by Peter Troy
By the end of the fourth inning, the crowd has swelled to such a size that they now are stretched in a line two or three deep across the entire outfield, and though the game is still scoreless, the Umpire has been a more regular participant in this game than any contest anyone can recall having seen before. Already he has called out three batters on strikes, issued multiple warnings for failure to swing at fairly pitched balls, been the final arbiter on several close plays on the base paths, and fined Harry twenty-five cents for saying the word damn when he fouled a pitched ball off his foot. Since no one was quite sure to whom the fine should be paid, the Umpire rescinded it and Harry got off with a warning, until he said it again just a minute later, and the Umpire demanded half a dollar from him, to be given to one of the orphanages in town.
Ethan comes to bat in the top half of the fifth inning with one out and Finny on second base. Taking his familiar left-handed hitting stance, flexing his wrists and forearms made strong by years of fishing, he swings at the second pitch and sends the ball screaming back past the pitcher and out into center field. Finny races home with the Excelsiors’ first run, and the less finely dressed amongst the spectators cheer loudly enough to betray their Brooklyn roots, though they don’t seem to care just then. And for the first time since the inception of the Knickerbockers Ball Club, it seems that the Elysian Fields have been invaded by a hostile throng, some of them, worst of all, immigrants.
The score remains the same until the bottom half of the seventh inning, when a Knickerbocker batter slams a foul ball down the third-base line, scattering several spectators and striking one of them on the forehead. The victim hadn’t been paying attention to the action on the field, too busy looking through his wooden box camera, and several people in the crowd laugh when they see him go down. But as he lies there, dazed on the ground, concern for him grows. Ethan’s among the people and players who walk over to tend to him, until finally a physician steps forward and reassures everyone that he’ll be all right. Still, at the end of the inning, Ethan walks past him on his way in from the field.
Are you all right there, sir? he asks.
Embarrassed more than hurt, he replies, though his voice sounds weak. That was some ball you struck a few innings ago, he adds
Ethan nods his appreciation, then turns toward the camera. He’s seen them before, even once up close, but he’s never seen the view from under the small black curtain draped over it. The man notices Ethan’s interest and lifts up the curtain for Ethan to take a look. It’s a wooden box about eighteen inches square in front and connected to a smaller wooden board in back by six inches of accordion bellows, and Ethan wears a boyish smile as he leans toward it and the man drapes the curtain over his head. All goes dark until he presses an eye to the viewfinder and sees the field and the buildings across the river just as they’d been all along, only now defined by the frame the lens provides. It’s as if he’s taking a piece of the moment, trimming out the less important surroundings, and telling the story from his own view. He watches for several minutes as the Excelsiors are retired in order.
I’d better get back out there, he says, pulling his head out from under the curtain to see Finny trotting out toward shortstop. Thanks for the view, Mr.…
Hadley, the man says. Come back next inning if you’d like.
Of all the lads on the team, Ethan’s interests have always cast the largest net. He’d once insisted that Finny take him up to the tower of Brooklyn City Hall, where Finny worked as a doorman, so he could see the large clock from behind with all its inner workings exposed. He’s placed Harry on permanent alert to let him know when ships from exotic places come into port and spend the night. So it’s this kind of interest, this curiosity, that shares an equal part of his focus when he takes the field for the bottom half of the eighth inning. The Knickerbockers get two men aboard and Mr. Hadley begins moving his camera closer and closer to the foul line to get a picture of the batter. Ethan watches him adjust the tripod and focus the lens and is so engrossed that it takes the sound of the bat hitting the ball to snap his attention fully back to the game. From the look of Finny in front of him, he can tell the ball is hit in his direction, but when he looks into the sky, he sees nothing but sunshine.
Back Perfessor, back! Finny shouts from shortstop.
