Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [86]
One wintry day David went out to work over his maple sap lines, heating with his butane burner those that had frozen and mending any that the red squirrels had gnawed. Dusk was already filming the sky when Mrs. Reed’s call came. She had not heard from David in hours.
I refrain from wearing snowshoes, those oversized tennis racquets Vermonters put on to walk over the top of heavy accumulations. They just feel too awkward on this California boy’s feet. So I pulled up my thick Sorrell boots and walked outside to find Mr. Reed. He had parked his olive-green tractor near the top of my driveway. I could see the prints of his snow shoes following a path into the woods.
David’s heavy footsteps had packed the snow down, so traveling was initially easy. Deeper past the trees, though, the snow turned slushy in spots and I broke through its frosted crust every third step. That made for slow moving. The forest grew darker, sweat soaked my long johns, and the harsh wind iced my face. I reached the furthest end of David’s property, a point maybe half a mile from my house, and saw a shovel by the side of the path.
A few feet further down I found a flashlight. I tried not to think the worst. He’s not in distress, I told myself. These aren’t even his tools. Any minute now David’s going to come walking down this path, a smug grin creasing his face, and we’ll both head back to some mulled cider and his dear wife.
Then I saw my friend’s body lying prone on his stomach at the side of a sap line. He looked as though he wasn’t breathing.
Seldom do I remain calm when a situation calls for panic. “Dave,” I yelled, “just hang on. I’ll get you out of there.” I ran not three feet before my boots cracked through the top of a snowdrift. My body plummeted until the snowflakes kissed my chin. Pine branches twined around my ankles and held me fast. I could not raise my arms high enough to pull myself up from the hole. The branches afforded no leverage; the more I pushed against them with my feet, the deeper I dropped as the icy quicksand pulled me under. Dave lay dying, frostbite was setting into my limbs, and I wanted to start crying for mama when I heard a familiar voice hovering behind me.
“Nice day, ay?”
“Dave! What the hell are you doing standing there? I thought you were in trouble.”
“No, Bill, from the looks of it, you’re the one who’s in trouble.”
Turned out he had been lying on the ground splicing together a sap line, a delicate procedure that required him to keep his body perfectly still while his fingers did all the work. He never faced any danger at all. Dave placed his shovel across the hole; I leaned against the thick handle and pushed myself out. He saved my butt by reacting like the typical Vermonter, someone who approaches life with the detachment of a Zen monk and rarely gets too excited over anything. If someone had only taught me to maintain my cool that well, I’d still be pitching in the major leagues.
As laid-back as they might be, the Vermonters I know are triple tough and highly competitive. I have played hardball for Newport in the Vermont Senior League. Rollie Denton starred for our team. Years before, this North Troy butcher had become a Vermont sports legend when he led his high school basketball and baseball teams to state championships. Rollie was sixty-five years old when we played together; he could still throw a fastball in the mid-eighties with movement, and the velocity on his slider registered just a notch below major-league.
One afternoon he started for us against the Jericho Little Indians and came out of the shoot looking like a hybrid of Randy Johnson and