Hearts In Atlantis

“Cheating cocksucker. That’s what you are.”

A woman close to third gasped and turned away.

“That’s it,” the counsellor said in a toneless voice. “Get off the field. Right now.”

Bobby walked halfway down the baseline between third and home, his sneakers scuffling, then turned back. “By the way, a bird shit on your nose. I guess you’re too dumb to figure that out. Better go wipe it off.”

It sounded funny in his head but stupid when it came out and nobody laughed. Sully was straddling home plate, big as a house and serious as a heart attack in his ragtags of catching gear. His mask, mended all over with black tape, dangled from one hand. He looked flushed and angry. He also looked like a kid who would never be a Wolf again. S-J had been to Camp Winnie, had short-sheeted beds, had stayed up late telling ghost stories around a campfire. He would be a Lion forever and Bobby hated him.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sully asked as Bobby plodded by. Both benches had fallen silent. All the kids were looking at him. All the parents were looking at him, too. Looking at him as though he was something disgusting. Bobby guessed he probably was. Just not for the reasons they thought.

Guess what, S-J, maybe you been to Camp Winnie, but I been down there. Way down there.

“Bobby?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he said without looking up. “Who cares? I’m moving to Massachusetts. Maybe there’s less twinkydink cheaters there.”

“Listen, man—”

“Oh, shut up,” Bobby said without looking at him. He looked at his sneakers instead. Just looked at his sneakers and kept on walking.

Liz Garfield didn’t make friends (“I’m a plain brown moth, not a social butterfly,” she sometimes told Bobby), but during her first couple of years at Home Town Real Estate she had been on good terms with a woman named Myra Calhoun. (In Liz-ese she and Myra saw eye to eye, marched to the same drummer, were tuned to the same wavelength, etc., etc.) In those days Myra had been Don Bider-man’s secretary and Liz had been the entire office pool, shuttling between agents, making their appointments and their coffee, typing their correspondence. Myra had left the agency abruptly, without much explanation, in 1955. Liz had moved up to her job as Mr. Biderman’s secretary in early 1956.

Liz and Myra had remained in touch, exchanging holiday cards and the occasional letter. Myra—who was what Liz called “a maiden lady”—had moved to Massachusetts and opened her own little real-estate firm. In late June of 1960 Liz wrote her and asked if she could become a partner—a junior one to start with, of course—in Calhoun Real Estate Solutions. She had some capital she could bring with her; it wasn’t a lot, but neither was thirty-five hundred dollars a spit in the ocean.

Maybe Miss Calhoun had been through the same wringer his mom had been through, maybe not. What mattered was that she said yes—she even sent his mom a bouquet of flowers, and Liz was happy for the first time in weeks. Perhaps truly happy for the first time in years. What mattered was they were moving from Harwich to Danvers, Massachusetts. They were going in August, so Liz would have plenty of time to get her Bobby-O, her newly quiet and often glum Bobby-O, enrolled in a new school.

What also mattered was that Liz Garfield’s Bobby-O had a piece of business to take care of before leaving Harwich.

He was too young and small to do what needed doing in a straightforward way. He would have to be careful, and he’d have to be sneaky. Sneaky was all right with Bobby; he no longer had much interest in acting like Audie Murphy or Randolph Scott in the Saturday-matinee movies, and besides, some people needed ambushing, if only to find out what it felt like. The hiding-place he picked was the little copse of trees where Carol had taken him on the day he went all ushy-gushy and started crying; a fitting spot in which to wait for Harry Doolin, old Mr. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen.

Harry had gotten a part-time stockboy job at Total Grocery. Bobby had known that for weeks, had seen him there when he went shopping with his mom. Bobby had also seen Harry walking home after his shift ended at three o’clock. Harry was usually with one or more of his friends. Richie O’Meara was his most common sidekick; Willie Shearman seemed to have dropped out of old Robin Hood’s life just as Sully had pretty much dropped out of Bobby’s. But whether alone or in company, Harry Doolin always cut across Com-monwealth Park on his way home.

Bobby started to drift down there in the afternoons. There was only morning baseball now that it was really hot and by three o’clock Fields A, B, and C were deserted. Sooner or later Harry would walk back from work and past those deserted fields without Richie or any of his other Merrie Men to keep him company. Meanwhile, Bobby spent the hour between three and four P.M. each day in the copse of trees where he had cried with his head in Carol’s lap. Sometimes he read a book. The one about George and Lennie made him cry again. Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. That was how George saw it. Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to. Lennie thought the two of them were going to get a farm and raise rabbits, but long before Bobby got to the end of the story he knew there would be no farms and no rabbits for George and Lennie. Why? Because people needed a beast to hunt. They found a Ralph or a Piggy or a big stupid hulk of a Lennie and then they turned into low men. They put on their yellow coats, they sharpened a stick at both ends, and then they went hunting.

But guys like us sometimes get a little of our own back, Bobby thought as he waited for the day when Harry would show up alone. Sometimes we do.

August sixth turned out to be the day. Harry strolled through the park toward the corner of Broad and Commonwealth still wearing his red Total Grocery apron—what a fucking nimrod—and singing “Mack the Knife” in a voice that could have melted screws. Careful not to rustle the branches of the close-growing trees, Bobby stepped out behind him and closed in, walking softly on the path and not cocking back his baseball bat until he was close enough to be sure. As he raised it he thought of Ted saying Three boys against one little girl. They must have thought you were a lion. But of course Carol wasn’t a lion; neither was he. It was Sully who was the Lion and Sully hadn’t been there, wasn’t here now. The one creeping up behind Harry Doolin wasn’t even a Wolf. He was just a hyena, but so what? Did Harry Doolin deserve any better?

Nope, Bobby thought, and swung the bat. It connected with the same satisfying thud he’d felt at Lake Canton when he’d gotten his third and best hit, the one to deep left. Connecting with the small of Harry Doolin’s back was even better.

Harry screamed with pain and surprise and went sprawling. When he rolled over, Bobby brought the bat down on his leg at once, the blow this time landing just below the left knee. “Owwwuuuu!” Harry screamed. It was most satisfying to hear Harry Doolin scream; close to bliss, in fact. “Owwwuuu, that hurts! That hurrrts!”