The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [172]
Henry nodded, stared at the back of his hand, the hand that was blocking the coffee smell.
“And you’re not going to do any of those things. Am I right?”
He moved his hand, looked at the trembling surface of the coffee. He thought, I’m not going to drink coffee anymore. It was too dark, too dirty. Too much like food. The thought of no more coffee and no more food made him momentarily happy. He wanted to follow that happiness where it led—wanted to and would. It was a journey he was embarking on. Had already embarked on: how many days since he’d eaten more than a spoonful of soup? And each day, each hour, each minute furthered the journey. He knew what would happen if he ate: his body would churn up the food, piss it and sweat it and shit it out, stack little segments of protein on his shoulders till he looked like the guy on the SuperBoost jar. He knew how to participate in that whole cycle. But not-eating was new. It was new and just for him: he couldn’t tell Pella about it. She wouldn’t understand.
“Am I right?” Pella repeated.
Henry nodded. “I can’t.”
“Okay.” He watched her gather her resolve. He felt bad that he was making her do this. “Okay,” she said. “Then I think you should probably go.”
Henry shoved back his chair and stood. His knees wobbled a little, not in an unpleasant way: he felt loose and light, like a parade balloon. When he got back to the room Owen wasn’t home.
69
Practice had ended an hour before, and now it was just the two of them together in the dimness of the third-floor gym, the smaller man crouched in the batting cage, unleashing swing after swing like a repeatable toy, the other standing behind the cage’s netting with his chin declined and his arms crossed over his chest. After a dozen line drives in a row, Izzy fouled one straight back. Schwartz reached out and snared it barehanded, strands of nylon netting between the ball and his hand.
“Keep your hands up,” he said.
“Aye aye, Abuelo.”
Schwartz didn’t mind the nickname, which all the freshpersons had adopted. It referred to his widow’s peak and his creaky knees, his crotchetiness, his penchant for dispensing pearls of wisdom like an old man on a porch, but there was a more interesting meaning in there too. For Izzy and the other young players, Henry was the father figure, the guy who’d harassed and cajoled and counseled them day by day, bucked them up and called them out, made them memorize passages of Aparicio—taught them, in his own imperturbable way, the lessons Schwartz had taught to Henry and Rick and Starblind. Henry was their father and Schwartz was abuelo. But now their father had abandoned them, as fathers often did, and the old man was back in charge.
“Keep your weight back,” he said. “You’re lunging.”
Ping.
Ping.
Ping.
“Goddamnit, Izzy. Quit slapping at the ball like that. This isn’t a catfight.”
Ping.
Actually, the kid looked good. He wasn’t Henry, but he was going to be one hell of a college ballplayer. Better than Starblind, most likely. Better than Schwartz, for sure.
His batting stance was pure Skrimmer: the easy sink of the knees, the sense of prevailing silence, the dart of the hands to the ball. Good players tended to be good mimics; old footage of Aparicio, if you were as familiar as Schwartz with Henry’s movements and mannerisms, was downright eerie to watch. And now, in a similar way, it was eerie to watch Izzy. The lineage was clear.
Duane Jenkins, the school’s AD, was standing at the far end of the gym, hands in his khaki pockets. “Hey Mike,” he called. “You got a sec?”
Schwartz gave Izzy a fist bump through the nylon. “Strong work,” he said. “We’re going to need that this weekend.”
“I’m done, Abuelo?”
“You’re never done. Go get dinner.”
Schwartz followed Jenkins up to the AD’s office, tried to arrange himself in a tiny cloth-covered chair. If big men ran the world, as was often supposed, you’d think they could get the furniture right.
“Nationals.” Jenkins shook his head in wonderment. “How’s it feel?”
“It’ll feel pretty good if