by Chris Lynch
“I hear you, man. The world’s gone nuts. Come on, let’s go play some baseball.”
“Would you pa-lease,” Beverly scolded me. “Just give it a rest for one day, huh? Anyway, I was thinking you guys might like to go for a little ride today. I know a great Brigham’s in a great square, all old-timey, and clean. My treat.”
“Ya?” I said. “Well. Whatcha think, choir-boy?”
Napoleon scowled at me. Then he looked to Beverly, sort of nervous and embarrassed at the same time. “Ah, well, you mean in your neighborhood? Would that be a good idea?”
“No,” Beverly said boldly, “that would not be a good idea, I’m ashamed to say. But this is not in my neighborhood. It’s in that direction, but not quite. Neutral territory.”
It was amazing to me the way a small statement like that could change Napoleon’s whole face. From closed up and scowling to smooth in seconds. From mean old man to twelve-year-old regular guy. “I would be pleased to go,” he said to her.
By the time we got there it seemed like the day was nearly gone. Wait for the bus, ride the bus. Wait for the other bus, ride the bus. All the while I couldn’t help staring and staring into the blue sky dotted with the occasional bit of a cloud, and all around sprayed with bright sunshine. Napoleon and Beverly were most of the time discussing this or that, but I was like in a trance every time I looked up. The clouds started looking an awful lot like baseballs floating across the sky and I thought, yup, Fred Lynn and Jim Rice were probably at that moment sending moon shots out into orbit right up there.
When we got there though, it was nice. As advertised, this was one of the best Brigham’s I had been in. All brass and marble and fixtures that reminded me of that song John Kiley would pump out on the organ during rain delays, Daisy, Daisy... a bicycle built for two. Only there were three of us. That was it. There was a nice lazy after-church feel to things, and we were the only people in the place. We got our single-scoop dishes of ice cream and took them to the front window booth to look out at the square.
Which was fine for a while. Palm Sunday. Families walking along together, parents holding their three strands of dried palm respectfully, while their kids whipped each other with theirs. The atmosphere out on the small green patch at the center of the square had that unmistakable look of the true beginning of spring, with guys throwing footballs around with their jackets off, people eating food outdoors as if fresh air was an actual nutritional ingredient, and an explosion of babies all around. Not bad. Very peaceful. I was almost ready to let go of my baseball pang as the three of us sat there for a bit silently, staring out from our ice-cream world.
Until the real world stared back. All of a sudden, one of the ball tossers across the way dropped his hands as he caught sight of us in the window. The football hit him in the chest and fell to the ground in front of him. Jum McDonaugh stood there, staring dumbfounded at us, as if this could simply not be happening. Then, like a great big sewer rat he scurried over to his bike and was gone so quickly we could have imagined the whole thing.
Napoleon sat rigid as a statue.
We had not imagined it.
“Do you suppose we scared him away?” I asked.
Beverly sighed, a heavy, exhausted sigh.
Any pleasure we might have enjoyed had been choked out of our time now. Amazing that it could turn so quickly, and turn on so little.
“Should we go?” I asked. “I guess we should get going, huh?”
“Much as I hate to say it,” Beverly said sadly, “it’s probably best if we do.”
I assumed we were all in agreement on that. It made you so mad your stomach burned, but there was no denying what we were feeling. And it would only get worse if we waited. Beverly and I put down our spoons and wiped our mouths with our big white Brigham’s napkins.
Napoleon took another, very small, spoonful. He held it in his mouth for what seemed an unnecessarily long time without swallowing, and then swallowed.
He picked up another spoonful. “I am finished when I am finished,” he said calmly. He wouldn’t look at either one of us.
Beverly and I looked at each other.
“You’re right,” Beverly said. “Dead right. And I understand why you don’t want to give in. I respect that. But I’m the one responsible for you being here, and I don’t want to be responsible for what happens next. I don’t want to see it, Napoleon.”
“What if he comes back with twenty guys?” I pointed out.