And Ethan turns over his left shoulder and begins drifting back, a few slow strides at first, until he finally catches sight of the ball and sees how far over his head it is. By the time he reaches it, he’s at the edge of the crowd gathered in left field and it’s still rolling slowly away from him. He finally picks it up and hurls it back toward the infield, but not before the two Knickerbockers score and the batter stands safely on third. Harry retires the next batter, but the damage has been done, and Ethan feels the disappointment of having let his team down. The Excelsiors trail two to one.
Nobody says anything to Ethan about the lapse. In fact, it becomes clear that nobody even saw the delay in Ethan’s break on the ball, just that it was hit well over his head and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. But it hangs on Ethan’s mind as Harry picks up another half dollar in fines for foul language as the Excelsiors prepare to take their final turn at bat. Smitty hits a ball high and far to lead off the inning, but the center fielder catches up to it, lets it bounce once, and catches it with ease to record the first out. Then it’s Finny, and he becomes the first man in the entire contest to reach base safely two times, this one the product of a cleanly struck single over the shortstop’s head. And then it’s Ethan’s turn again.
He takes the first pitch and the Umpire warns him that the next one like it will be a called strike. The second delivery is almost exactly the same as the first, and he launches his weight forward off his back foot, uncoiling his body as he always does, with his wrists, shoulders, and hips opening at the point of contact, driving the ball in the air toward right field. It takes off, gaining height as it travels, while the stunned Knickerbocker fielder turns and gives chase. At first the spectators, lined up along the outfield nearly three hundred feet from home base, are stunned as well and stand still as the ball approaches them. Then a lady screams and the crowd suddenly begins to scramble out of the way, with only a few of them stopping to watch with open mouths as the ball sails over their heads and lands with a splash at the edge of the Hudson River. The right fielder races through the crowd and to the end of the short bluff at the river’s edge, but by the time the ball bobs up to the surface, it’s twenty feet downstream and headed out quickly to the bay. He runs back through the outfield crowd and shouts toward the infield, throwing his arms above his head in disgust.
It’s gone … it’s gone down the river! he shouts.
By the time Ethan crosses home base, the crowd is as delirious as such a refined gathering can be, knowing that it’s only the second time a batter has reached the river that year, and the first time anyone has ever reached it on a fly, so long as anyone can recall. Even Knickerbocker supporters are cheering him for the feat, and Ethan’s teammates swarm him, slapping him on the back and shouting Perfessor! as he waves to his Mam and Da and Aunt Em and Paddy standing not too far away. Even Seanny summons up a proud smile. But the elation of the moment fades not long afterward when they realize that, as was the case with most contests, they’d only brought one ball to the game. For a moment it looks like a brawl might break out as Harry yells that the Knickerbockers were the host team and they had to provide the ball, which they of course remind him they had until Ethan went and knocked it into the water on purpose!
The Umpire finally decides that they should play another game in two Sundays, playing this one to its rightful conclusion first. A reporter from the Herald is there, and he calls Mr. Hadley over to get a picture of Ethan. There are questions to be answered and folks who come up to offer congratulations, and even a few Knickerbockers who want to shake his hand. Mam and Da and Aunt Em and Paddy are soon headed home on the ferry, knowing Ethan’ll be a while here and then with the lads at Feeny’s. Sea
nny’s leaving too, but not until after he brings a few of his associates to meet Ethan and mentions that his kid brother is just now doing some work with him and the lads down at Tammany. Ethan begins to correct Seanny, wanting to tell the Wall Street–looking men that he’s still just a fisherman and a ballplayer and had only told Seanny that he’d reconsider the matter when the summer ball season was done. But his attention is quickly drawn away again as he sees Mr. Hadley begin to walk off with his camera. He joins the last of the crowd walking to the ferry but lingers a few feet behind most of his teammates while talking with Mr. Hadley the whole time, even carrying the camera for the old man. Mr. Hadley wants to talk about the home run Ethan hit, but Ethan’s the one peppering him with questions, wanting to learn everything he can about taking pictures.
You know lad, Mr. Hadley finally says as Ethan hands him back his camera to board the ferry. I’ve a small office in the Brooklyn Heights where I take portraits. Anytime you want to come by and learn more, I’d be glad to teach you what I know.
