The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [96]
“I don’t need any money,” he said.
“Bullshit.” Coach Cox began peeling hundreds off a fat wad held folded by a rubber band. He slipped some number of them against Schwartz’s palm.
“I can’t,” Schwartz said.
“The heck you can’t. Stick it in your pocket.”
Since long before Schwartz’s time, it had been rumored that Coach Cox had a couple million dollars socked away somewhere. “He fits the profile,” Tennant used to say. “Never wears anything but free WAD gear. Eats all his meals at McDonald’s. Drives a car with three hundred thousand miles on it. I’m telling you, the guy’s loaded.”
Schwartz had never been sure one way or the other. Coach Cox hardly ever talked about anything but baseball. A third baseman in high school, he was drafted by the Cubs and played a few years in the low minors, retired at twenty-two because, as he put it, “I didn’t have the stuff. Hell, I couldn’t even fake the stuff.” He moved to Milwaukee, became a line repairman for the phone company, got married, had a kid, became the Westish baseball coach, had another kid, got divorced, quit the phone company, and opened his own two-truck operation. Which, if you believed Harpooner lore, had netted him millions.
Their palms were pressed together, neither of them holding the bills that were in between. It was a risky standoff, given the wind. Schwartz wavered. With money, he could take Pella to dinner tomorrow night. He could make up for all the tea-and-cracker meals they’d had, not to mention the nights he’d canceled their tea-and-cracker plans to go hit ground balls to Henry under the lights of Westish Field. He could take her to Maison Robert, the overpriced French place he’d only ever been to with his history adviser. They could drink wine. He closed his hand, just a little.
Coach Cox stood up and exited the forecabin. The bills threatened to slide out of Schwartz’s grasp; he slipped them into the pocket of his windbreaker, riffling their edges with his fingers to get a sense of his newfound wealth. There were a lot: nine or ten. He closed his eyes and surrendered to the slow roll of the waves like liquid Vicodin.
It might’ve been a few seconds later, or an hour, but suddenly Henry stood in front of him, his pale-blue eyes filled with what could only be called anguish. His lower lip quivered and his soft chin squinched into a web of small rolling lines as he tried to keep from crying. “Skrimmer,” Schwartz said.
“Hey.” Henry’s voice cracked miserably; he coughed to clear his throat.
“You okay?”
Henry nodded. “Yeah.”
“You played well today.” Schwartz removed his headphones from around his neck and tucked them into his jacket pocket. “Arm looked strong, everything looked strong. We’re right where we need to be.”
“I cost us the game.”
“One lousy play,” Schwartz said. “We should have been up twelve by then.”
“But we weren’t.” Henry sat down beside Schwartz, bounced back up as if the aluminum scorched his ass. He clapped both hands to the top of his age-blackened Cardinals cap like a long-distance runner warding off a cramp. “What can I do?” he said. “What can I do?” His voice was quiet and disbelieving; awed, even, at the circumstances in which he found himself.
He bent his head back toward the ceiling and breathed out a short pained sigh or moan. He dropped his hands, worried them in quick circles, clapped them to the top of his head again. His movements were spastic and strange, the movements of a person whose thoughts have become toxic.
“It’s okay,” Schwartz said, “we’re okay,” but Henry’s feet had already carried him through the cabin’s rickety metal storm door, which banged behind