The Art of Fielding

by Chad Harbach

  “Sorry,” Henry said, wiping his eyes, once the several waves of sobbing had passed.

  “Hush now,” Affenlight said. “You just take it easy.”

  Affenlight brought Henry a wad of toilet paper with which to blow his nose. On the windowsill sat a bunch of bananas, an outsize box of Rice Krispies, and the proper dishware. Affenlight opened the minifridge and found a half gallon of milk—Owen’s way, no doubt, of trying to provide for Henry in his absence. Affenlight poured a bowl of cereal, carved off banana slices with the spoon, added milk. He didn’t quite spoon-feed Henry, but he did sit beside him with a hand on Henry’s shoulder, murmuring his approval at each swallowed bite. With his free hand he lit a cigarette, lit another when it was done. Henry grimaced at the first spoonful, and as it reached his stomach he looked like he might vomit, but after a few bites things went more smoothly. He made it most of the way through the bowl and lay down drowsily.

  “You have to leave early to make the flight,” Affenlight said. “I’ll set your alarm.”

  Henry nodded.

  “I’ll drive you to the airport. Meet me outside by the statue. Six o’clock sharp.”

  Henry yawned and nodded again. It wasn’t clear whether he was really listening or whether Affenlight would have to come here tomorrow morning and drag him out of bed; either way was fine. Affenlight took the cereal bowl and the fly-clotted soup containers to the bathroom, dumped them down the sink, rinsed them, and set them on Owen’s desk to dry. On his way out he snapped off the light.

  “President Affenlight?” Henry said.

  Affenlight paused in the doorway. “Yes?”

  “G’night.”

  Affenlight smiled. “Don’t forget your uniform.”

  73

  As the door swung shut his foot kicked something, knocking it over—a squat container like the ones he’d just emptied. Luckily the seal on the lid was tight and it didn’t spill. As he picked it up he could feel the heat of the soup through the plastic. He carried it down the stairs with him, lit a cigarette as he stepped outside.

  The evening was cool and dry. Affenlight sat down on the broad stone base of the Melville statue. The warmth of the soup container felt good between his hands; he peeled off the lid and let the steam waft up to his nose. Chowder, Boston clam. It smelled marvelous. He lifted the container and took a sip, parted his lips to let through a cube of potato, a chewy dollop of clam. The texture, the richness of the cream, the proportions of salt and pepper, which seemed so simple but were often skewed—Affenlight had eaten his share of chowder, and this was a nearly ideal specimen. The lake spread out before him, better than any ocean. Was this what they were serving in the dining hall these days? It couldn’t be. If it was, they should cut costs. If it was, he should have eaten there more often.

  When the soup was gone he lit another cigarette. The pain had returned to his chest, and in addition he could feel it in his shoulder, or his collarbone—somewhere around there. Each drag on the Parliament seemed to exacerbate it. If it didn’t pass, if it came back again, he might have to think about calling the doctor.

  By the time he entered his office his chest felt better. Contango greeted him warmly. Affenlight scratched the back of the husky’s sugar-furred neck, opened the office door and the outside door so Contango could wander out into the quad. Then he called the airline and converted his plane ticket to Henry’s name, called his car service and scheduled a trip to the airport for six o’clock. There was no need to drive Henry to the airport. Henry could decide whether he wanted to go to South Carolina, just as Mike Schwartz could decide whether he wanted to take the job in the AD’s office. These children weren’t his children; they weren’t children at all.

  He loosened his tie, poured a sizable scotch, put Gounod’s Faust on the shiny executive stereo that was tucked into the bookshelves. He lit a Parliament and sat down at his computer to write Pella an e-mail.

  Dear Pella,

  I just wanted to tell you that I saw Henry today. He looks a little rough, but he’ll be fine.

  He paused, unsure of what else to say. He wanted to write a truthful message, and yet regarding the biggest, most intractable matter of all he had no intention of telling the truth. If he told Pella the truth, she would leave this place and never forgive it. He wanted her to stay. For practical reasons, he told himself: She had been accepted. Her tuition would be nil, provided Gibbs kept his word. Given her disciplinary record at Tellman Rose, her expired SAT scores, her lack of a high school diploma, it would probably take two years to get her into any other decent school.

