The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [155]
Henry made his way to the jukebox, fed in the ten, pressed the buttons that turned the plastic pages. The only band name he recognized was U2—that was mellow, right? He punched in a bunch of U2 and still had twenty choices left. Flip flip flip. The only songs whose names he knew were the ones Schwartz played while they lifted weights, and those weren’t mellow at all. He gave up and headed for the bathroom.
Pinned to a corkboard above the urinals were the sports pages of USA Today and the Westish Bugler. “Home at Last!” read the Bugler’s banner headline, above a half-page photo of the Harpooners storming Coshwale’s diamond with raised arms and mouths in midscream. Even Owen looked excited. The article, like every article about the baseball team, bore Sarah X. Pessel’s byline:
COSHWALE, IL—They had never, in over one hundred seasons, won a conference title. Their opponents, the Coshwale Muskies, had captured twenty-nine in that same time span, including four in a row. Their star shortstop, Henry Skrimshander, was nowhere to be found.
It didn’t matter.
Sunday afternoon, the Harpooners put an exclamation point on a century of frustration, fishhooking the favored Muskies 2–1 and 15–0 to don their first UMSCAC crown. Senior captain Mike Schwartz spearheaded the redemption with two home runs and seven RBI, while junior pitcher–center fielder Adam Starblind, he of the blond locks and movie-star swagger, chipped in four hits and earned the save in the opening game, despite what he described after the game as severe abdominal soreness, lifting his jersey to reveal a bruised but impressively sculpted six-pack.
Freshperson Izzy Avila filled in more than admirably for the absent Skrimshander, scoring a brace of runs and patrolling the middle of the diamond the way Crockett and Tubbs patrolled Miami in the age of early Madonna: with flair. One or two sublimely acrobatic plays even had bystanders murmuring the name of the shortstop he replaced—a man many deemed unreplaceable. “Izzy looked sharp,” intoned mustachioed skipper Ron Cox, a manly man with a nose for understatement.
Schwartz, meanwhile, shrugged off the suggestion that Skrimshander’s apparently unexcused absence, one day after walking off the field midinning after a long battle against waning confidence, would hamper the team as they prepared for their first-ever regional tourney. “Skrimmer’ll be back tomorrow,” Schwartz growled. “You can bet your god-[CONTINUED ON 3B]
Henry ripped down the page, tore it into thin strips like confetti, and peed on the strips. In the mirror as he washed his hands he saw how he looked in his filthy sweatshirt. He hadn’t shaved or showered in days. Lopez wasn’t just being nice—he was humoring him the way you humor a crazy person.
His knees felt wobbly. He lingered by the bathroom doorway until Lopez made his way to the far end of the increasingly crowded bar. He slipped a twenty under his empty pint glass and hustled out the door, crossing the railroad tracks into the heart of deserted downtown, where few students had reason to go.
Walking toward him, or trying to, was Pella Affenlight.
She didn’t see him at first. She was struggling to move a four-legged piece of furniture down the sidewalk. She hoisted it off the ground, clutching its flat top to her chest so the legs pointed straight at Henry. Once she had it in the air she could only stagger a few steps forward and, with a flurry of soft curses, let it drop.
When he reached her, he couldn’t not stop; they were the only two people on the street. They looked at each other across the desk.
Pella pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her sweatshirt pocket, tapped out a cigarette and lit it. Henry reached out his hand. Pella looked at him. “You sure?” she said.
Henry nodded. She handed him the cigarette. “Careful. They’re strong.”
Henry didn’t know strong from unstrong. He put it between his lips.
“This isn’t as stupid as it looks.” She nodded at the desk as she lit a second cigarette for herself. “Or actually no—it is that stupid.