The Youngest Hero Read online

  I didn’t know whether to ask Momma if she knew more than she was telling me about Daddy. All I knew was that I missed him. He always clapped me on the back, looked me in the eye, and told me I was “gonna be a great one someday.”

  Every night in bed I prayed my dad would come back. I wanted him to keep teaching me baseball, to touch me, to live in the trailer, to be Momma’s husband again, to make us a family. Other kids had dads. I wanted mine.

  4

  When Elgin first started asking when he would see his dad again, I said, “I’m not sure exactly where he is.” It was true. I didn’t know which wing, which cell block.

  “Well, am I supposed to meet him at the park this week?”

  “We won’t know till he calls,” I said. Now that was a lie. Neal wasn’t ever going to see that park again.

  It didn’t take long for Elgin to figure out that his father was no longer bagging groceries, racing cars, or even playing local baseball.

  “Has he moved, Momma?”

  “I expect he has,” I said. “You know I don’t care.”

  “Well, I care! What am I supposed to do? I’m just starting to get good at baseball!”

  “You can keep playing.”

  “Yeah, but not with anybody who knows what he’s doing! You know our gym teacher was trying to get everybody to throw off their right foot the other day? Right-handers! He was having right-handers step with their right foot and throw!”

  “Is that wrong?”

  “Is that wrong! Mom, look!”

  He went through the motion. I smiled. “You look like me when I try to throw,” I said.

  “I flat out wouldn’t do it. I told him if this was some sort of a drill, then maybe, but if he thought that’s really the way you’re supposed to throw, he was wrong. You know I usually don’t talk back, and I called him sir and everything, but there was no way I was gonna throw a ball stepping with my right foot.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said you get more power that way, and I asked him how come then that big leaguers don’t do that. He said he was sure they did. I asked him to show me how a pitcher would do it, if it would give him more power. He tried to do it and then he said, ‘Well, I think outfielders do it on the big throws.’ It was crazy. That’s the kind of coaching I’m getting without Daddy.”

  I couldn’t believe the prices of aluminum bats. The salesman told me I would be ahead “in the long run, because it will never break.”

  I told him how tall Elgin was and asked for a bat he wouldn’t grow out of too quickly. The man went on about length and weight and thickness and made me wish I’d brought Elgin with me and forgotten about surprising him for his birthday that April. How different could bats be? I only hoped Elgin would like it.

  He did and he didn’t. He’d never had his own bat before, but he had always talked about having a wood one. This one was a little too long, a little too heavy, but I could see in his eyes he didn’t want to say anything bad about it.

  I was desperate. Elgin was my life. I lied again. “El, your dad sent me the money for that bat and had me pick it out for you. He probably could have done better himself, or maybe I could have with you there, but we wanted it to be a surprise.”

  Elgin’s eyes shone. “Dad hates aluminum bats, but he probably knew I’d break a wood one.”

  I nodded, hating myself. I was going to feel bad in church again Sunday. That night I wrote Neal: “I told Elgin his birthday gift, a metal bat, was from you. If you talk to him, cover me. Neal, I would rather a man like you have no influence on my son, but I don’t think he could handle never hearing from you again. Don’t do that to him. Sincerely, Miriam.”

  A little more than a week later a card came for Elgin with a lockbox number as the return address. I had no idea whether Elgin would be able to figure out anything from it, but to be safe I gave him only the card, not the envelope.

  Crafty as ever, even though he had clearly forgotten Elgin’s birthday until he heard from me, Neal had dated the card the day before Elgin’s birthday. It was a silly card with a cartoon ballplayer on it. It read, “Today is special in every way, swing for the fences and Happy Birthday!”

  On the back, Neal had written, “Hope this reaches you in time. Hope you liked the bat. Had to follow work to Alabama. I’ll come see you when I can. Love, Dad (#16).”

  “He put his old uniform number on here, Mom.”

  “Did he?” I said, trying to hide that I wasn’t impressed.

  “I was starting to feel real bad about not hearing from him,” Elgin said.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “I mean, it was my birthday! He never forgot my birthday. The card must have got lost in the mail.”

  “Must have.”

  For Christmas I made Elgin a sweater but couldn’t afford anything more besides two rubber-coated baseballs. I figured they would stand up to the weather better than regular baseballs. I told him they were from his father, but I forgot to inform Neal. He called the day after Christmas.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you picked up, Mir,” he said. “I was afraid Elgin would answer and thank me for some gift and I wouldn’t know what I got him. What did I get him?”

  “He’s right here, Neal. He wants to thank you for the two rubber-coated baseballs.”

  “Rubber-coated? Miriam!”

  “Here he is.”

  “Dad?… Yeah!… Great! How are you?… Yeah, they were nice. I’ve already played catch, but it’s been cold out. Hurt my arm a little…. No, it’s okay. When are you coming to see me?… Well, let me know when you get a vacation or something…. Yeah, here’s Mom.”

  I took the phone.

  “Good-bye, Neal.”

  “Wait a minute, Miriam. Just tell me why you went and bought—”

  “Good-bye, Neal.”

