Summerland

by Michael Chabon

  "I don't know if I'd want to be flitting around in that thing today," Mr. Brody said, resuming his usual gloom. "Not with this sky."

  It was true. The hundred-year spell of perfect summer weather that had made the Tooth so beloved and useful to the islanders, seemed, to the astonishment of everyone, to have mysteriously been broken. If anything the clouds were thicker over Summerland than over the rest of the island, as if years of storms were venting their pent-up resentment on the spot that had eluded them for so long. It had been raining, on and off, since yesterday, and while the rain had stopped for now, the sky hung low and threatening again. In fact Mr. Brody had arrived at Jock MacDougal that day prepared to execute a solemn duty which no Clam Island umpire, in living memory and beyond, had ever been obliged to perform: to call a baseball game on account of rain.

  "I bet that thing's what's makin' it rain," said a voice behind them, muttering and dark. "God only knows what that shiny stuff on the balloon part is."

  Everyone turned. Mr. Brody felt his heart sink; he knew the voice well enough. Everyone on Clam Island did.

  "That man's been messing with our sky" said Albert Rideout, sounding, as usual, absolutely sure of his latest ridiculous theory. He had turned up again two nights earlier, bound for someplace else, come from who knew where, with seven ugly stitches in his cheek.

  "What do you know about it?" said Jennifer T. to her father. "Are you an aeronautical engineer who studied at M.I.T., like Mr. Feld? Maybe you'd like to explain to us about the Bernoulli principle?"

  Albert glowered at her. His battered, pocked cheeks darkened, and he raised his hand as if to give his daughter a swat. Jennifer T. looked up at him without ducking or flinching or showing any emotion at all.

  "I wish you would," she said. "I'd get your butt thrown off this island once and for all. Deputy sheriff said you're down to your last chance."

  Albert lowered his hand, slowly, and looked around at the other parents, who were watching him to see what he was going to do. They had an idea that he was probably not going to do anything, but with Albert Rideout, you never knew. The fresh scar on his face was testimony to that. They had known Albert since they were all children together, and some of them still remembered what a sweet and fearless boy he had once been, a tricky pitcher with a big, slow curveball, a party to every adventure, and still the best helper Mr. Brody had ever had around the drugstore. Mr. Brody had even cherished a hope that Albert might someday follow in his footsteps and go to pharmacy school. The thought nearly brought a tear to his eye, but he cried even more rarely than he smiled.

  "I ain't afraid of the deputy sheriff," Albert said at last. "And I sure as hell ain't afraid of you, you little brat."

  But Jennifer T. wasn't listening to her father anymore. She had taken off at top speed across the field to catch hold of the mooring line as Mr. Feld tossed it down to the grasping, leaping hands of the children. Before anyone had any idea of what she was doing, or could have begun to try to stop her, she tugged herself up onto the rope, twisting the end of it around her right leg.

  The Victoria Jean rolled slightly toward the ground on that side, then righted herself, thanks to her Feld Gyrotronic Pitch-Cancellation (patent pending). Going hand over hand, steadying herself with her right leg, Jennifer T. pulled herself quickly up to the gleaming chrome rail of the black gondola. Mr. Feld and Ethan took hold of her and dragged her aboard. They were both too amazed by her appearance to criticize her for being reckless, or even to say hello.

  "Hey," Ethan managed finally. "Your dad's here?"

  Jennifer T. ignored Ethan. She turned to Mr. Feld.

  "Can I bring her in?" she asked him.

  Mr. Feld looked down and saw Albert Rideout, red in the face, standing with his arms folded across his chest looking daggers at them. He turned to Jennifer T. and nodded, and stepped to one side. Jennifer T. took the wheel in both hands, as he had taught her to do.

  "I was going to set her down by the picnic tables," Dr. Feld said. "Jennifer T.?"

  Jennifer T. didn't answer him. She had brought the tail of Victoria Jean around, so that they were facing southeast, toward Seattle and the jagged dark jaw of the Cascade Mountains beyond. There was a funny look in her eye, one that Ethan had seen before, especially whenever her dad came around.

  "Do we have to?" she said at last. "Couldn't we just keep on going?"

  IT WAS A WEIRD GAME.

