The Fox Steals Home (6 page)

“Moon’s only five foot two, not ten foot eight!” exclaimed another Sunbird, Eddie Boyce.

Nothing like a bad throw to invite insults,
thought Bobby.
Good thing it was just a scrub game.

A towering fly ball to center ended the half inning. Bobby walked off the field, his mind still on the wild throw to first.
Scrub game or not, such gross throws preyed on a guy’s mind. Just because you tried to do your best in a real game, there
was no reason in this wide world why you shouldn’t try your best in a scrub game, too.

“Bobby!”

The voice came from someone near the lilac bushes flanking the road behind the ball park.

Bobby turned, and stared in surprise. It was his father!

“Dad!” he cried.

What was he doing here? He was supposed to be with his friends. Fishing.

His thoughts went topsy-turvy. The sight of his father twisted things all around for him.

His father motioned to him. Reluctantly, Bobby approached him.

“I stopped at the house,” his father said. “Your mother told me you were coming here.”

“I thought you went fishing,” said Bobby.

“I called my friends,” said his father. “I’m meeting them tonight, instead. Is that okay?”

Bobby’s heart went up to his throat. “Sure is,” he said.

“What do you want to do? Stay here and keep playing with the kids, or do something else? Anything.”

Bobby thought a minute. “Can I practice base stealing a bit?” he asked. “This would be a good time. The ballpark’s probably
empty. I think that
most of the guys are here. Then we could see the Giants play the Foxes. If you’d like to.”

His father smiled. “Why not? Come on. We won’t need a ball. Just your legs.”

Bobby yelled to Nick. “Nick, I’ve got to go. Sorry! Thanks for letting me play.”

“Okay!” Nick yelled back.

Bobby turned back to his father, saw him gazing attentively at one of the players.

“See somebody you know, Dad?” he asked.

“Well — yes. But never mind. Come on.”

Instinctively, Bobby glanced over his shoulder, and met the strong, silent gaze of Walter Wilson. Was he the one at whom his
father had stared?

But why him? How in this world could his father know Walter?

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind as he turned and followed his father to the car.

They drove to the ballpark. Bobby had guessed right; there was no one there. He practiced running the bases, getting the jump
on the pitcher, and stealing second and third.

When he got tired, he rested and once suggested
to his father, between breaths, that they ought to have a stopwatch.

“No way,” replied his father. “You’re not training to be a professional, or for the Olympics. This is just to teach you the
right way to run and steal bases, and to develop those abilities as you keep playing. I don’t want you to strain, either.
Too much of this stuff at one time could injure a muscle, hurt you for life. We don’t want to take a chance on doing that.”

They had barely started practicing again — the last time today, his father promised, before they would head for the city park
to see the ball game — when a car drove up slowly and parked at the curb behind the high wire fence. There was a woman in
it: a stranger, at least to Bobby.

The horn honked. Bobby looked at his father. “She honking for you, Dad?” he asked wonderingly.

His father, standing on the pitcher’s mound, looked over his shoulder.

“Darn,” he said, half under his breath. “What does she want?”

I’
ll be right back,” he told Bobby, and walked briskly across the diamond to the car. He talked with the woman for a few minutes,
then came back. The woman started up the car and took off.

“Okay,” said his father, back on the mound. “Get on first. We’ll go through it once more, then head for the game.”

His attitude had changed. Bobby could tell by the sharp way he spoke, by the expression on his face. Had something the woman
had said to him bothered him that much? Who was she, anyway?

But Bobby didn’t ask his father who she was. He didn’t think it was his business to pry.

Finished with the base-stealing practice, Bobby brushed himself off as thoroughly as he could and got in the car with his
father.

“You’re probably wondering who that woman is,” Roger Canfield said.

Surprised that his father should mention it, Bobby shrugged. “I don’t care who she is,” he said.

“She’s a friend,” explained his father, nevertheless. “A widow. Met her at a bowling party.”

“That’s okay, Dad. You don’t have to tell me about her.”

He didn’t want to hear about her. The less he knew the better. He still had hopes of his mother and father’s reuniting again
sometime when the dust from their marriage problems had settled. Maybe that was looking for a miracle, but he hated to see
another woman enter his father’s life, making sure that the miracle would never happen.

They drove to Municipal Park and got there a few minutes before the Giants–Foxes game started. They stayed the full nine innings,
even though it was one of the dullest games Bobby had ever seen in his life: 1-0, in favor of the Foxes. And that single run
by virtue of an error. Super super dull.

“Fast game, but Dullsville,” said Bobby as they drove out of the parking lot.

“You should’ve said something,” said his father. “We would have left earlier.”

“I was just hoping for something to happen,” said Bobby. “But nothing did.”

His father laughed.

“Are you still going to church with your mother?” his father asked after a brief silence.

“Nine o’clock every Sunday,” answered Bobby.

She was almost fanatic about it. She never missed.

“Good. You never know when you’ll need someone to lean on, someone other than a mere human being. Know something? I just bought
one of the bestsellers ever published.”

Bobby didn’t know much about bestsellers, except for something like
Charlotte’s Web
or
Fog Magic,
kids’ books that his father had probably never heard of. Or books on famous athletes. He gulped them down like cereal.

“I don’t know any bestsellers, Dad,” he admitted.

“You know of this one,” replied his father. “It’s the Bible.”

Bobby looked at him, a little embarrassed. “We’ve got one, but I’ve never read it. It’s pretty long.”

Roger Canfield shrugged. “I know, but I’ve been reading one chapter at a time, and I’m about a third done with the book already.
Can you believe it? Me reading the Bible? I bet if your mother heard about it, she’d flip.”

