gives half to the kid, and they look at Manx and eat.
They are listening and chewing and he tries to read their looks. He is stymied, though, by the names involved, the players at the climax, he doesn't know their names, faces, numbers, all the things the fans know from childhood to the day they die, and this slows his narrative and muddies it up and he tries to compensate by taking out the baseball.
Now the man is talking, through a mouthful of food.
'So what you're saying is. You're telling me. In other words.'
White meat and lettuce are showing behind his teeth.
'That's right.
But the man's not looking at the baseball. He's looking at Manx.
'And I'm supposed to stand here.'
Manx begins to understand, close range, that this guy's a bus driver or sewer worker or bricklayer.
'And listen to this bullcrap.'
The man is chewing and talking.
'I think you better haul ass out of here, buddy, before I call a cop.'
Manx puts the ball back in his pocket.
'They put son of a bitches like you behind bars is where you belong.'
Talking like that in front of his own kid.
The kid is hungry, he's going through the lettuce like a lawn mower.
They're standing there eating, both of them, looking at Manx, and the son resembles the father to such a degree, stocky and full-faced, that Manx wants to warn him against growing up.
Think they own the earth.
It takes him an hour, scouting the lines, doing three circuits of the stadium, talking to this and that person, getting a feel for the individual, seeing how it goes, and it's not going well, giving himself another five minutes by the clock on the wall at the southwest end, and then five more minutes, telling himself if he doesn't spot someone in five minutes, with a wholesome kid in tow, he will give up and go home, and then one more minute, and then one more, prowling the lines, making approaches that don't pan out, and about an hour later he is talking to a man and his son who are squatted down outside the bleacher section near the end of a very long line, camped out with a sleeping bag for the kid and a duffle coat for the man, and Manx is working his way into the names.
'Which I'm saying, in all honesty.'
'Wait a minute. You're saying this baseball you claim to have in your possession.'
'Right right right. But I don't know the player's name, y'under-stand, which I'm being honest with you.'
'You mean Bobby Thomson?'
'That's the one. All right. I feel better now.'
See, Manx believes he can be straight-up with this man. Expose his own shortcomings. He's not a fan and shouldn't pretend to be. And at the same time, only deeper, he thinks this is a strategy that can work, it's a scheme, a plot-show the man your weakness and he will swallow your story whole.
'I'm of the attitude where if you're doing a little business, you put all your cards on the table. And I'll tell you what I think. That tomorrow a wholesale rabble show themselves at the clubhouse entrance. Carrying a baseball, every one of them, and saying I got the ace.'
'When in fact, according to your claim,' the man says.
'When in fact the ace is in the hole,' Manx says, and he reaches into his pocket and takes out the ball.
The man smiles. The man is on his haunches against the wall and Manx is in a squat himself, holding the ball slightly atremble for comic effect, staring hard at the man, showing the man a fake intensity, which they both know is fake, just for effect, and the man holds out his hand for the ball, amused but skeptical, meaning in other words that he'll play along for now.
But Manx doesn't give him the ball.
The boy is sitting up in the sleeping bag, trying to stay awake.
'Now see this tar spot,' Manx says. And he shows the man and he shows the boy. 'I think I ought to rub it off, being it has no business here.'
And he wets his thumb with a flourish and tries to remove a scant trace of tar, because Cotter must have bounced the ball in the street, but he only succeeds in smudging the area and has to wonder why he is doctoring the ball at all.
'By the way,' the fellow says, maybe to distract Manx from his embarrassment. 'My name's Charlie.'
'You call me Manx. And the boy. What's your name, son?'
'Tell him.'
'No,' the kid says.
'We got us a rascal here,' Manx says. 'How old's this rascally son of a gun?'
'Eight,' the man says.
'Eight. Imagine being eight. Imagine going to the first game of the World Series and seeing all these famous players. Something he'll remember for the rest of his life.'
'His name's Chuckie.'
Manx looks at Chuckie. Kid rather be home sleeping in a soft warm bed with dog drawings on the wall. That's okay. What we're talking about here is not the present but the future. Pop's looking to build a memory for the boy
'Being eight. Yankee Stadium. The most famous ballpark in the country.'
Manx puts the ball in the man's hand.
'But if a dozen people show up with baseballs at the clubhouse entrance,' Charlie says, 'how do I convince anyone? How do I convince myself this is the Bobby Thomson ball? Or anyone else?'
Manx is in his crapshooter's squat.
'Let me put it this way,' he says, and he does not shy from the question because he's been waiting for it ever since he walked across the bridge from Harlem. 'Do they believe you or me? Who do they believe? Put yourself in their place, friends of yours, people in the office. Then look at me and look at you. Who they gonna believe?'
Manx knows the logic in this argument is about six times removed from the question of the ball's actual history. But he thinks he can count on this fellow to see the underlying subject, the turn of mind.
'And I can believe it, personally, myself,' he says, 'because my own boy give me the goods on this baseball. And no way on earth he's gonna lie to the old man about a thing like this. He lie all right. Lie about school. Miss school, tell a lie. Miss a visit to the dentist.'
'But this is baseball,' Charlie says helpfully.
'Exactly right. But I have to admit I wasn't convinced at first. Like you. Like anyone. I was first gave over to doubt. But then I heard the boy.'
'And you felt you knew.'
'I felt exactly. I knew. Because I heard it in his voice.'
'And saw it as well.'
'Saw it right there. Wouldn't lie about this. Good boy when it counts.'
'And baseball. This counts.'
Manx takes heart from the man's cooperation because he doesn't want to suffer another bringdown. But at the same time he doesn't want to think of Charlie as a sucker, a rube in a duffle coat, falling for an easy line. The line is true in this case but what's the difference? Manx has told amazing lies that were a lot easier falling from his lips than anything he could say about this little spheroid fact.
The man is studying the ball.
Manx decides to shut his mouth for fifteen seconds. Let the occasion take a solemn turn. Give the customer a chance to fall in love with the product.
'Well, I see there's a green, a little sort of green paint smudge near the seam here, between the seam and the trademark,' Charlie says, 'and I know for a fact because someone said so on the radio that the ball struck a pillar when it went in the stands. And the pillars are green, I also know for a fact, at the Polo Grounds.'
Manx does a little squat-jump. He is elated to hear this. It's as though he himself has to be convinced, as though the man's remark is the confirmation he needs to see Cotter as an honest boy, transformed from a back-
