“Why? What’s the matter?”
“It’s—it’s ’cause I can’t stand to look at your arm, Grant,” Little Joe said. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been there, my dad wouldn’t have . . .” He bit his lip. “Your pitching arm would still be fine. It’s all my fault, and what if you can’t make the big leagues now? I wrecked it!”
“Joe, listen. It’s not your—”
But Little Joe grabbed his coat and hat and ran out of the cloakroom.
“Joe! Wait!” Grant hurried after him.
Little Joe ran out the door without even pulling his coat on. Grant went to the door, and Little Joe was running across the school field, carrying his coat and his books.
* * *
That night, Grant pulled his sled with one hand toward the train tracks. He kept watching for Little Joe.
“Hey!” Orland came trotting up beside him. “You need some help kicking down coal for you? You can’t climb the car, can you?”
“I guess. Thanks.” It would be impossible to climb the slippery coal-car ladders with one hand. “I was hopin’ you guys might help. That’d be swell.”
“Can you haul a full load with one arm?”
“I’m gonna have to.”
Frank came up behind them. “What does the doctor say? You gonna be able to pitch again?”
“Dr. Bronstein, the doc in Grand Forks, doesn’t know. I have to go back to him to get the cast off. He said after that, it’ll be up to me. How hard I work at getting it back.”
A voice behind them said, “If it’s up to you, you’ll do it. If anybody can do it, you can.” Little Joe.
Grant stopped and turned. He faced Little Joe. All four boys stood stock still.
Joe looked at him and then dropped his gaze to his feet. “Grant, I feel so awful, I can’t even stand it. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop it, Little Joe! It’s not your fault.” Grant said.
“If I hadn’t been there, my dad wouldn’t a been there, either.” Little Joe looked more miserable than Grant had ever seen anybody look.
“Joe. Listen. It isn’t your fault. You were standin’ up for yourself and for us. You were bein’ our friend. I can’t say I don’t hate your dad, ’cause I do. Sometimes I want to kill him, especially if my arm is wrecked. But I sure don’t hate you. I just gotta work like crazy to get my arm back.”
Little Joe let out a sigh so big his breath crystallized in a cloud. “Still, it’s my fault. If I hadn’t sassed back, Big Joe wouldn’t a gotten so mad.”
“No,” Frank said. “Grant’s right. All you did was try to bring us the hammer. That I dropped. It’s your dad that’s a horse’s behind, not you.”
They turned and the four of them walked toward the train.
Grant looked over his shoulder. “Little Joe?”
“Yeah?” Little Joe looked at him, still miserable, trudging along with his sled.
“If I’m really gonna get it back—if I’m gonna be able to pitch again—you know what I need more than anything?”
“Nope,” little Joe said. “What?”
“My catcher.”
Little Joe stopped and looked up at Grant. The misery on his face didn’t really lift, but the shine Grant knew came back in Little Joe’s eyes, at least a little.
“Okay?” Grant said.
Little Joe nodded. “You got your catcher. Forever.”
And they went on their way to the train.
Twenty
Just Do
The winter stretched out long with Grant’s arm in the plaster prison. The ache in his elbow was a constant reminder of how much he hated Big Joe.
Grant read more than he ever had before because it got so tiresome to do everything with his left hand. He finished Gulliver’s Travels and the entire One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. His mom mailed the books back to Grand Forks Library.
He went to the library in Larkin and read everything he could find that Jack London wrote. One day, Miss Garst, the librarian gave him a book by Ernest Hemingway, who was supposed to be the newest up-and-coming American novelist. A Farewell to Arms. He couldn’t put it down. Three days later, back at the library, Miss Garst gave him two more Hemingway novels. He liked The Sun Also Rises but not Men Without Women.
Every night, his friends kicked coal off the train for Grant to haul home. The other boys and Lorraine caught on, and everybody kicked off a little extra. When Little Joe hopped down from his gondola car, he piled his sled high and then ran to Grant, to help him load his sled with the extra from everybody else’s pile.
Little Joe rarely mentioned Grant’s pitching arm, but Grant could read Little Joe’s expression when he looked at Grant with consternation every single day.
