Waiting for Teddy Williams

by Howard Frank Mosher

  14

  E.A. WATCHED, and the next time Teddy showed up, they made their plan. After BP they started down the river road toward the iron bridge to the village. As they passed Midnight Auto, Orton and Norton stared at them from a ’72 Firebird they were cannibalizing for seat covers. They each had a used beer going from Dan’s redemption center.

  When E.A. and Teddy reached the T where the Canada Post Road off Allen Mountain crossed the M&B line, Teddy headed down the tracks. He passed the old water tower, stopped on the trestle, looked back, and waved. Then he continued across the trestle toward the village, and E.A. turned back toward home.

  As Ethan came abreast of Midnight Auto again, Orton and Norton sidled out into the road. One on each side of him, cutting off escape in both directions.

  “Where you going, boy?” said Orton, who’d positioned himself on the village side. “You got to pay the toll. Ten cents. Otherwise, you’re goat bait.”

  Ethan started walking toward Orton. When he reached the state boy he jabbed him twice in the nose, two short punches, no wind-up. Orton’s nose was already spurting blood as he lifted his hands to his face, just the way Teddy said he would. E.A. took a short step and delivered a right to Orton’s midriff, then a left hook to the jaw, and Orton was down in the road. Meanwhile, Norton was rabbit-punching his neck.

  E.A. twisted away and sprinted toward home. Then he slowed down, and when he heard Norton panting behind him, he turned and let the younger skinhead run straight into his first jab. He thought his left hand might be broken. Fighting now with his right, he went for the breadbasket. But Norton, though his nose was bleeding, kept coming. He was all over E.A., whose left hand hurt so much he couldn’t lift it. It was time for Teddy’s contingency plan. E.A. stepped back, and when Norton charged, E.A. kicked him as hard as he could kick, right “where the sun don’t shine,” as Teddy had put it. Norton howled, went down, rolled on the ground. Now Orton was up and headed his way, leading Satan Davis on a chain. E.A. still had time to get away, beat him home. But he wasn’t finished.

  “Orton and Norton Horton,” he said in a sharp, carrying voice. “I know what you boys do every morning. I know why you have to hang up those sheets.”

  Orton stopped short and jerked back on the chain. Satan kept trotting and dragged him several steps down the road. Ethan stood his ground.

  “What about our sheets?” Orton said.

  “You hang out your sheets every morning because you pee the bed every night. You ever punch me again, or shag me home with rocks, or put Satan Davis on me, I’ll have it all over town that you boys pee the bed every night. Anybody doesn’t believe me, I’ll invite them out here to see you hanging up your sheets.”

  Orton and Norton were trying to pull Satan back toward Midnight Auto when they spotted Teddy, standing in the river road between them and the entrance to the junkyard. He’d come up out of the meadow, his pant legs wet from wading back across the river.

  “What you staring at?” Orton yelled. “You old drunk.”

  “Sic!” Orton shouted and loosed the goat. Old Satan charged straight toward Teddy, who punched the goat once, hard, right between its horns, driving it to its knees. The dazed goat staggered back toward the junkyard, bleated, and took refuge inside a doorless bread truck. Orton and Norton had taken off across the meadow.

  Teddy lit a cigarette. “How’s your hand, Ethan?”

  “I think I broke it.”

  “Bend your fingers back. Now the other way. Over your palm, toward the wrist. No, it’s not broke. It was broke, you couldn’t do that. Besides, it ain’t your throwing hand. Long as it isn’t your throwing hand, we can live with it.”

  That afternoon Devil Dan drove his four-wheeler into the WYSOTT Allen dooryard. He spun around and around the yard at a furious pace until Gypsy and Ethan came outside. He stopped, facing them, still aboard the running ATV

  “That little bastard of yours took his ball bat and frailed hell out of my state help this morning,” he screamed. “Then he half-kilt my prize goat.”

  “That’s too bad,” Gran called out through the open doorway. “Now Satan Davis won’t be able to service R.P. tonight.”

  Dan shouted, “I’ll dozer down these buildings by snowfall. We’ll settle up, you can bet.”

  “We’ll settle up right now, you impotent dwarf,” Gran shrieked, and tossed Grandpa Gleason Allen’s rifle to Gypsy. And to E.A.’s delight, as Devil Dan spun out of the dooryard, his ever-loving ma put one right through Dan’s hat.

