by Chris Lynch
“What?” Napoleon said. “People are calling us that? What people are calling us that?”
“I think that is wonderful, the two of you are getting renowned for your ability. Is that what they call these two players? The Gold Dust Twins? That is marvelous.”
One of the waiters set a bowl of creamy soup in front of Dr. Ellis. It reeked of fish.
“What people are calling us the Gold Dust Twins?” Napoleon demanded. “I am sure they are calling us something, but I highly doubt that is it.”
Dr. Ellis sipped the soup and declared it “beauteous. Would anyone care to taste?” We declined. “So tell me more. Is this fellow Lynn as good as the man Rice?”
“Oh ya,” I said. “Rice is really really good, but Fred Lynn is even better. But together they are going to be awesome.”
“Like the two of you,” Dr. Ellis said between mouthfuls. “Bravo.”
He appeared to be truly happy about this. Napoleon was more serious, more hung up on details. “No one is really calling us the Gold Dust Twins, are they?”
I busied myself pulling apart my roll, which was hard and crackly on the outside and kind of slick and hollow on the inside. This might have been a fancy place, but they could learn a thing from Wonder bread.
“Richard?”
“All right, I call us that. But you watch, pretty soon others will follow.”
“And I will,” Dr. Ellis said, smiling. “The Gold Dust Twins. I am having dinner with the Gold Dust Twins.”
“See,” I said to Napoleon. “Feels good, don’t it?”
Napoleon had his own roll popped open and his head down, as if he was trying to fit his face inside the mushroom-cap top half of it. “No, it does not. It feels rather silly at the moment.”
Dr. Ellis had just finished his soup and as if on command, a team of waiters came with the main dishes. I had apparently ordered my chicken with some kind of tan-colored sauce with mushrooms thrown all over the place, and like five different vegetables, three of which I had never seen before. And they came on their own separate plate.
Napoleon had something on his plate that looked like a steak but wasn’t fooling anyone. That was a fish.
Dr. Ellis had lobster. It looked like lobster.
“Did you know,” Dr. Ellis said, “that there is a great pitcher called Doc Ellis. He pitches for Pittsburgh, I think. Doc Ellis. Isn’t that something?”
“Yes,” I said. “He is great. He pitched a no-hitter one time, and he even did it while he was on drugs.”
“Oh,” Dr. Ellis said, a little flat.
Napoleon glared at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. I hadn’t meant to be insulting. “Is he a relative?”
Napoleon glared at me.
“What?” I said. I didn’t know, but I apologized again anyway. I didn’t know how to do this. I was well aware I didn’t know how to act right. Even talking baseball didn’t seem safe, which was about as serious a warning sign as I could get. I worked up a fine sweat trying to eat my food just right, using all the utensils they had given me even though they had given me enough to work a whole farm with. I watched the Ellises, imitated them as much as possible while still checking the crowd and the staff and my shirtfront to make sure I had not made any spectacular errors.
It was hard work. Supper shouldn’t be hard work. Meeting and talking and eating with people should not be hard work. But then again, I should remember it could always be harder.
“We really should think about getting together, the four of us, some night,” Dr. Ellis said as we neared the end of the meal. He was very neatly working his way through a strawberry shortcake with such style that he was never once in danger of a drip. “Do consider mentioning it to your father, would you, Richard?”
I had all my attention focused on monitoring my cheesecake. “I sure will, sir. Thank you, I will mention it.”
“Great,” Napoleon said.
I don’t know if he was joking, or if he really believed I would do it.
You don’t have to know everything in the world to get by. Because there are a few things that, if you know them, they cover a lot of the others. Your limits, like. Your strengths and soft spots and shouldn’t-go-theres. Like if the pitcher has a killer sinkerball, don’t try and hit it. Wait for your pitch.
This was not my dad’s pitch. Me and my dad are great. I like him fine. He’s mine. You have to like your people, I think, because they’re yours. Other folks don’t have to like them.
I didn’t think the Ellises would like my dad a lot. And I didn’t think he’d like them a lot.
The ride home, through light sparkly crystal snowfall, was nice. It’s always nice, with a full belly, walking out into the cold but then climbing into a plush and warm car instead of a rattly, drafty rust box with dodgy heat. Half-sleepy dreamy during the trip, I was relaxed and grateful, listening more than talking with the Ellises—which was a good thing. Snowflakes caught in streetlights became baseballs hit into the dark skies of night games, one after another disappearing over the wall. Napoleon sat next to me in the backseat, looking likewise outside but maybe thinking entirely different things, I couldn’t tell. Snow was still kind of foreign to him.
“Right here,” I said, as Dr. Ellis was about to pass right by Woolworth’s. “The driving will be ten times worse now, even, with this new snow.”
As I opened my door, Dr. Ellis reached over the backseat, and shook my hand, thanking me.
A shock ran through me, from my hand on up through my whole upper body. Thanking me. Thanking me?
It was a great, firm, and honest handshake.
Then I reached over and shook Napoleon’s. Seemed like the thing to do.
Same. Firm, honest handshake.
“See you Monday,” I said.
“See you Monday.”
I stood on the corner waving, seeing them off, until I saw them gone.
