The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [188]
Starblind lined a first-pitch single to left. Izzy laid down a perfect sacrifice to move him to second, headed back to the dugout to receive his long line of congratulations. So far, so good. Owen settled into the batter’s box, politely stifled a yawn with the back of a batting-gloved hand. On the fourth pitch he chopped a single back through the middle. Starblind wheeled around third at sprinter’s speed and slid home as the throw veered off target. One–nothing, Westish.
“You’re the man!” Henry told Owen.
“I’m the man!” Owen squinted up into the stands. “Have you seen Guert?”
“Something came up,” Henry said. “He couldn’t make it.” He was lying without really knowing why. When his alarm went off this morning, he’d grabbed his bag from under his bed, unsure whether he’d hallucinated his entire encounter with President Affenlight the night before. In a way, it was that uncertainty that propelled him; he’d gone downstairs more to see whether Affenlight’s visit had been a dream than because he was sure he wanted to fly to South Carolina.
President Affenlight hadn’t been by the Melville statue, where he’d said he’d be, but a black town car lurked in the service bay of the dining hall. The driver rolled down the window. “Skrimshander?”
“Yes.”
The driver popped the trunk. Henry told him he was waiting for someone. The driver said, You’re Skrimshander, right? The chapel bells tolled once, lugubriously, to indicate that it was six fifteen; President Affenlight had said six. Maybe Henry had misunderstood; maybe Affenlight hadn’t intended to join him. It only took a moment to lift his bag into the trunk and climb into the backseat. Once the driver shut the heavy, sound-muffling door behind him, there was no turning back.
“He told me to wish you luck,” Henry said to Owen.
“Luck? I require no luck. That’s unfortunate, though, that Guert couldn’t come.”
The Harpooners’ lead held until the third inning, when Amherst pieced together a hit batsman, a single, and a sacrifice fly to tie the game. It could have been worse for Westish, but with runners on the corners and two down, Izzy made a diving grab of a shot up the middle and, while lying flat on his belly on the outfield grass, flicked the ball to Ajay for the force.
“He’s no Henry Skrimshander,” Arsch said. “But he’s pretty damned good.”
Izzy came sprinting toward the dugout, thumping his fist into the web of his glove and yelling, the way you do when a great play gets your blood up. As Henry trotted out to first base, he slapped Izzy on the rump. “Good play,” he said.
Izzy beamed. “Thanks, Henry.”
Behind the Amherst dugout stood a row of six female students, purple decals painted on their cheeks, wearing oversize purple T-shirts that spelled out A-M-H-E-R-T in white letters. Four of the girls were stout and blocky and more or less butch. The fifth—letter E—stood six-foot-something and swayed in the wind, hair pulled back in a dark ponytail. The sixth—letter A—was petite and blond, with her own ponytail slipped through the slot at the back of her purple baseball cap. Henry could tell they were Amherst softball players who’d road-tripped south to support their male counterparts. Their missing S was probably back at the motel, passed out after a too-hard day of partying.
A, despite being half the size of her teammates, was the ringleader; she started the foot-stamping cheers, and she was drinking the most impressive quantity of the pink liquid being distributed by letters M and R, with eroding secrecy, from smuggled-in plastic bottles into stadium-issue Pepsi cups. She strained forward over the railing, her face bright red from booze and yelling. She’d caught Henry’s attention right away. Then in the fourth inning, to Henry’s dismay, he caught hers.
“Hey, Henry!”
This startled him, but he couldn’t turn around or in any way acknowledge it.
“Hey, Henry! Why won’t they let you play?”
He felt quite certain that the voice, shrill and demanding, with an undercurrent of malicious playfulness, belonged to A. His heart sank