by Chris Lynch
“I said, is it always like that here, Richard? It is just a question.”
“The answer is, I don’t know, Napoleon.” It was the absolute truth. I had no idea. Had never noticed. Had never checked. “I was always watching the game,” I said. I shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
I had never said anything like that before. There was never any reason to apologize for baseball. And truth was, I didn’t feel the need to apologize now. It just seemed like the right thing to say.
I bought the next round of Cokes. The game dragged on. The pitchers continued to be great. The hitters continued to be not. Jim Rice didn’t get a hit all day. Neither did Fred Lynn, although he walked once and then got picked off trying to steal second. He’s not speedy. He’s quick. He had to remember that. He got a nice ovation for the attempt, though.
“They clap for Fred Lynn even when he appears to have done something foolish,” Napoleon said.
A small growl came out of me. “They were applauding the effort, Napoleon, the hustle.” He was refusing to understand things. I was sure of it now.
“And when he struck out, that took great effort?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“He struck out, the same as Jim Rice.”
“Like I told you, it happens—”
“But the people clapped madly for Mr. Lynn anyway. Not so much for Mr. Rice.” Napoleon had by now given up any pose of being casual with his questions. It became interrogation. “What does that mean, Richard?”
You know the moment. Like when an important paper comes back with a large F on it. When your father tells you he has searched everywhere but it seems the dog just won’t be coming back. Or there’s a phone call and you’re the only one home, and the person on the other end is sorry but there has been an accident. ...
And you don’t get to digest it slowly over time because it is a punch, hard in the stomach.
“No, Napoleon,” I said. “Stop. You’re not going to do your thing. Please. Not now. Not to this.” I pointed at the field, Joe Mooney’s perfectly groomed field, that was perfectly groomed for us, to enjoy all spring and summer and right through to the World Series in October when Napoleon and I could be right back here again, watching history.
“Did you know,” Napoleon said calmly, like a professor, “that there is a country club in Winter Haven, Florida, where the Red Sox golf during spring training? All the players get complimentary membership cards when they arrive. Except the black players. I read that in the newspaper. Did you know that?”
I was gripping the arms of my seat. My stomach was jumping. I threw my head back and stared straight up. “I told you not to go reading the papers. I told you that would only—”
“Did I tell you that my father was discussing Lynn and Rice with another man at the university and when my father suggested that Lynn was possibly not the better player the other man said, ‘Oh, you must be one of them Ricists.’ He thought that was funny. A joke.”
I said nothing. Napoleon could talk all he wanted to. He could pile one fact on top of another on top of another on top of my body and then he could go on and kick that body as hard and as many times as he liked, because he had already done his worst.
To me.
Something in him, I guessed, had to do this but I was never, ever, never going to understand it. Newspapers and universities and country clubs and all the rest are just poison. They don’t do anybody any good. What I had, what I thought we had, was better than all that. It was better, and it was great, and I really really really loved it because of what it was all by itself, inside itself.
Napoleon didn’t understand, after all.
The game ended quietly. When the sun starts going down in the late innings of the early season, it gets very cold very quickly at Fenway Park. You can almost feel people wishing the game to end. The hitters start looking stiffer, and the guys out in the field keep blowing on their hands to thaw them.
The A’s won 2–0. It was a fine game if you appreciated the sport, a waste of time if you did not. It was quiet enough on the way out that you could have a normal-level conversation and be heard.
“Why do you have to keep doing this to me?” I said to Napoleon, who was walking ahead of me at about the middle of the line of 32,149 pale cold Bostonians. “It’s baseball. Man, it’s baseball. Why do you have to be like that?”
I didn’t expect an answer. But maybe an apology. He took something away, he owed me something back.
I was way off, and I should have known.
“Because I have to,” he said.
He sounded sad. But it wasn’t an apology.
I SWEAR
I SWEAR I DIDN’T mean it.
I had picked my team, like usual, put Napoleon on it, like usual.
Then traded myself. Switched teams with Manny just as the game was to start.
I wanted to pitch. To him.
I had by that time thrown probably ten thousand pitches to Napoleon Charlie Ellis, and never once came seriously close to hitting him. Which made this even worse. Because he just stood there, like a big dumb senseless defenseless sitting cow when the ball—we were using a hard orange hockey ball that day as we edged closer to real baseballs—came in, started low and rose, rose, came inside, inside. ...
That’s the game. That’s my job. If I had never in all that time brushed Napoleon Charlie Ellis back with a pitch, then that was my mistake. I should have been preparing him better.
But it was only a brushback. I was just playing the game.
He never flinched. Because he never would have expected it. Not from me.
The ball hit Napoleon square in the mouth. It sort of sank into him, then just died there, falling at his feet. He blinked, raised his hand to his mouth, then looked at the little bit of blood that had seeped from the small split in his lower lip. He looked blankly at me.
He was in shock.
I was in shock. I would never, ever have done that on purpose.
Would I?
The game went quiet. I had already seen Sister come out into the yard with her bell, so this was when we should have been at our noisiest. There were a couple of low murmurs behind me, the woooo kind that guys make when they are trying to whip something small into something bigger.