And headed up my hill.
NOT CRICKET
MONDAY WAS GORGEOUS. ONE of the great things about being in Boston was that, just as soon as you got the feeling in January or February or March that the weather was brutal and would remain brutal for the rest of your life—a feeling you could get pretty frequently in January or February or March—then bang came a day to make you walk around with wow in your stomach and a mad itch in your feet. To get out there and play a game.
Which we did at lunchtime. Every kid in the school was climbing over every other kid to get through the door, still chewing, still slurping, bits of ham or apple or jelly falling down our shirts as we rushed the exit.
There was no doubt what I was intending to do. Not on a midwinter day when it was nearly sixty degrees and the sun was throwing brightness over everything. My dream, a dream I had over and over again during the previous three hours while the teachers were probably discussing math or god or poetry, involved swinging some sort of stick at some sort of sphere.
“You know what’s been running through my head all morning, Napoleon?” I asked as we scooted across the asphalt toward the back of the Sisters’ four-car garage. That was where the odd old broom handles were stashed, and we all knew what odd old broom handles were good for, so you had to get there early or lose out.
Napoleon snorted. “The whole world knows what has been running through your head all morning. Baseball has been running through your head all morning.”
“Well, ya, of course, but I don’t even have to say that. I mean, along with baseball.”
“Apparently there is a great deal of room up there,” he said, reaching over and tapping the side of my head. Like he expected an echo.
“Because I am in such a good mood,” I said, picking up the first thick, strong broom handle, “I won’t even mind that you did that. And I will tell you that what has been running through my head is the theme to Hawaii Five-O.”
I was very serious, and very excited.
“I’m holding a big stick, Napoleon. You better cut that out.”
He was laughin
g.
“You mean the theme music. From that television program with the police officer with the metal hairstyle.”
“That’s not the point,” I snapped. “It’s the music, the sound.” I jumped into my batting stance, and began my rendition of the surfy, coppy song—Ba-ba-ba-ba-BAH-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-baaaaa—swinging my bat as hard as I could in either direction every other beat. “It’s the perfect baseball soundtrack, and I was brilliant on the field all morning. In my head.”
I could not stop moving as I talked, and Napoleon could not stop smiling. It was the kind of thing that I knew was contagious, and that I knew all along he would eventually catch from me. And then we would be off into history, the Gold Dust Twins.
In truth, I wasn’t the only one with the fever. Various strains were happening all over the schoolyard. There was mad motion in every direction and even the yard monitors, Sister Esther and Sister Margaret, couldn’t seem to keep from grinning as they patrolled the grounds telling everybody to cut it out. Games of tag were crisscrossing each other so that one kid from one game would tag another kid from another game and then the two games would merge. The one painted hopscotch in the corner of the lot closest to the building became less like a game, in a place, and more like a through-station half the population was going to pass on their way to further fun someplace else. Hop one, two, three-four, five, six-seven, and away, never turning to hop back to one.
It would be tough enough under these conditions to get any kind of ballplaying done in the crowd, but there was no way we were not going to try, and no way anyone would try and stop us.
“You did pretty well with the snowballs,” I said to Napoleon, “but have a look at this.” As I said it, I drew a pimple ball out of the pocket of my jacket. It was the next best thing, the pimple ball, even though it bore very little resemblance to a baseball. It was small, and though it was white it was filled with air and covered with little bumps that had the added benefit of making it do strange little unpredictable fishtaily things when you put enough English on it. Life with the pimple ball was an important step on the baseball ladder, since we spent so many of our important hours in school, and real baseball was never going to happen on school grounds. It was also critical, skillwise, in that with a stick that was a lot skinnier than a bat, you were required to zero in on a ball much daintier than a hardball.
And about one tenth the size of the fat iceballs we had been murdering over the weekend.
He took the ball, squeezed it, tossed it up in the air a couple of times, then pointed.
He did that very well, I had to say. Silent and grim when he did it, Napoleon Charlie Ellis pointed me into the corner, farthest from the school building, where a weird small nook of the massive red church came together to form our natural St. C’s home plate area. He had never yet played here but he knew. Another good indicator of NCE’s instincts.
And when he did that, he looked like the Grim Reaper, ready to mow me down. No, more than that. He looked like Vida Blue of the Oakland A’s. Now that was grim.
I stood in, and waited, scuffing the feet, gripping the bat, leaning.
And leaning, and leaning.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he backed farther and farther away from me, so far away that some of the space between us was being filled by a game of keepaway with Arthur Brown’s shoe.
“Just stay in position,” Napoleon said to me. I did, and then he finally stopped backtracking, leered in at me...
And started running my way.
I was stumped. I straightened up, started shouting at him to cut it out, but then instantly was shut up myself. After four or five long powerful strides, Napoleon’s arm hanging behind his back, he left the ground and came over the top with a vicious whipping motion. I was then frozen, by the loud whizzzz of the pimple ball buzzing right past my face, ricocheting off both walls behind me, then rolling back out to Napoleon Charlie Vida Blue Ellis.
“Holy smoke,” was the best I could do.
That was the fastest anything had ever passed me without a driver inside it.