Oh, you can be sure he’ll be there, Harry says from nearby. Ol’ Perfessor won’t be happy ’til he knows everything there is t’know in this world.
He knows how to hit, Smitty adds, an’ that’s all I care.
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS
AUGUST 3, 1857
The fishing was done by ten o’clock the very next day since it was just him without Da, and he washed as much of the smell off him as he could without taking a full-on bath. A couple of nice fluke would buy a few pints at Feeny’s, or a used book in pretty good condition, but Ethan had other ideas in mind for this day. He took the dollar and a half that was his share of three dollars’ worth of fish, stuffed the fifty cents in his pocket, and the dollar went in his top bureau drawer, the beginning, he decided that morning, of his own personal camera fund.
He still went out on the skiff six days a week, though Da, starting to feel the ache of arthritic bones, had begun to take regular days off. On the days when it was just Ethan, he’d generally stay out until well into the afternoon, doing the real fishing from six to noon or so, then drifting for a while without much more than a single line draped over the side and him with a book in his hands, of course. It might’ve been a glorious season but for the lingering question he’d managed to put off for one summer more. He was twenty-two by now, and it was time to step off the boat for real, as Seanny’d said just a few months before. But everything was all about to change today, Ethan figured, since he’d found what it was he wanted to do.
So he put on his best suit for the first time since the debacle with the Dean, and walked the three blocks to Fulton Street not far from City Hall, walking east until he found the small storefront window that read: J. M. Hadley, Daguerreotypist. And beneath it: Portraits, $1.00. Inside was a small waiting room, and there was a young man and woman seated in the corner, wearing their Sunday clothes, too. Ethan looked around for a moment, then at the young couple again.
Hello, is Mr. Hadley around? he asked them.
That’s the fella what takes th’pictures, yeah? the man said, and the young lady nudged him, pointing to the glass window with Mr. Hadley’s backwards name on it.
Yes, that’s him, Ethan answered.
He’s in back, the man said. But we’re next in line.
Oh, I know, I’m just here on business.
Well what d’ya think it is we’re here on? the man snapped, drawing a harder nudge from the woman beside him.
No fightin’ on our weddin’ day fer chrissakes, she said, commanding more than asking.
What’d I say? the man asked her with mild protest.
And Ethan decided to take a seat on the other side of the waiting room, offering simple congratulations to them as he passed.
It was a few quiet minutes in that room, with the two soon-to-be-weds looking like they were about to enlist in the army instead of entering marital bliss, and Ethan sat staring out the window at nothing in particular, not wanting to strike up a conversation that might lead to a fight on the day of their nuptials. Then Mr. Hadley came out from the back room with a man and a woman and two children dressed neatly, if not in a Sunday best that’d match most people’s.
Tomorrow, he said to them, nodding his head and sweeping his arm in an arching motion that must represent the sun rising and setting, Ethan figured. Tomorrow it will be ready, he said again, louder this time and holding up one finger.
The woman nodded, and the man looked at her quizzically.
Amanhã, she said, and the man nodded, taking change out of his pocket as if to hand it to Mr. Hadley.
No, no, the rest you pay me tomorrow, Mr. Hadley insisted, arching his arm again, then saying, Aman … before looking over at the woman.
Amanhã, she said, and smiled. To-morrow.
Then the man smiled and put the money back in his pocket and the two of them nodded their heads to Mr. Hadley. Obrigado. Amanhã. The man tapped the children on the shoulder and pointed to Mr. Hadley. Obrigado, they said, dutifully. And Mr. Hadley nodded back and smiled as they walked out the narrow doorway.
Just off the boat from Lisbon, he said to the couple in the corner, then spotted Ethan. Mr. McOwen, he exclaimed, did you see the Brooklyn Daily Eagle this morning? Did you see your picture?
No, Ethan answered, a little puzzled.
Well it’s there, on page eleven, next to the article on the baseball match.
