Timmy answered my knock. “It’s Sam!”
Inside, feet shuffled and chairs scraped. Timmy dashed away, leaving me in the foyer. At length Cait appeared, her hair in a scarf. She wore a plain pleated gray dress. When she spoke she sounded tired.
“It’s not a proper hour for visiting, Mr. Fowler.”
Flustered by the green-eyed gaze, feeling bulky as a moose this near her, I blanked out what I’d rehearsed.
“I wanted to talk,” I blurted.
She said nothing.
“Look, I don’t really know how to visit properly,” I said hopelessly. “What I mean is, I don’t have visiting cards to send, there’s no phone—”
“Phone?” She tilted her head.
“I’m sorry, I just mean—”
Timmy rescued me by appearing and declaring urgently, “They don’t believe it’s the real article, Sam!”
“What article? Who doesn’t?”
He held up his ball. “My pals won’t believe it’s truly from one of the Stockings.”
“Well, that’s one reason I dropped by,” I said, glancing at Cait. “Come to the game tomorrow and we’ll get it signed.”
“That’d be grand!”
“Timothy, enough for you now,” Cait said. “Go inside, please.”
“But, Mother—”
“Away with you.”
“Bye, Sam.”
“He talks of nothing else,” she said. “It’ll be the death of me.”
“Yet you brought him out yesterday.”
She sighed and said, “It’s not in me to deny all that a boy loves. Andy’s long been his hero.”
“Is that the only reason you came?”
She looked away. “I mustn’t neglect my boarders.”
“Cait—Mrs. O’Neill—I’m not sure how to express it, but since I first saw your picture I’ve had this strange—”
“Caitlin!” said a peremptory voice within.
O’Donovan. Sonofabitch!
She stiffened. “I must go.”
“Boarders?”
“He is a boarder. I’m thinking I needn’t explain myself to—”
“Cait!” boomed O’Donovan. “What’s keeping you?”
The parlor door swung open. O’Donovan’s eyes narrowed as he recognized me. Before he yanked the door shut I glimpsed three or four men sitting inside.
“What in hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
I smiled into his glare.
“Come in,” he told Cait. “I’ll handle this.”
She turned to face him. “It’s not quite finished I am.” Her tone offered no compromise.
He frowned and said, “I’ll be just inside.” He looked at me darkly. “Call if you need me.”
“Thank you, Fearghus,” she said. She swung back toward me when he had gone. “Do you see the strain you put me to?”
“That’s not my intention.”
“What is it, then?”
I hesitated, sure that O’Donovan was listening. Then again, did it really matter? “When I first saw your picture I felt this funny pull, as if I were supposed to meet you, or had known you before, or—” I stopped, aware of some quality in her eyes changing.
“Known me before?” She tucked a wisp of hair beneath her scarf. On her ring finger I saw a thin silver band bearing a heart design.
“Yes, well, not exactly. I mean, there’s this feeling of unfinished business. Yesterday I thought maybe you felt it too.” I groped for amplifying words, found none. “I guess that’s really all I wanted to ask. Whether you’ve felt the same, or if it’s just me.”
She regarded me silently.
“Look, I don’t mean to mess up your arrangement with O’Don—”
“I have no arrangements” she said hotly. “And I think it’s time you leave now, sir.”
“All right, but answer me.”
She shook her head, small quick movements.
“You felt something, didn’t you?”
She raised her face defiantly. “Mr. Fowler, what you are trying to do is not welcome.” Her voice was shaking. “You have no right to do this to me!”
I knew it would have been disastrous to try to touch her. But I also knew that I’d never wanted anything more than I wanted to take her in my arms just then.
“Whatever’s happening, it’s not just me doing something to you,” I told her. “It’s happening to both of us.”
She brushed the air with her fingers, as if to say what did it matter. I could hear her breathing in the ensuing silence.
“Please, bring Timmy tomorrow and have dinner with Andy and me afterward.”
A sound escaped her, a combination of sigh and sob. “I’ve just now said to you—”
“Just do it,” I urged. “Don’t be afraid.”
I left before she could answer. From inside the hack I looked back and saw her standing in the dim hallway, slender and rigid.
I ran newspaper ads touting the Forest Citys as “Crack Champions of the Northwest” and told Johnny to increase booth supplies a third in expectation of a sellout crowd. Champion, following my design, had had carpenters install the nation’s first scoreboard atop our right-field fence: a wooden billboard with a walkway on which boys waited to hang the green metal plaques bearing white numerals on the hooks for innings. No longer would spectators strain to hear the scorer’s megaphoned shouts. Dubbed the “telegraph board,” it proved to be instantaneously popular.
The trouble was that only three thousand came out. A top-level opponent should have drawn more. I concluded that the small-town Illinois squad simply couldn’t match the pull of a top eastern club. Several times during the contest I saw Champion gazing dolefully at me. I could guess his thoughts: Would we lose our shirts on all this new stuff? He looked positively funereal when Johnny ended up donating our unsold sausages and beef patties and buns to the Home for the Friendless. On the positive side, our latest innovation, a primitive version of Cracker Jack, was a budding success, though we hadn’t gotten the blend of caramel, molasses, and corn syrup quite right yet.
During the game itself I was too busy to give off-diamond developments much thought. The Forest Citys showed up in new uniforms—again I was struck by this amateur club’s affluence—with gray checked pants and ice-white shirts. From their grim demeanor it was clear they wanted to take us. And that with Allison gone, they thought they could do it.
Harry won
