Mr. Bridge_ A Novel - Evan S. Connell [50]
“Anyhow,” he said, “it didn’t sink.”
“And it’s the prettiest one here,” said his mother as she slipped an arm around his waist.
Fifteen minutes later the boat had drifted halfway to the south end of the pond, but no closer to either shore. Mr. and Mrs. Bridge and Douglas followed it.
“Lots of them didn’t get across,” she said.
But the boat heard this and faced them with sails flapping in vast astonishment.
“I’m just sure it’ll come back before much longer,” she said.
Douglas answered quietly. “Sooner or later.”
So they waited, watching other boats that drifted around the pond, and commented on these; and they looked at the boats floating on one side dead in the water as if they had been torpedoed, and at the white keels standing up here and there like freshly painted tombstones.
“I guess a couple went down,” Douglas said.
“Oh, what a shame,” his mother replied. She took off his crown and smoothed the tangled hair with her fingers and set the crown back on his head.
Then, against the dying breeze, out of some magical perversity with which it may or may not have been imbued by the spirit of its maker, the boat that Douglas built was seen to come to life. With both sails bent and full, and the pennant fluttering as though some ancient mariner at the helm could not rest until the journey ended, the marvelous boat bore straight toward them.
“Here it comes,” Mrs. Bridge cried, and she clapped her hands.
Douglas nodded.
They watched, and as it approached them the boat sailed more cautiously; yet there was no doubt that it intended to reach the shore.
Mr. Bridge asked Douglas if he was hungry.
“Hungry?” he answered without looking up.
“I was thinking that after your boat comes in the three of us might go somewhere for a banana split.”
“All right,” Douglas said. He knelt on the bank to wait.
54 Semi-pro
Mr. Bridge felt guilty about the boat race even though he knew he was not responsible for that melancholy afternoon. He did not know why he felt a sense of guilt, but he could not escape from it, and it caused him to attempt something which he realized was foolish. For weeks Douglas had been after him to get out into the middle of the street with a baseball bat and hit a few grounders for the benefit of Rodney Vandermeer. Rodney Vandermeer’s father had been a semiprofessional ballplayer and was in the habit of knocking the ball around for his son and Douglas and Bobby Tipton and any other neighborhood children who cared to play. Douglas therefore, was anxious to demonstrate that his father was equally handy with a bat.
Mr. Bridge could not remember the last time he had hit a baseball. He thought it had been at least twenty years ago. He had used every excuse he could think of to avoid making a spectacle of himself in the middle of the street. He had hoped to get through the summer, and perhaps by the following summer Douglas would abandon the idea; but not long after the boat race, when Douglas once again brought up the subject, he succumbed. Very reluctantly he accepted the bat, and after a last desperate look at his wife he followed his son out the door.
The bat felt exceedingly strange in his hand. The weight of it, and the smooth little handle. He read the trademark. He waved the bat in small tentative circles as they proceeded to the street. He knew he should expect a bad half-hour. The important thing, of course, was to hit the ball. He would not be expected to hit it farther than the Vandermeer boy’s father. Neither of the boys would be expecting that.
Douglas shouted “Here he is!” and Mr. Bridge saw not only Rodney Vandermeer but three other boys sprawled in the shade of an oak. Just then another boy dropped out of the tree, where he had been hanging from a limb like a sloth. Mr. Bridge saw the five boys scrutinizing