took a final drag on her cigarette and crushed it out on the earth beside her. She looked at me with a close-lipped smile.
‘At least you tried,’ she said, and leaned over so her head rested on my shoulder.
We kissed, both our faces damp from the heat of the day. The smell of freshly cut clover was overpowering. Julie slid closer to me, crossed one of my bare legs with one of her denim ones. She radiated heat. Her breasts burned against my chest as we embraced, only two thin layers of cloth separating us.
Her tongue was deep in my mouth, her large right hand hard to my left shoulder. Before I realized it she was forcing me down on my back, pushing me deep into the sweet clover. I didn’t mind that she was stronger; there was nothing I could do about it. It even excited me. I ran my free hand down the thigh of her jeans, let it find its way between her legs.
We stopped kissing and gasped for breath.
‘I bet I could take you,’ Julie said into my neck, and I knew by her tone that she meant in physical strength.
‘You probably could,’ I said, gasping for air. ‘What does it matter? You work hard, have all your life. I don’t.’
Suddenly, Julie forced my head deep into the hay. All the sexuality of the previous moment was gone. This was a contest. Julie’s hands were on my shoulders, her right leg between my thighs; she held my back down flat on the stubbly earth.
I had no experience roughhousing with girls.
My worst fear, almost certainly a truth, was that Julie would care about being able to out-wrestle me. How hard should I defend myself? If I concentrated on one of her arms, got a solid lock on it … but Julie was sitting on my chest. My shoulders were pinned to the earth, and my head partially covered with clover, the tiny red seeds filling my eyes and mouth, spilling down my neck.
I bucked ineffectually a few times.
‘Okay, you’ve proved your point,’ I said.
Julie scrambled to her feet. I stood and brushed the clover seeds from my face and shirt front. I wanted to reverse time. I wanted the scent, the taste of Julie; I wanted to be inside her mouth, to feel the heat of her breasts burning against me.
But what I read in her eyes was that I was never to be forgiven for my weakness. I was walking toward her with the idea of taking her in my arms anyway, in spite of the coldness in her eyes, when her kid sister reappeared.
‘We’ve got to get back to work,’ said Julie.
‘I’ll come by again,’ I said. Julie didn’t reply.
But as I walked slowly back toward town, swinging my shirt in my right hand, the sun burning my back, I knew I wouldn’t.
Saturday night, Roger went to bed about ten o’clock. Alone.
‘Got to rest the old soupbone,’ he said, as he headed up the stairs, flexing his huge pitching arm.
I went to bed shortly after, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind was too full of the game the next day, my thoughts as much on the operation of the concessions as on baseball.
Eventually I dozed fitfully, but late in the night I woke with a start, surprised to hear the stairs creaking. I stretched out my arm and let the moonlight slanting through the window touch the face of my watch. Three A.M. I went to the window. I heard keys jingle in the darkness, watched as Roger opened the trunk of the Caddy and stealthily extracted the garden tools, hoisted them to his shoulder, and set off down the fragrant, moonstruck street.
About four-fifteen, just as the first blue-orange tinge appeared on the horizon, Roger returned, replaced the tools, and re-entered the house.
By game time we had sold 511 tickets. I left a woman named Margie Smood at the ticket table to sell to latecomers until the fifth inning. The concessions were booming, and the air was alive with the smell of frying onions, hot dogs, and popcorn. There was no fence around the local ball field, so, at Roger’s suggestion, Byron and I constructed a funnel-like gate, made of pickets joined by flame-orange surveyor’s tape. People were generally honest; only a few school kids and a handful of adults skirted the ticket line.
Our players were all nervous as we warmed up along first base. One thing I’d neglected to tell Roger was that our high-school team had never been able to afford uniforms – although the football team had trucks full of equipment – so we wore whatever we could scrounge: anything from jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers to a full Detroit Tigers uniform worn by Lindy Travis, who was a cousin several times removed of Detroit pitcher Virgil Trucks.
Along third, McCracken Construction, in black uniforms with gold numbers on their chests and their names in gold letters on their backs, snapped balls back and forth with authority. Baseballs smacking into gloves sounded like balloons breaking.
‘Where are the gate receipts?’ Roger asked me.
‘In a box under the ticket table. You don’t need to worry. Margie Smood’s honest.’
‘Go get them. Just leave her enough to change a twenty.’
‘But …’
‘I’ve got to get down some more bets.’
‘What if we lose?’
‘Never in doubt, Mike. Never in doubt.’
While six members of the Franklin Pierce High School Music Makers Marching Band, in beautiful red uniforms with gold buttons and epaulets, were assassinating the national anthem, Roger carried the money around to a conference with McCracken and his teammates.
The mayor, a small man with white hair and a rodent face, wearing an American Legion beret, was seated in the front row, directly behind home plate, and he had apparently agreed to hold the bets. By game time there were bags and boxes, envelopes and cartons piled at his feet. As near as I could estimate, Roger must have had upwards of ten thousand dollars riding on the game, perhaps as much as twenty thousand, most of it covered by McCracken and his team.
Roger and McCracken talked animatedly for several minutes. Finally McCracken went to his equipment bag and counted out more money; he also signed something that Roger proffered. Roger dug into the back pocket of his uniform and produced the keys to his Caddy. He held them up, let the sun play on them, then dropped them in a box with the money and the paper McCracken had signed. The box was deposited at the feet of the mayor.
McCracken appeared uncomfortable as he warmed up on the mound. One of the concessions Roger offered, even though we were playing on our home field, was to allow McCracken Construction to be home team.
McCracken pawed the dirt and stalked around the rubber. After the umpire called ‘Play Ball!’ his first three pitches were low, one bouncing right on the plate. The fourth pitch McCracken threw was a fastball, right down the heart of the plate, for a strike. I was tempted to hammer it, but held back, telling myself, a walk is as good as a single. McCracken was in trouble, I wasn’t, and he walked me with another low pitch. He walked Lindy Travis on five pitches. He walked Gussy Pulvermacher on four. As I moved to third I watched Roger whispering to our clean-up hitter, Dave Urbanski, his heavy right arm clamped on Dave’s shoulder.
The first pitch was low. The second broke in the dirt. McCracken kicked furiously at the mound. I could almost see Dave Urbanski’s confidence building as he waited. The fastball came. He drove it into the gap in left-centre for a stand-up double. Three of us scored, as Roger, leaping wildly in the third-base coach’s box, waved us in with a windmilling motion.
McCracken was rattled now. It didn’t help that the crowd was solidly behind us. Here was a high-school team coming off a two-and-nineteen season, going against a crack amateur team who were state finalists.
Our next batter walked on four pitches. Then McCracken settled