  The rain came soon after play began, with the Roosters as the home team taking the field in a kind of stiff mist, not quite a drizzle. The Reds' pitcher, Andy Dienstag, got into trouble early, loading the bases on three straight walks and then walking in a run. The Reds' pitching seemed to get worse as the rain grew harder, and by the fifth inning, when they halted play, the score was 7-1 in favor of Mr. Olafssen's Roosters. Then came a strange, tedious half hour during which they all sat around under their jackets and a couple of tarps fetched from the backs of people's pickups, and waited to see what the weather and Mr. Arch Brody wanted to do. Mr. Olafssen still had not put Ethan in the game. For the first time this was not a source of relief to Ethan. He was not sure why. Mr. Olafssen had met Mr. Feld's announcement that Ethan wanted to learn to play catcher with a thin smile and a promise to "kick the idea around a little." And it was not as if this were the kind of long, slow, blazing green summer afternoon that, according to Peavine, baseball had been invented to help you understand. It was miserable, gray, and dank. But for some reason he wanted to play today.

  "I have been accessing my historical database," Thor said. He was sitting between Jennifer T. and Ethan, holding up the tarp over all of their heads. He had been holding it like that for twenty minutes, straight up in the air, without any sign that his arms were getting tired. Sometimes Ethan wondered if he really were an android. "The last reported precipitation at these coordinates was in 1822."

  "Is that so?" said Jennifer T. "And what does all this rain do to your big undersea volcano theory?"

  "Huh," said Thor.

  "Maybe," Jennifer T. suggested, "you're experiencing the emotion we humans like to call 'being full of it.' " She clambered out from under the tarp and stood up. "Shoot!" she said. "I want to play!"

  But the rain went on, and on, and after a while the tiny spark of interest in the game that Ethan had felt kindle in him that morning, reading Peavine's book, had all but been extinguished by the dampness of the day. He saw Mr. Brody check his watch, and puff out his cheeks, blowing a long disappointed breath. This was it; he was going to call the game. Do it, Ethan thought. Just get it over with.

  Suddenly Jennifer T. turned and looked toward the canoe birch forest. "What was that?" she said.

  "What was what?" Ethan said, though he heard it too. It sounded like whistling, like a whole bunch of people all whistling the same tune at once. It was far away and yet unmistakable, the tune lonely and sweet and eerie, like the passing of a distant ship way up the Sound. Jennifer T. and Ethan looked at each other, then at the other kids on the bench. They were all watching Mr. Brody as he poked a finger into the grass, measuring its wetness. Nobody but Jennifer T. and Ethan seemed to have heard the strange whistling. Jennifer T. sniffed the air.

  "Hey," she said. "I smell…" She stopped. She wasn't sure what she had smelled, only a difference in the air.

  "The wind," said Albert Rideout. "Comin' from the east now."

  Sure enough, the wind had turned, blowing in crisp and piney from over the eastern Sound, and carrying away with it, as it flowed over the field at Summerland, all the piled-up tangle of gray clouds. For the first time in days the sun reappeared, strong and warm. Curls of steam began to rise from the grass.

  "Play ball!" cried Mr. Brody.

  "Feld," said Mr. Olafssen. "You're in the game. Take left." He stopped Ethan as he trotted past. "At Monday practice maybe we can put you behind the plate for a little while, all right? See how it goes."

  "Okay," said Ethan. Running out to left, feeling almost ready to catch a fly ball, he looked up as the l
ast low scraps of cloud were carried west by the softly whistling breeze. He was sure that it was the ferishers he had heard whistling. They were near; they were watching him; they wanted to see him play, to see if he was willing to follow in the footsteps of Peavine and apprentice himself to the game. They wanted to see him play. So they had whistled the rain away.

  ETHAN CAME UP TO BAT IN THE BOTTOM OF THE SEVENTH, THE FINAL inning, with the Reds ahead 8–7. The change in the weather had proven more helpful to the Reds than to the Roosters—Kyle Olafssen, who was on the mound as six of the last seven Red runs came in, said the sun was in his eyes. Ethan walked over to the pile of bats and started to pick up the bright-red aluminum Easton that he normally used, because it was the one Mr. Olafssen had told him to use, back on the first day of practice. He could feel the eyes of all his teammates on him. Jennifer T. was on first base, Tucker Corr on second, and there were two outs. All he had to do was connect, just get the ball out of the infield, and Tucker, who was fast, would be able to make it around to home. The game would be sent into extra innings, at least. If there was an error on the play, as was certainly not out of the question, then Jennifer T. would be able to score, too. And the Roosters would win. And Ethan would be the hero. He let go of the red bat and stood up for a moment, looking toward the birch wood. He took a deep breath. The thought of being the hero of a game had never occurred to him before. It made him a little nervous.

