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 forwards, 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 towards 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 afterwards 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 towards 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 towards 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 towards 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 grey men with twitching black wings. So he ran. He ran as fast as he could, towards 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 thought. 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 picofibre-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,