Summerland. Michael Chabon
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earlier, bound for someplace else, come from who knew where, with seven ugly stitches in his cheek.
“What do you know about it?” said Jennifer T. to her father. “Are you an aeronautical engineer who studied at M.I.T., like Mr. Feld? Maybe you’d like to explain to us about the Bernoulli principle?”
Albert glowered at her. His battered, pocked cheeks darkened, and he raised his hand as if to give his daughter a swat. Jennifer T. looked up at him without ducking or flinching or showing any emotion at all.
“I wish you would,” she said. “I’d get your butt thrown off this island once and for all. Deputy sheriff said you’re down to your last chance.”
Albert lowered his hand, slowly, and looked around at the other parents, who were watching him to see what he was going to do. They had an idea that he was probably not going to do anything, but with Albert Rideout, you never knew. The fresh scar on his face was testimony to that. They had known Albert since they were all children together, and some of them still remembered what a sweet and fearless boy he had once been, a tricky pitcher with a big, slow curveball, a party to every adventure, and still the best helper Mr. Brody had ever had around the drugstore. Mr. Brody had even cherished a hope that Albert might someday follow in his footsteps and go to pharmacy school. The thought nearly brought a tear to his eye, but he cried even more rarely than he smiled.
“I ain’t afraid of the deputy sheriff,” Albert said at last. “And I sure as hell ain’t afraid of you, you little brat.”
But Jennifer T. wasn’t listening to her father anymore. She had taken off at top speed across the field to catch hold of the mooring line as Mr. Feld tossed it down to the grasping, leaping hands of the children. Before anyone had any idea of what she was doing, or could have begun to try to stop her, she tugged herself up onto the rope, twisting the end of it around her right leg.
The Victoria Jean rolled slightly towards the ground on that side, then righted herself, thanks to her Feld Gyrotronic Pitch-Cancellation (patent pending). Going hand over hand, steadying herself with her right leg, Jennifer T. pulled herself quickly up to the gleaming chrome rail of the black gondola. Mr. Feld and Ethan took hold of her and dragged her aboard. They were both too amazed by her appearance to criticise her for being reckless, or even to say hello.
“Hey,” Ethan managed finally. “Your dad’s here?”
Jennifer T. ignored Ethan. She turned to Mr. Feld.
“Can I bring her in?” she asked him.
Mr. Feld looked down and saw Albert Rideout, red in the face, standing with his arms folded across his chest looking daggers at them. He turned to Jennifer T. and nodded, and stepped to one side. Jennifer T. took the wheel in both hands, as he had taught her to do.
“I was going to set her down by the picnic tables,” Dr. Feld said. “Jennifer T.?”
Jennifer T. didn’t answer him. She had brought the tail of Victoria Jean around, so that they were facing southeast, towards Seattle and the jagged dark jaw of the Cascade Mountains beyond. There was a funny look in her eye, one that Ethan had seen before, especially whenever her dad came around.
“Do we have to?” she said at last. “Couldn’t we just keep on going?”
IT WAS A weird game.
The rain came soon after play began, with the Roosters as the home team taking the field in a kind of stiff mist, not quite a drizzle. The Reds’ pitcher, Andy Dienstag, got into trouble early, loading the bases on three straight walks and then walking in a run. The Reds’ pitching seemed to get worse as the rain grew harder, and by the fifth inning, when they halted play, the score was 7–1 in favour of Mr. Olafssen’s Roosters. Then came a strange, tedious half hour during which they all sat around under their jackets and a couple of tarps fetched from the backs of people’s pickups, and waited to see what the weather and Mr. Arch Brody wanted to do. Mr. Olafssen still had not put Ethan in the game. For the first time this was not a source of relief to Ethan. He was not sure why. Mr. Olafssen had met Mr. Feld’s announcement that Ethan wanted to learn to play catcher with a thin smile and a promise to “kick the idea around a little”. And it was not as if this were the kind of long, slow, blazing green summer afternoon that, according to Peavine, baseball had been invented to help you understand. It was miserable, grey, and dank. But for some reason he wanted to play today.
“I have been accessing my historical database,” Thor said. He was sitting between Jennifer T. and Ethan, holding up the tarp over all of their heads. He had been holding it like that for twenty minutes, straight up in the air, without any sign that his arms were getting tired. Sometimes Ethan wondered if he really were an android. “The last reported precipitation at these coordinates was in 1822.”
“Is that so?” said Jennifer T.” And what does all this rain do to your big undersea volcano theory?”
“Huh,” said Thor.
“Maybe,” Jennifer T. suggested, “you’re experiencing the emotion we humans like to call ‘being full of it’.” She clambered out from under the tarp and stood up. “Shoot!” she said. “I want to play!”
But the rain went on, and on, and after a while the tiny spark of interest in the game that Ethan had felt kindle in him that morning, reading Peavine’s book, had all but been extinguished by the dampness of the day. He saw Mr. Brody check his watch, and puff out his cheeks, blowing a long disappointed breath. This was it; he was going to call the game. Do it, Ethan thought. Just get it over with.
Suddenly Jennifer T. turned and looked towards the canoe birch forest. “What was that?” she said.
“What was what?” Ethan said, though he heard it too. It sounded like whistling, like a whole bunch of people all whistling the same tune at once. It was far away and yet unmistakable, the tune lonely and sweet and eerie, like the passing of a distant ship way up the Sound. Jennifer T. and Ethan looked at each other, then at the other kids on the bench. They were all watching Mr. Brody as he poked a finger into the grass, measuring its wetness. Nobody but Jennifer T. and Ethan seemed to have heard the strange whistling. Jennifer T. sniffed the air.
“Hey,” she said. “I smell…” She stopped. She wasn’t sure what she had smelled, only a difference in the air.
“The wind,” said Albert Rideout. “Comin’ from the east now.”
Sure enough, the wind had turned, blowing in crisp and piney from over the eastern Sound, and carrying away with it, as it flowed over the field at Summerland, all the piled-up tangle of grey clouds. For the first time in days the sun reappeared, strong and warm. Curls of steam began to rise from the grass.
“Play ball!” cried Mr. Brody.
“Feld,” said Mr. Olafssen. “You’re in the game. Take left.” He stopped Ethan as he trotted past. “At Monday practice maybe we can put you behind the plate for a little while, all right? See how it goes.”
“OK,” said Ethan. Running out to left, feeling almost ready to catch a fly ball, he looked up as the last low scraps of cloud were carried west by the softly whistling breeze. He was sure that it was the ferishers he had heard whistling. They were near; they were watching him; they wanted to see him play, to see if he was willing to follow in the footsteps of Peavine and apprentice himself to the game. They wanted to see him play. So they had whistled the rain away.
ETHAN CAME UP to bat in the bottom of the seventh, the final inning, with the Reds ahead 8–7. The change in the weather had proven more helpful to the Reds than to the Roosters – Kyle Olafssen, who was on the mound as six of the last seven Red runs came in, said the sun was in his eyes. Ethan walked over to the pile of bats and started to pick up the bright-red aluminium Easton that he normally used, because it was the one Mr. Olafssen had told him to use, back on the first day of practice. He could feel the eyes of all his team-mates on him. Jennifer T. was on first base, Tucker Corr on second, and there were two outs. All he had to do was connect, just get the ball out of the infield, and Tucker, who was fast, would be able to make it around to home. The game would