There was something familiar about the man’s smooth, dark face, his wide green eyes, the missing third finger of his right hand. She recognised him, in spite of the passage of many, many years, from a grainy, washed-out photograph in the pages of one of her favourite books, Only the Ball Was White, a history of the old Negro leagues.
“Chiron ‘Ringfinger’ Brown,” she said.
“Jennifer Theodora Rideout.”
“Your middle name is Theodora?” Ethan said.
“Shut up,” said Jennifer T.
“I thought you said it didn’t stand for anything.”
“Are you really him?”
Mr. Brown nodded.
“But aren’t you, like, a hundred years old by now?”
“This here body is one hundred and nine,” he said, in an offhand way. He was eyeing her carefully, with a strange look in his eye. “Jennifer T. Rideout,” he said, frowning, giving his head a shake.” I must be gettin’ old.” He took a little notebook from his breast pocket and wrote in it for a moment. “I don’t know how,” he said. “But somehow or other I done missed you, girl. You ever pitch?”
Jennifer T. shook her head. Her father had been a pitcher; he claimed to have been scouted by the Kansas City Royals, and blamed all his problems in life on the sudden and surprising failure of his right arm when he was nineteen years old. He was always threatening to show her “how to really ‘bring it’” one of these days. She supposed she ought to welcome his attempts to share with her the game she loved most in the world. But she didn’t; she hated them. She especially hated when he used baseball lingo like “bring it”.
“I don’t want to be a pitcher,” she declared.
“Well, you sure look like a pitcher to me.”
“Missed her for what?” Ethan said. “I mean, uh, well, who are you, anyway? Like, OK, I know you were in the Negro Leagues, or whatever.…”
“Most career victories in the history of the Negro Leagues,” Jennifer T. said. “One book I have said it was three forty-two. Another one says three sixty.”
“It was three hundred an’ seventy-eight, matter of fact,” said Mr. Brown. “But to answer your question, Mr. Feld, for the last forty-odd years I’ve been travellin’ up and down the coast. You know. Lookin’ for talent. Lookin’ for somebody who got the gif’. Idaho. Nevada.” He eyed Ethan. “Colorado, too.” He took something from his hip pocket. It was an old baseball, stained and scuffed. “Here,” he said, handing it to Jennifer T., “you try throwin’ with this little pill sometime, see how it go.” Jennifer T. took the ball from him. It felt warm from his pocket, hard as a meteorite and yellow as an old man’s teeth. “I done used it to strike out Mr. Joseph DiMaggio three times, in a exhibition game at old Seals Stadium, down in Frisco, away back in 1934.”
“You mean you’re a scout?” Ethan said. “Who do you scout for?”
“Right now I’m workin’ for those little folks you met, Mr. Feld. The Boar Tooth mob. Only I don’t scout ballplayers. Or at least, not only.”
“What do you scout?” Jennifer T. said.
“Heroes,” Mr. Brown said. He reached into his breast pocket again and took out his wallet. He handed Ethan and Jennifer T. each a business card.
PELION SCOUTING
MR. CHIRON BROWN, OWNER-OPERATOR
champions found – recruited – trained for over seven eons
“A hero scout,” Ethan said. It was the second time the word hero had passed through his mind in the last hour. It did not sound as strange to him as it had at first.
“Or,” Jennifer T. said, “you could just be some kind of weird guy following us around.”
But she knew as she said it that there was no mistaking this man, from the intent, wide, slightly popeyed gaze to the fabled missing finger on the pitching hand. He really was Ringfinger Brown, ace pitcher of the long-vanished Homestead Greys.
“Mr. Brown,” Ethan said. “Do you know what they’re doing here? What it is they’re building?”
“What they buildin’?” As if for the first time, Ringfinger Brown turned to study the devastation of Hotel Beach. His bulging eyes were filmed over with age or tears or the sting of the cold west wind. He sighed, scratching idly at the back of his head with the four fingers of his right hand. “They buildin’ theirself the end of the world.”
Ethan said something then, in a soft voice, almost an undertone, that Jennifer T. didn’t understand. He said, “Ragged Rock.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Brown said. “One at a time, cutting apart all them magic places where the Tree done growed back onto itself.”
“And you really scouted me?” Ethan stood up and began backing towards the woods. “When I lived in Colorado Springs?”
“Before that, even.”
“And the ferishers put all those dreams into my dad’s head, about the airships and my mom?”
“That’s right.”
Jennifer T. heard voices coming through the trees, and recognised one of them, at least, as that of Mr. Feld.
“Because of me?” Ethan said.” What do I have to do with the end of the world?”
“Maybe nothin’,” Mr. Brown said. “That is, if my conjure eye” – here he touched a trembling old finger to the lower lid of his left eye – “done finally gone bad on me.” The milky film that was covering the eye, like the clouds of a planet, seemed momentarily to clear as he looked at Ethan. Then he turned towards the sound of men approaching. “Or maybe, if I still know my bidness, you goin’ to be the one to help put off that dark day for just a little bit longer.”
Jennifer T. was not following the conversation too well, but before she had a chance to ask them what in the name of Satchel Paige they were talking about, Mr. Feld emerged from the trees, along with Coach Olafssen, Mr. Brody, and a sheriff’s deputy named Branley who had arrested her father three times that she knew about.
“Ethan? Jennifer T.? Are you all right?” Mr. Feld slipped on a slick pile of leaves as he approached them, and lost his footing. Deputy Branley caught him and hauled him to his feet. “What are you kids doing?”
“Nothing,” Ethan said. “We were just standing around talking to—” Ethan raised a hand as if to introduce Ringfinger Brown to the men. But Ringfinger Brown was not there anymore; he had vanished completely. Jennifer T. wondered if such a very old man could possibly have gotten himself hidden behind one of the earthmovers so quickly, and if so, why he should want to run and hide. Hiding didn’t seem in character for him, somehow.
“Huh,” said Ethan. His face went blank. “To each other.”
“Come on.” Mr. Feld put an arm around Ethan’s shoulders, and then draped the other across Jennifer T.’s. “Let’s go home.”
As she pressed into the warmth of Mr. Feld’s embrace, a shudder racked Jennifer T.’s entire body, and she realised for the first time that she was soaked to the skin and freezing. Mr. Feld started to lead them back towards the ball field, but then he stopped. He looked at the heavy equipment, the stacked corpses of the trees, the empty, torn-up patch of earth on which,