person, but he was straight up, gave each kid a fair shot-no one ever complained about favoritism-and besides, he’d taught Wyatt so much: how to be patient at the plate, wait for his pitch, even set the pitcher up a bit, plus all the intangibles like being relaxed and alert at the same time, and putting the team first, and playing hard until the last out. “Oh, no, Coach, I wasn’t thinking that. I was thinking, you know, what about health class?”
The coach paused, his hand on a trophy he was taking from a desk drawer. “Not gonna help them sugarcoat this,” he said.
Wyatt didn’t understand. Who was “them,” for starters? He remembered something from history class, how even the Great Depression had finally come to an end. “The economy’s going to get better, right, Coach? What if it gets better soon, like by the summer? Then we could have a team again next year.”
The coach gazed at him. Those cold blue eyes didn’t look quite so cold. “Yeah, sure, anything’s possible. And I’m the last one to run my mouth on any of this. But we got complicated problems, maybe more complicated than people can handle.”
“But people made the problems in the first place, didn’t they, Coach?”
The coach smiled. His teeth were yellowish plus a couple were missing, but there was something nice about his smile. “Got a head on your shoulders,” he said.
Wyatt didn’t get that at all. Except for math-and not that he was great at math, B’s, yes, but he wasn’t in the top stream-he was an average student, maybe below.
“You’re a smart kid, is what I’m saying,” the coach explained, perhaps because Wyatt was standing there with his mouth open. Wyatt came pretty close to arguing the point. “Want some advice? About playing ball, I mean. An old dumbass like me ain’t qualified to opinionate about nothin’ else.”
What was going on? Wyatt had never heard the coach talking like this; he was always confident, teaching the team, Wyatt figured, how to be confident by example. “Yeah,” he said, “sure.”
“Reason I’m tellin’ you this,” Coach Bouchard said, “is you’ve got some talent for the game, maybe the kind, if it keeps developin’ and you grow some more, that’ll take you to a college. Not sayin’ D-One, you understand, no promises on that score, and notice I’m not breathin’ a word about pro ball, but-somewheres. Meaning scholarship money, son, and the chance to get a real education. You follow?”
Wyatt nodded. College: that would be something. How much more did he have to grow? Wyatt was a hair over five ten and built solid, weighing one seventy-five.
“My advice,” said the coach, “is for you to get out of here fast.”
“Get out of where, Coach?”
“This school, this town. Got to establish residence in some other town, a town that’s got a high school with a good baseball program.”
Establish residence? What did that mean? He named the only team from their district that had given them trouble last season. “Like Millerville High?”
The coach snorted. “Think Millerville’s in any better shape than us? Same thing could happen there, if not this month then next, or next year. No, where you gotta go is someplace more prosperous, the kind of town that’ll have baseball no matter what, even in a crappy economy.”
Wyatt tried to think of towns like that. He hadn’t traveled much, had been out of state only once, last year when the four of them-he, Cammy, Linda, Rusty-had taken a trip to Disneyland. He’d seen prosperity on that trip- they’d spent an hour or so driving around Beverly Hills-but the coach couldn’t be meaning somewhere like that. Was there even a high school in Beverly Hills? That would be like transferring to the moon.
“I’m thinkin’ Silver City,” the coach said.
“Silver City?” It was at the other end of the state, four hundred miles away.
“Know any folks down that way?”
“No.”
“Not an issue-I got some contacts at Bridger High. I’ll make some calls-just say the word.”
“So, I’d be, like, living in Silver City?”
“Exactly. Living there. Residing. Can’t just parachute in and suit up. That’s only in The Show.” Coach Bouchard laughed.
Wyatt didn’t get the joke. “But, uh, Coach, living with who?”
“Some family that likes baseball. Boosters, kind of thing. Coach down there’s Bobby Avril-should be able to set you up, no problem. Bobby sent a kid to Tulane last year, full ride, and another one to Arizona State.”
Full ride: sounded like words to make a magic spell. This was all so much. Wyatt tried to line it up in his mind the way the English teacher did on the blackboard, using-what were those marks called? Bullet points? Yeah, that was it. Wyatt lined up the most obvious bullet points, like living in a new place, a booster family, Bobby Avril, and leaving home.
“Well?” said the coach.
Wyatt took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
“Smart man,” said the coach. “All you got to do is keep doin’ what you’re doin’. Play hard, stay relaxed.”
Wyatt nodded. Yes, he could do that. He was going to miss things, his mom, of course, and Dub and the team, and other kids at East Canton High, but: yeah. And Cammy. He was going to miss her, too. Wyatt held out his hand. “Thanks, Coach, thanks a lot.”
“Don’t thank me,” the coach said. They shook hands. The coach’s hand was hard and rough, the big fingers twisted. Wyatt turned to go. He was almost at the door when the coach called him back. “One more thing,” he said. Wyatt walked back into the room. The coach opened a filing cabinet under the window, searched through the bottom drawer. “Here you go,” he said. “Might as well have this. Everything’s just gonna end up in boxes in my garage, moldering away.” He gave Wyatt a photograph, six by nine or so.
“What’s this?” Wyatt said. A black-and-white photo and obviously kind of old, the edges yellowish and turning up, it showed two guys in baseball uniforms with East Canton on the chests, although the lettering was different from the lettering on the uniforms now. One of the guys, the unsmiling, older one, had a salt-and-pepper mustache. The other was a kid, maybe about Wyatt’s age, a good-looking kid with a big white smile on his face. Wyatt didn’t recognize either of them. “Who are these guys?”
Coach Bouchard jabbed his finger at the older one. “That’s me, for Christ’s sake.”
“Oh,” said Wyatt. “Sorry.” The mustache had fooled him, plus how young the coach looked; his face-now deeply grooved-had hardly any lines at all. But those cold eyes were the same; he should have seen that. “Who’s the other one?”
“Take a guess.”
Wyatt had no idea. “The team captain, maybe?”
“Woulda been, if he’d stuck around for another season.”
“Uh-huh,” Wyatt said. Why did the coach want him to have this picture?
“No idea who that is?” Coach Bouchard asked.
“Nope.”
“Look closely.”
Wyatt looked closely, shook his head.
The coach gave him a long stare. “Maybe this ain’t such a good idea,” he said. He reached for the photo, got a corner of it between his fingertips, but Wyatt didn’t let go.
“Why not?” he said. “Who is this guy?”
Coach Bouchard sighed. “Ah, Christ,” he said. “It’s a slick-fielding shortstop I had way back when. Name of Sonny Racine.”
The photo trembled slightly in Wyatt’s hand. “My father?” he said. “My real father?”
The coach sighed again. “Biological, I guess they say these days, ’stead of real.”
3
Wyatt held the photo in both hands, kept it steady. He’d never seen a picture of his father before; they’d been separated, if that was the way to put it, prior to Wyatt’s birth. First had come six or seven years of ignorance, then his mom-it was just the two of them then, pre-Rusty-had sat him down and told him the story. After that came a
