momma.”
“Don’t get smart with me or you won’t see it again.”
“I wasn’t being smart! I just don’t want you acting like this is some crazy idea of mine that you have to pay for.”
“Did the ball hit you?” I said. “Were you trying to bat before you knew where the thing would throw the ball?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly, what? Did the ball hit you or what?”
“A ball hit me.”
A minute after we were in our apartment and before Elgin could even explain, I heard a knock at the door. It was a tiny black girl with pigtails.
“’Scuse me, ma’am, but Mistuh Brava say he wanna see you right now. Say you know where to meet im.”
“Thank you, honey,” I said. I shut the door and turned to Elgin. “What would he have found in the basement?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do. I want no surprises.”
“I haven’t got time to explain.”
“You comin with me?”
“I’d better not, Momma. You’ll do better cooling him off without me there.”
“True enough,” I said, and I ran down all six flights to the basement door. I had forgotten to get the key from Elgin, so I had to knock. It seemed strange, as if I were asking to be bawled out.
Mr. Bravura was huffing and puffing when he reached the door. “I gave you a key,” he said. “Why do you knock?”
“I forgot it, I’m sorry,” I said. “It sounded like an emergency.”
“An emergency is right! This will not do! Look at this mess!”
“I know about the light,” I said, following him down the stairs. “Elgin told me.”
He shone a flashlight into the big room. “And what did he tell you about the golf balls?”
“Golf balls?”
“I am telling you something, Mrs. Woodell. You know I think the world of you and the boy, I really do. I have tried to treat you with more than courtesy.”
“I know.”
“In fact, I think you are most charming and beautiful, and you have been wonderful to me.”
“I know. Forgive us.”
“Forgiveness is not what this is about, ma’am.”
“Mr. Bravura—”
“Call me Ricardo, but for now, don’t call me anything and let me finish. I want this place repaired, the light replaced, and the cord plugged in somewhere else. There is a socket in the smaller room, but you will need a heavy-duty extension cord, which I don’t have. I want the glass swept up, and I don’t ever want balls left on the floor when the boy leaves the basement.”
“That’s certainly fair, but he injured himself or I’m sure he would have cleaned up the—”
“If that is too much to ask, then I must ask for the key back.”
“It’s not too much to ask.”
“Good, because we’re talking about my job here. You know that my wife is ill and in bed all day. I get my room free plus my small salary, which puts food on our table and gives us medicine for her. I cannot be without this job. We would be homeless and she would die.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you do. You have a good job and can pay your rent and buy fancy equipment for your boy.”
I nearly laughed but thought better of countering Mr. Bravura, who had by now worked himself into an unattractive lather in the faint light from the basement stairs.
“I wonder if you know what it means to be desperate, to have a life-and-death need to keep a job. I know for certain that if the owner of this building saw this, I would be out. Out! No severance pay. No warning. No notice. Out, gone, finished, over and done with.”
I thought of what a dive the rest of the building was. It stank. It was moldy, greasy, filthy. What owner in his right mind would even come in there? And then to the basement? And would he really expect the basement to be spotless when the rest of the place was such a rat hole?
“Ricardo,” I said, “accept our apology. We’ll get this cleaned up right away and you’ll never have to worry about it again. I’ll talk to the boy about what you’ve said, and I know he’ll be careful to follow your orders, because he thinks so highly of you.”
That quieted him for a moment.
“Well, I like him too,” he said. “But this, this will just not do.”
I had figured out a few things. First, ice hurts before it helps. My forehead throbbed. I took off my pants and shirt and looked at my back and legs in the mirror. Several red spots would become bruises, I knew. I looked like the victim of a stoning. I was standing before the mirror with a washcloth full of ice on my forehead when my mother returned.
“Guess I should have told you about the golf balls, huh?”
“That would’ve been nice. You can imagine what he said.”
“He throwing us out?”
“No, he’s not, no thanks to you.”
She told me everything Mr. Bravura said.
“I’m sorry, Momma,” I said, and I told her how it had all happened.
“How is your head?” she said finally.
“It’s all right, and why are you smiling?”
“I’m not,” she said, but then burst into laughter. “I’m sorry, El, but that musta been a sight! I wish I could’ve seen that!”
“I’m sure glad you care about me so much,” I said, but I couldn’t help laughing too.
Over the weekend, I worked on the light fixture, which needed only a new bulb, and the machine. I added a few pieces to help balance the trough to make up for the weight of the golf balls, but I wasn’t ready to try the machine yet. I was able to pick up a used extension cord for fifty cents (after hard bargaining at the secondhand store), so there would be nothing hanging down in the middle of the room except the lightbulb. I made a smaller cover for it that would be harder to hit, and I knew I could adjust the machine so it wouldn’t pitch the ball at the light or even bounce off the wall and hit the light. The only way to hit the light after that would be if I hit it with a batted ball. At this point, I couldn’t imagine getting the bat around fast enough to do anything more than just bunt a ball.
Most important, I was doing odd jobs for my mother and for Mr. Bravura, saving a little each day so I could afford some large sheets of canvas. I would hang those from the ceiling on the back wall behind the pitching machine. If a pitch got past me—as I knew most would—and banged off the far wall, that was fine. But I wanted it to hit something flexible at the other end so it wouldn’t keep bouncing around and hit me. That way, if I hit a ball, it would hit the canvas and drop near the machine. If I missed a ball, it would bounce off the wall behind me and fly to the other end where it also would hit the canvas and drop.
My only problem was that the canvas sheets I found at the secondhand store, cheap as they were, were white. I was making this the most difficult batting practice area I
could.
I was not going to slow down the machine. I had no idea how fast it could throw the golf balls, but I knew from having watched it when I got nailed so many times that it was faster than anything I had ever seen. No pitcher and no pitching machine threw the ball so fast that it looked like a white streak.
If I could get it to throw strikes, with a white canvas background, while I was swinging a skinny but heavy aluminum bat, well, that would be some kind of training. I hoped it would make live pitching with a bigger ball, and hitting with a bigger bat, look slower and easier. I didn’t know if anything like that had ever been tried before, but it seemed to make sense.
I washed the golf balls until they gleamed white. I was grateful for their colored stripes; without them I would never have been able to see the balls against that background.
My last purchase was the batting helmet that had fit me so perfectly in the secondhand store. My new friend, the man behind the counter, showed me how to cut down the foam rubber around the ears as I got older and bigger. “That should fit you for three or four more years, if you do it right. If you have any questions or problems with it, just bring it in here when it needs cuttin, and I’ll do it with my bowie.” He patted the blade at his hip, and I decided that was something I would want to see: a man who knew what he was doing, adjusting sports equipment with a hunting knife.
By the time I had rearranged the room, hung the canvas, and made all the repairs, I was back in the swing of things at school and had only a few hours after homework every night to make final adjustments. I kept making excuses to my friends who played fastpitch, but the fact was, I was not getting good enough competition there. I didn’t want to tell them that, but it was true. The game was still fun and challenging, but I was hitting about seven hundred. And after a lot of dry swinging with the heavy fungo, the broom handle seemed like a toy. I could smash that fastpitch ball.
Every afternoon I played an hour of fastpitch, went home for supper, did my homework, and tinkered with the machine in the basement. I finally got it to where it would fire the golf balls, one every few seconds, right into my strike zone. By adjusting the wheels, I could make it curve in or out or up or down, but of course I had to have it throw all the balls one way before adjusting it to throw them another way.
The Youngest Hero Page 14
