The Fox Steals Home (3 page)

He sat on the edge of the dock and watched other boaters and water-skiers skimming across the lake, having the time of their
lives. He had waterskied a few times himself. Man, it was fun. But that was before the breakup. Maybe, when he felt like it
again — when the turmoil and the pain of his parents’ divorce were behind him — he could get Billy Trollop and some other
guys and go waterskiing again.

After about ten minutes, he thought about going up to the house. He was hungry, and his mother was probably expecting him,
anyway.

When he reached the side of the house and looked around to the front, he saw that the white car was gone.

Well, if it were Mr. Ferris, the lawyer, his mother would have enjoyed the visit. He was an old guy, smart as a whip, but
with a subtle sense of humor that would help Bobby’s mother forget her cares for a while.

On the other hand, if it were somebody like
Mrs. Trundle — that gossipy woman who used to be a neighbor and had moved to another part of town — Bobby’s mother might have
welcomed an earlier appearance by him.

Well, he didn’t like to bother her when she was having company, that was all.

He entered the house through a side door, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Is that you, Bobby?” his mother’s soprano voice carried to him from upstairs.

“Yes, Mom. It’s me,” he said.

“I’ll be right down, dear,” she said.

He went to the living room and started up the stairs to his room. He was only halfway up when she emerged from her room, wearing
a bright yellow dress and high-heeled shoes, and carrying a small white purse.

“Bobby sweetheart!” she cried. “You look terrible!”

She stopped on the steps and brushed back his hair.

“You better get that uniform off and take a shower,” she went on hastily. “And use a lot of soap.”

“Where you going?” he asked her. He didn’t remember her telling him that she was going somewhere this evening.

“Where am I going?” She stared at him as if that were the number-one dumb question of the day. “It’s my bridge night, dear.
I told you that this morning. Didn’t I?” she added, a frown suddenly forming on her forehead. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear. Maybe
I didn’t. Anyway, it’s Tuesday night, and you should know by now that I have a bridge party every Tuesday.”

He looked at her pensively, wondering if she would tell him who her visitor had been.

But she didn’t. She was too much in a hurry to leave. She just told him to get washed up, put on clean clothes, and to find
his dinner in the oven.

“What is it?” he asked. He hoped it wasn’t franks and beans again. He was getting tired of franks and beans.

“Pizza,” she said, smiling.

He smiled back. Pizza he liked.

H
is mother woke him up the next morning at 7:15.

“Gee, Mom,” he cried, looking sleepily at his Mickey Mouse alarm clock. His father had bought it for him when he was eight,
and it was still ticking along as merrily as ever. “It’s the middle of the night!”

“You know what time it is,” she replied, her voice coming up the stairway in one giant leap. “Get your b-o-d-y down here,
so you can wash up and eat breakfast. You’ve got only fifteen more minutes before I have to leave.”

“Why can’t you leave without me?” he retorted. “I can make my own breakfast. All I eat is cereal, anyway.”

“This morning I want you to have eggs,” she
said. “Protein is good for you. Now come down here and don’t argue with me.”

“Okay,” he sighed.

He shoved off the covers, rolled out of bed, and silently dropped upon the floor. The hardness of it was unbearable. But he
lay there awhile, his eyes closed, until his back began to ache. Then he got up.

The sun was shining brightly through the curtains of his window, proving that it and the clock were both working against him.
He dug clean socks and underwear out of his dresser, put them on, then put on his pants, shirt, and shoes, and went downstairs.
He managed to do it without falling, which was somewhat remarkable since he had kept his eyes closed all the way down.

“Well, good morning, bright eyes,” said his mother, who was already dressed in her work clothes and ready to go. She was a
manager in an office, and her work clothes were a trim-fitting suit and low heels.

“’Morning,” said Bobby, heading for the bathroom.

“Scrambled or sunny-side up?” shouted his mother while he was washing his face.

“Sunny up!” he replied, finding it an effort to raise his voice enough to get it through the door.

After a while he managed to get dried and out of the bathroom. His sunny-side up eggs, atop a piece of dark toast, were waiting
for him, along with extra toast and a glass of milk.

