by Chris Lynch
“Do you miss home, Napoleon?” I asked this as easily and quietly as I could, though I had no business doing it. One week at a camp two hours away was the greatest separation I had ever endured. It was at a lake, in July, with half of my friends. It was better than being home. I knew nothing about what he was living through, and had no right going into it.
I felt like I had to go into it.
I heard a rapid series of short shallow wispy breaths, like a muffled asthma attack. He would not talk. Then it went quieter, like he was covering the receiver with his hand. I waited, until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“It’s probably just me,” I said tentatively. “Maybe there’s just something wrong with me. You know. No brain, no pain?”
Nothing.
“Ignorance is bliss, right?” I tried, brighter.
For this, he came back.
“Getting warmer,” he mumbled.
Which, after all that, was what cut. I could feel the smile slither off the edges of my face. I thought I was on his side. I thought I was helping. I thought I was doing good. I had been trying to cheer him up a bit, and could feel the actual sting in the middle of it.
In the middle of me.
“Oh,” I said, my voice sounding probably worse than Napoleon’s. “I get it.”
“Wait, Richard,” he said.
I didn’t.
I lay down on my bed, grabbed the ball off the night table, and began bouncing it off the ceiling and catching it. Bouncing it off the ceiling and catching it.
Why couldn’t I seem to get through a single conversation anymore? Why did things have to be hard for no good reason? Did I owe somebody an apology for liking things pretty much the way they were?
Were happy and stupid both the same thing?
I could smell spring. All things right were about to come together, just like they did this time every year, so why shouldn’t I feel okay? Why couldn’t I?
My ball began making a foreign sound. For every bounce off the ceiling I was hearing a shadow bounce. Twinned. I don’t know how long it was happening before it occurred to me to go to the window, but Napoleon Charlie Ellis looked pretty cold by the time I saw him throw that last leather ball, thump, off my storm window.
I opened the sash, opened the storm.
“What’s that?” I asked coolly.
“Cricket ball.”
“Looks stupid.”
He wanted to say something back. Would have had the right. He didn’t, though. He threw the ball straight up in the air and caught it again.
“Coming down?” he asked.
“What are you doing out?”
“Feeling better.” He was working on not showing any face. No smile, frown, scowl. The phone Napoleon was separated, different. Like the mirror Napoleon at the icecream parlor. Different characters from the poker-faced guy with the cricket ball. “Coming down?”
“What? To play cricket?”
“Maybe. If you like. Or baseball. No matter.”
The impulse in me, the dumb impulse, was to grab the Adirondack and hit the stairs.
“Tomorrow,” I said, without an explanation.
Napoleon Charlie Ellis nodded. Then he short-armed a throw that almost caught me off guard, but didn’t. It came up on a line, face high, through the eight-inch opening of the storm window. I caught it at my ear.
“Have that,” he said, backing away.
I looked at the hard reddish leathery ball. Squeezed it, rolled it around in my hand.
I looked back down at Napoleon. He wasn’t one hundred percent different from me. He did better when he shut up too.
“Thanks,” I said, and shut the window.
REAL SPRING
IT WAS A COUPLE of weeks into March before real spring started setting in, and playing ball became more of a part of everybody’s days. Partly because of the weather, and partly because of the daily reports coming up from Florida. It was becoming obvious to the world. Fred Lynn was special. The Gold Dust Twins were special. And the 1975 Red Sox were going to be something we would remember for the rest of our lives.
If I wasn’t playing baseball I was watching it. And if I wasn’t watching it in the real world I was watching it in my head. Napoleon and I had played so much repetitive two-man baseball, we were getting to know each other’s game as well as we knew our own. He was beginning to learn how I would set him up with a couple of off-speed junky pitches, then try to sneak the third past him with a short-delivery fastball. We would go to the frozen field down off the parkway, or more often the defrosting, muddy field, with a duffel bag full of bruised, scarred, or waterlogged balls, and take turns emptying the bag on each other. I loved to hit still, and if I could there would be days when I never surrendered the bat to him, and I know that would have been fine with Napoleon too. Because he loved to throw.
He certainly loved to throw.
Napoleon Charlie Ellis could throw a baseball.
But I couldn’t do that because that was not the plan. We could not be the Gold Dust Twins if we did not have well-rounded skills. People were already making fun of Jim Rice’s fielding ability down there in Winter Haven, as if being able to hit a baseball from Florida to Georgia was not enough, and I was not going to let that happen to Napoleon.
Fred Lynn could do everything, though. It was awesome.
Besides, we did ourselves so much good with our constant hit-and-pitch routine. I could see it every time out, as Napoleon’s stroke got smoother, stronger, more controlled. I didn’t have to guide him as much anymore but there were still occasions when I would step down off the mound and sidle up next to him, showing him one small fine adjustment or another. Only there was this progression happening where with each attempt, I would find him a little stiffer, a little less pliable than before until, by the last time I tried to help him, he had changed from the Gumby poseable figure I started out with into a bronze statue. His stance was his stance, and as I tried to get the tiniest of changes out of him, we locked into this struggle of will and muscle, Napoleon holding stubbornly steady, me trying to bend his left arm slightly... Napoleon stiffening... me bending... until... the bat fell away completely, I grabbed his shirt, he gave me a headlock... and the two of us toppled into the sloppy soupy mush of the batter’s box.
