The Fan (5 page)

“Yeah?”

His eyes, muddier, hotter, found Bobby’s again. “Hit a home run for me.”

Bobby said nothing.

“Please,” said the boy.

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll do it,” the boy said. “I know you will. You’re a superstar.”

“I’ll try.”

The boy smiled a little smile. Then his eyes closed. Was he dead? Bobby almost blurted the thought before the nurse stepped forward, saying, “We’d better let him rest.”

They went out into the corridor, leaving the boy lying quietly on the bed, the bat beside him. The mother embraced Bobby, dampening his polo shirt with her face. “Bless you, Mr. Rayburn,” she said. “You’re like a god to him.”

The nurse walked Bobby and the DCR to the elevator. She slipped Bobby a note. He read it on the way down: “I’m off at eight,” she’d written over her name and number.

Bobby crumpled it. “Mind if I have that?” said the DCR. Bobby gave it to him, then put on his headphones and pressed
PLAY
.

Bobby got to the first tee at 2:55. Wald was taking practice swings. “How’d it go?” he asked.

“Okay,” said Bobby. “I promised the kid I’d hit one out tomorrow. Like Babe Ruth.”

Wald teed up, waggled his driver. “That wasn’t the Babe, Bobby. It was William Bendix.” He hooked the ball into a grove of scrub pine, not far away.

“… and so in a Freudian sense, Bernie, the catcher is the father, and the son is the pitcher. It couldn’t be more obvious, once you know the psychoanalytical lay of the land.”

“Fascinating, Doc. Running out of time here, absolutely fascinating, I love this stuff, but if what you’re saying is true, what’s the bat and ball represent?”

“The bat I don’t think I need to spell out. The ball symbolizes the family gene pool.”

“Gene pool?”

“In the form of ejaculate.”

“Meaning?”

“Semen, Bernie. The male fluid.”

“Wow. Wish we had more time. Thanks for being on the JOC.”

“You’re—”

“That was Dr. Helmut Behr, author of
Three Dreams and You’re Out: Freud, Jung, Baseball
. We’ll be back with all the scores from last night, and the morning spring-training roundup. Don’t go away.”

Gil, waiting at a red light, turned down the radio, dialed Everest and Co. on the car phone, got through to the purchasing VP.

“Sorry about that screwup yesterday, Chuck,” he said. “The weather …”

The VP was silent.

“So when can we get together? Can’t wait to show you our new Iwo Jima line. Heard about it?”

“No.”

Gil glanced down at the catalogue, lying on the seat. “Iwo Jima Experience, the full name. We’re taking on the Japanese head to head.” Gil waited for the VP to say something. When he didn’t, Gil said, “Any chance you’re free this afternoon?”

He heard pages riffling. “Tied up until the eighth,” said the VP. “Two-thirty.”

“The eighteenth, you mean? The eighth was last week.”

“Eighth of April.”

“Next month?”

“Got it.”

“But we always—”

“Taking another call. Bye.”

“—meet monthly,” Gil said to a dial tone.

Someone honked at him. Green light. He drove through the intersection, fishtailing on an icy patch. The asshole honked again, or maybe another asshole, and Gil honked back.

Make your quota, you son of a bitch
. How was he supposed to do that without the monthly order from Everest and Co.? In his anger, Gil pictured himself doing all sorts of things—banging the steering wheel, yelling at the top of his lungs, sideswiping the car in the next lane. He turned up the radio.

“What have you got for us this morning, Jewel, besides a nice suntan?”

“No suntan, Bernie. Do you find melanoma attractive? The big news down here was the arrival in camp yesterday of high-priced free agent Bobby Rayburn—”

“Norm says the phones were lit up all day.”

“As well they might be. It was only batting-practice pitching, but let me tell you something, he looked prodigious. He’s got that textbook swing everybody talks about, but what you really don’t appreciate until you’re up close is the tremendous power he generates. The ball comes off his bat like a firecracker. Sid Burrows was positively beaming, and beaming is not the natural state of Sid’s face.”

“And that’s an understatement. Did you get a chance to talk to him?”

“Rayburn? Briefly, Bernie. Contrary to some reports, he seems very approachable.”

“What did he say?”

“I can play that interview if you like.”

“Okay. Before we open up the lines.”

Gil dialed FANLINE.

“Do you feel under any special pressure because of the big contract this year, Bobby?”

“No.”

“But what about the fans?”

“What about them?”