“I want you to go to Grandma’s today,” said his mother as she pulled on her jacket. “You don’t have a baseball game again
today, do you?”

“No,” he said, sitting down on the chair in front of the eggs. “Our next game is Thursday. Why do I have to go to Grandma’s?”

“I want you to, that’s why.”

“When do you want me to go?”

“Sometime this morning. At least before lunch, so you’ll have something else besides peanut butter and jelly for a change.”

Grandma Reenie makes good peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, too, he almost told her.

“Good-bye, dear,” his mother said, kissing him on the forehead. “See you this afternoon.”

“’Bye, Mom,” he said, and watched her go out of the door.

While he ate, he heard the old Chev grinding away in the garage as his mother tried to start it. It suddenly sparked to life,
then roared madly as his mother pressed down on the accelerator.
That’s right, Ma,
he thought, smiling to himself.
Goose it. Clean out the carbon good, and maybe burn up the rings one of these days. Can’t you remember Dad warning you about
that?

He finished his breakfast and put the dishes into the sink. Then he stared at them a while, pondering whether to wash them
or not. One part of his brain told him he didn’t have to, the other part advised him that he should.

He got to thinking about his mother struggling all day to make the right decision about a work problem, then worrying that
she hadn’t made the correct decision after all. And he grinned.
Oh, sure,
he thought.
I know that mother of mine better than anybody else does. She would never worry that any decision was wrong.

He did the dishes.

When he was finished, he went into the living
room and headed for the CD player. He’d put on a CD, he thought, and then switch on the TV to get the baseball scores.

His attention was drawn to the ashtray on the coffee table. He had forgotten about his mother’s visitor, but apparently whoever
it was smoked, too, just as his mother did. He stared at the stubs of two cigarettes, one that he recognized as his mother’s
brand, the other, which was different. It had a tan band around the tip of it.

Suddenly he was Sherlock Holmes investigating the clue of the tan-banded cigarette stub.
Come on, Watson. Let’s take a closer look and see what’s elementary about it. Shall we, old boy?

He stepped closer to the coffee table, and made a unique discovery. Both stubs had lipstick stains on them. Well, at least
it wasn’t a man. That would leave out the lawyer, Mr. Ferris. But that was as far as his investigative powers were able to
go. He had determined that his mother’s visitor was a woman: that was all.

For Mom’s sake,
he thought,
I just wish it wasn’t Mrs. Trundle. That old bag of wind would talk the ears off of anyone who would listen to her.
And Mom would listen to her even though she would never take Mrs. Trundle seriously.

Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was nine-thirty. News time, followed by the baseball scores, would be coming on shortly.
He didn’t care about the news, but he had to listen to the scores. Without them you could throw your TV out the window.

At twenty-five minutes of ten he turned on the TV, heard the last bit about a railroad train derailment somewhere in Illinois,
then the all-important, team-by-team scores in both the American and National leagues. The Yanks topped Boston. The Orioles
downed the Brewers. The Oakland A’s just eked out a victory over the Angels.

He kept staring at the brightly lit screen, looking at it as if hypnotized, while he listened to the rundown of the scores.

“The Mets three, the Cardinals two. Los Angeles eight, the San Diego Padres one.” The voice droned on, clear, monotonous.

His thoughts drifted to yesterday’s game, and he saw himself hitting the old apple, getting on base, and sliding into second.

Man, he enjoyed running the bases, and making that steal. There was something especially challenging about it. Hey, Joe Morgan!
Lou Brock! Watch out! There’s a new base stealer on the way up!

“The Reds took it on the chin, five to four, from the Houston Astros, after winning four straight —”

“Oh, no!” Bobby cried, slamming his fists against the air.

After a while it was over, and he shut the set off. He took a quart bottle of orange juice out of the refrigerator, poured
himself a glass, and drank it. Returning the bottle to the refrigerator, he wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve and picked
up his baseball cap. Blue, long brimmed, it fit his head perfectly.

He left the house, making sure that all the doors were locked and that the key to the side door was placed on the lamp beside
it.

Grandma Reenie and Grandpa Alex Morris lived on German Creek Road. To get to it, you had to go up the road for a mile or so,
then turn off to the left for about another half mile. It was a long, tire
some walk. By the time Bobby arrived, he wished he had never started.