He took another spoonful. Swallowed. Shrugged. “What if he comes back with twenty thousand? What is the population anyway, of Boston, Massachusetts, USA?” He took another tiny mouthful.
“If it was the whole city, I guess you’d want to fight the whole city,” I said. “But it’s not the whole city, so don’t start that.”
“Why don’t you just fight each other then?” Beverly sounded disgusted.
“If you don’t mind,” Napoleon said, pretending to be oblivious to everything all of a sudden, “I am trying to eat.”
It was the longest, slowest bowl of ice cream in history. The last eight or ten spoonfuls could have easily been done with a straw. I was getting more and more nervous, to the point where I was ready to pull Napoleon right out of the chair for his own stubborn good.
Until it occurred to me. Nothing was happening. Nothing was going to happen. It was possible, still, for things to get blown up worse than they were. And that’s what we were doing. I was wrong. We were wrong. I was so pleased, about everyone being wrong.
“I’m getting myself a Coke,” I said. “Anyone else?”
I stood to go to the counter. Confident.
And wrong again.
Jum stood up close to the window, pointing us out to Butchie.
Butchie smiled. Looked like a dog baring his teeth.
The two of them stood there for a long minute, staring at us like we were the impossible three-headed fish in the pet store window. Then they moved on away from the window and across the street.
“This is stupid,” I said. “I’ll go talk to him.”
“Sit down, Richard,” Napoleon said.
I sat.
“Please don’t make too big a deal out of it, Napoleon,” Beverly said. Beverly’s face was making a big deal out of it, like she might cry. “He doesn’t matter.”
I looked outside. Jum and Butch were sitting now, in a bench at the park. Facing us. There were two more guys with them that I had never seen before. Older.
Beverly took notice too. “No, no...” her voice trailed away.
Then there were two more. And it looked as if they were all sitting on a wooden sofa, watching a TV that was the Brigham’s window.
“They’re just like dogs,” Beverly said. “Territorial. Brainless.”
“And what,” I said, “they don’t like other dogs in their yard? And anyway, I thought this wasn’t even their yard.”
“Apparently their yard is getting larger,” Napoleon said.
We all stared out for a few seconds, waiting for whatever. But it was waiting for us.
“I am so sorry about this,” Beverly said.
Napoleon stood up, wiped his mouth neatly at the corners with his napkin as he continued staring out across the way. Even now, he still had his manners. I thought of him and his father together in Pier 4, so graceful, so foreign, so many million miles away from here and now.
I could not ever remember actually wanting to fight anybody before. Before this moment.
“You want to go fight?” I asked.
“Don’t be stupid,” Beverly said to me.
Napoleon pulled his lips tight. His eyes went narrow as he looked out there, and he began lightly, rhythmically tapping the table with the meaty part of his fist.
“Yes, I want to fight,” he said.
I thought Beverly was going to scream, or cry, or attack Napoleon herself.
“If you do,” she said, pointing a finger at him, “if you do...” She stalled, to collect herself. “They are animals. What’s
your excuse?”
Napoleon looked out the window at the faces in the park. They were hardening as we spoke, freezing and whitening, into hateful stony statues. Then he looked at Beverly, then at me, before finally nodding at Beverly.
“I have never struck anyone before,” he said to her.
“I believe you,” she said.
“I could do it now, however.”
“I believe you.”
Napoleon stood then, and with smooth, slow, graceful motions, took his napkin, wiped the corners of his mouth. He refolded the napkin, placed it beside his plate as neatly as he found it. He put on his coat.
“This is a sad place,” he said.
The three of us walked out to the sidewalk, looked at the bunch of them for a minute, then headed toward the bus stop.
“There ya go,” Butch called, to the sound of supporting laughter. “Good boy. Smart boy. Don’t get lost again now. Who knows what could happen to a lost boy in the big city?”
I tipped a glance toward Napoleon. The muscles in his temples were bunching and bunching and bunching.