  “Miriam!”

  I covered the mouthpiece. “El, could you give me a minute?” He hurried to his little room at the back of the trailer, and I feared I saw hope in his eyes. I didn’t want him to think there was some hope of our getting back together just because I wanted to talk to Neal alone. But I didn’t want Elgin knowing yet that his dad was in prison, and especially why.

  “I’m back, Neal.”

  “I wanna know—”

  “Listen to me, Neal. I don’t have to tell you anything. If you want to get Elgin somethin for his birthday or Christmas, then you better remember and save your money and buy him something right. How do you think I feel trying to buy him the right stuff and not knowing and not having enough money? Who do you think you are, scolding me for doing the best I can? I’m not giving you the credit for any gifts anymore, so you better plan ahead next time.”

  “I don’t have any money, Mir! How’m I s’posed to do that?”

  “Well, you should’ve thought of that a long time ago.”

  “Well, lemme just tell you this, Mir: If you think about gettin him a glove, and you don’t hafta say it’s from me, make sure it’s a Wilson A-2000. Got it?”

  “Neal! Where do you think I’m going to get the money for a ball glove? You have any idea what those run these days? Cheap ones are over fifty dollars!”

  Neal laughed. “Fifty dollars! It’d be just like you to get him a vinyl glove. You’re lookin at three times that for a good one.”

  “Well, you can forget that. He’s using your old glove.”

  “That’s old, all right. And dry. And too big for him.”

  “Neal, I am through talking.”

  “My time’s up anyway, Miriam. I’ll call you sometime soon.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Well, I can call the boy, can’t I?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t. I haven’t told him where you are.”

  “I’m getting out soon.”

  “Oh, Neal, don’t start playing games with me, and quit promising Elgin that you’re coming to see him.”

  “I was framed, Miriam. I’m gonna get outa here soon, and I will come see him. I wanna talk to
you, too.”

  “No.”

  “I’m telling you I was framed, well, not framed, but railroaded.”

  Mr. Thatcher had given me the details. “You weren’t driving with a suspended license?”

  “Well, yeah, but I was going to work and—”

  “You weren’t drunk?”

  “I was officially under the influence, but only a hundredth of a—”

  “And so, what, someone pushed that man out in front of you?”

  “It was dusk, Miriam, and I should have sued his family for letting their dad ride that three-wheeler that late in the evening.”

  “He was on a three-wheeler?”

  “And just pokin along! I couldn’t stop. I honked and he panicked and stopped.”

  “He didn’t swerve out in front of you?”

  “No, but if he’d swerved the other way, I wouldn’t have hit him when I slid onto the shoulder.”

  “Oh, Neal! You’re never gonna get off from a charge like that!”

  “You just watch!”

  “I’d rather not.”

  I wanted to come up with a great closing line that would put Neal in his place. But words weren’t my game. I would not be calling or writing him again, I decided. The last thing he needed was encouragement from me. I hung up.

  The next day I asked Billy Ray Thatcher to see if Neal had filed an appeal on his sentence. He called back that evening.

  “He doesn’t even have a lawyer, Miriam. And the case was so open and shut that there would be no hope. He was driving while his license was suspended. Witnesses saw him get thrown out of a bar for being too rowdy. They say he was laughing and crying as he staggered to his car. A friend offered to drive him home and Neal took a swing at him. He laid rubber screeching out of the parking lot, then flew through radar at over sixty in a thirty zone. The officer saw Neal’s car weaving as he pulled out to pursue him, and just as he was turning on his flashing lights, he saw the accident. Neal appeared to have not even seen the old gentleman on the bike. It was lucky no one else was on the sidewalk.”

  “The sidewalk?”

  “Neal drove off the road, between two trees, and up on the sidewalk where he hit the man. The old guy was hardly moving.”

  “Neal said something about the man being in his way.”

  Mr. Thatcher sighed. “Neal was a born liar.” He paused. “Open and shut, Miriam. He’s in there forever.”

  When Momma told me we would be moving to Chicago that summer, I worried about Dad. “Won’t it be harder for him to find me and get there?”

  “Might be,” Momma said. “That’s his problem.”

  “It’s my problem too,” I said. “You gonna let me play in a league up there?”

  “The summer after we get there.”

  “A league with uniforms and all?”

  “I don’t know what they have.”

  “I want to play in a league with real uniforms. I can’t stand this playing with just a team T-shirt. I’m ready.”

  “I know you are. But we’ll be getting there too late to try to join one right away.”

  I played in just five games before we took off for Chicago. If I’d have known how I would do in those five games, I’d have fought harder against leaving.

  5

  The children’s baseball program in Hattiesburg had one league for nine- and ten-year-olds, one for eleven- and twelve-year-olds, and another for thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. I was hoping Momma would handle signing me up, but she seemed as shy as I was when we walked in. I finally went up to one of the tables and a woman shoved a sign-up sheet toward me. A man leaned over and looked me up and down.

  “Before you tell me your age,” he said, “I guess. I’m within a year ninety percent of the time.”

  A man and woman at the cash box smiled and nodded. “He’s been especially accurate today.”

