Waiting for Teddy Williams by Howard Frank Mosher Page A

MURDERED BY REVENUERS . And old Patrick Allen, who, with a few of his drinking cronies, decided one night to annex the province of Quebec to Kingdom County. They got as far as the first farmstead across the border before they were gunned down in their tracks by local farmers.
    The drifter was looking at the wooden marker with GONE AND LONG FORGOTTEN scratched on it. “That’s my pa,” E.A. said.
    â€œYour pa?”
    â€œYes. Well, I think so. Sometimes Gypsy calls him Mr. Nobody.”
    The man looked at him. “You want to hit a few balls?”
    â€œYou mean like BP?”
    The drifter nodded. “I got a few baseballs in my coat pocket. Not official balls like the one Davis run over. But they’ll do. You want to hit a few?”
    â€œYou bet I do,” E.A. said.
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    The boy and the drifter walked toward the baseball diamond laid out in the meadow. Over at Devil Dan’s, Norton and Orton Horton were hanging out R.P.’s wash. The skinheads stared at E.A. and the drifter.
    â€œThis isn’t a bad ball field,” the tall man said.
    â€œGypsy and I laid it out. Bill was supposed to help but didn’t on account of his bad back.”
    E.A. looked up at the man with pale eyes. “I got to ask you something, mister. Before we get started. The Colonel—the statue overstreet—said he might send somebody. A fella to help me along with my game.”
    â€œHold on here. You’re overrunning me on the base path. You say the statue told you this?”
    â€œYou bet. Ethan Allen, over on the common. He’s my—let’s see—great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. I used to think he was my real father on account of we had the same name. And when I said my Our Father Who Art in Heaven I’d think of him. I asked him to do things for me, but he never did jack. Not that I could see. Him or Our Father Who Art in Heaven, either.”
    â€œWhat’d you ask him to do?”
    â€œWell, to help the Sox win the Series so Gran could walk again.”
    â€œThat would be a tall order.”
    â€œI know. I didn’t really expect he’d pull that off. So I asked him to help Gypsy make a record and get to Nashville. When he didn’t step up to the plate on that one, I all but begged him to smite down Devil Dan and his first-born and his oxes and asses for running over my official American League baseball with the Blade. But he hasn’t seen fit to smite Dan yet, either.”
    The drifter looked over at the Davis place. He stared at Norton and Orton, and they stared back at him. After a minute they looked away.
    E.A. wondered if he’d told the man too much. That he’d think E.A. was crazy for talking to a statue. Maybe not toss him any BP after all. He wished he hadn’t blurted those things out, didn’t know what had come over him. But all the man said was, “Usually, you want something done like what you asked that statue for, your best bet is to tend to it yourself. Like in baseball. You have to find a way to get on base, make something happen. Same with learning the game. Maybe I can show you a thing or two you’d be a while coming to figure out yourself. Mainly, you have to do it on your own.”
    E.A. wondered if the drifter was suggesting that he should smite down Devil Dan himself, pop him some morning with Grandpa Gleason Allen’s deer rifle when he was emptying crankcase oil from the Blade into the river. Maybe rub out the two skinheads, Orton and Norton, at the same time. It was an appealing idea.
    The man walked out to the mound. E.A. stood at home plate and took several hard practice cuts. He said, “You’ll be surprised to see how far I can drive the ball this year. Since I hit that game-winning line drive on the common? I’ve grown a lot. You can see that.”
    The man was looking at the anthill pitching mound. “You’ve grown some,” he said.
    Bill emerged from his trailer