“They’re all talk,” Beverly said. “They would never really do anything.”
“Was that not anything?” he said. He sounded exhausted.
I thought then, I would be exhausted all the time if I was Napoleon Charlie Ellis.
It’s exhausting enough just being with him.
A HIGHER CALLING
AS PROMISED, MR. CONNOLLY was at the school on Monday. He was making the rounds of the classes starting with first grade, listening to every voice in the school in his search for talent. Apparently this was Mr. Connolly’s full-time job, going around to all the schools in the Archdiocese and recruiting for the choir school. We could hear the squeaky little voices of the lower grades, as they sang to the piano in the basement room that was directly below Sister Jacqueline’s homeroom. Sister kept smiling sweetly at every warbling, every screech. But every minute or so she would look back toward Napoleon Charlie Ellis and give a knowing nod. As if it was all just a formality, and we all knew why Connolly was really here. Which, this being a kind of intimate little school, I suppose we did.
Some of us did, anyway. Some of us didn’t particularly care.
“Hey,” Butchie said, apparently to me and Napoleon both. “What’s the deal? The Judge decide all the Brigham’ses in the city need to be desegregated now?”
The two of us wheeled around to face him.
“I will not waste my time on this ignorance of yours,” Napoleon said, then turned right in his seat again.
Which left me facing Butch. “See what I mean,” he said to me, pointing a finger straight at Napoleon’s back. “Thinks he’s too good to waste his time on the likes of me.”
I nodded. Finally, I did see.
“He is,” I said. “So am I.”
“Oooh,” Butchie said with a cheesy fake smile on his face. “I been waitin’ for this. Finally you ain’t white trash anymore?”
“Nope.” I did my best imitation of the Ellis composure I had seen so much of. I looked at the back of my hand. “Still white. Just ain’t trash.”
“In your dreams, Riley,” he said, but it didn’t matter. As far as I was concerned the conversation was already over.
Now Napoleon and I were both facing front. For a second.
I tipped a look his way. “All right.”
He didn’t look back. “All right?”
“All right, you were maybe right.”
He looked at me now, just as I looked away.
“About time,” he said, then went back to his book.
He was not about to cut me any slack, give me any credit, or call off his dogs for one single minute. He was determined to be miserable no matter what. There was a lot of tough stuff to admire about Napoleon, but then he could turn around and drive you nuts with that very same stuff. Well, now I wasn’t going to give in all the way, either.
“You were right about him.” I said. “Not about everybody everywhere.”
He just kept to his book.
At eleven that morning we were all gathered around the piano. All the boys in my class anyway. They divided us by gender as well as age, I guess in an effort to group all voices approximately according to similar sound. They had that wrong.
“Stop, stop, stop, wait a minute,” Mr. Connolly said after grimacing through the first six notes of the C scale with all of us as a group. “You,” he said to me. “Is that you, making that... sound?”
“’Fraid so,” I said. I didn’t mind. Expected it, really.
“I’m sorry, son, but would you mind terribly... not singing?”
“Not terribly,” I said, while most of my classmates laughed.
Which, a little less conspicuously, was how the process went. One by one, Connolly would isolate a singer from the group, ask him to hit a note or two, then weed that guy out.
Until in the end there was one lone voice. And that voice was so strong and clear, and surprisingly high—he hit a note like that little whistle piping an admiral aboard ship, and held it a long time—that everyone in the room just stood there gawking silently. We did a lot of gawking in this group, but usually not silently.
I had so much time, during the miracle of that long note, that I traveled, through January, and February, through the snow and ice and muck and arguments and symphony and Pier 4 and above all, across baseball fields, snowy ones and arid rock-frost ones and asphalt ones and finally fantastic grassy springtime ones, hitting and pitching and fielding and coaching and talking and even, unbelievably, learning.
Napoleon’s one unbelievable otherworldly note ran through me.
When he had finally let go, Mr. Connolly went practically mental with clapping, and the rest of the class followed. I thought Connolly was going to cry.
