“But he’s only thirty-one.”
“Thirty-two in a few weeks. Almost geriatric in this game, even though he’s still seventeen in real life.”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Val said.
21
Should have been a grave digger.
Another black night, moonless and starry, but now the air was warm, and alive with soft breezes. Surrounded once more by the old town names, written in stone-Pease, Laporte, Spofford, Cleary, Bouchard-Gil toppled the marker that read Renard, R. G., and dug again his father’s grave. This time the once-turned, unfrozen soil had lost its resistance. The earth felt weightless, and Gil very strong, stronger than he could ever remember. He was a big man, he reminded himself, bigger than Bobby Rayburn, as he had discovered when they stood so close at the ballpark; and much bigger than Primo. He pictured the knife flashing into Primo’s hand in the men’s room at Cleats, and his insides stirred with a feeling he hadn’t known since the last time he had faced some dangerous hitter: butterflies.
In what seemed like moments, Gil was down in the earth to shoulder level. The shovel blade struck the pine box. Recalling the jagged holes he had made in the wood, Gil knelt and cleared the rest of the dirt by hand. Then he climbed out of the pit and walked to the shed at the end of the dirt track crossing the cemetery. The pickup was parked behind it. Gil opened the door, reached inside, bent his knees, and hoisted Boucicaut’s body onto his shoulders.
A heavy and unbalanceable load: Gil carried Boucicaut half the distance, dragged him the rest of the way by his belt, bumping him over rocks and tree roots. Gil knew he couldn’t hurt Boucicaut anymore but still was crying by the time he got him to the grave. Boucicaut: a knight in the Crusades, according to some college girl; a real one, not like Robin Hood. He smoothed Boucicaut’s hair a little, plucked a twig from his beard. Bent over the body, Gil was conscious of the stars above, the vast black spaces between them, the infinite blackness beyond. He knew he should say something, eulogize Boucicaut in some way.
“Len Boucicaut,” he said. “Catcher.”
Then he rolled him into the hole. Boucicaut landed with a heavy thump, facedown.
Beside the shovel lay Gil’s MVP trophy, the brass-plated baseball on the hardwood stand. Gil picked it up. He had brought it with the intention of placing it in Boucicaut’s arms. Boucicaut was the MVP, always had been, always would be. It was the right thing to do, but how was it feasible, now that Boucicaut had landed facedown like that? He could climb down into the pit, wrestle the body into position; that was one way. Gil stood at the edge, picturing himself doing it. But he didn’t do it. In the end, he shoveled the earth back in, working faster and faster, hurling and flinging the last clods of it, then tilted his father’s headstone back in place, and hurried off, shovel in one hand, trophy in the other.
Gil drove to the trailer in the woods. The 325i was still parked in the junk-strewn yard, but that wasn’t what first caught his eye. What first caught his eye was the light glowing in the trailer.
He got out of the pickup and closed the door softly. Had they left a light on? Possible, but still he moved as quietly as he could toward the trailer. Now he heard voices, realized as he drew closer that they were TV voices. Could they have left the TV on too?
Gil found a window where the plastic curtains were only half drawn, knelt, and peered over the sill. He saw no one except the figures on the TV screen. Black-and-white figures in some old movie: a man in a tuxedo breathed smoke from his nose and asked a woman in a strapless gown to dance. She breathed smoke from her nose and said her feet were tired.
Then Gil felt something hard in the small of his back, and a real woman said: “Hands way up.”
He didn’t move.
“This is a twelve-gauge, peeping boy, and my finger’s wrapped around the trigger.”
Gil considered the thrower on his leg, tried and failed to imagine reaching it before she could pull the trigger; and raised his hands.
“Now, kneeling down just like that, turn around so I can see your pretty face.”
Gil started to turn. She prodded him with the gun muzzle. “Did I say anything about lowering them?”
Gil raised his hands higher, twisted around, still on his knees. He looked up at the woman. She had painted eyebrows, frosted hair, upside-down Cupid’s-bow lips.
“How to keep men the way you are right now,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Gil said. “I was only returning the truck.”
She didn’t turn to look. “What were you doing with it?”
No smooth lie came to mind. But he did remember something: She’s in the pen. “Returning it, like I said,” Gil told her. “I didn’t expect to see anyone here, that’s all. You weren’t supposed to be back till August.”
A guess, but not a wild one: her eyes wavered, and so did the gun. At that moment, the mongrel came bounding out of the darkness.
“Hey, Nig,” Gil said, and held out his hand. Nig sniffed it, then sniffed it some more.
“Who are you?” she said.
“A friend of Co’s.”
The gun came up again. “No one calls him that.”
“I always did.”
“What’s your name?”
“Onsay.” A thrill shot through him.
“He never mentioned you.”
Gil shrugged. Nig kept sniffing him, wagging his tail.
“He likes you,” the woman said. “And Nig don’t like nobody except Len.”
Gil said nothing. He knew what the sniffing was about.
“Where is he?” the woman said.
“In the city.”
“What’s he doing there?”
Gil paused. He was starting to feel clever. It was a nice feeling. Clever people could have the whip hand, even on their knees looking up a gun barrel. He gave his clever answer: “I don’t like to say.”
“Son of a bitch,” said the woman. “He just can’t keep his zipper up, can he? And don’t tell me he couldn’t wait. You don’t know what I’ve done for that prick.”
Gil didn’t reply. He didn’t know what she’d done for Boucicaut, suspected there was a lot he wouldn’t understand about a relationship where a whore demanded sexual fidelity from her man.
“When’s he coming back?” she said.
“Whenever I get down there and bring him back.”
The woman lowered the gun. There were still tough questions she could have asked, but she fed him an easy one instead. “Is that your car?” She pointed the muzzle at the 325i.
He nodded.
“Nice car,” she said. The expression in her eyes changed. “You can get up.”
Gil rose. She backed away, but only a little: living with Boucicaut, she must have gotten used to size in a man. Gil thought of another clever line. “I won’t bite,” he said.
“No?”
They looked at each other.
“What did you say your name was, again?”
“Onsay.” The thrill again, just as strong.
“What kind of a name is that?”
“It’s my lucky name,” Gil said. “What’s yours?”
“Claudine,” she said. “But it’s not lucky.”
“Maybe that’ll change,” Gil said, astonished by his sudden glibness, as though he were someone else, a tuxedo-wearing star from the thirties; a real player. And then it hit him: I can be someone else-I’m already on the
