The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [195]
Henry set up farther from home plate than usual, to encourage Dougal to throw his high tight fastball a little tighter than he otherwise might. He went through his age-old routine—touch the far black of the plate with the bat head, tap the Harpooner on his breast three times, make a single, level pass of the bat through the zone—but it had a different meaning now, a counterfeit meaning, or no meaning at all, since he had no intention of swinging at the pitch.
Dougal checked the runner, began his elegant efficient slide-step toward home. Henry gritted his teeth. It was weird how clear and clean the air felt. His mind subsided into something like prayer. Forgive me, Schwartzy, for quitting the team. He stepped sharply toward home plate, dipping his shoulder as he did so, as if expecting, diving into, a slider low and away.
76
His first thought was that he was President Affenlight and that he had died, but the mere fact of thinking such a thing meant that it couldn’t be true. Wherever he was was dark. He tried to lift his left arm to touch his head where it hurt, but the movement was arrested by two tubes that were taped to his forearm. A bitter taste stung his mouth. Schwartz was sitting in a chair by the bed, motionless in the dark.
The simple act of moving his jaw sent shocks of diabolical pain through his brain, worse than anything he’d ever felt. When he finally managed to speak, the words came out soft and slurred. “Who won?”
Schwartz cocked his head. “You don’t remember?”
“No.” He remembered the pitch, a tiny white pellet shoulder-high and rising. He remembered trying to spin away so it would catch him on the helmet rather than flush in the face.
“You scored the winning run,” Schwartz said, frowning.
“I did?”
“That fastball hit you square on the earflap. Everybody in the park thought you were dead. Me included. But you bounced right up and ran to first. The trainers tried to check you out, but you wouldn’t let them. Play ball, you kept saying. Play ball! Over and over again. Coach Cox tried to send Loonie in to pinch-run, but you yelled at him till he went back to the dugout.”
Henry didn’t remember any of that. “Then what happened?”
“Dougal got ejected. He screamed bloody murder about it, but the benches had been warned, and he was gone. They brought in their second-best guy.
“I knocked the first pitch off the wall. I almost hit it too hard, it caromed straight back to the left fielder. But you were flying. I’ve never seen you move that fast. By the time I got to first you were rounding third. Coach Cox tried to hold you, but you never even looked at him.
“You beat the tag by half an inch. Everybody piled on top of you, including Coach Cox. Heck, half the parents were on that pile. And when everybody else got up, you didn’t.”
Henry studied Schwartz’s face, or what he could see of it, in the dimness. To see if he was telling the truth, not that Schwartz ever lied; to see in what ratio the sadness of Affenlight’s death was mixed with the joy of winning the national championship; to see if his friend might be beginning to forgive him.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Schwartz said sternly.
“Done what?”
“You know what. Eaten that pitch.”
Henry’s idiot lips were taking forever to form the sounds of words. “I thought it was a slider.”
“Bullshit.”
He tried to cover his mouth as he retched, but the tubes inhibited his movement. A few bile-wet Rice Krispies spilled over his lower lip and down his chin.
“Bullshit,” Schwartz repeated. “I saw it live and I saw it on SportsCenter while I was sitting in the goddamn waiting room at the goddamn ER. You dove into that thing like it was a swimming