We was here first, the man in the corner interrupted, causing his beloved to slap him across the top of his arm.
What, I’m just lettin’m know!
They were here first, Mr. Hadley, Ethan offered. I don’t want to interrupt, I just—
You just came by to learn some more about the camera, yes?
Well, yes.
Listen, can you do yer learnin’ a little later, the man said, trying his best to be calm and gracious. We gotta be at City Hall by one.
Of course, of course, come right in, Mr. Hadley said, fully accustomed, it seemed, to all sorts of clients. He opened his hand toward Ethan as if presenting him to them. This is Mr. McOwen, my new apprentice.
And much as the word surprised Ethan, he did nothing to refute it. Mr. Hadley smiled at him, tilting his head as if asking whether the arrangement would be acceptable. And Ethan nodded in reply, smiling at the idea of it, of him, no longer a man of leisure the way Seanny sometimes teased him.
That night he slipped out of the house after supper, after all the congratulations and questions from his family, and walked, still dressed in his suit, down to Red Hook. The cabin he and his Da had first stayed in was gone now, replaced by something a little larger and more permanent looking. But there was still the nook of land that stretched out just a little farther than the rest of the shoreline, the place he’d gone to on his first night in America to tell Aislinn he’d made it. Of course, since that time he’d learned that he was facing west, away from Ireland, but by then it had become their spot, and what did it matter anyway with Aislinn looking down from the Ever After?
So he went back there from time to time, always on Aislinn’s birthday and sometimes on his, on every Christmas too, and always on the anniversary of the day she died. And he’d talk to her just a little, letting her know how Mam and Da and Aunt Em and Seanny were all getting on and introducing her to the important people in his life through the stories he’d tell, out loud, in a whisper. And that was where he stood again that night, dressed as he’d never been before on such occasions, feeling the pride that comes with looking like such a gent, and letting the breeze tussle his hair as he stood with his top hat off, held by his two hands behind the small of his back. He smiled a little, knowingly, waiting to tell her the news he’d wanted to tell her most of all ever since he’d left Mr. Hadley’s shop.
I’m gonna take pictures Ais’, I’m gonna be a photographer, he said, in a voice louder than he usually used when speaking to her, as if he were making a formal pronouncement.
And he allowed himself to smile for a moment or two more, basking,
as if waiting for a whisper of approval bestowed from the Ever After. Then, with only the breezes for an answer, he pulled his hat into one hand and used the other to sit down on the patch of sand and grass, the way he always did, Sunday suit or not. He bent his knees out in front of him and wrapped his arms around them, hat dangling from one hand in the space between, and the whisper returned though the smile remained. It was, since the very first night he’d sat here and spoke to her, the first time he would speak mostly of himself. It was the first time he had something worthwhile to report, something he felt might one day justify the fact that it was him who’d been given this chance to come to America and not her. And the words spilled out from him, with all the once-upon-a-time exuberance of that twelve-year-old boy.
It all started just yesterday when we were playin’ the Knickerbockers over there at th’Elysian Fields an’, oh you shoulda seen the crowd Ais’, there was more than a thousand of ’em, or so the paper says. And that’s another thing, I was in the paper today, picture and all. But first I gotta tell ya about the game …
COOPER UNION, NEW YORK
FEBRUARY 27, 1860
The speech is a decidedly different thing than he could hear anywhere near the Points. And for the almost two hours Mr. Lincoln talks about the pressing issues of the day, Ethan feels as if he’s been lifted from his common origins into another world altogether, the one he’d once hoped to be a part of when he’d ventured into the hallowed halls of New York University and sought to become a verified scholar. But when it’s over, and Mr. Lincoln seems to have become a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for President, Ethan steps outside and it’s as if the moment is lost. Anywhere familiar he goes, he realizes, will inevitably be more of the same sort of reverence for the mundane that drew him here in the first place. And he yearns to follow the well-dressed crowd spilling out of the Great Hall, hoping to find someone amongst them who will discuss Emerson and de Tocqueville and … Lincoln.