  He bent down again and this time, without knowing why, chose a wooden bat that Jennifer T. used sometimes. It had been Albert's, and before that it had belonged to old Mo Rideout. It was dark, stained almost black in places, and it bore the burned-in signature of Mickey Cochrane. A catcher, Ethan thought. He was not sure how he knew this.

  "You sure about that, Feld?" Mr. Olafssen called as Ethan walked to the plate, carrying the old Louisville slugger over his shoulder, the way Jennifer T. did.

  "Hey, Ethan?" called his father. Ethan tried not to notice the tone of doubt in his voice.

  Ethan stepped up to the plate and waved the bat around in the air a few times. He looked out at Nicky Marten, the Reds' new pitcher. Nicky wasn't that hot a pitcher. In fact he was sort of the Ethan Feld of his team.

  "Breathe," called Jennifer T. from first base. Ethan breathed. "And keep your eyes open," she added.

  He did. Nicky reared back and then brought his arm forward, his motion choppy, the ball plain and fat and slow rolling out of his stubby little hand. Ethan squeezed the bat handle, and then the next thing he knew it was throbbing in his hand and there was a nice meaty bok! and something that looked very much like a baseball went streaking past Nicky Marten, headed for short left field.

  "Run!" cried Mr. Feld from the bench.

  "Run!" cried all the Roosters, and all of their parents, and Mr. Olafssen, and Mr. Arch Brody too.

  Ethan took off for first base. He could hear the rhythmic grunting of Jennifer T. as she headed toward second, the scuffle of a glove, a smack, and then, a moment later, another smack. One smack was a ball hitting a glove, and the other was a foot hitting a base, but he would never afterward be able to say which had been which. He couldn't see anything at all, either because he had now closed his eyes, or because they were so filled with the miraculous vision of his hit, his very first hit, that there was no room in them for anything else.

  "Yer OUT!" Mr. Brody yelled, and then, as if to forestall any protest from the Rooster bench, "I saw the whole thing clear."

  Out. He was out. He opened his eyes and found himself standing on first base, alone. The Reds' first baseman had already trotted in and was exchanging high fives with his teammates.

  "Nice hit, son!"

  Mr. Feld was running toward Ethan, his arms spread wide. He started to hug Ethan, but Ethan pulled away.

  "It wasn't a hit," he said.

  "What do you mean?" his father said. "Sure it was. A nice clean hit. If Jennifer T. hadn't stumbled on her way to second, you would have both been safe."

  "Jennifer T.?" Ethan said. "Jennifer T. got out?" His father nodded. "Not me?"

  Before Mr. Feld could reply, there was the sound of raised voices, men shouting and cursing. They looked toward home plate and saw that Albert Rideout had decided to give Mr. Brody a hard time about calling Jennifer T. out at second.

  "You are blind as a bat, Brody!" he was saying. "Always have been! Wandering around half blind in that drugstore, it's a wonder you ain't given rat poison to some poor kid with asthma! How can you say the girl's out when anybody with half an eyeball could see she had it beat by a mile?"

  "She stumbled, Albert," Mr. Brody said, his voice a little more controlled than Albert's. But just a little. The two men were standing with their faces less than a foot apart.

  "Forget you!" Albert said. "Man, forget you! You are worse than blind, you're stupid!"

  Albert Rideout's voice was rising to a higher pitch with every second. His jacket was falling off his shoulders, and the fly of his dirty old chinos was unbuttoned, as if he were so angry that he was bursting out of his pants. Mr. Brody was backing away from him now. Albert followed, lurching a little, nearly losing his balance. He might have been drunk. Some of the other fathers took a couple of steps toward Albert, and he cursed them. He reached down and picked up an armful of baseball bats, tossed them at the other men. Then he fell over. The bats clattered and rang against the dirt.

