Waiting for Teddy Williams by Howard Frank Mosher

Strike. He smelled like the cheap booze at the dives where Gypsy sang. “His Blade,” he said, not quite a question.
    â€œHis D-60 bulldozer.” E.A. glanced over toward Midnight Auto and the open-sided machinery shed. “Biggest bulldozer made—weighs sixty tons. Another five minutes, it’ll be light enough to see it.”
    â€œWhat does he need a sixty-ton dozer for?”
    â€œMa says he uses it to wage war on the environment, except Devil Dan doesn’t believe in the environment. He shoves junk cars over the riverbank. Built up that big levee out in center field so the highwater won’t flood his junkyard. Drives logging roads up mountainsides, knocks down buildings on the Historical Register.”
    â€œThe what?”
    â€œThe Historical Register. A list of all the old rundown buildings in the county dating back to I don’t know when. Gran’s eight sided barn’s on it, only we’ve had to burn quite a bit of the barn lately for firewood. Devil Dan said at Town Meeting he didn’t believe in the Historical Register. Said he’d knock down the Washington White House if they’d pay him enough.”
    The drifter stared over at Midnight Auto, at the hundreds upon hundreds of junk cars and trucks acquiring color in the strengthening light. “How did this fella come to run over your baseball?”
    â€œGypsy—that’s my ma—was pitching to me down at Fenway. The ball diamond over yonder. She was throwing BP?”
    The man nodded.
    â€œI wanted to hit that new ball one good lick. See how far it’d go. I caught it right on the sweet spot of the bat and drove it over Old Bill’s head, he’s our hired man.”
    The drifter nodded again. One thing Ethan liked about him was that he didn’t ask too many questions. He didn’t crowd a boy with questions the way the Colonel did, or a schoolteacher. Not that E.A. knew for sure what a schoolteacher would do, never having attended regular school. But he was pretty sure that pressing a fella with questions he didn’t want to answer was a schoolteacher’s style, and he didn’t want any part of it. Questioning E.A. Allen tightly was a sure way to get him to clam up.
    It wasn’t just not asking questions that made the drifter different from most grownups. Earl and the Outlaws didn’t ask him many questions, either, except to tease him. But the drifter actually seemed to listen. He waited for E.A. to finish what he was saying, and he thought over his replies. Listening was unusual. Gypsy listened to him, and the Colonel listened, but just to find out whether he was going to say what the Colonel wanted to hear, and then got mad if he didn’t. But the stranger seemed genuinely interested.
    â€œDan was building that bank, and he swerved out of his way to run over the ball. Gypsy shucked off her top and did the River Dance on the Blade’s roof. Old R.P. Davis, that’s Devil Dan’s wife, smashed the dozer’s instrument panel all to pieces with her rolling pin.”
    The drifter was grinning a little. “That must have been quite a show.”
    â€œDan called me a little bastard.”
    â€œDid he?” The man narrowed his eyes through his cigarette smoke. “That’s harsh language. How come your pa didn’t deal with him?”
    E.A. shrugged. The stranger was studying him, using the cigarette smoke as a screen so that E.A. couldn’t read his expression. But then he looked back at the slate stones in the cemetery. “Gleason Allen, 1860 to 1922, blown sky high while trying to blow up his loving family,” he read aloud.
    â€œGypsy’s got a song about him,” E.A. said. “She wrote it when she was a little girl. It starts out, ‘Grandpa Gleason, crazy and mean, got blown up to smithereens.’”
    They looked at the stones, BABY, MOTHER, SISTER, OUTLAW ALLEN —Outlaw his given Christian name—