The Fox Steals Home (2 page)

It was down the middle for a called strike.

He tried to repeat the pitch, and grooved it, but this time Baggy Pants laid into it for a long triple to deep center field.
The drive gave Chubby plenty of time to make it home for the Cowbirds’ third run.

Somehow Bobby wasn’t surprised about the hit. Baggy Pants might not have cared how he looked in his baseball uniform, but
as a player he was one hundred percent.

Two pitches later, a fly ball that must have climbed as high as the Empire State Building, almost disappearing out of sight,
came down and was misjudged by center fielder Billy Trollop. The
hitter got two bases on the hit, and credit for an RBI as the fourth run scored.

The fifth run came on a grass-scorching single between third and short. The third out finally came on a strikeout, which drew
the loudest applause since the game had started.

B.J. walked off the mound with his head bowed. Until he reached the dugout, he was a lone kid. Nobody said as much as a word
to him.

When he sat down, Coach Tarbell offered him a few words of baseball wisdom. “Chin up, B.J. They just had a hot inning. No
reason why we can’t come back and do the same thing. Okay, Sherm,” he said, turning to the catcher, who was stripping off
his leg guards. “Let’s start it off.”

The back of his shirt sweat stained, Sherm walked to the plate and did just that, pulling a base on balls. B.J., not the best
hitting pitcher in Lyncook County, bunted him down to second. The third baseman, who fielded the bunt, threw B.J. out at first.

Bobby got up from his kneeling position in the on-deck circle and strode to the plate, carrying his bat like Ken Griffey Jr.
He looked eyeball-to-
eyeball at the pitcher like Ken Griffey Jr., and swung like Ken Griffey Jr. But he missed twice.

Then Walter threw him a slider. The ball looked like the head of a snake coming around a tree. It headed for the plate, and
Bobby swung again.

Crack!
The ball sizzled out to short. The shortstop made the play to first, and Bobby was out. Sherm advanced to third.

Bobby made the turn to the right and trotted back to the dugout, completely forgetting that he was Ken Griffey Jr. Maybe he
ought to try being Graig Nettles the next time.

Eddie slam-banged a double, scoring Sherm, and kept alive the Sunbirds’ hopes of overtaking the Cowbirds. But Billy Trollop
got up and pricked the balloon with a pop-up to third.

Cowbirds, 5–3.

Bobby looked across at Walter coming off the mound. The pitcher was squinting over his shoulder at the scoreboard in center
field. Then he turned and looked grimly ahead. He was probably pondering a way to keep that lead, thought Bobby.

B.J. laid the first batter to rest with a strikeout.
The next batter popped a high, towering fly over third base. Bobby got under it, feeling nervous all of a sudden as the ball
started to play tricks on its way down. But he held out his glove, and he had it. Two outs. Then as he waited for the third
batter to step to the plate, his mind began to wander.

You must try to see it from my point of view, too, Bobby. I’m your mother and I love you. You’re my only child, the only good
thing I have left. You must realize that your father and I just can’t keep on living together like this. We’d be hypocrites
to continue living together just because some people think that it’s the proper thing to do. Well, it isn’t, Bobby sweetheart.
It’s not the proper thing to do at all. Why, you can see for yourself how rotten your father and I are getting to be toward
each other. We’re not happy and you’re not happy. And it’ll just be getting worse and worse, Bobby sweetheart.

The words were a fuzzy sound in the far recesses of his mind. There had been tears in her eyes when she had spoken them, tears
that had brought an ache to his throat.

The third batter lashed a furious drive past B.J.’s legs that sizzled out to center field for a single. And Bobby broke his
daydream and began to fret. Another run would mean that the Sunbirds would need four runs to knock off the Cowbirds. And in
this game the Sunbirds didn’t seem to have that many left in them.

“Take ‘im yourself, B.J.!” shouted Bobby.

The next batter grounded out.

“Amen,” murmured Bobby as he relaxed and trotted off the field.

“What inning is this, anyway?” B.J. asked as he plunked down on the dugout bench.

“Bottom of the fifth,” said Coach Tarbell. “Andy! Snoop! Come on, you guys! Grab your bats! Start it off, Andy!”