In February, the snow shrank under the sun, and for three days, the temperature hovered above freezing, filling the streets with mud and puddles. The air filled with the promise of spring.
Under the cast, his arm itched like crazy. His fingers itched like crazy for a baseball.
Each night, the temperature dropped again, and the streets became treacherous, solid, rutted, and full of lumpy ice. Slider came home from Grumpy’s complaining about sore knees from walking stiff-legged so he wouldn’t land slam on his back. Each morning, the sun came back out and made more mud that froze into more ice at night.
After a week, the snow was turning gray-black around the edges and making a serious retreat. That evening, snow clouds roiled up from the western horizon until the stars winked out.
Grant woke to almost a foot of new snow on the ground and fat wet snowflakes filling the early morning sky. Winter hadn’t loosed its grip. At school, he took a pencil and shoved it down inside his cast to scratch the intolerably itchy places.
Finally, March first arrived. Grant and Slider were up and dressed at 4:30 a.m. Mamie made them breakfast and Grant drank a cup of sweetened, milky coffee with his dad.
“You two be careful. A storm is coming.”
Both Grant and his dad looked up at Mamie. “What?” said Slider. “You hear it in the train?”
“I did.”
“Beats me how you can hear a storm, Mamie, but I’ve never known you to be wrong.”
“Train sounds different every time a storm is brewing,” Mamie said, and set a plate of bacon on the table.
Grant and his dad drove to Grand Forks under another heavy gray sky.
With ten miles to go, the clouds that had been hovering all morning let loose, and snow pellets pounded the windshield like tiny hailstones. “Your mother’s never wrong about storms,” Slider said.
When they reached Doc Bronstein’s office, Grant and Slider pulled their collars up around their ears and hustled into the warm office.
Dr. Bronstein showed Grant the big cutters he would use to cut off the cast. One side looked like half a scissor, and the other would lie flat against Grant’s skin. Grant didn’t think he could watch, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away as the cast started to crack apart.
When Dr. Bronstein cracked the shell off, his arm emerged pink and scaly like a dragon hatching from an egg.
Grant stared at the arm. This pink scaly thing was not part of the body that he knew. It stank. Gummy, moist skin and flesh hung on his bones, skinnier than a little girl’s arm. When he tried to move it, it felt so weak he couldn’t even lift his forearm, much less lift a book. He stretched it, and, thinking of geometry, he could barely push his elbow past a right angle. He pushed it with his left arm, and it only went slightly farther and hurt like wildfire. He lifted it above his shoulder, and it felt exhausted. His hand was a useless claw at the end of a bent stick. He practically swallowed his lip, biting it so hard. He scratched the pale scaly skin, and a layer came off in his fingernails.
A nurse helped Grant scrub the stinky flesh. No wonder it had itched so much. The gentle scrubbing felt heavenly. When she’d rubbed it mostly raw, and patted it dry, Dr. Bronstein came back into the room.
“Here.” Dr. Bronstein handed Grant a soft red rubber ball. “Squ
veeze it. Squveeze it as hard as you can.”
Grant squeezed. He could barely dent the ball.
“Da more flexibility your hand gets, da more da insides of your arm vill be vorking.” The doctor demonstrated some stretches with his wrist that would force his elbow to extend. “Don’t do anyting drastic for two veeks. Keep using the sling. Wrist exercises, stretches. Squveeze the ball. Straighten your arm as far as it goes vithout hurting too much, but don’t force it yet. Dat’s it. Den after two veeks, start pushing more until you can straighten it all da vay. Den, only den, you can start lifting veight vith it. To get your strength back. Hear? You can lift tings vith a straight arm.” He told Slider that if questions came up and Dr. Connor couldn’t answer them, to feel free to call him on the telephone.
When they were ready to leave the office, Grant felt the question welling inside, bubbling to the surface to be asked, but asking that question might be prying, impolite.
Dr. Bronstein shook their hands, Slider first, and then Grant winced as he reached out to grasp the doctor’s firm handshake with his right hand. It sent tremors of lightning pain up to and past his elbow. The doctor saw it in his face and winked. “You vill be fine. It vill hurt, but it vill only get better and better.”