“That was... that was...” With the words not coming, Mr. Connolly went back to the hand-shaking thing. He really was a fan by now.
I had to slap my man on the back. I didn’t know if this was what you did to singing stars, but I knew it was what you did to athletes who scored. And that’s what this felt like.
“You didn’t even sound human, man. That was great. Does everybody in Dominica sound like that?”
“No,” he said, looking down, shaking his head. Then he looked up at me, shaking his head again.
“What?” I asked. I couldn’t believe the million ways it was possible for my mouth to open and his head to shake. I should have stuck to the language I knew and slapped his back a few more times.
Which was what I did. It was a spasm, but the right spasm, as he started laughing... along with shaking his head.
For the most part, Napoleon looked a little embarrassed by the whole thing. Which must have made it a whole lot harder for him when Sister Jacqueline stood side by side with Mr. Connolly at the head of the class at the end of the day to make the big announcement.
“... and this is such an honor, such a banner day for St. Colmcille’s, as we have never placed one of our students with the prestigious and nationally famous Archdiocese Choir School in all the years they have been testing us. And for our Napoleon to be offered a full scholarship...”
When the time came, I clapped as hard as anyone. I felt proud, like somewhere in there I had something to do with Napoleon’s achievement. I was the one who took him under my wing, after all.
And besides, it wasn’t as if he was actually going to go. I clapped harder as I thought that. And harder and harder, and my hands turned red, and all thoughts melted harmlessly away.
He was out of school again the next day. Hurt himself singing, I figured. It was a pretty high note he hit after all. Or maybe he was just letting this thing die down since he was obviously not a limelight kind of a guy.
At lunch I got in the game. Stickball. And I was a monster. I hit whatever was thrown at me. First pitch every time. It was as if I couldn’t even wait for the ball to reach me, I was so prepared, so ready, so ahead of the game I was in.
He did
that for me. All these guys I had been playing with before, they were just a step slower and a thought behind now. Napoleon’s pitching all these weeks, faster and nastier than anything I had faced before, improved me. Even without him here at this moment, we were still operating as one machine, because of all that we had done together. I could not wait for youth league season to start. Napoleon and I were going to eat that league up.
The Gold Dust Twins. Just rolling the words through my head raised bumps on my skin higher than the pimples on the pimple ball.
But.
But.
“So what are you gonna do now?” Quin asked. He had his hand on his cheek and his head tilted like this was really worrying him. He was trying anything to crack my concentration before pitching to me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Without your shadow.”
Did I imagine it? Or did he really lean on that word? “Shadow.” No. No, I had to stop now. I was getting as bad as...
“Shut up. He’s nobody’s shadow.”
“Whatever. But you’ll be back to being one of us, now that he’s gone.”
“He’s not gone. Jeez, a guy stays out one day and you make a big... there ain’t no way he’s gonna go there.”
“Fool. He ain’t sick. He’s over touring that weenie choir school right now. Sister said so.”
“You don’t know anything. Shut up and throw me the ball.”
Quin smiled. Figured he had done what he set out to do, which was rattle me. Fine. That’s the game. Nothing more than the game.
The ball came, out of the sky from that big ol’ swooping windup of his. Zinging out over the outside edge of the plate.
And smack, I hit it.
And smack. The ball bounced right off Quin’s forehead and went high up in the air.
Manny caught it when it finally came down, and I was out. Fine with me.
I went down to the field that day with Manny and Glen, Quin, Arthur Brown, and Arthur’s brother Gary. It was just too much like spring for people to resist anymore. We took turns pitching and catching, shagging flies, and fielding grounders. This was it now, the transition stage from mechanical-type drills to actual baseball-game activity, and it got my adrenaline pumping. I ran around all that afternoon like a headless haunted ballplayer, chasing every ball, retrieving every foul, catching, throwing, just doing whatever necessary to make myself work, and breathe hard. Breathing baseball was what I was doing. The scent had changed already, from mud and frost to mud and grass.