  "Yo!" Albert cried, catching sight of Ethan as he picked himself up. "Ethan Feld! That was a hit, man! A solid hit! You going to let this idiot tell you the first hit you ever got wasn't nothing but a fielder's choice?"

  All the boys, Roosters and Reds, turned to look at Ethan, as if wondering what tie or connection could possibly link Dog Boy to crazy, drunken, angry, wild old Albert Rideout.

  It was too much for Ethan. He didn't want to be a hero. He had no idea how to answer Albert Rideout. He was just a kid; he couldn't argue with an umpire; he couldn't fight against ravens and Coyotes and horrid little gray men with twitching black wings. So he ran. He ran as fast as he could, toward the picnic grounds on the other side of the peeling white pavilion where people sometimes got married. As he ran, he told himself that he was leaving a ball field for the last time—he didn't care what his father loved or hoped for. Baseball just wasn't any fun, not for anyone. He cut through the wedding pavilion, and as he did his foot slipped on a patch of wet wood, and he went sprawling onto his belly. He thought he could hear the other kids laughing at him as he fell. He crawled out of the pavilion on all fours, and found his way to the picnic tables. He had hidden underneath picnic tables before. They were pretty good places to hide.

  A few minutes later, there was a crunch of gravel. Ethan peered out between the seat-bench and the tabletop and saw his father approaching. The wind had shifted again—there was no more whistling. Once again it was raining on Summerland. Ethan tried to ignore his father, who stood there, just breathing. His feet in their socks and sandals looked impossibly reasonable.

  "What?" Ethan said at last.

  "Come on, Ethan. We calmed Albert down. He's all right."

  "So what?"

  "Well. I thought you might want to help Jennifer T. She ran off. I guess she was upset about her dad and the way he was behaving. Or maybe, I don't know, maybe she was just mad about getting called out. I was kind of hoping—"

  "Excuse me? Mr. Feld? Are you Bruce Feld?"

  Ethan poked his head out from under the table. A young man with longish hair was standing behind the car. He had on shorts, a flannel shirt, and sporty new hiking boots, but he was carrying a leather briefcase. His hair, swept back behind his ears, was so blond that it was white. He wore a pair of fancy skier's sunglasses, white plastic with teardrop-shaped lenses that were at once black and iridescent.

  "Yes?" Mr. Feld said.

  "Oh, hey. Heh-heh. How's it going? My name is Rob. Rob Padfoot? My company is called Brain + Storm Aerostatics, we're into developing alternative and emerging dirigible technologies?"

  Wow, Ethan tho
ught. This was exactly the kind of person his father had been waiting to have show up. A guy with long hair and a briefcase. Somebody with money and enthusiasm who was also a little bit of a nut. It seemed to Ethan that in the past he had even heard his father use the phrase "alternative and emerging dirigible technologies."

  "Yes," Dr. Feld repeated, looking a little impatient.

  "Oh, well, I heard about your little prototype, there. Sweet. And I've read your papers on picofiber-envelope sheathing. So I thought I'd come up here and see if I could, heh-heh, catch a glimpse of the fabled beast, you know? And then, like, I'm driving around this gorgeous island and I look up in the sky and…and…"

  "Look, Mr. Padfoot, I'm sorry, but I'm talking to my son right now."

  "Oh, uh, okay. Sure." An expression of confusion crossed Rob Padfoot's face. Ethan saw that his hair wasn't blond at all but actually white. Ethan had read in books about young people whose hair went white. He wondered what unspeakable tragedy Rob Padfoot might have undergone to leach the color from his hair. "Hey, but, heh, listen, let me give you my card. Call me, or e-mail. When you have the time."

  Ethan's father took the card and stuck it in his pocket without looking at it. For an instant Rob Padfoot looked incredibly angry, almost as if he wanted to hit Mr. Feld. Then it was gone, and Ethan wasn't sure if he had seen it at all.

  "Dad?" he said, as Padfoot went slouching off, swinging his briefcase at his side.

  "Forget it," Mr. Feld said. He crouched down in the gravel beside the picnic table. "Now, come on. We have to find Jennifer T. I have a pretty good idea that you might know where she went."

  Ethan sat for a moment, then climbed out from under the table into the steady gray rain.

  "Yeah," he said. "Actually I sort of probably do."