  All around, it had been a grand day for the Wrong Side of the Tracks Allens.

  15

  “YOU DON’T ASK ME to throw you BP much these days, hon. You aren’t losing interest in baseball, I hope. Baseball’s your ticket to college.”

  “He probably doesn’t want to end up beaned and wearing a metal plate in his head for the rest of his natural life like that imbecile Don Zimmer,” Gran said. “Zimmer handed the Yankees the ’seventy-eight playoff game on a silver platter.”

  “We know, ma,” Gypsy said. “Bucky Dent’s pop-fly home run.” Gypsy yawned. She’d had a busy night. First the Reverend had pulled in and wanted her to dress up like Potiphar’s wife in the Bible and “give Joseph the works.” He’d left about ten. At eleven Father LaFontaine had shown up and requested “Christ’s Temptation in the Wilderness,” with a very different outcome from the original story, since Father L never got past the second temptation, the Appearance of Salome in Gypsy’s West Texas cowgal outfit.

  “It wasn’t just Dent’s home run,” Gran complained. “Instead of lifting that rag-arm Torrez, Zimmer left him in to get hammered some more. The game got out of reach, and I knew right then I’d never walk again. All because of Don Zimmer and that metal plate.”

  “Ma, Don Zimmer does not have a plate in his head. That’s one of those convenient Red Sox myths to explain the unexplainable. Like Harry Frazee trading Ruth to New York to finance No, No, Nanette—the Curse of the Bambino. The fact is, the Sox’s slump is a mystery. Sort of like the Virgin Birth.”

  “Hogwash,” Gran said. “In both instances. I can explain the Virgin Birth and I can explain why the Sox ain’t won a Series. As far as Mary goes, she got knocked up, same as you did with E.A., Gypsy Lee. Then she went and made up a story to tell that gullible young nail-driver. As for the Sox, it’s all a plot to keep me wheelchair-bound.”

  It was early in the morning. E.A. had grown two more inches over the past winter. He was thinking more about girls, especially before going to sleep at night. At times he almost wished he could go to school so he could get to know some girls.

  “I always want you to pitch to me, ma. I haven’t lost interest in baseball.”

  They went down to Fenway in the morning dew, Gypsy still in her cowgal boots and fringed buckskin dress.

  “Tiant’s spinning a beauty this afternoon, folks,” Gypsy announced. “He’s ready. Checks the runners. Twists, looks right up at the center-field scoreboard—wow, how’s he do that?—delivers. How come you don’t swing at so many pitches anymore, hon?”

  “I’m learning to be patient, ma.”

  Gypsy grinned out from under her cowgirl hat. “I’ll try to do better. Get more pitches over the plate.”

  “You do fine. It’s good practice for me to lay off the ones out of the strike zone. Not get down on the count.”

  Gypsy pitched. The ball was outside two inches. E.A. took his short stride, thought about it, held off.

  “Good eye, hon. Walk’s as good as a single, right? You want one from Eckersley? The Eck winds, hair flying, throws. Uh-oh. Good ducking, honey boy. We wouldn’t want you to go through life with a metal plate in your head.”

  “Don’t worry about me, ma. I’ll get out of the way.”

  “That’s what the Zim said,” Gran said.

  Gypsy pitched. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “I had no idea you could hit a ball that far, baby. Well, twelve was the biblical age of manhood. The age of Our Lord when He went up to the temple and
held discourse with the Pharisees.”

  “It’s the age you started going down to the trestle to hold another kind of course with Gone and Long Forgotten,” Gran said. Then she cackled. “I got you both beat. I started going to the trestle when I was nine.”

  Gypsy and E.A. sat on the catwalk of the old water tower by the trestle, just below the osprey’s nest, dangling their feet and legs in thin air, the hot tarry scent of the railroad ties in the air around them.

  In the olden days, coal-driven steam locomotives had stopped here to fill their boilers. Forty steam trains a day had come through Kingdom Common on the Montreal-to-Boston line. Now only six daily freights, pulled by diesel engines, used the line.