  But there were selfish reasons too, and maybe those were the ones he really cared about. He needed her here. They’d erase him from the memory of this place as quickly and thoroughly as they could; she was the part of him that would be allowed to stay. That was the deal. Even if he was elsewhere—God knew where he would be—he needed her here. Was that insane? Probably it was, after what had happened today. But he couldn’t change what he wanted just because it was insane. He couldn’t hate this place just because it had cast him out. And he couldn’t have Pella or Owen hating it either. It was no worse than anyplace else, and it was theirs.

  Contango wandered back inside, did a lap of the office, and settled down on the rug, head propped on his paws. Affenlight finished his scotch, lit another cigarette. He wasn’t sure what to say to Pella; maybe the safer course, for the moment, would be to say nothing. He’d get his story straight first. With Owen too. That would be even more difficult—how to give up Owen without Owen knowing why? Owen would almost certainly figure it out, there were clues enough to piece it together, but Affenlight couldn’t let Owen figure it out. He couldn’t let any of the weight or blame of his banishment settle on Owen’s shoulders. He couldn’t become burdensome or pitiable in Owen’s eyes. The thought of such a thing sent a pain through his chest that was worse than the actual pain, unless that was the actual pain and he was confusing the two. In any case he’d have to get his story straight before he talked to Pella. Early retirement, doctor’s orders, stress, a longing to travel, to write, to teach again—some bullshit like that. He closed out of his e-mail and shut down the computer, as he did every night.

  When the screen went dark he felt so deeply and sweetly tired that even to walk upstairs seemed impossible. With effort he pushed back his massive chair and made his way over to the love seat. He sat down and laboriously unlaced his wing tips. Contango was asleep on the rug. Affenlight lay down, crossed his long legs at the ankles, and spread his jacket over his torso so as not to get cold. He’d taken to turning the building’s thermostat down, way down, at the end of the working day.

  The music that entered his dream wasn’t Gounod or Mozart or anything Affenlight loved. It was the first few notes of the old Westish fight song, sentimental, unassuming, played by a flute or some other trilling woodwind. The band kicked in, brassy and strong. Eighty-six maple go. Eighty-six maple go. Hut hut. The ball came back between Neagle’s gold thighs, snapped into Affenlight’s hands. The pleasure of pebbled leather against his palms. Cavanaugh on the go route, fastest man on the team, a wonder of speed but with terrible hands. Affenlight drop-stepped, scissored, dropped, scissored. The end would come from his blind side. Cavanaugh loved the go route, ran it like a big-college guy though he couldn’t catch anything, what a tease that made him, a purveyor of false hope with his racehorse strides, neck and neck with his man but not for long, no safety ever deep enough to be there to take credit when Cavanaugh dropped the ball. Still there was always the chance that this would be the one. The next one was always the one.

  How many days since Affenlight found that sheaf of papers in the library basement? Now with the scrum of linemen snorting and collapsing around him, he remembered the music of H. Melville’s words. How odd. His concentration was usually total, everybody’s was, needed to be, that was what made it work, the common agreement that the game was all-important, but now the encroachment seemed lovely, an intimation of a world beyond th
e world of the green-and-white field. It was then, as he finished his seven-step drop and heard Melville’s words and saw Cavanaugh gaining separation from his man, that Affenlight knew he was through with football, through for all time, he wouldn’t be back next year. Other things awaited. It was good to be young and to know it for once. So much unfolding to do. He had the laces, he patted the ball. Footsteps pounded toward him from behind. There was no hint of wind, a ship captain’s nightmare, a quarterback’s dream. I won’t be back next year. He pushed off and threw as high and as deep as he could, the ball arcing through blue toward Cavanaugh’s terrible hands, but he no longer cared whether Cavanaugh caught it or not, and as the end arrived and his breath left him he couldn’t remember or imagine ever having cared. He was five or six, he was cutting pumpkins in the sun with his father. The tiny sere needles of stems bit through his cotton gloves and stung his hands. Still he loved the pumpkins, he could not lift the big ones, and the field all around was autumn brown.

