The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [131]
Pella felt intensely compelled by whatever was about to occur. Her father slowed his steps, paused, said something. Owen, his eyes on the field, index finger preserving a spot in his book, replied from the side of his mouth. Her dad declined his head and smiled a smile that threatened to bloom into laughter but didn’t, quite. They stood and looked out at the field together.
Something happened in the game—a cheer shot through the Westish bleachers while the beet-red people around Pella groaned. Owen broke the tableau with a single sidelong word and disappeared down the dugout steps. Her dad lingered at the fence, as if savoring the spot where Owen once stood, the look on his face a pensive one of puppy-dog love.
Could it be? At first she tried to dismiss the thought—it seemed less an intuition than a flash of insanity. But it wouldn’t go away. It wasn’t just the look on his face, though that look said all that could be said. It wasn’t just the way he and Owen had stood there at the fence, communicating so subtly, alone among a thousand people. It was her dad clambering into the ambulance to accompany Owen to the hospital; his obvious jitters when Owen and Genevieve came for drinks; his obvious indifference to Genevieve thereafter; his emergence from that dormitory last night, with Owen moments behind; the fact that he hadn’t been home when she awoke this morning. If you swapped out just one premise—the premise that her dad was straight—it was just too obvious. Of course, that was literally the premise on which her life was based.
A woman in a Westish sweatshirt approached her dad and tapped his elbow. Absently, reluctantly, he left off thinking about Owen and turned to engage the woman. Pella, watching him there on the other side of the diamond, two lengths of fence between them, was awash in anger and fear. Her dad had lied to her, had lied and lied, had caused everything to change. But he was also in danger—he’d forgotten himself, made himself too vulnerable, or else he wouldn’t be taking these foolish risks, talking to Owen in public, falling in love. She felt exhausted. She wanted to curl up on the bleachers and go to sleep, but there wasn’t any room.
Gary stuck his face over her shoulder, his breath reeking of shrimp and Tabasco. “You lucked out on that one,” he said.
48
The throw was high and fluttering higher. Henry wanted it back as soon as it left his hand; even as he finished his follow-through his fingertips grasped after the ball, as if he could bring it back. Motherfucker.
It seemed destined to sail over the fence and into the bleachers until Rick O’Shea somehow detached his two-hundred-plus beer-bellied pounds from the earth—it was impressive, how much air that leap put beneath his spikes—and snow-coned the ball with the fringe of his extralong mitt. Rick landed, spun, and slapped a tag on the hustling runner. One out.
Henry lifted two fingers in sheepish gratitude. Rick nodded and winked—No sweat, little buddy—and whipped the ball back to Henry to begin the around-the-horn.
Henry spun the ball in his throwing hand. It felt cold and slick and alien. He tucked his glove under his arm and worked the ball over with both hands, trying to knead some life into it. Technically illegal, only pitchers could do that, but the umps weren’t going to stop him. A minute ago he’d felt fine, or thought he felt fine, but now the possibility of failure had entered his mind, and the difference between possible failure and inevitable failure felt razor slight. His lungs clenched like he was standing in the lake to his armpits.
Relax, let it go. He’d had one bad throw in him and he’d gotten it out of his system. Rick had saved his butt. They were ahead 2 to 0. He pushed the bad throw aside, steadied his breathing, tossed the ball to Ajay. Turned around and flashed an index finger at Quisp in left: one out. He could see without seeing Aparicio in the stands, his sister, his parents, Coach Hinterberg in the bright-green cap of Lankton High, a private bit of rooting amid all the red and blue. Owen’s voice came floating