I took a few steps toward Napoleon. “Sorry,” I said. My voice was dead, though. It didn’t sound good enough, but good enough just wouldn’t come. “It got away from me.”
He nodded. He was nothing if not leather-tough. He reached down and picked up the ball and threw it back to me. We didn’t do walks around here.
Napoleon got back into his crouch. And I got back into my windup.
And did it again.
It traveled just about the exact same line, low-to-high, bearing in. But this time he reacted at the last second, spun away from the pitch, and took it in the back.
And then he came my way.
He was right. He should have come.
But it was an accident. A freak. I’d lost the handle.
None of that mattered.
I met him halfway, ready, hands up. We grabbed each other, looked into each other’s faces. Don’t know what mine was showing, but Napoleon’s was a combination of teeth-gritting anger and drippy-eyed sadness. I was dying to say I was sorry, but it was just not coming out of me. I don’t know if he was waiting for that or not, but we were taking too much time deciding to hurt each other.
I could hear the low buzz out there, in that way you can hear those things even they don’t sound like actual voices that belong to anybody. “Hit him,” they said, “hit him.” I agreed with them. Hit me, I was thinking. Hit me.
Until the buzz actually cleared, and got specific. “Kill him, Richard,” was what I heard. “Mess him up.”
What? Kill him, Richard?
The bell started clanging. I held on to the collar of his shirt. Napoleon ran out of patience. Grabbing me tighter and tighter around my collar, pushing his thumbs into my throat, he was beginning to choke me. He gritted his t
eeth. A small, high moan came out of him.
And then Napoleon Charlie Ellis did what he had spent all his time since I’d known him—maybe all his life—trying not to do. He broke.
He cried.
Then he dumped me. Pulled as tight as possible around my neck, bounced me hard down onto the pavement. His glasses hit the ground at the same time I did. I looked down at them, then up at him.
He was in perfect position. I was there, my head was there, just waiting to be teed off.
He leaned toward me, scooped up his glasses, and walked toward the ringing bell.
I sat on the ground for another minute. Watched Napoleon walk with a sort of force field around him, nobody coming within ten feet of him.
Somebody slapped me on the shoulder on his way past. Then somebody else did. Then three or four more. What for? Idiots, I was the bad guy. I slapped away one more hand. I couldn’t even bear to raise my head and look.
Then there was a hand in my face. Butchie, offering me a hand up. “Another nasty interracial incident in a Boston school,” he said slyly, shaking his head. “Is no place safe anymore?” He laughed.
It had come to that. I had made Butch happy.
“Get away from me, before I puke on both of us,” I said, getting up on my own.
The next morning, even before the first bell rang, I sat next to Napoleon’s empty seat and waited, waited for what I already sort of knew. If he had shown up... I don’t know what I would have done if he had shown up. Probably nothing.
Manny took Napoleon’s seat. “Wanna get up a game this afternoon?”
“Ya,” I said automatically, not much thinking who I was talking to.
“So,” Manny said casually, looking around. “He’s gone.”
There was really no need to answer. And suddenly the idea of talking made me very tired.
“Hey, you tried,” he said. “I don’t even know why. He didn’t want to know nobody. He didn’t belong here. He’s better off with all the singers and weirdos at that other place.”
I was staring at him hard. Manny. I could usually find something helpful in there, in Manny’s open face. “You think?” I said.
“I know it. Look, I know about getting along. You want to get along you at least meet people halfway. He wasn’t meeting nobody noplace. He didn’t want to get along.”
I thought about that, whether I thought it was true. Thought about if I could even tell what was true about Napoleon.
“Ya, maybe,” I said. “Maybe he just didn’t want to try. Or maybe he really was the most negative guy ever. Or maybe everything and everybody was just as bad as he said.”
Manny started leaning away from me. “Okay, so you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Something you want to share with the rest of the class, Richard and Manuel?” Sister Jacqueline said dramatically.
“No, Sister,” we moaned together.
By the walk home I was feeling strangely pumped full of energy. I had received invitations to play ball from so many different people that a full five-on-five home-run derby was going to be possible down at the field that afternoon. That alone was reason for cheer, and gradually as the day wore on I was feeling less tired.
So what if I was walking alone? That was what I had always done, before.
Right. He should have just left me alone in the first place. I was fine before he got here. Finer, even. I was great before he got here. I would be great again.
I felt the tap on my shoulder. “Walk me to my stop?”
I nodded.
“He’s gone,” she said after a few steps.
“Why does everybody keep saying that?”
“Touchy.”
“Hey, Beverly, I tried to be his friend, but he saw something wrong with everything. I even had this idea, that we would be the Gold Dust Twins, in baseball, like Rice and Lynn, together all the way. Stupid. What a stupid dream. Such a kid’s dream.”
“It was a sweet dream,” Beverly said. Then waited.
“It just wasn’t his dream,” she said.
“It could have been.”
“No. ...”
“Yes it could. He was just so difficult all the time.”
“Did you ever wonder, Richard, what Napoleon’s dreams are? Did you ever even ask him?”