Andy did — a corking single over first. Snoop bunted him down to second, sacrificing himself, although he made a gallant effort
to turn the bunt into a hit.

Marv Goldstein, batting left-handed, looked sick on the first two pitches, missing both by inches. Then he connected with
a fast pitch that
drove Andy in for the Sunbirds’ fourth run. Marv stayed on first, clapping proudly. It was his first hit of the season.

Hank Spencer stepped to the plate and began nudging his left shoe into the dirt as if he wanted to bury it. He took a called
strike. Then Walter came back with another pitch that headed for the heart of the plate. It was a mistake. Hank laid into
it, and the sound of bat meeting ball was music to the Sunbirds’ ears.

It went for a home run.

On the mound, Walter’s shoulders drooped as if something had happened to his collarbone.

“Send him to the showers!” yelled a Sunbirds devotee.

Sherm flied out to left, and B.J., who wasn’t much with the stick, anyway, grounded out to short.

Sunbirds, 6–5.

In the top of the sixth, the Cowbirds connected with two hits, one walk, and two runs, to forge ahead, 7–6.

“Come on, Bobby!” encouraged Coach Tarbell as Bobby walked to the plate to start off the bottom
of the sixth inning. “Let’s get that run back — and more!”

Images of Graig Nettles, Pete Rose, and Wade Boggs floated through Bobby’s mind as he strode to the plate.

Walter gazed at him through narrowed lids, stretched, and delivered. The pitch was wide. “Ball!” snapped the ump.

Bobby fouled off the next two.

Then Walter seemed to have lost sight of the plate, and Bobby walked.

Bobby trotted to first, then looked across the diamond at the third-base coach, who was watching Coach Tarbell standing at
the side of the dugout. Whatever the sign was that Coach Tarbell related to the third-base coach Bobby didn’t know. But the
sign directed to him was clear as the hot shining sun.

Thumb to cap, to belt, to chest, back to cap. The steal sign was on.

Oh, man! Well, grease your joints and gas up your tank, Bobby. You’re going to move!

Walter stepped on the mound, looked over his shoulder at Bobby, then started his delivery.
Bobby took off, dirt puffing from his heels as he sprinted toward second base. Just before he reached it he saw the Cowbirds’
second baseman covering the bag, waiting for the throw from his catcher.

Bobby hit the dirt, slid, and touched the bag a second before the Cowbird touched him with the ball.

“Safe!” called the ump.

On the mound Walter Wilson looked on, not liking the call one bit.

B
obby tried not to show it, but deep inside he was as proud as could be.

He wished again that his father was there, that his father could have seen him run. But, as before, the thought of his father
reminded him of the divorce.

Why couldn’t you two get along like millions of other married people? Why did it have to happen to us?

Bobby was nuts about baseball. But right now he was never happier to see a game coming to an end. It was a wonder that he
had played as well as he had, because worrying about family problems had taken a lot out of him. And he hadn’t been able to
concentrate at the most crucial times.

“Drive ‘im in, Eddie!” he heard Marv Goldstein yell. “Tie up the score!”

Who was to blame for the mess? His father or his mother? He didn’t know. How could he? He didn’t know every little thing that
had gone on between them. No kid would. You didn’t see everything. You couldn’t hear everything.

Let’s be careful about this, you and me. We don’t want him to worry his little head over our problem. This is strictly between
you and me, see?

That was the way the mess — the whole rotten mess — had seemed to exist to him. He didn’t know when the smelly business had
started. That was pretty difficult to tell. But it had been about a year ago when he had begun to see the signs: the cold
tone of voice between his mother and father, the angry questions, the angry answers. Then the hours of awful silence, which
were even worse.

Bobby shut out the ugly thoughts and concentrated on the batter, Eddie.

Eddie took three swings, striking out, and walked away from the plate, his lips pursed.

Billy got up and popped up to third. Andy
Sanders grounded out to second, leaving Bobby stranded.

Neither team scored in the seventh, and the game went to the Cowbirds, 7-6.