His dad didn’t press about the Bible reading, but Bobby could tell it meant something special to him.

They stopped at a red light. “There’s a fair on in Meadville. Like to go there tomorrow?”

“I’d love it,” said Bobby.

“Fine. I’ll pick you up at the usual time, eleven o’clock.”

Bobby had the sudden fear that their day had ended, that his father was going to take him home. But two blocks farther on,
Roger Canfield turned right and pulled up in front of a diner.

“I’m starved, aren’t you?” he said.

Bobby grinned. “Something like that,” he admitted.

He enjoyed these little surprises that his father
often pulled on him. They made their stay together so much fun.

They went inside, found a vacant booth, and sat down. Roger Canfield took off his yellow cap, set it beside him on the seat,
and surveyed his son. “It’s been a great day, Bobby,” he said happily.

“Sure has, Dad,” replied Bobby. “Wish we could do it every day.”

“Me too.”

Idle talk. Wishful thinking. Even before his mother and father had split up, he and his father hadn’t spent a heck of a lot
of time together. But he was around, at least. And they often had indulged in their own private talk, which included sports,
a topic his mother had placed at the bottom of her list of favorite subjects.

They ordered from a menu that a waitress brought them, and took their sweet old time putting the food away. When they were
finished, Roger Canfield left a tip for the waitress, paid the check, and followed Bobby out of the door.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“I’m stuffed,” confessed Bobby.

His father drove up to the house at a minute of eleven on Sunday morning, picked up Bobby, and drove to Meadville, twelve
miles away. The fair was already in full swing: the ferris wheel revolving slowly, every chair occupied; the stiff, plastic
horses of the merry-go-round bobbing up and down in slow motion; rockets spinning in a wide circle; a fat man wearing a derby
four sizes too small for him selling helium-filled balloons. On the midway, hucksters on makeshift stages were trying to inveigle
the people into their tents to see “the famous chicken woman,” “the alligator man,” and “the two-headed goat.”

“Interested in something like that?” Roger Canfield asked his son.

Bobby shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure if he was or not.

“Come on,” urged his father. “Most of this stuff is a lot of baloney to separate people from their money. But if you’ve never
seen one of these shows before, now’s the time.”

They bought tickets to the “famous chicken woman” show, and saw a small, thin woman whose
chest protruded like a chicken’s and whose skin resembled a chicken’s.

“I expected to see feathers,” said Bobby.

“Maybe she’s been plucked,” his father chuckled.

The “alligator man’s” somewhat brown, scaly skin was undoubtedly what had earned him his title. Bobby left the tent disappointed,
although he hadn’t known what to expect. An alligator man with a long snout and a snapping tail?
That’s
an alligator, man!

“Had enough?” asked his father.

“Had enough,” echoed Bobby.

They rode on the ferris wheel and the rocket, and tried winning prizes at the various concession stands. By evening, when
they ended the day by eating a light dinner of hamburgers, salad, and ice cream, Bobby’s prizes were an accumulation of sorts
— a rag doll, a plastic cat, a bamboo cane, and a glass coin bank. The items were practically worthless, but they were souvenirs
just the same of a day that he would remember for the rest of his life. Today was the day he had gone to the Meadville Fair
with his father.

Roger Canfield drove him home, and hugged him tightly before Bobby got out of the car.

“Thanks, Dad,” said Bobby, trying to keep a lump from rising to his throat. “I’ve had a real great time.”

“So have I, Bobby,” said his father. “See you next Saturday.”

“Right.”

When Bobby got to the door of the house, he found it locked. He located the key on the lamp near the door casing, unlocked
the door, and went in.

On the kitchen table was a note:
Dear, I won’t be home till late. If you’re hungry, there is tuna fish in the refrigerator. Make a sandwich. And there is cake
in the cupboard. Love, Mother.

O
n Tuesday the sun was playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, and a light breeze was teasing the trees when the Sunbirds met
the Swifts on the Lyncook School Ball Park.

During infield practice, before play began, Bobby saw a left-hander warming up for the Swifts. He was Lefty Thorne, a kid
with nothing but a straight ball and a slider. He didn’t need anything else from what Bobby had heard through the grapevine.

“Hey, Fox! How many bases you going to steal today?”

The voice came from the third-base bleachers. Bobby glanced there and saw the two long-haired kids. He wasn’t surprised. They
were his best fans.

“Got to get on base first,” he said.

“Right!” the other agreed, grinning broadly.

In a few minutes the ump was shouting “Play ball!” and Bobby went up to the plate, his nerves jumping. He hated left-handed
pitchers.

Lefty Thorne looked seven feet tall as he took his stretch, brought down his arms, then delivered. The ball seemed to come
directly at Bobby, and he backed away from it.

“Strike!” said the ump.

Bobby looked at him, but the ump’s attention was drawn to his counter, which he was holding in the palm of his left hand.
It was, Bobby thought, a devious way of ignoring him.

Lefty rifled in another pitch for “Strike two!” and Bobby stepped out of the box. He took a deep breath, hoping that it would
settle him down, and stepped back in again.

This time Lefty’s pitch was outside, and so was the next. His fifth delivery came barreling in with something on it, because
it started in toward Bobby, then headed out, like a snake that had seen something and wanted to get away from it.

Bobby swung. Bat met ball squarely and Bobby, dropping his bat, sped down the first-base line. The
blow was a single over short, just six inches shy of being caught by Joe Morris, the Swifts’ shortstop.

“There you are, Fox!” one of the kids yelled at him. “You’re on!”

Bobby looked at third for a sign — any kind of sign — and got it. Play it safe, it said.

Eddie let the first pitch go by. It was a ball.