Yes, that was it. He had woken up feeling the same as he usually felt after he dreamed of the General, but when he looked for him between the big gaps of black and gooiness he could not find him, could not sense him anywhere.
And with those words, instead of the General’s presence, flickered strange and distant images of him battling what he somehow understood to be a big black blob of pain—punching and kicking it violently until the big black blob disappeared.
Memories of a dream? Most likely, but the boy couldn’t be sure, couldn’t tell the difference between actually dreaming about the blob or just making it all up now that he was awake. No, all Edmund Lambert knew for sure was that the pain in the back of his head from the jump-rope handle was gone.
And so the boy would willingly swallow the medicine many times in the years that followed—only after his fights or when he got hurt, and even then not every time.
Timing was part of it, his grandfather said. The timing had to be right.
Yes, in the end Claude Lambert was true to his word.
Never too much, never too often.
Chapter 45
There were really only two times that Edmund suspected his grandfather of giving him the medicine for reasons other than fighting or getting hurt: once in the summer of 1991 when Edmund was eleven, and once a year later in the fall, just after he turned twelve. Both times were without his knowing, and only years later did Edmund begin to suspect that Claude Lambert might have pulled a fast one on him.
The first time was in the farmhouse, in a supersweet milkshake Claude Lambert mixed in the blender. He made it “special” he said, to go with the two large pepperoni pizzas he’d picked up after he and Edmund got back from the Little League All-Star game in Cary. Edmund didn’t play in the game that year because he was too young, but the coach of his Sunday league team in Wilson wanted him to go to meet another coach so they could clock Edmund’s pitches with a radar gun they’d be using for the game.
Edmund and his grandfather had a bit of a ways to travel, but got to the baseball field in Cary early. And just as the older kids began warming up, one of the coaches took some time out to use the radar gun on Edmund’s pitches—said he was really impressed with his arm and that he pitched just as fast, if not faster, than the older kids. The coach handed his grandfather his card and invited the two of them to watch the game, too. They did, but Edmund quickly became bored. He didn’t like watching baseball; and when he thought about it, he didn’t really like playing it much, either.
Edmund wasn’t quite sure what the whole trip to the baseball field in Cary had been about until he got home and his grandfather handed him the milkshake.
“All that pitching you done in the backyard is gonna pay off for you someday, Eddie,” said Claude Lambert, sitting down. “You’ll be moving up next year to the higher division. Gonna keep on moving up, too, if you play your cards right.”
“Past Little League, you mean?”
“Right you are,” said his grandfather. “Little League, high school, college, straight on through to the majors, I reckon.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to go to college.”
“If you can go for baseball, well, that’s a different story.”
“But what if I don’t want to go to college? What if I don’t want to play baseball no more and just want to work on the farm with you?”
“Don’t be stupid now, Eddie. Baseball’s a God-given talent that you can’t deny.”
Edmund had never thought of it that way. But still, the idea of playing baseball for the rest of his life didn’t sit well with him.
“Did you pick up
“Yeah, I picked it up,” said the old man. “But it’s getting late and you better not fall asleep during it. You know I don’t like them cowboy movies.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“All right then,” said his grandfather. “Drink your milkshake before it melts.”
But Edmund did fall asleep before the end of the movie. He woke up on the couch just before sunrise with the thick and gooey feeling behind his eyes. He looked for the General but could not find him. At the same time, however, the gaps of blackness told him someone had been there in his dreams—someone who had been fighting with him on a baseball field; someone with a scratchy voice who was forcing his arm to throw pitches. Yes, fighting and baseball, that’s what the dream had been about—but at the same time Edmund couldn’t be sure if he’d really dreamed it or if he’d just made it up afterward because of his conversation with his grandfather.
He told the old man about the dream at breakfast, and straight up asked him if he had given him the medicine like he used to when he was a boy—without his knowing.
“Now why would I do that?” his grandfather replied. “You was tired and ate too much pizza, is all. But maybe your conscience was trying to tell you something, Eddie. Maybe it could’ve even been God trying to tell you something. After all, baseball’s a God-given talent. All that nonsense about not playing—that’s downright blasphemy.”
Edmund didn’t think it was God who had talked to him in his dreams—didn’t think not wanting to play baseball was blasphemy, either—but he decided not to argue. All that didn’t seem to matter now anyway. College was a long way off, and for some reason he felt better about playing baseball than he had in a long time.
Besides, his grandfather was going to let him keep
The other time Edmund suspected his grandfather might’ve slipped him some medicine without his knowing was on their first deer-hunting trip upstate, after he and the old man took a piss next to each other in the woods.
“What you got on your prick there, Eddie?” Claude Lambert asked.
“I guess I’m getting my pubes is all.”
His grandfather zipped up his pants and looked down at Edmund’s crotch.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Claude Lambert said, smiling, and told Edmund to zip up his fly and head back to the cabin.
“What’s in there?” Edmund asked when his grandfather came out of the bathroom with the flask.
“You’re a man now, Eddie,” said Claude Lambert. “And a man deserves a drink.” He handed him the flask. “Drink up. There’s just enough for you.”
“It smells awful,” said Edmund. He knew that smell well; had smelled it many times on his grandfather’s breath. The licorice moonshine.
“Right you are,” said Claude Lambert. “And you might feel a little loopy. But it’s all part of being a man.”
“It’ll help you sleep, too,” said his grandfather. “We gotta catch some shut-eye before we head out to the stand. Gotta be rested for our twelve-pointer now, don’t we?”
Edmund drank the flask dry. And sure enough, not only did he start to feel loopy, but soon he fell asleep. He