  74

  The Harpooners queued along the third-base line, shoulder to shoulder, their caps clapped over the spearmen that adorned their pinstriped chests. Schwartz gazed out at the emerald diamond, which was part of the Atlanta Braves’ spanking-new AAA facility in Comstock, South Carolina. The field breathed magically beneath the high-banked lights, the grass precisely mowed in starburst rays of lighter and deeper green. Down the first-base line the Amherst fans were already on their feet, chanting and cheering and waving their purple pennants. A beefy man in a size-too-small tux clambered out of the stands’ first row and swaggered to home plate, cordless microphone in hand, followed by a crouching cameraman in an ESPN polo. The betuxed guy turned to face the crowd, doffed his white ten-gallon hat, and pressed it to his beefy chest.

  “Why’s he in the batter’s box?” Izzy muttered. “He’s messing up the chalk.”

  Suitcase, who was standing beside Izzy, nodded and spit. “It’s the national championship, for Chrissake. They could’ve at least gotten a chick to sing the anthem.”

  “Yeah, word. A chick in a dress. How hard is that?”

  “Ssssshhh,” hissed Loondorf. “That’s Eric Strell.”

  “He’s what?”

  “Eric Strell. ‘Don’t Fence Me Out’? Remember?” Loondorf, who sang tenor in the Westish Wails, began to croon in a quiet voice: “Don’t… fence me out / In my heart there is no doubt…”

  “Country’s gay,” said Izzy.

  “It’s a good song,” protested Loondorf. “I might solo on it.”

  “Gay.”

  “It’s about Mexican immigrants. Like your dad.”

  “Ga-a-ay.”

  Owen cleared his throat.

  Izzy covered his mouth with his cap. “Sorry, Buddha.”

  “Can it, all of you.” Schwartz’s voice was sharp, but inwardly he felt pleased that the younger guys were loose enough to goof around. He himself had already puked twice out of nervousness—once discreetly in a locker room sink, once less discreetly by the left-field foul pole during warm-ups. If any balls got hit down into the corner, Quisp or the Amherst left fielder would be in for a messy surprise.

  Eric Strell was really belting it out. He wasn’t a small guy—only one notch smaller than Schwartz, and he was crammed into that tux with the boots, the bolo tie, the whole bit, his cheeks the alcoholic color of steak tartare, especially when he reached for the sky with his hat’s crown in his right hand and brought down the HOME… OF THE… BRAAYYYYYVE in a tumid drawl that lasted so long it left him doubled over, crumpled and spent like Arsch after a jog to the lighthouse. The crowd exploded. Eric Strell straightened, waved his ten-gallon hat at the stands. He brought the mike close to his now-crimson face, beefy hand cupped tight around the windscreen, and gazed into the camera lens, making sweet love to each and every American who’d tuned into ESPN2 hoping to see bowling or billiards reruns and instead got the D-III college baseball championship game. “Puh-lay baawwwl!” he purred.

  Schwartz put his hat on, blinked back a renegade drop of salt water. He’d always been a sucker for the anthem, and then there was the almost unfair beauty of a professional ballfield, the expensive riotous green of the grass, the scalloped cutouts around the bases, the whole place groomed like living art. As he turned back toward the dugout and glanced into the stands, it seemed as if the little contingent of navy-clad fans were composed entirely of mothers—Rick’s mom flanked by the gawky ten-year-old O’Shea twins; Sal Phlox’s mom ancient and white-haired and leaning into Papa Phlox’s elbow; Meat’s mom seated because of her gout while everyone else stood, spilling out over her chair, a ripe blueberry of a woman in her triple-XL Westish T-shirt. Owen’s and Izzy’s waving their Westish pennants like cheerleaders. Loondorf’s mom, who’d brought them so many kringles over the course of the season; Ajay’s tiny Indian mom with her many bracelets; and on down the line. An endless supply of mothers, though of course the one you wanted was never there.

  He plunked down on the bench to don his chest protector. A cell phone buzzed nearby. He glanced around, ready to cuss at someone—no phones in the dugout—then recognized the ring as his own. He unzipped the side pocket of his bag, peeked at the display: Pella’s new number. There were several missed calls too, all from her. What a great time to get in touch. He powered down the phone, grabbed his mask and mitt, and headed up the dugout steps to join his gathered teammates.