“Ah—” Grant stammered. “Thank you.” He gritted his teeth against the pain and shook back, squeezing the firm grip as hard as he could, pain shooting all the way to his shoulder.
Dr. Bronstein watched his face. “Dat’s goot. Goot grip for you. You’ve got vhat it takes, Grant O’Grady. Dis pain vill be da price for being a great pitcher. Someday, I expect to see your name on a major league roster. In Chicago. Or St. Louis. Or New York City.”
Dr. Bronstein wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t teasing.
“Thank you, sir. I sure do hope so. I’ll try.”
“No, Grant.” The doctor leveled his gaze at Grant. “Don’t hope. Don’t try. Just do.”
Grant stared back, absorbing this. Just do. “Yes, sir.”
They turned to leave, but Grant turned back. He had to ask the burning question. “Dr. Bronstein?”
“Hmm?”
“Did your family in Germany listen? Are they going to leave?”
Dr. Bronstein put a hand on Grant’s shoulder. He frowned, and then his face softened, like he was glad that Grant asked. “My brother, he owns a thriving grocery store. He von’t leave.” Dr. Bronstein shook his head. “He says, ‘you vorry too much. How bad can it be? Dis is the great Reich.’ He von’t listen. And my father—he listens to my brother. He says he’s too old to move.”
He let go of Grant’s shoulder, as if he had just realized he was still touching it. “But da others—my sisters and deir husbands and my five nephews—dey are coming to da States. Dey have tickets for passage next week. My uncles—dey are going to Austria. Dey have no vish to cross da ocean.”
“I’m glad to hear that your sisters are coming,” Slider said. And that your uncles are getting out.”
Dr. Bronstsein nodded. He smiled at Grant. “I have two nephews close to your age. I vish dey could meet you vhen dey arrive in North Dakota. One, his name is Jens, says he vants to play American baseball.”
“Thank you, sir,” Grant said. “I’d like that. I . . . I could teach them to play baseball.”
“Maybe so. Dat vould be vunderbar. Now. You baby dat arm for two veeks. Vork da ball and stretch your fingers and your arm—dat vill strengthen your arm from da inside out, and den and only den, after two veeks, you start vorking on da pitching arm. Any sooner could do more harm. You hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You push it, even if it hurts, but not to da point it feels like it’s breaking again. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Grant said for the thousandth time.
“You’re a good young man,” Dr. Bronstein said. “Vhen you make it to the big leagues someday, I vill come and vatch a game. I vill say, ‘I fixed dat man’s elbow vhen he vas just a boy. I’m partly responsible for his pitching career.’ You two get on home now. Be careful in da storm.”
Twenty-One
Henry Olson
Slider steered into the blinding snow. On the edge of town, the big Plymouth was barely crawling along, and they couldn’t see fifteen feet in front of the car.
Slider said, “Son, we’re going back to get a hotel room. Only a fool would drive seventy miles in this. Larkin can survive without us tonight.”
They got a room in the Sundown Hotel, and ate venison sausages and mashed potatoes in the dining room for supper. Then they walked next door to the Star Saloon, where Slider had a vodka sour and called Mamie, and Grant sipped a root beer.
When Slider hung up, he said, “She was just starting to worry about us. Good thing I called. Can’t see across the street there, I guess.”
When they walked back to the hotel, they could barely see five feet in front of their faces. “Good thing we stayed,” Grant said, squinting into the blizzardy wind.
They read and slept, and in the morning, the snow had stopped. Drifts piled up over the hood of the car, and it was noon before they shoveled out and could get on the road.
* * *
It took five hours to drive seventy miles home, so many drifts covered the roads. Twice Slider had to shovel the car out to make any progress.
They pulled up to their house in time for supper.
Mamie met them at the door. Something wasn’t right. Mamie almost never met them at the door, no matter where they’d been or how long they’d been gone.
She held the door for them and waited while they tromped the snow off their feet and came to sit down by the kitchen stove. “Henry Olson died last night,” she said as they sat, unlacing cold wet shoestrings.