  I was taller than most older boys, so when the man guessed thirteen—“Am I right, huh, am I right?”—I wasn’t surprised.

  “I’m ten,” I said.

  The man roared. “Well, we’ll see what your momma puts down for date of birth, and if it comes out to ten, we’re gonna hafta see what Matt wants to do about it.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “League rep. He can ask you for a birth certificate.”

  That got Momma’s attention. ‘The boy is ten,” she said. “And I didn’t bring any papers. I’m sorry.”

  Somebody went and got Matt, a huge fat man with an unlit cigar at the corner of his mouth.

  “Trouble?” he said.

  “No,” Guesser said. ‘Just that this boy and his momma say he’s ten.”

  Matt seemed to study Momma more than me. “Pretty little lady says her son is ten, he’s got to be ten. But ma’am, you understand we’re gonna get challenged on this every time we turn around. You have papers somewhere, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Just bring a copy of his birth certificate to tryouts.”

  “My dad is tall,” I said. ‘That’s why I’m tall.”

  He said, “If you’re as good as you are tall, you’re gonna need that birth certificate. If you’re not, nobody will care.”

  “My dad is a good player.”

  “Someone I should know?”

  “Neal Woodell.”

  “No kiddin? He was some kinda player before, ah—he was some kinda player.”

  The man at the cash box said, “Maybe he would like to coach a team for us. We’re still looking for help for the—”

  “Uh, no, Clarence,” big Matt said. “He’s, uh, not a local man. Now let’s get this boy signed up and tell him where to report for tryouts.”

  I was nervous at tryouts, but I tried to hide it. The other kids all seemed to be dressed in new shoes, sweats, hats, and gloves. I wore raggy sweats, one of my dad’s old, too-big caps, and that floppy glove. I wore year-old sneakers that were already smooth on the bottom.

  I quit telling other kids about my dad after the first three didn’t know his name. But I couldn’t wait to run and hit and throw and catch. I was glad Momma was there to watch. Matt explained to the parents how the tryout would go.

  “We’ll run them for time, hit em a coupla grounders and flies, and give em three swings apiece. We grade em from zero to five or A for automatic. Each coach gets a certain number of nine-year-olds and a certain number of ten-year-olds on his team, and they bid on players of different levels. We don’t claim to be perfect, and we don’t tell anyone what the ratings are. Don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

  They lined us up near home plate and told us to stand in the batter’s box, one at a time. We were to swing and drop the bat and run all the way around the bases, touching each one. We were timed from the plate to the plate.

  Most of the kids swung, set the bat down, and then ran. They ran in a huge circle, touching first base and running almost into right field on their way to second and into left on their way to third. A lot of kids slid into home, even though that slowed them down. Some stopped and jumped on the plate with both feet.

  When my turn came I stepped quickly into the box. I crouched with the bat ready, pretending I was in a game. Daddy had drilled into me that every play in practice came with a man on second and two outs, or bases loaded and no outs, or whatever. My dad would tell me the inning, the standings, the score. “Practice doesn’t make perfect!” he would shout. “Perfect practice makes perfect!”

  I had to run out every ground ball or pop-up and step and throw on every practice toss. Now I imagined running out an in-side-the-park home run where scoring would tie the game and being out would mean a loss. I stood in left-handed to give me an edge toward first.

  “You a lefty?” a man asked.

  “Switch-hitter, sir.”

  “Sure you are. Which hand do you throw with?”

  “Right.”

  “Bat righty for this.”

  That made me mad. I moved to the other side of the plate, stepped and swung hard. I was moving before
I dropped the bat, and within three steps I was at top speed.

  I heard other kids gasping and saying, “Whoa, watch this! Look at that kid.”

  I raced toward first, sixty feet away, and I must have looked like I would never be able to slow enough to make the turn. A few feet from the bag I darted to the right and leaned hard to the left. My left foot slid into the bag and straightened me up and put me on a line toward second, where I did the same thing.

  I was hardly two feet out of the base path all the way around. I got ahead of myself on the way to home and almost stumbled, then righted myself and sped across the plate.

  “Man!”

  “Wow!”

  “Unbelievable!”

  I peeked at Momma in the bleachers. She raised her fist and smiled.

  The timers looked at their stopwatches and then at each other.

  “Can’t be right,” one said.

  “The watch doesn’t lie. He looked pretty quick.”

  “He didn’t look this quick. I don’t think a fourteen-year-old has run this fast. Maybe I was late punching in at the start.”

  “Me too. We were both off?”

  “Could have been. He got out of the box fast.”

  Another man came up to them with a clipboard.

  “Time?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  Both showed him their watches.

  “You want me to write that down? Or should I just note that you both think you’re funny? C’mon, what’s the time? I expected him to have the fastest time, but faster even than the big kids by more than a second? Are we sure this kid’s only ten?”

  “He’s ten.”

  “Sure he is.”

  “Woodell!”

  “Sir?”

  “When you catch your breath, get back in line. We need to be sure of your time.”

  When I catch my breath? I was hardly panting. I went to the back of the line.