“What in the world was that?” I said, trying not to sound overly impressed.
“Bowling,” he said, squeezing the ball, as if he was checking to see if he’d hurt it.
“Ah, excuse me, but I’ve been bowling lots, and it’s much slower than that.”
“Cricket. That’s called bowling. Although if I had been properly bowling I would have bounced the ball off the ground before it reached you. I was trying to give you a chance.”
“Try—” I could not even manage to finish the thought. I put that stick right back on my shoulder and planted. “Bowl,” I said, nearly speechless at the thought of somebody having to give me a chance.
He took the ball, backed up, backed up, and came at me, hard.
In the ball came, spinning and wobbling and—
Whiffing. I lost my balance in the gritty wet pavement as I swung with everything to get that ball.
“Bowl,” I yelled, as the ball reached Napoleon Charlie Ellis again.
“It does take some getting used to,” he said kindly. “But you will learn to love it, I am sure of it.”
“Bowl,” I growled.
Bowl, he did.
Whiff. I was now losing my composure very quickly.
“I think maybe you need just to relax,” he said.
A crowd began to gather around him. Tag games stopped. Arthur Brown got his shoe back. And Napoleon Charlie Ellis got his audience, just like when the photographers all surround the first pitchers to start their throwing down in Winter Haven.
I was hot. Yes the sun was out, and yes I was straining, but that was no excuse. I was hot, as in a sweaty brow, and damp armpits and there is no excuse for that kind of thing on a beautiful baseball day in February. I could sweat in a fancy restaurant because I didn’t belong there. This was unacceptable. I belonged in this situation.
I became suddenly aware of being at the center of something, something that should have been great, that had always been great before. The sun was doing its job so well, melting the snow wherever it could, after Mr. Mendelson had done his job, plowing the whole yard down to nothing but watery icebanks along walls and fences. The whole place had a feel now like the base of a mountain when the winter was letting go and everything was wet with the snow being converted to crystal waters running down from the slopes. The ground everywhere was shiny.
And then I was unaware of it all again.
“Bowl,” I said, and heard the odd little word repeated here and there in the crowd.
He looked at me without emotion. He nodded.
He stepped back and back and back, then forward, faster, faster, long went the stride, sling, over the top came the arm.
And zzzzzip, past me came the ball. I swung. But I was swinging at sound. I couldn’t even see the pitch.
Napoleon bowled again, like I told him to. And bowled me out.
There was a lot of muttering out in the crowd, no laughing really, and no cheering. Because this was not the way things worked. I was supposed to be hitting these balls, for the whole school population probably as much as for myself. It was like the pond freezing solid in January, and the crocuses poking through the crust in March. I was supposed to be tattooing some poor pimple ball right now.
“Bowl,” I said. Napoleon Charlie Ellis was trying to hold his game face, to show nothing, but the crack of a wince was coming across his tight lean skin.
“Maybe we should take a break, Richard,” he said.
“Ya, Richard, take a break before you hurt yourself,” Manny said, and a few people laughed.
I could feel the redness in my face, and was sure it could be seen from the cheapest seats in the house.
“Why are you lettin’ him cheat?” Jum McDonaugh asked.
Napoleon turned to face him. “I do not cheat at anything,” he said.
“You ain’t supposed to run like that before pitching.”
“It’s okay,” I said, frozen an
d probably looking crazy in my tight stance.
“Look,” Jum said, walking up and taking the ball from Napoleon. He set himself, wound up, and slung one at me.
I have to confess, when I hit that pitch, when I hit the absolute guts out of that pitch, I almost cried with relief and excitement. I saw myself circling the bases, heard the theme to Hawaii Five-O blasting over the massive Fenway sound system, and felt like somebody had just pulled me up out of a pit of alligators.
“See,” Jum said, as if he had accomplished some outstanding sports feat rather than giving up the biggest tater of the young season. “That is how to pitch a baseball.”
“We were not playing baseball,” Napoleon said. He took the ball again, as Arthur Brown ran it back from the far outfield. “We were playing cricket.”
That’s right, I thought. That’s right, we weren’t playing baseball. We were playing cricket. Oh, yes. God, yes. I was not failing at baseball, I was messing around with stupid old cricket. Yes. Yes. It was just cricket.
And the last time I would be playing cricket.
Jum screwed his face all up. “Why?” he asked.
“Because,” Napoleon said, “Richard and I are thinking men, and so we play the thinking man’s game.”
Butchie stepped in and snatched the ball away from Napoleon. “Ya, well nobody plays that here.”
“Some guys play it over at Franklin Park, every Sunday,” Glen Solar said.
Butchie pointed at the ground under him. “But nobody plays it here,” he said. “We play baseball here. Or stickball, but using baseball rules. Meaning, you don’t run at the guy when you pitch to him. Cricket,” he announced like some kind of authority, “is a stupid game.”
“Cricket is not a stupid game,” Napoleon said. “In fact, I believe that your inability to understand cricket is even further proof of the fineness of the game.”
There were small titters of laughter that faded out as Butchie scanned the crowd. Then he trained his look back on Napoleon, who wasn’t going anywhere.
I took a few steps toward them, caught Butchie’s eye.