“You oughta have a bike,” suggested Grandpa Alex, peering at Bobby through his trifocals. Balding, and gray around the edges
of his hair, he still stood up straight as a pole and walked with the graceful bearing of a soldier.

“Mom thinks there’s too much traffic where we are for me to have a bike,” said Bobby.

“Pooshwah! It’s a wonder she didn’t worry about you walking up here.”

“Are you hungry, dear?” Grandma Reenie asked him. Faint lines webbed the corners of her hazel eyes.

“No thanks, Grandma,” he said.

“I’ve been meaning to telephone you, Bobby,” said Grandpa. “But your grandmother keeps pestering me with one foolish job after
another. How did your team make out yesterday?”

“We lost,” said Bobby. “Seven to six.”

“Lost?” Grandpa said it as if the word had a terrible taste to it. “How did you do? Get any hits?”

“One,” replied Bobby. “And one walk. I also stole a base.”

“You did?” A wide grin splashed over the old man’s face. “Good! You’re pretty good with the stick, are you?”

“Fair.”

“Fair? That’s not enough, boy. You’ve got to be good at something, get what I mean? If not with the stick, then with catching
the ball. Otherwise you won’t be worth more than a lick. What would you like to be good at?”

“Stealing bases,” said Bobby.

“Stealing bases?” Grandpa’s jaws dropped a few notches. “Why? You a whiz on bases?”

“No. I just like to run.”

“Oh. So you just like to run. Well, I suppose it’s the runners that score, isn’t it?” He grinned warmly.

“That’s right,” said Bobby.

I’
ve got a theory about life, Bobby,” Grandpa said, focusing his eyes through the upper third of his glasses at his grandson.
“And that is, it’s best to specialize in one thing, at least. Two or three things are better, but could be more difficult.
So,
at least
one thing. Get what I mean?”

Bobby nodded. Anyway, he
thought
he got what his grandfather meant.

“What I’m saying is that if you want to be a base stealer, go all out at it. Be good at it. Be the best. Look how long Ty
Cobb held the base-stealing record. Then Maury Wills comes along and breaks it. Then somebody else comes along and breaks
his. Why? Because they made a specialty of it, that’s why. Get what I mean?”

Again Bobby nodded. He had known that his
grandfather enjoyed baseball, but he had never dreamed that the old man was so psyched up about it. It was as if he wished
he were young again himself to show Bobby what he was talking about.

“Practice is the key, Bobby,” Grandpa Alex went on, emphasizing the word
key
to let it sink in. “Like everything else, a guy has to practice at his craft to be the best. Why work at anything if that
isn’t your aim? Get what I mean?”

Bobby grinned. “I get it, Grandpa,” he said. He hadn’t thought about being the best in anything. But, the way Grandpa put
it, it didn’t sound bad at all.

“Okay. Tell you what we’ll do,” said his grandfather. “I’ll fetch my gloves and a ball, and we’ll go to the ballpark. We’ll
stop at your house first for you to put on your baseball pants. Okay?”

Bobby nodded.

“Okay. Come on. We can put in about a half hour’s practice, then come back and rest up before lunch.” He turned and looked
at Grandma Reenie sitting on the porch, crocheting an afghan. “Did you get all this chatter, Grandma?” he asked
her. “Bobby and I are going down to the ballpark. I’m going to make this kid into the best base stealer in Lyncook County.”

“Just as long as you don’t teach him to steal anything else,” Grandma Reenie said, glancing up through her glasses but not
missing a stitch. “And be back by lunchtime. I’m making chicken and dumplings.”

“Half an hour. That’s all we’ll be gone,” said Grandpa Alex.

He went into the house and stayed so long that Bobby began to wonder if he were ever going to find the gloves and ball. But
he came out eventually, carrying them. They looked at least a hundred years old.
Well,
figured Bobby,
if they worked then, they should work now.

They got into Grandpa Alex’s green sedan and drove to Bobby’s house, where he put on his baseball pants. Then they drove to
the ballpark that was about a mile toward the village, next to the school.