We wrestled there for a few seconds, not to establish who was going to beat the other, certainly not to settle the batting-stance question, but to make sure neither of us got back up with one single patch of unmudded clothes.
And the laughing made it even harder to get back up on our feet. We sat there for a few seconds.
“There,” I said. “Much better.”
I got up and headed back to the mound calmly.
“Next time,” Napoleon called, “I’ll come visit you out there and show you how to pitch.”
“Hah. That’ll be the day,” I said.
But really, I knew he very well could. I could swear that every day his fastball gained one more mile per hour.
He was already the hardest thrower I had ever seen.
“I have to tell you something, Richard,” he said as we went through our routine, combing the outfield together to gather up the balls for the next guy to pitch. We were playing till we dropped that day, and nobody was complaining but the balls. I had pitched a full bag already to Napoleon, and he had just finished doing the same for me. When we gathered up this bunch, we would start the whole thing over again. “I thought today was the day. I thought today you were not going to keep up.”
I stopped right there in my tracks, ankle deep in grassy mud. “You thought I...?” I pulled one of the balls back out of the bag, held it up between us like that guy with the skull in Hamlet. “You know what this is? You know who I am?”
“Yes, I know you both,” he said dryly. “But I have been feeling so strong these last few days, as if the ball is simply going to go faster and faster every time. You know that feeling?”
Did I know it? I had often wondered if I would ever hear anyone else
say what I thought so many times before. This was how I figured parents feel when their kids graduate or are born or get married or something. I nodded and went back to picking up balls.
“But every time, you catch up. You learn. You make yourself hit the ball when it appears that you are falling behind.”
I looked at him again, and spoke as seriously as I could. “I really want to hit that ball.”
“Yes. I can see that.”
“Thanks. You make me better.” I felt I couldn’t come up with any higher praise than that. Or any greater thanks.
“You actually do intend to play baseball for all your life, don’t you, Richard.”
We had now collected all the balls and were walking back toward the infield. We almost never spoke anymore when we were hitting, so this was our moment. I grew to like this bit very much. It would have been my favorite part of the entire drill, if hitting and pitching weren’t the other parts.
“Of course I’m going to play pro ball. The only people who don’t want to are the people who can’t. And you’re coming with me. We’re the Gold Dust Twins, remember. Only we’ll have to think up a different name by then.”
We were both standing on the mound. Napoleon had both feet on the rubber, as he would be if he was looking for the sign from the catcher. I was in front of him, on the home plate side, with the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. Because it was my turn to pitch.
He shook his head at me.
“What, no?” I asked. “Oh, listen, don’t worry. You are good enough, I know this stuff. And hey, even if you were borderline, I’d do that thing like in Bang the Drum Slowly... you know, put in my contract, wherever I go, my buddy goes.”
He continued to shake his head, but added the words. “Thank you very much, Richard. I’m glad you would do that for me. But that’s not it. The difference is not that you can play and I cannot. The difference is that you want to.”
I dropped the bag of balls at my feet. I swear I had never considered this, that Napoleon Charlie Ellis wouldn’t want to play baseball for life. That anybody wouldn’t. How could this be true? How could somebody with Napoleon’s ability not want to spend his life playing ball? He had the feeling, I was sure I had heard it, just minutes before, when he was describing the feeling of getting better and better with every pitch, of getting better than yourself, of getting better than everybody else. I knew he was feeling it because he was describing what I had always felt like nobody else was ever able to describe. I knew it before that, even just by watching him play, by watching him improve faster than I could have imagined. Because he was made for this game.
He could not be right. If he was still a little short of full commitment to the game the idea the life of baseball, it wasn’t because it wasn’t in there. It was because I had just not finished the job of helping him along.
I couldn’t imagine it any other way.
“You can’t really be serious,” I said, because if I tried to say it all, I would sound crazy.
He shrugged. “Yes, I can. I like playing here and now, though. I like that very much. And I am happy if I am helping you get better and closer to your dream. But that is it. The rest, that is your dream. It is not mine.”
He didn’t even look sorry.
“You’re not joking, by any chance, Napoleon?”
He stomped down off the mound, right up to me, and gave me a good stiff shove in the chest before blowing by me on the way to the plate. “I hope to love something as insanely as you do baseball, Richard Riley Moncreif. Because if I do, whatever it is I will be the world’s greatest at it.” He picked up the Adirondack.
I picked up the glove and slipped it onto my hand. If I coated my hand in raw pizza dough, it would not mold to me any closer than this glove that I had lived with, literally slept with, breaking it in under my mattress with a ball stuck in the web.
I picked up a ball, aimed it at Napoleon. “Ah, you’ll change your mind. I know you will.”
I threw him the straight hard one that he could hit a mile.
He hit it a mile.
