voice, soft and sleepy as it is, startles me. He comes into the office and puts his hands on my shoulders.
“What are you doing up so early? When I woke up and you weren’t there, I thought maybe my mama was right after all and the Rapture had come and Jesus had swept you into his bosom. I was afraid you’d left Sam and me to face the army of hell all on our own.”
“Somehow I think I’m the last one Jesus would sweep into his bosom if he came back,” I tell him. “And even if he did, I think you and Sam would do just fine against Satan and his hordes.”
“Sam maybe,” says Thayer, leaning over my shoulder. “He’s a tough old boy. But I’d be the first one on my knees letting ’em brand me with the Number of the Beast.”
He picks up the photographs. “Who are these handsome gentlemen?”
I sigh. Although he knows the basic outline of my life’s story, Thayer has heard very few of the details. Not because I fear knowing them would change how he feels about me, but simply because I’ve never felt the need to tell them.
“That is a long and complicated tale,” I answer.
“Well, apparently it’s interesting enough that it got you out of bed. And now I’m up, too, so I think it’s only fair that you tell me,” Thayer says. “I’ll go put the coffee on.”
He leaves me alone with the photos and with the memories that are starting to push their way into my thoughts. Do I really want to tell him about Jack and Andy? Can I even remember it all and make some sense of it? I teach history to my students, but my own is one I’m not sure that I’m completely qualified to relate. I fear that given my role in the events, I’m an unreliable narrator. At best, my memories are tarnished by years spent trying to erase them, so that what remain are faded, possibly beyond recognition.
Still, I find that part of me wants to tell the story. Maybe, I think, it will help me decide what to do about what Jack has called to tell me. More likely, it will simply resurrect old ghosts. Either way, Thayer is waiting downstairs with coffee, and I find that I can no longer sit up here alone.
I leave the photos behind and descend the creaky staircase to the first floor. The smell of coffee scents the air, and the kitchen is comfortingly lit. The doorway glows, and through it I see Thayer setting two mugs on the table. Sam has followed him downstairs and has stretched himself out on the floor. His tail thumps against the worn planks as I enter and sit down, and then he closes his eyes and settles back into sleep.
“All right,” Thayer says, sitting down across from me. “Start talking.”
CHAPTER 1
For many reasons, August of 1950 was not a pleasant time to be nine months pregnant, particularly for my mother, Alice Brummel. The war in Korea, less than two months old, weighed heavily on the minds of Americans everywhere, and my mother was no exception. Worried that there might be rationing, she’d taken to buying large quantities of things like bread, sugar, and coffee, all of which she stored in the basement, along with bottles of water and extra blankets, which she fully expected to need when the North Koreans began running rampant through Pennsylvania and it became unsafe to venture outdoors unarmed.
When she wasn’t stocking up on emergency supplies, she was contending with my father, Leonard Brummel. Unlike his wife, my father felt that the whole Korean business would be settled swiftly and efficiently by the superior war-waging power of the good old U.S. of A. Unconcerned for his own safety, he was therefore free to focus instead on the war raging between his beloved Philadelphia Phillies and everyone else in major league baseball.
The summer of 1950 belonged—as far as the entire baseball-loving population of Pennsylvania was concerned—to the team that had been dubbed the Whiz Kids. Young, cocky, and with the talent to back up their attitude, the Phillies had stormed to the front of the National League thanks to the work of guys like Andy Seminick, Granny Hamner, Dick Sisler, and Robin Roberts. These resident gods of Shibe Park were my father’s sole interest during those hot, sticky days, and every evening he came home from his insurance salesman job, settled into his favorite chair with a bottle of Duke beer, and listened to the night’s game on the radio.
My mother was not without a sympathetic ear, however. As luck would have it, her best friend and next-door neighbor, Patricia Grace, was also pregnant. Like my father, Patricia’s husband, Clark, was also unavailable for support, but not because he was in love with a baseball team. Clark Grace, who didn’t know an earned run average from a double play, was a scientist—a physicist—and suddenly much in demand by the military. He was currently spending most of his time in Washington, working on something he described vaguely to his wife and neighbors as “a possible new fuel source made from hydrogen.”
With their husbands otherwise occupied, Alice and Patricia spent most of their time together. As their bellies swelled in tandem, they passed the mornings playing cards while lamenting their sleeplessness, their hemorrhoids, and the utter unattractiveness of maternity clothes. Out of concern for the welfare of the country, they were careful to limit themselves to two cups of coffee and four Lucky Strikes apiece, not wanting to take more than their share. In the afternoon, they did their shopping at DiCostanza’s grocery store and, if Clark was staying in Washington, made dinner together in Alice’s kitchen, leaving a plate in the refrigerator for Leonard before going downtown to see a movie or sit in the park. If Clark was home, dinners would be made and eaten separately, but as soon as Leonard was ensconced in front of the radio and Clark in his study, the two women would be out the screen doors of their kitchens and on their way.
Given this closeness, it was no surprise when both Alice and Patricia went into labor within minutes of one another. On a particularly torpid Thursday afternoon, while searching for potential ingredients to put into the fruit salad recipe they’d clipped out of the Ladies’ Home Journal earlier in the day, Patricia was in the process of thumping a honeydew melon to test its freshness when she felt a wetness on her legs and realized to her dismay that her water had broken right there in the produce section and that her good shoes were most likely soiled beyond repair. Turning to alert Alice, she discovered her friend looking at the apple in her hand with an astonished expression that suggested that she, too, was engaged in something more significant than simply admiring the quality of the fruit.
Moments later, they were on their way to Mercy Hospital, Alice at the wheel of the Nash Rambler Leonard had purchased for her use in May, but which she’d rarely taken out of the driveway. Patricia, in the passenger seat, clutched the door handle and called out directions. By the time they reached the hospital, both women were breathing heavily and barely able to remember their names to give them to the attending nurse. It wasn’t until they were installed in beds next to each other and receiving simultaneous injections of scopolamine that they realized they’d forgotten to inform their husbands of their impending fatherhood.
As it turned out, there was no immediate hurry. Both women would be in labor for some hours, giving Leonard and Clark time to arrive at the hospital and take up stations in the waiting room, where they sat nervously and passed the hours waiting to hear their names called. For Clark, the call came shortly before midnight, when a nurse arrived to tell him that he was the proud father of a healthy baby boy. He had hardly finished receiving congratulations from Leonard when an almost identical nurse appeared to announce that the second birth had occurred at exactly one minute after twelve.
And so it was that Jackson Howard Grace was born on August the 10th and I was born on August the 11th. As for my name, had it been up to my father it would have been Phillip, for obvious and unfortunate reasons. My mother, however, stood her ground and I became Edward Canton Brummel. My father’s disappointment at this turn of events faded later in the year when the Phillies won the National League pennant for the first time since 1915 in a nail-biter that came down to the last game on the final day of the season and a 4 to 1 win against the favored but despised Brooklyn Dodgers. And although they subsequently lost the World Series to what my father referred to for the rest of his life only as “that other team from New York,” he continued to view his Whiz Kids as the greatest team in baseball history.
The