  Coach Cox read the lineup in his usual way, but you could tell by his rapid mustache-stroking that his nerves were up. “Starblind Avila Dunne. Schwartz O’Shea Boddington. Quisp Phlox Guladni.” He paused, examined their faces, stroked his mustache some more. “Big game today. Real big. But you guys are ready. Play together, and you’ll be fine. I’m not one for speeches, as you know, but I just wanted to say that… I’m really proud of you all. You guys are ballplayers all the way.” Coach Cox glanced around, stroking his mustache, embarrassed at his own floridity. “Mike, you got anything to add?”

  Last night, as he lay awake in the hotel room listening to Meat snore—at least they had separate beds this trip—Schwartz had developed a strong premonition that Henry would show up today. It made no sense, there was no way, and yet the premonition had only grown stronger as the day went by, so that now Schwartz was surprised not to see the Skrimmer’s blue eyes as he scanned the huddle. Not that Henry had any business here. His presence, even as a spectator, would have been disruptive. Schwartz looked around the circle, cranked The Stare up to a 7, a 7½. He himself was clean-shaven, his razor burn finally gone, but his teammates had been cultivating playoff beards. Individually the beards ranged from wispy and pathetic to lush and shampooable; taken together they made the Harpooners look like a tough, grizzled group. Yes, Henry had helped them get here, whatever they accomplished they owed in part to him, but to win these last twelve games they’d had to fill the gap left by his absence as quickly as possible, and once you healed the Henry gap you had no place for Henry. Even Owen had a layer of soft grayish fuzz on his face.

  While Schwartz lay awake, he tried to concoct a pregame speech that would whip his team into a frenzy. A real fire-and-brimstone number, based on his favorite theme, that ageless angelic theme, of the underdog outlasting the favorite, the oppressed bitch-slapping the oppressor. He was going to start by bringing up the namby-pamby Amherst mascot: Their team was called the Lord Jeffs, after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the eighteenth-century British general who advocated using smallpox-infected blankets against Native Americans. And—so went the speech—not much had changed in three hundred years. The Amherst players were still Lords, still hip-deep in old-school power and privilege—imagine the practice facilities they had! Imagine the jobs they’d be given when they graduated! By comparison the Harpooners might as well have been sucking on smallpox blankets. They were going to answer to guys like the Amherst guys for the rest of their lives. Their average postgraduation starting salaries were miles apart—Schwartz had looked it up. So were their acceptance rates at places like Harvard and Yale and S
tanford Law. Their first, best, and last chance for preemptive revenge was here, now, tonight. Crush the Lords or be forever crushed.

  That was the sort of convoluted crap Schwartz kept coming up with, as he stared at the ceiling of the surprisingly cushy Comstock Inn while Arsch sawed logs. But pregame speeches didn’t depend on statistics or cute transitions. There wasn’t another Harpooner who cared about the relative socioeconomic status of Amherst and Westish grads, except maybe Rick, who’d beer-bonged himself out of his Ivy birthright and been banished to Westish. None of Schwartz’s teammates had Schwartzian ambitions. They just wanted to win a baseball game. Which was fine, better than fine, perfect, but it left him without a speech. His nerves were shot. It all came down to this.

  He tried to take The Stare to an 8, let it level off when he noticed that the stares coming back at him were like 9, maybe 9½. Plus beards. Starblind was pawing a cleat at the dirt like a coked-up bull. Even Owen’s soft gray eyes above his soft gray fuzz expressed a deathly intensity. Schwartz had talked an awful lot of warrior bullshit in his athletic career, especially at football halftimes, but this was the first time he’d ever felt like one of his teammates—any of his teammates—might haul off and punch him in the throat. The Skrimmer had been their transcendent talent, but now that he was gone the other eighteen Harpooners had found something new inside themselves. A paradox better left unconsidered: they might never have made it here with their best player. Schwartz cast his gaze around the circle one more time. What came back was something beyond confidence, a sense that the game might as well already have happened. He didn’t know if he was ready to play—his mind was everywhere, sleepless and scattered and sentimental—but they sure were. If he was the Ahab of this operation, this tournament the target of his mania, then they were Fedallah’s secret crew.