  Along with the high mowing meadow, Fenway Park, and Allen Mountain Brook, the water tower was one of E.A.’s favorite places. Ever since he was five, he and Gypsy had often climbed the rickety wooden ladder and sat on the catwalk next to the rusty metal spout. It was a fine place to view the surrounding countryside. Below was the siding where the steam trains had pulled off to take on water. To their left, the Canada Post Road crossed the tracks and joined the river road. The high trestle spanned the river to their right. Across the river, beyond the line of soft maples and willows, lay the big pasture behind the commission-sales barn. Then the village.

  The water tower was covered with faded messages. The largest, in red letters touched up every two or three summers by Moonface Poulin, was the ever-present reminder of the last ultimate triumph of the Sox. Just below, LYD PI K M was all that was left of the old Lydia Pinkham patent medicine ad. At abandoned homesteads on the mountain E.A. had dug up a few large shards of Lydia Pinkham bottles, but none intact, though he had unearthed a Dr. Atwood’s Bitters that was worth twenty-four dollars in his bottle book. Under the LYD PI K M were some initials in faded hearts. One was especially intriguing: G A + F V Ethan figured G A might be Gypsy Allen. But who was F V? Fred? Frank? He didn’t have a clue. Maybe G A was Gloria Alexander, Bobby Alexander’s mother over in the village. Except that she wasn’t an Alexander until after she married Bill.

  Gypsy strummed a chord of “Nobody’s Child,” the song she’d been working on for a long time. Then she stopped playing and looked off toward Jay Peak. “When we go to Music City, sweetie, we’ll mosey down through the Smokies. See some wild country. Go over to Merlefest, too, in North Carolina. ‘Nobody’s Child’ is the one I’m going to win Merlefest with. It’s more geared for the festivals than the Top Forty.”

  “It’s a great song, ma. The songs in the Top Forty all suck.”

  “Well, in general they do. Except when they play an oldie but goodie.”

  The 9:30 A.M. southbound whistled. A minute later the lead diesel pulled into sight. The water tank vibrated as the train passed below, mainly Burlington Northern and Canadian Pacific boxcars now, though a few Atlantic and St. Lawrence lumber flatbeds, the yellow boards stacked tall and partly covered with tarps. Three open automobile carriers went by, loaded with brand-new pickups straight from Detroit, being shipped east to Boston through Canada.

  Gypsy’s red cowgirl hat was tipped back now, and she looked like one of the Lovett Sisters on the cover of the Big D Jamboree CD of songs from the ’40s and ’50s that E.A. had gotten her last Christmas out of a music mail-order catalog.

  “Detroit,” Gypsy said, shaking her head. “Reminds me of that old song ‘Detroit City.’ That was one of his favorites.”

  “Whose favorites, ma?”

  “Gone and Long Forgotten’s. He loved to have me sing it ’cause it’s about a natural-born loser. Hometown guitar-picker lights out to make it in the big city. Detroit. Pardon me. De-troit. Let’s get it right here, folks. Anyway, he goes up to De-troit from wherever, East Jesus or West Overshoe or Kingdom Common. And what happens? God love him, he falls flat on his face. What he forgot, see, was he was taking his own sorry self right along with him. Not that Mr. Nobody even got that far, come to think of it. He didn’t have the guts to try. I’m sorry, hon. I shouldn’t bad-mouth your relation. There’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that, ma?”

  “He was a no-good, gutless, self-destructive son-of-a-bitching loser, pardon my French.”

  “Ma?”

  “What, hon? I’m sorry I went to rant there for a minute. When I get my Allen up, I can’t seem to help myself.”

  “I know, ma. What I wanted to ask, when are you going to Nashville?”

  “Not until you’re grown-up, hon. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t ever leave you.”

  “I’m not worried. But I’d like for you to go soon so you don’t wait till it’s too late. Gran and Bill and I’d be all right for a while. I want you to go, ma. Like the guy, the natural-born loser, in ‘Detroit City.’ Only you’d make it. I know you would.”

  “How do you know that, lovey?”

  “Well, for one thing, Our Father told me. I mean the Colonel.”

  “Oh, E.A. Maybe you just thought he said that.”

  “He really did, ma.”

  The train whistled at the crossing in the Common. Gypsy sang a line of “The Wreck of the Old Ninety-seven.”

  “Ma, tell the story about you and Gone and Long Forgotten.”

  “Oh, that’s a sad, sad tale, darling.”

