line.
'How much?' says Charlie.
Manx looks away. He hasn't come this far in his tactics and plans and he doesn't know how much. But he feels himself get tense. The horse makes a snuffling sound behind him.
'It's entirely up to yourself,' he says, and feels immediately, unspecifically cheated.
Charlie holds the ball in both hands now, pressed up under his chin.
'See, I don't know what I'm buying,' he says. 'This is a consideration we have to keep in mind. Sure, buyer beware and all that. But we're talking about an object that belongs properly to the heart.'
You don't want to squeeze the eagle on me, do you, boss?
'Entirely up to yourself. Because I trust you to do right. You know your baseball. A fan. I want a fan to own this thing,' Manx says.
He feels his gaze sliding away, drifting inward, and notes a certain tightness in his chest.
Charles. Charles is suddenly all-decisive. A little lull, you see, with the mention of money. But suddenly Charles is sliding up the wall to dig into his pockets and he's all bustle and rush.
Manx tips the flask and drinks.
Pulling bills out of two or three pockets and uncrumpling a five and smoothing out a single. Manx looks down the line at the nodding heads, men breathing steam in the chill air, sleepers and dreamers deep in the night.
The sum arrived at looks like this. A ten, two fives, another ten, two singles, a quarter, two nickels and a tiddlywink dime.
Plus the kid pops out of the camp bag.
Charlie says, 'I want you to take it all because it's all I've got. Even the change. I want you to even have the change. Because I've got the ticket money here.' And he pounds his chest. 'And the car keys here.' And he slaps his thigh. 'And I want you to have every nickel in my pocket above and beyond.'
Manx thinks all right. He tries to keep his eyes from fluttering while they count. He thinks this is more than he could have gotten for those snow shovels he boosted from the utility room in his building. Plenty more. A hell of a lot, actually, more.
The small angry head is jutting from the bag.
'I want to go home now,' Chuckie says.
Manx takes the money. He licks his thumb to count it for the benefit of the kid. Says some things to the kid, feeling good, trying to draw half a laugh.
Says to Charlie, 'Bought yourself a souvenir of the great game. Calls for a drink, old boy.'
They pass the flask and this is the only thing in the course of the long night and early morning that seems to engage Chuckie, the sight of two men guzzling booze right out of the bottle.
Half sigh, half pain in the sound they make when they open their mouths to exhale the fumes, eyes tight and pink.
Charles arches his fleecy brows.
'Now that the ball is mine, what do I do with it?'
Manx retakes the flask.
'Show it around. Tell your friends and neighbors. Then put it in a glass case with the fancy dishes. You saw those crowds go crazy in the street. This is bigger than some wars I seen.'
Manx has no idea what he means by this. The Irish is beginning to talk. He sees that Charlie is feeling slightly down at the moment. Charlie is probably passing from the stage of half belief to the stage of disbelief. Feeling rooked and beetle-brained. Slyed out of his honest wages by some rogue off the street with a tale so staggering Charlie's embarrassed to tell his friends.
Let the buyer, like they say, beware.
He tries to think of the word that means a thing will increase in value over the years. But the Irish is not only talking, it is thinking, and anyway it is probably not a good idea at this point to say encouraging things to Charles. Only sound phony, won't it?
They look at each other. Charles has the baseball and the flask and Manx has the money. Okay. It is one of those happenstances where the mood downshifts once the deal is made. Only normal. The boy is asleep now, his face partly visible over the flap, and Manx wonders if he'll recall any of this, ever, or if it's already sunk in the dreaming part of his mind, the vague shape of a crouched man who is part of the night.
Charles looks at Manx and smiles, complicatedly, with an element of drowned affection in the mix.
Then they shake hands wordlessly and Manx is on his feet and out of there, feeling a slight ache in his calves and a hard tight serious-minded pain in his left hand from dragging the fire drum across the sidewalk. Put some butter on it when he gets home.
He walks past the humped and bundled bodies and the smoky grills where some of them cooked their meals and he walks past the cop on the tall horse and goes back across the bridge and up to Broadway and maybe there's the faintest line of light low in the eastern sky.
It occurs to him. A lot of things occur to him, all dulled by drink, but it occurs to him that he doesn't want to stand on an empty platform under the street waiting for a train.
He walks down Broadway and begins to wonder why the man gave him the change in his pockets. There wasn't any need for coins to be changing hands. Maybe it was just what the fellow said, the heartfelt thing of wanting to give whatever's on your person, giving the shirt off your back, or maybe it's an honest deal that two men make and one of them turns it into a handout.
He walks, he wants to walk but he doesn't want to reach home, ever, necessarily. He has to think this out, how he has the right to enter into money matters concerning any object that belongs to his family, which he is still the head of, regardless.
Being broke makes him feel guilty. Get a little cash and you're guiltier still.
He pees in an alley unashamed.
It occurs to him further that he could take a Greyhound bus out of here, ride that skinny dog into the sweet distance. The way his own sons raise up to him sometimes, all that wrangle in their eyes.
He will write the letter for Cotter. To excuse his absence from school. As he had a fever of a hundred and two.
Make the boy feel better about things.
It also occurs to him that he's approaching the corner where the street preacher spoke earlier in the evening, or last night, and then he realizes no, he's confused, he's still ten blocks north of there. Then he forgets this and looks around for the man. The man's gone of course, to wherever he goes, and this isn't his corner anyway, and there's nothing moving but a car or two, cars with mystery drivers coming out of the gloom, alive like insects all hours of the night.
Thirty-two dollars and change.
He feels the familiar stab of betrayal. Be messing with his head. Tricked him every which way. The baseball's bound to appreciate is the word. And the cash be worth less by the minute.
He looks in doorways for the preacher because he wants to give him the money. Get it off his hands. He wants to push the money in the old man's clothes just to be done with it. Give it to someone with a scientific interest in the stuff.
Booshit, man.
Money's his and he'll keep it. Take a bus somewhere. Or a room in some shambly street only a mile from home. Find a woman who'll look at him when her eyes sweep the room.
He forgets where he is again. He walks, he wants to walk, he's writing the letter in his head.
Please excuse my son from school yesterday.
He hears the rumble and grind of a garbage truck around a corner somewhere. Cars moving, trains running under the street, he's the only walking soul.
Old Charles be laughing up his sleeve for tricking old Manx. Tell his kid we gulled that fool.
Flat enough to pocket conveniently, with a cap on a chain.
He comes into his street and goes past the shoe repair and the beauty school.
His hand hurts where it touched hot metal.
It's beginning to get light when he reaches his building. He goes inside and climbs the stairs, each step taking basically a year, this is how it seems to Manx, until he is age eighty when he reaches his floor. He goes in the
