Bobby got up glaring at the ump, a Sterling House counsellor of about twenty with a whistle and a white smear of zinc oxide on his nose. ‘I was safe!’
‘Sorry, Bob,’ the kid said, dropping his ump impersonation and becoming a counsellor again. ‘It was a good hit and a great slide but you were out.’
‘Was not! You cheater! Why do you want to cheat?’
‘Throw im out!’ someone’s dad called. ‘There’s no call for guff like that!’
‘Go sit down, Bobby,’ the counsellor said.
‘I was safe! Bobby shouted. ‘Safe by a mile!’ He pointed at the man who had advised he be tossed from the game. ‘Did he pay you to make sure we lost? That fatso there?’
‘Quit it, Bobby,’ the counsellor said. How stupid he looked with his little beanie hat from
some nimrod college fraternity and his whistle! ‘I’m warning you.’
Ronnie Olmquist turned away as if disgusted by the argument. Bobby hated him, too.
‘You’re nothing but a cheater,’ Bobby said. He could hold back the tears pricking the corners of his eyes but not the waver in his voice.
‘That’s the last I’ll take,’ the counsellor said. ‘Go sit down and cool off. You—’
‘Cheating cocksucker. That’s what you are.’
A woman close to third gasped and turned away.
‘That’s it,’ the counsellor said in a toneless voice. ‘Get off the field. Right now.’
Bobby walked halfway down the baseline between third and home, his sneakers scuffling, then turned back. ‘By the way, a bird shit on your nose. I guess you’re too dumb to figure that out. Better go wipe it off.’
It sounded funny in his head but stupid when it came out and nobody laughed. Sully was straddling home plate, big as a house and serious as a heart attack in his ragtags of catching gear. His mask, mended all over with black tape, dangled from one hand. He looked flushed and angry. He also looked like a kid who would never be a Wolf again. S-J had been to Camp Winnie, had short-sheeted beds, had stayed up late telling ghost stories around a campfire. He would be a Lion forever and Bobby hated him.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Sully asked as Bobby plodded by. Both benches had fallen silent.
All the kids were looking at him. All the parents were looking at him, too. Looking at him as though he was something disgusting. Bobby guessed he probably was. Just not for the reasons they thought.
Guess what, S-J, maybe you been to Camp Winnie, but I been down there. Way down there.
‘Bobby?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with me,’ he said without looking up. ‘Who cares? I’m moving to Massachusetts. Maybe there’s less twinkydink cheaters there.’
‘Listen, man — ‘
‘Oh, shut up,’ Bobby said without looking at him. He looked at his sneakers instead. Just looked at his sneakers and kept on walking.
Liz Garfield didn’t make friends (I’m a plain brown moth, not a social butterfly,’ she sometimes told Bobby), but during her first couple of years at Home Town Real Estate she had been on good terms with a woman named Myra Calhoun. (In Liz-ese she and Myra saw eye to eye, marched to the same drummer, were tuned to the same wavelength, etc., etc.) In those days Myra had been Don Biderman’s secretary and Liz had been the entire office pool, shuttling between agents, making their appointments and their coffee, typing their correspondence. Myra had left the agency abruptly, without much explanation, in 1955. Liz had moved up to her job as Mr Biderman’s secretary in early 1956.
Liz and Myra had remained in touch, exchanging holiday cards and the occasional letter.
Myra — who was what Liz called ‘a maiden lady’ — had moved to Massachusetts and opened her own little real-estate firm. In late June of 1960 Liz wrote her and asked if she could become a partner — a junior one to start with, of course — in Calhoun Real Estate Solutions. She had some capital she could bring with her; it wasn’t a lot, but neither was thirty-five hundred dollars a spit in the ocean.
Maybe Miss Calhoun had been through the same wringer his mom had been through,