  “I like to hear it.”

  “Well, as young kids together, he and I would jump off the trestle into the big pool below. Sometimes we’d wait until a train was coming and the lead locomotive was on the trestle, whistle screaming, air brakes shrieking, then jump hand in hand. Just don’t ever let me catch you doing such a foolhardy thing, sweetie.”

  “That’s where you and my pa went skinny-dipping, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, hon. We were as wild as two young birds of the air.”

  “Weren’t you afraid of tramps?”

  “Not with Mr. GALF there. Plus that’s where Our Father blessed me eternally by giving me you, hon. The best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “I thought it was Mr. Gone and Long Forgotten who gave you me.”

  “He was just the instrument of the Lord, hon. Only Our Father can give precious life, and all life is precious. I used to tell that to Mr. Gone and Long Forgotten when he killed snakes and frogs and pigeons. Anyway, you were conceived under that very trestle. Romantic, huh?”

  “Well, it is, sort of.”

  “Bobbi Gentry could’ve gotten a good song out of it.”

  “You got two good songs out of it, ma. ‘Knocked Up in Knoxville’ and ‘Nobody’s Child.’ I know you’ll get the handle to ‘Nobody’s Child.’”

  “Yes. Companion songs, lovey. To showcase your ma’s versatility. You see, Our Father gave me the gift to write them. It would have been wrong not to use it and multiply that gift, like the good steward. We’re all stewards of our own gifts. You’re the steward of your gift for baseball.”

  “Did Mr. Gone and Long Forgotten have a gift?”

  “I guess you’d have to say he was pretty good at what we did under the trestle, ’cause he helped me make a fine redheaded boy. Apart from that, anything else he was good at, he wantonly threw away.”

  “Tell about racing the train, ma. Sing ‘The Kingdom County Accident.’”

  “That’s a sad and tragic song, hon.”

  “They love it when you sing it out.”

  “People have gruesome taste. Okay, here we go:

  It was the summer of ’eighty-four.

  We wasn’t really kids no more.

  When we took it in our dumb brains

  To race the seven-thirty-five train.”

  Gypsy stopped. “I don’t know, hon. I can’t go on. He had a souped-up jitney, and he’d start up on the mountain, on the Post Road, and race the train to the crossing. I did it with him just once. It was a big rush, an even bigger thrill than jumping off the trestle. We bounced over the rails a heartbeat ahead of the locomotive. To tell you the truth it scared me half to death. You know what scared me most? That if we lost I’d never write all the songs in me. Finally
I got Gone and Long Forgotten to promise he’d never do it again, but one evening when it was raining he did it one time more.”

  “And he’s buried under the marker?”

  “Mr. Nobody’s buried beneath the marker, all right.”

  “Ma? How come sometimes you call him Mr. Nobody?”

  “Because he was afraid of being somebody, hon. Afraid to be a father, a husband, and a success. Afraid to use the talent Our Father in His infinite wisdom had given him. Afraid to pay the price of his talent. Oh, hon. He was a low-down coward like the dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard and laid poor Jesse in his grave. Pardon me for badmouthing him, baby. But he was no man.”

  “Do you think Mr. Nobody ever would have changed?”

  “I don’t have much faith in change, baby. He was a son of a bitch through and through. Start to finish. I’m sorry. I guess that’s the WYSOTT Allen in me.”

  “Old Lady Benton says I’m a bad seed. I guess I get that from Mr. Nobody.”

  “Old Lady Benton can go screw herself, sweetie pie. I’m sorry for the language, but she can. I’ll tell her so next time I see her. You aren’t a bad seed, you’re the most precious gift a mother could ever receive. I shouldn’t have told you all this, baby doll. It isn’t right for a ma to spill the beans to her only begotten boy about getting knocked up by a no-good, low-down, two-timing loser.”

  Gypsy laughed and sang:

  “Knocked up in Knoxville.

  Made up in Memphis.

  Hitched up . . . in Nashville

  . . . Tin-nessee.”

  E.A. hummed along. But he never did have much of a singing voice, and besides, he had an idea. A good one. Sitting on the water tank in the hazy morning sunlight, listening to Gypsy warble “Knocked Up in Knoxville,” he believed he’d hit on a way to find out what he most wanted to know.