I watched the ball every inch of the way, with my arms stretched wide, the scent of mud and grass in my nose, water in my shoes, and cool wind on my face.
No matter what he thought, Napoleon Charlie Ellis was a baseball player.
YARD DOGS
PALM SUNDAY. I HAD no idea.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” I asked, and I was aware of sounding like a fan. But he was so shockingly good, there was nothing else I could do.
“I learned at church,” Napoleon said. “Isn’t that where most people learn?”
“No. I’ve been going to church every Sunday since I was six years old, sometimes even more than once a week depending on holy days and weddings and funerals and stuff. I have heard zillions of singers, heard enough organ music to fill probably a year’s worth of time solid, and I have been instructed at least one period a week for all of my school life. And I still sound like this.”
Without hesitation or modesty, I lit into a version of “Ave Maria,” right there in the street within spitting distance of the church itself. I sang strong, and I sang loud because I did not know how to sing it any other way, and I sang so bad that if there were any birds in the area they would have fallen dead out of the trees. Napoleon reached out and clapped both hands over my mouth, and while that would under normal circumstances be a pretty hostile move, I did not take offense. Because he did it out of respect for music, and he was right to do it. I am an insult to music and musicians everywhere.
“Wow,” Napoleon Charlie Ellis said.
“Wow is right,” I answered.
“Wow,” Beverly said, running up and wedging herself in between us.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. The Ward 17s never showed up at our church on Sundays. They had their own church, and while the Catholic schools were filling up all over the city, the actual churches weren’t selling out most home games.
“I came for the show,” she said. “Napoleon,” she added, with a slap on his arm, “why didn’t you tell us you were some kind of musical genius?”
“Stop it,” Napoleon said, pulling away from her. When we caught up to him, he reversed direction and started walking quickly back in the direction of church.
“And he’s a shy superstar, at that,” Beverly said.
“Hey,” I said, catching up and clutching at his shirt so the brilliant white tail of it came flapping out of his pants. “I knew him first. I knew him when he was a regular guy.”
“I hate it when this happens,” Napoleon said. Now he stopped running east or west. He simply stopped right there in the sidewalk, clenched his fists and shut his eyes, as if he was going to make us disappear.
“When this happens?” Beverly and I said together.
“What are you, Napoleon, some fugitive from fame? Does this happen to you a lot? Are you some kind of child prodigy, like Donny Osmond?”
“Now you are making me angry,” Napoleon said, opening his eyes briefly, then snapping them closed again.
“Excuse me?” Someone was calling, and waving, from the front of the church. He was a tall thin man, with glasses and a very neat gray suit on. His shoes made a loud clicking sound as he hurried our way. He looked so anxious to get to us that it couldn’t have been good.
“Did you do something wrong?” I asked Beverly as the man approached.
“No. I figured it was one of you guys.”
Napoleon had his eyes wide open now and stood tall as the man approached. “I don’t care what he wants. I am pleased just to change the subject.”
“Young man,” the man said, reaching for Napoleon’s hand, “your singing was breathtaking.” He must have been telling the truth, since he was breathless.
“Thank you,” Napoleon said shyly.
“My name is James Connolly, and I’m from the Archdiocese Choir School. Have you heard of it?” He continued holding Napoleon’s hand. He was no longer shaking it, just holding on and
smiling like he was some sort of great lifelong admirer of Napoleon’s work.
“No, sir, I’ve never heard of the Archdiocese Choir School, or any other choir school, as a matter of fact.”
“Well, that’s fine. Wouldn’t want some other denomination recruiting you away from us,” Mr. Connolly said, and chuckled musically. “Seriously. Have you had any serious training, Mister...?”
“Ellis. And no, I have never actually trained.”
“Ever thought about it? No, never mind. Don’t answer that. I’ll be around to all the classes on Monday. We can talk more about it then.” He started shaking again, then backed away quickly, so as not to upset the great performer I guess.
With Mr. Connolly gone, I had no qualms about upsetting the great performer.
“Ar, ar, arrr,” I laughed out loud. “Can you believe that guy? A school? For choir?”
“I think it sounds great,” Beverly said. “You deserve it, Napoleon, you lucky thing. We’re going to miss you, though.”
“What?” I said loudly. We had absently turned and were once again floating down the sidewalk away from church. “What are you talking about, Beverly? You don’t really think Napoleon would be interested in leaving to go to some weenie choir school?”
“Of course he would. He’d be crazy not to.”
By now even I could see that Napoleon Charlie Ellis was not participating in the discussion of the future of Napoleon Charlie Ellis. It seemed that there was now a lot going on in that head, with small flicks of different expressions snapping across his face and then leaving to be replaced by something else. Confusion was in the mix. Then fear. Excitement, then something else again.
“What’s up, Napoleon?” I asked.
“You all right?” Beverly asked.
He looked straight ahead, then at me, then at Beverly, then straight ahead again. Now he looked like he had just woken up from a pleasant dream.
“I never heard of such a thing,” he said. It wasn’t so much a yea or a nay to the choir school idea, but an amazement over the plain fact of its existence.