Eddie’s parents came off the stands and hugged Eddie for the double he had hit. Andy’s father came down and shook Andy’s hand
for the three hits he had pounded out. Hank’s parents and his two sisters came down and hugged him for the single and the
colossal home run he had smashed. Almost every one of the guys had somebody meeting him, either to congratulate him on his
hits, offer sympathy for losing, or both.

No one was there to meet Bobby. His mother wouldn’t meet him, of course. She didn’t care sour apples for baseball. Or, he
thought, for anything he did, for that matter.

“Hey, Bobby! Tough game to lose!” said a voice out of all that maze of voices.

Bobby looked around in surprise and saw that it was Mr. Trollop, Billy’s father.

Bobby tried to smile. “That’s right, Mr. Trollop,” he said.

He walked home with some of the crowd, not saying anything to anyone, because no one said anything to him. He might as well
be on the street alone.

“A broken home.” That was a term he used to hear now and then at school, at play, and occasionally at home. It had meant very
little to him. “Hey, Jimmy! Hear about Dave’s parents? They broke up!” The usual response was “That right? Wow. That’s tough.”
Or, sometimes more frankly, “Oh? So what else is new?”

But, since the terrible thing had happened right in his own home, a “broken home” had suddenly taken on a definite meaning.
For a long, long time there were the three of them — his mother, his father, and himself. And then one day he woke up and
there were just the two of them — he and his mother.

It was too hard to believe.

There was a court trial about something to do with custody, a trial that had made him wish that he had never been born. Not
that there was any violence between his mother and father. No, it was nothing like that.

It was just the strained calmness that had gone on between his parents, his mother’s lawyers, and the judge. His father had
not wanted a lawyer to represent him. He had said that he knew beforehand who would take custody of Bobby, and he was entirely
agreeable to it.

He explained it to Bobby, saying that he was moving a few towns away. If he and Bobby’s mother shared custody of Bobby, Bobby
would have to bounce back and forth between them like a Ping-Pong ball. It would be better for Bobby to stay in one place;
his dad would visit him on the weekends. Everyone agreed it would be best.

It was that darned agreeableness that had bothered Bobby so much, because sometimes he felt that he loved his father more
than he did his mother, even though he knew that the right thing to do was to share his love equally between them. That was
hard to do sometimes, because both of them were so different. They had different interests. She liked shopping, cards, acting
in local plays — things that his father didn’t care a hoot about. He was an outdoorsman. Give him a gun,
or a fishing pole, and a free weekend in the mountains, and you wouldn’t find a happier man.

How the two of them had ever gotten together and married was beyond Bobby’s imagination. And having him, their only child,
must have just complicated the unimaginable union.

He arrived home, and saw a car parked at the curb — a shiny white car with tinted glass and chrome trim. It was a car he had
never seen before. Only a person rolling in dough would sport such luxurious wheels.

Bobby paused in his tracks and looked at the house. It was an old, two-story building that his father had renovated from an
old two-story shack. Somebody had said that it had first been constructed as the village post office. That was only thirty
years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Whose car is it?
he wondered.
A salesman’s? An insurance man’s?
It could be any one of a dozen people who might want to see his mother.

Maybe it was her lawyer’s, Mr. What’s-his-
name. Hugo Ferris. But why should he want to see her again? The case was over, wasn’t it? Well, maybe he just wanted to drop
by and see how she was doing. A short, gray-haired man in his sixties, he had that warm, sympathetic quality about him that
Bobby’s mother seemed to have needed.

Or it could be one of her bridge-playing friends. She had a lot of them. Maybe they were having a chitchat, “woman talk,”
as his mother called it. His mother usually got home from work at ten after five, so whoever it was visiting her couldn’t
have been here very long.

He walked onto the driveway, noticing his mother’s banged-up Chevrolet in the garage, and walked past the house toward the
lawn in back. A hundred feet beyond was the lake, a spacious body of water covered with gently rolling waves and an array
of sailboats and motorboats.

A three-foot-wide dock extended out to a hoist in which an inboard-outboard motorboat sat like a setting hen. It used to be
Roger Canfield’s favorite mode of transportation to various fishing spots on the lake. Since he had left, the boat had not
been
touched, although Bobby knew how to run it almost as well as his father did. He just hadn’t felt like taking it out, that
was all.