“Isn’t this your stop?” I growled. We’d come to a street-cleaning sign.
“How come you never knew about his singing after all that time?”
I didn’t like the question she asked. So I just answered one she didn’t. “My dream was big enough for both of us,” I said. I could hear how childish I sounded, but I could not stop.
“I was doing fine before he showed up. Before all of you showed up. It was so much easier before... everything was just great.”
This time we had reached her stop. The bus was approaching.
“He had no right,” I snapped.
Beverly looked at me calmly, kindly, as if she just didn’t believe me, whatever I was saying, and wouldn’t react.
“I’m going to be seeing him this afternoon,” she said. “You want to come?”
As quickly as I could, I shook my head, hard. “I have a game to play,” I said.
“You want me to tell him anything?”
The bus door opened. The driver did not look like he’d wait.
“You can’t tell that guy anything,” I said, and turned to go before she did.
I walked on. The bus doors shut. The engine wheezed into gear.
I started running.
I ran down the sidewalk, jogging at first, then trotting, then running hard down the line, running, running, legging it out, until the bus caught up to me. I veered out into the street, waved him down. He stopped. They don’t do that a lot in Boston. I must have looked desperate.
I walked halfway to the back, swaying side-to-side, holding seat backs for balance, until I tumbled into the seat next to her.
Beverly looked at me, waiting.
“Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I’m sorry and good luck. Tell him I hope he’s great. Tell him I know he’s going to be great.
“Tell him that,” I said, hopping up and heading for the exit.
She nodded.
I got off at the next stop. I could feel myself pounding down the sidewalk. I saw the bus pass me again out of the corner of my eye. I was pumped now, and more so with every step. I could feel the old lightness and energy kind of surging back up through me, and I knew I was full of it this afternoon, full of pure baseball, all baseball, nothing but baseball.
I was going to be great.
A Biography of Chris Lynch
Chris Lynch (b. 1962) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children. His father, Edward J. Lynch, was a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus and trolley driver, and his mother, Dorothy, was a stay-at-home mom. Lynch’s father passed away in 1967, when Lynch was just five years old. Along with her children, Dorothy was left with an old, black Rambler American car and no driver’s license. She eventually got her license, and raised her children as a single mother.
Lynch grew up in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and recalls his childhood ambitions to become a hockey player (magically, without learning to ice skate properly), president of the United States, and/or a “rock and roll god.” He attended Catholic Memorial School in West Roxbury, before heading off to Boston University, neglecting to first earn his high school diploma. He later transferred to Suffolk University, where he majored in journalism, and eventually received an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. Before becoming a writer, Lynch worked as a furniture mover, truck driver, house painter, and proofreader. He began writing fiction around 1989, and his first book, Shadow Boxer, was published in 1993. “I could not have a more perfect job for me than writer,” he says. “Other than not managing to voluntarily read a work of fiction until I was at university, this gig and I were made for each other. One might say I was a reluctant reader, which surely informs my work still.”
&n
bsp; In 1989, Lynch married, and later had two children, Sophia and Walker. The family moved to Roslindale, Massachusetts, where they lived for seven years. In 1996, Lynch moved his family to Ireland, his father’s birthplace, where Lynch has dual citizenship. After a few years in Ireland, he separated from his wife and met his current partner, Jules. In 1998, Jules and her son, Dylan, joined in the adventure when Lynch, Sophia, and Walker sailed to southwest Scotland, which remains the family’s base to this day. In 2010, Sophia had a son, Jackson, Lynch’s first grandchild.
When his children were very young, Lynch would work at home, catching odd bits of available time to write. Now that his children are grown, he leaves the house to work, often writing in local libraries and “acting more like I have a regular nine-to-five(ish) job.”
Lynch has written more than twenty-five books for young readers, including Inexcusable (2005), a National Book Award finalist; Freewill (2001), which won a Michael L. Printz Honor; and several novels cited as ALA Best Books for Young Adults, including Gold Dust (2000) and Slot Machine (1995).
Lynch’s books are known for capturing the reality of teen life and experiences, and often center on adolescent male protagonists. “In voice and outlook,” Lynch says, “Elvin Bishop [in the novels Slot Machine; Extreme Elvin; and Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz] is the closest I have come to representing myself in a character.” Many of Lynch’s stories deal with intense, coming-of-age subject matters. The Blue-Eyed Son trilogy was particularly hard for him to write, because it explores an urban world riddled with race, fear, hate, violence, and small-mindedness. He describes the series as “critical of humanity in a lot of ways that I’m still not terribly comfortable thinking about. But that’s what novelists are supposed to do: get uncomfortable and still be able to find hope. I think the books do that. I hope they do.”
Lynch’s He-Man Women Haters Club series takes a more lighthearted tone. These books were inspired by the club of the same name in the Little Rascals film and TV show. Just as in the Little Rascals’ club, says Lynch, “membership is really about classic male lunkheadedness, inadequacy in dealing with girls, and with many subjects almost always hiding behind the more macho word hate when we cannot admit that it’s fear.”