talking kid who jumps turnstiles into an honest upright dutiful boy, at last.
The man raises his eyes from the ball and looks at Manx. It's a look that says, I want to believe. And Manx can't think of a thing to say, for the life of him, the actual life, that would bring the man across the line and clinch the deal completely.
Charlie takes up the task himself, says some fairly convincing things, this time to his son, about the company that makes the ball and the name of the league president that's stamped on the ball and other matters and details, all of them checking out okay, it seems, and the boy is sleepy and cold and unimpressed and Manx looks around for a vendor with hot chocolate because it never hurts to be considerate.
'Vendors scarce tonight.'
'He had some soup.'
'I was a vendor I be out here in force. Put the wife and kids to work.'
'He had hot soup in a thermos. He's all right.'
But Chuckie says, 'I don't think I'm so all right.'
'Just stay awake. I want you awake for this.'
Manx understands this is for his benefit more than the kid's. The man and the kid just going through the motions. Kid's not even doing that. Kid stopped listening to the man somewhere around the diaper stage.
Chuckie slithers into the bag with that mutinous look kids get once they understand they're not property.
'I want you to remember everything that happens here tonight,' Charlie says.
But the boy is already down under, even his head vanished in the flannel.
''tou're a father, you must know,' Charlie says.
'I wrote the book.'
'What a danger-laden thing it is, in all respects, trying to raise a child.'
'Take forever to grow up on the one hand. But it goes so fast on the other.'
'I've only got the one.'
'You're looking at four.'
'Four,' Charlie says, and in his look there is admiration, sympathy and some wonder as well, and something else Manx can't quite identify-maybe just the sense of different lives, a thing that has nothing directly to do with the number of kids.
There's a fire going in an oil drum and Manx goes to the curb, grabs the rusty can and drags it over to the line of waiting fans, fire and all. He feels the metal burn his hand as an afterthought, burn like hell in a picture book, but the fans are impressed by the gesture, big smiles abounding, it is the kind of thing that rightly marks a night like this, and Charlie seems delighted.
But not just different lives. Completely other ways of thinking and doing. And Manx isn't sure if they're supposed to be sad about this. He's ready to do whatever's called for.
'What kind of seats you expecting you get?'
'Bleachers. Love to get reserved seats but they're long gone. Everything's gone but bleachers and standing room and I know Chuckie'll never forgive me if I force him to watch a ball game standing up.'
'After he spends a night sleeping on the sidewalk? Who can blame him?'
Charlie smiles again, throwing a wayward slap at Manx's kneecap. Then he hands Manx the ball but only because he's reaching into his coat for something. Turns out to be a flask, sweet little silvery thing with a cap on a chain like those army canteens, only flat, small, expensive, that you can pocket easy, a pick-me-up on a down day.
'Now what have we here?' says Manx.
'Give you one guess.'
'Could say orange juice.'
'Too soon for breakfast.'
'Could say spicy tea from old India.'
'Too late for teatime,' Charlie says.
They're having a pretty good time, the one on his haunches against the wall, the other in his crapshooter's squat, with the lump in the flannel bag gone totally still, either pouty-stiff or sleeprstiff.
Charlie says, 'Do the honors,' and he hands the flask to Manx, who tosses the ball back to Charlie, and this small blurry exchange has an odd depth, it's a sign of some kind, a deal that's completely outside the transaction in progress, and it brings Manx up a little higher.
He unscrews the cap and lets it dangle and he takes a connoisseur's sniff of the action in the jug.
'Do believe this is what they call spirits.'
'Irish whiskey,' Charlie says.
'Do love the Irish, don't we?'
'Many lasting contributions,' Charlie says.
'Well said, my man.'
They share a complicit grin. And Manx raises the flask and tilts his head and knocks back a not too sizable shot, for courtesy sake, and gives the thing back to Charles.
He calls him Charles now, for the social aspect, gentlemen drinkers at the club.
And he waits for Charles to drink. A moment of stinging truth. Manx has put his mouth to the rim of the flask and now he waits for Charles to do the same.
A brief, deep and knowledgeable suspense.
Doesn't even wipe off the rim. Just tips the flask and drinks, too deep, and comes up teary-eyed and gasping but happy too. Both men happy, having a princely time.
'Went down the wrong pipe,' says Charlie, forcing out the words.
'Happens to the best.'
'Occupational hazard,' says the gasping man.
Hands over the flask. Manx takes a klondike swig and keenly feels the effect, oh yes, as the Irish aerates a number of crucial passages in his head and chest.
They pass the flask a while.
'One of mine's a girl,' Manx says. 'Rosie. Best ever daughter you could find.'
'How old?'
'How old,' he says.
He feels a drifty look come into his eyes.
'Maybe twice yours. Yours eight, right? Imagine being eight.'
They pass the flask.
'I'll be honest,' Charlie says. 'You were honest with me. Least I can do is tell you what I'm thinking,'
All up and down the line there are people crouched in sleep or in drowsy bundled waiting, out of conversation now, heads slumped, some cigarettes going, most people asleep in blankets or thick parkas or just nodding off, squinch-eyed, and a cough and a moan and a radio playing Latin music but not too loud, and shaking awake and nodding off and a cop on a horse over by the barricade, and Manx shifts position slightly to observe the stillness of the tall brown animal, a dead-still quality that is not like men when they are motionless, or dogs for that matter, or fish in a bowl, and not peaceful or unperturbed but immobile in its own way, great and strong, shining at the flanks.
'Til be honest,' Charlie says, 'because what's the point of all this if we're not honest?'
'Go, man.'
'I don't know if you're telling me the truth. But the ball looks like a ball they'd be using in a National League game in the year 1951. That's one mark in your favor, relatively minor, because there's balls and there's balls.'
'And there's ball breakers.'
They pass the flask.
'And the other mark is, the major mark, I look at you and I don't think I see a con man or a liar.'
A brief pause.
'Then you the first,' Manx says.
They laugh and stop and laugh again. It's one of those jokes that reverberates for ten or twenty seconds, bouncing around the premises, one meaning echoing into another, and it's only a matter now of signing on the
