I forgot my own failure in the drama of this new confrontation: thirty-four-year-old Captain Harry battling the nineteen-year-old phe-nom. Spalding worked the edges cautiously. Harry waited, poised gracefully, no sign of tension; the man should have been an Olympic athlete. He stepped, swung, and met a low fastball smoothly. We jumped to our feet at the crack of the bat.
“I knew it!” George exulted.
The ball slashed over Barnes’s straining fingers into left. My voice was lost among the others. Mac pounded my back as Andy strode purposefully to the batter’s box.
“Come on!” I yelled. “You can do it!”
The crowd was up now, imploring. Spalding, abandoning finesse, came at Andy with nothing but heat, bent on overpowering the smallest Stocking. Andy took a ball, watched a strike, fouled off four consecutive fastballs—timing the big pitcher and wearing him down. Harry took off from first as Spalding came in with another fastball. Choking up on the bat, Andy spanked the ball into right. Again we leaped up as Harry made third easily, and now the tying runs were on the corners, our fastest man on first. I felt myself beginning to hope.
Brainard stepped to the plate, toothpick waggling. If he was nervous he didn’t show it. Noise erupted from the crowd. From third Harry flashed a sign to Andy and Brainard, but I couldn’t believe I’d seen correctly: STEAL!
Spalding looked in, concentrating on Brainard. Harry got an enormous jump and broke for the plate at the instant Spalding moved into his windup. Andy simultaneously sprinted for second. Brainard leaned forward, masking Harry’s approach until the last possible instant. Then he stepped back as Harry dove headlong for the plate, his body stretched in the air, one arm reaching beneath Addy, who had caught the rising pitch and plunged to make the tag. There was a pileup and a curtain of dust.
The umpire spread his arms. “Safe!”
I nearly peed my pants. I’d never seen anybody try a stunt like that under those circumstances. Maybe Jackie Robinson did it, I don’t know. But nobody—NOBODY—could have beaten Harry that afternoon. The play galvanized us. I could almost feel energy draining from the Rockford players as a big white 1 appeared on our peg on the telegraph board.
Stockings 13, Forest Citys 14.
Brainard shook Harry’s hand matter-of-factly and stepped back in. With the crowd still vibrating over the double steal, he poked Spalding’s first pitch safely into left center. Andy sprinted home well ahead of the throw. The game was tied.
“It’s curious,” said George on the bench. “Brainard’s not big, fast, or strong. He’s certainly not dependable—yet he beats you. Last year when I was on the Morrisanias and the Stockings upset our cart here, it was Brainard made the winning run. Same thing against the Mutes on the tour, remember? I’ll wager he does it again.”
Just as he said it, Sweasy sent a looper that fell short of the charging left fielder and just beyond Barnes’s clutching fingers. Brainard, running hard, slid across the plate to pull out the victory, 15-14.
Instead of 29-1 we were 30-0.
After the final outs, the crowd spilled onto the field, mobbing us. We dispensed with songs and cheers and ran for the clubhouse. The glum visitors challenged us to games in Chicago and Rockford the following week. After wrangling free lodging and a fat slice of gate receipts, Champion accepted.
Timmy waited at the gate. “We got here in time to see you make your run, Andy!” he yelled.
Great, I thought. It meant he had missed my homer and seen me pop up in the clutch.
I looked up the lane and saw Cait. She seemed to float toward us in a pale green dress that set off her jet hair and jewel eyes.
“I couldn’t keep Tim home,” she said. “He’d have burst.”
“You oughtn’t be here alone,” Andy said.
“You struck well,” she replied, ignoring what he’d said. “The ladies cheered you again.”
“Sam knocked a homer,” Andy said. “Clean over the fence.”
“You DID?” Timmy said.
“It’s a worthy thing to do?” Cait asked.
Timmy explained a home run.
“I saw you perform that, did I not?” Her tone suggested that since I’d shown myself capable of it, why make further fuss?
“Yes,” I said. “Are you accepting my invitation?”
She shook her head. “I must go straight back.”
“I see.” I tried to hide my disappointment. “Maybe there’s time to take Timmy in the clubhouse. Most of the team’s still there.”
“Could I?” he implored. “Please, Mother?”
Her answer nearly caused my mouth to fall open.
“Would you take him, Andy? I want a word with Mr. Fowler.”
Andy said he’d be delighted. As they moved off, we stood silently.
Birds sang in the nearby elms. Dusk was coming on. I tried to imprint in my memory the freckles sprinkled on her nose and cheeks.
“I believe I owe you an answer,” she said gravely.
“You do?”
“I thought about little else last night,” she said. “I wanted to deny what you said about something happening to both of us. But I cannot keep denying what I know inside to be true.” Her tone softened. “Even should I not want it so.” She paused. “This must sound quite the mystery.”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“‘Tis strangest of all that it was going on well before you arrived. Although I didn’t know for a certainty till the night you first appeared with Andy.”
“Know what, Cait?”
The green eyes held depths into which I could have plunged and lost myself forever.
“That someone very like you, Mr. Fowler, would be coming to me.”
Chapter 16
I saw her only once before we left for Chicago. It was a mild and sleepy Sunday when I called for her and Timmy in a rented carriage. We stopped at the Downtown Fifth Street Market—where vendors were talking violent opposition to a plan to raze the market and erect a fountain—and at Findlay’s, housed in a huge iron structure. Fully provisioned, we went up