Slider sat up.
“I always mocked you for checking up on him every night, and I teased you that you were keeping him alive. But you were right. When nobody made sure he got home, he didn’t.”
“Where? What?” Slider asked.
“In a snowbank. Frozen face down. This morning. Askil Snortland found him. Got two blocks from Grumpy’s and nobody else was out last night.”
Slider put his head in his hands and shook his head. “My fault. I should have called Grumpy. Or I should have told you to call somebody.”
“Not your fault,” Mamie said. “You just put off the inevitable a few years longer than it would have happened otherwise.”
“No. He counted on me, Mamie. Don’t you see? I always have somebody else check on him when I’m going to be gone overnight in the winter. My fault.”
“Stew about it if you want,” she said. “When you left, you didn’t know you’d be gone overnight. Supper’s ready.”
* * *
The next few days, everywhere Grant went, he carried the red rubber ball Dr. Bronstein had given him. Any pause or any moment in school when he wasn’t busy, he pulled it out and squeezed. He squeezed it when he read. Writing wasn’t hard. His elbow got tired, but he could rest his arm on his desk and in the sling, and he had been writing with his fingers sticking out of his cast most of the winter anyway.
Friday was Henry Olson’s funeral. The Episcopal church held the service, since nobody knew if Henry had ever gone to any church before he took up drunkenness as his perpetual way of life.
The Thorsons came in, and Grant grinned at Little Joe, but he felt his hackles rise at the sight of Big Joe. The Thorson family settled into a pew two rows behind the O’Gradys. A cloud of alcohol smell settled in with them. Little Joe whispered to his mom and then slipped up and sat beside Grant. Having Big Joe so close made Grant’s elbow burn and his throat hurt. Mamie threw Big Joe a look that could kill, but Grant figured Big Joe didn’t notice. Askil Snortland, one of the regulars at Grumpy’s, sat down in the row between the Thorsons and the O’Gradys.
Reverend Lawson went on and on and on about the beauty of a pious life, until it seemed ridiculous, even to Grant, to have such a eulogy for such a drunk.
After twenty minutes of the rambling ser
mon, Grant felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked back and saw Askil Snortland with one hand on his shoulder and one on Little Joe’s shoulder. “Boys,” he whispered, his beer breath close enough to smell, and his whisper loud enough to carry all the way across the church. “Boys, you sneak up there and have a look in that there casket.”
Grant sat frozen, knowing the loud whisper echoed all over the church. Mamie turned sharply and glared at Askil to shush him, but he paid her no mind.
“You let me know if that’s really Henry Olson in that there casket.” Askil’s voice got even louder as he warmed up. “’Cause either they switched bodies on us, or that there priest is a goddamned liar. He ain’t talkin’ ’bout no Henry Olson I knowed.”
Grant choked to keep from laughing out loud, in spite of it the strong smell of beer and the feeling of Mamie’s eyes on him, sharp enough to cut him to ribbons. Slider looked straight ahead but shook with laughter. The whole church rippled with a quiet giggle. A full-blown guffaw burst from the pew one more row back. Big Joe.
Giggling was one thing, but Big Joe’s guffaw was sacrilegious. Everybody turned and stared. Not at Askil, but at Big Joe.
“What?” he said right out loud. “Warn’t me. Askil said it.”
The priest stopped. Dead in his tracks. He stepped out of the pulpit and moved to the middle of the sacristy. His entire head under his balding gray hair was the color of a tomato. It looked like it could crack open. “I ask you to leave. If you can’t behave with respect for the house of God, Mr. Thorson, please just leave.”
The collective congregation held its breath. Big Joe staggered to his feet. Mrs. Thorson got up with him. He moved toward the aisle and stumbled. Mrs. Thorson reached to guide his arm, but he shook her off, swung his hand like he was swatting at her but missed. Emma and Alice Thorson followed, heads down. Little Joe didn’t budge.
The priest stood waiting for their exit. Halfway down the aisle, Big Joe turned. “Come on, Little Joe. We’re not welcome here. But we don’t wanna be. This here priest don’t have the respect to talk truth about a dead man.”
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