Gil got a dial tone. Someone picked up. “Fanline,” he said. “Hold the—” He shouted: “Fifteen seconds.” He lowered his voice slightly: “Name?”

“Gil.”

“Calling from?”

“Car phone.”

“About?”

“Rayburn.”

“Know the format? Bernie’ll intro you and—hang on. Just a—putting you through …”

“Let’s take a few calls. Gil on the car phone.”

“… now.”

“Hi, Gil.”

“Am I on?”

“You’re on the JOC.”

“Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you fine, Gil. Mind turning down your radio?”

Gil turned it down.

“Much better. What’s on your mind?”

“Bet you guys are eating crow today.”

“How’s that, Gil?”

“Based on the way you were running down Rayburn yesterday.”

“Easy now. I was in Atlantic City yesterday.”

“Your pal Norm, then.”

“What’s your point?… Hello? You still there?”

“Why are you guys so negative all the time? I guess that’s my point.”

“Negative? I’m a well-known Pollyanna in this business. The thing is, good people—”

“Then why get on Rayburn before the season’s even started?” Gil began a second sentence, “If you were as good at your job as he is at his, you’d be—” but stopped when he realized he was listening once more to a dial tone. He turned the radio back up.

“—isn’t a religion, for God’s sake. It’s not the Catholic church. Or the Protestant church, for that matter, or the Jewish synagogue, or the Muslim mosque. What am I leaving out? The Buddhist shrine? Temple? Baseball’s none of that. It’s just—”

The car phone buzzed, and Gil missed whatever baseball was.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Gil?”

“Who’s this?”

“Figgy.”

“Oh.”

“Was that you? On the JOC?”

Gil laughed, embarrassed.

“You shit disturber,” Figgy said. Then came a long pause that cost them both money—Gil could hear that Figgy was on his car phone too. “What’re you doing right now?” Figgy said.

“Working.”

“Oh,” said Figgy. Pause. “Thought we might meet somewhere.”

“Can’t.”

“How about tonight? At Cleats.”

“I’ll try,” Gil said.

He swung onto a ramp, walled in on both sides by snow crusted like burned marshmallow skins. Expressway traffic was heavy. Gil didn’t mind. He liked challenging the 325i. He stepped on the gas and headed south, changing lanes frequently
to pass, being passed by no one, listening to the JOC. Twenty or thirty miles past the city, beyond the suburbs, traffic thinned. Fog flowed in from the sea, first in little tongues through the bare trees, then in high-banked tides. The 325i took over; Gil slumped a little behind the wheel.

Hanging onto a one-run lead against the Tigers. Bases loaded. Two out. Bottom of the twelfth. Pease, the cleanup hitter, at the plate, waggling his huge black bat. Boucicaut comes out for a conference, pushing up his mask; sweat streaks make war-paint patterns on his dusty face. There’s a dusky hint of mustache over his upper lip.

“Just throw strikes,” he says, handing Gil the ball.

“What do you think I’m trying to do, you idiot?”

Boucicaut stares at him. “Got any gum?”

“No.”

Boucicaut pulls down his mask, trudges back behind the plate, squats. Gil glances into the dugout. No one is moving, no one is coming to get him, although that would be fine with him. Gil takes a deep breath, looks at nothing but the round shadow in the center of Boucicaut’s black Rawlings, tries to ignore his elbow, sore inside and out. “Just imagine a pipe from you to the catcher,” his father always said, “and fling the ball down that pipe. It’s simple.”

Gil flings the ball down the imaginary pipe. Pease turns on it, catches it square, rockets it down the third-base line, foul. Gil’s next two pitches are in the dirt, both blocked by Boucicaut. He takes another deep breath, thinks he hears his father calling from the stands, “C’mon, Gil,” but that isn’t possible, since his father’s in the hospital.

The next pitch just misses the outside corner.

“What’s the count?” Gil calls.

The umpire holds up his fingers. Three and one.

Gil stares into the shadow in Boucicaut’s mitt, goes into his windup, comes over the top with all his strength. As he lets go, he hears the sound of paper tearing, feels pain like hot barbed wire being drawn through his elbow. Pease hits this one over the fence, foul.

The umpire tosses Gil a new ball, holds up his fingers. Three and two.

Gil rubs the ball in his hands, checks the still dugout. Waiting for his elbow to settle down, he walks around the mound. He knows he can’t throw the ball past Pease. He considers his curve. Can’t trust it, not on a full count; can’t even throw it, not with his arm like this, not with the prospect of what he would feel the instant after. That leaves the change-up, which he doesn’t have, and the knuckler he fools around with on the side and has never thrown in a game.

He plants his foot on the rubber, grips the ball with the tips of all four fingers and his thumb. The knuckler. Pease waggles his bat. Gil winds up, puffing out his chest as though he were reaching back for a little extra, and fires.

In the movies, everything happens in slow motion after that. In life, it happens so fast, the swing, the miss, that Gil isn’t sure it’s all over until Boucicaut, charging out with his arms open wide, knocks him on his back and jumps on him.

Absolute fact; except perhaps for the part about believing he’d heard his father’s voice.

The wind had risen, driving away the fog. Gil checked the speedometer, saw he was doing ninety, eased off. Boucicaut. A rock. He’d had his best years with Boucicaut.

Gil crossed the bridge onto the Mid-Cape. He had it almost to himself. The wind blew across the highway but didn’t bother the 325i at all. Gil loved the way it handled, loved its smell. He remembered the car payment, due tomorrow, and the years of car payments still to come. He was adding his debts in his mind when he came to the exit, circled off the ramp, and headed for the shore. Couldn’t give up the wheels; without wheels, you were dead.

Gil drove past a village green, a stone church, and a seafood restaurant, boarded up, and onto a road with a
PRIVATE
sign posted at the entrance. He stopped at the gatehouse.

An old man came out, dressed in a pea-green army coat too big for him.

“Renard,” Gil said. “To see Mr. Hale.”

The old man ran his finger down the page on his clipboard, nodded, raised the barrier. Gil went through.

The road cut across a golf course to the sea, followed it for a few hundred yards, past three or four big houses and up a bluff. Another big house stood on top of the bluff, its windows beaten gold in the sunlight. Gil parked in the driveway, took the bowie and the thrower from the glove compartment, wrapped them in a chamois cloth, and walked to the door, the wind snapping at his pant legs. He rang the bell.

The door opened. A uniformed maid looked out. Her black eyes went to the point of the bowie, sticking out of the chamois.

“Renard,” Gil said again. “To see Mr. Hale.”

She led him across the marble floor of the entrance hall, along a corridor lined with oil paintings of lighthouses, sailing ships, whaling boats, and into a library. It overlooked a gazebo, where Mrs. Hale stood at an easel, and the sea, breaking on the rocks below.

Mr. Hale was sitting by the fire, oiling a basket-hilt rapier. He rose, holding up glistening hands. “I won’t shake,” he said, “but how about a pick-me-up?”

It was early for that. “Only if you are,” Gil replied.

“Why not?” Mr. Hale gestured out the window, where the wind was whipping the tops off the whitecaps. “Need something warming on a day like this.” Mr. Hale shivered. He wore thick gray-flannel pants and a wool sweater with an embroidered golfer on the front; the fire crackled behind him.

Hanging the rapier on the wall, he went to the drinks table and returned with two heavy crystal glasses, half filled with Scotch. “You take it neat, if I remember?”

The truth was Gil didn’t drink Scotch, preferred tequila if it came to hard liquor. While Gil was wondering whether to request it, or perhaps a beer, Mr. Hale added, “Meaning no ice.”

“I know that,” Gil said, taking the glass; it felt oily in his hand.

“Of course you do.” Mr. Hale raised his glass. “Here’s to cold steel.” They drank. Mr. Hale watched Gil’s face. “That’s more like it,
n’est-ce pas?
”

“Yeah.”

Gil expected that Mr. Hale would now invite him to sit. Instead he asked, “How’s business?”

“Up and down.”

Mr. Hale, sipping his drink, peered over the top of his glass. “How do you like the work, Gil?”

“Fine.”

“You know the product,” said Mr. Hale. “That’s your strength.”

Gil waited for Mr. Hale to say what his weakness was. While he was waiting, he drank some more. Mr. Hale didn’t reveal Gil’s weakness. Looking down at the bundle in Gil’s hand, he said, “What have you got for me?”

Gil laid the chamois on the drinks table, unwrapped it. Mr. Hale went for the bowie at once. He picked it up, one hand on the pommel, one on the point, held it to the light. The damascene whorls shimmered on the blade.

“My God,” he said, “he was an artist.” He gulped down half his drink, then plucked a book from the shelves, leafed through, read. After a minute or two, he looked up and said: “Fifteen hundred.”