The Aurora County All-Stars

by Deborah Wiles

  Now while the thunder grumbled to the coming rain and the breeze cooled the afternoon, House sat on his sleeping-porch bed and pulled out cards at random: several Willie Mays, a slew of Mickey Mantle, three Roger Maris, and on it went—Jackie Robinson, Don Drysdale, Roberto Clemente, Whitey Ford, giants of baseball from years past. He pulled out a Koufax card and stared at that serious face, then turned the card over to reread the statistics he had memorized.

  Sandy Koufax had pitched that perfect game in 1965. A perfect game. No runs, no hits, no errors. Each hitter came to the plate, swung, and struck out, one after another until the game was won. Sandy had pitched four career no-hitters. He led the National League in shutouts three times, in strikeouts four times, in wins three times. He made six All-Star appearances, won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1963, was World Series MVP twice—once in 1963, and again in that golden year of 1965’s perfect game.

  House stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes as he listened to the katydids call from the pines. Their insistent summer song melted into a dream and became the songlike voice of Vin Scully announcing from the Dodger Stadium press box: On the mound tonight for the Los Angeles Dodgers . . . number thirty-two . . . the great left-hander . . . Sandy Koufax!

  And there he was, House, shaking hands with his hero, Koufax. Koufax smiled at House and handed him the baseball. Then he walked to the bench, disappearing with each step. Now House stood on the pitcher’s mound alone. He looked up. The stadium was a three-tiered wonder packed with screaming fans. The crowd chanted his name. He could smell the hot dogs, the mustard, the peanuts, the sweat. He tapped the rubber on the mound with the tip of his cleats. He shook out his left arm, his pitching arm—it felt just fine. He clutched the ball in his left hand, gripped the stitches with his fingertips, and looked intently into the glove on his right. He could see every crease in that glove, like a detailed road map of every game he’d ever played.

  The roar of the crowd faded and he found himself sitting on the front porch now, back home in Mabel, Mississippi. He was six years old and he had a brand-new glove. He rubbed it with neat’s-foot oil, massaging it with both hands, down each finger, the oil smelling like promise, all over his glove. He worked an old baseball into the pocket, turning it around and around, coating it with the oil as well. He could see every stitch in that baseball, every nick. He also saw a name scratched into it: Elizabeth. His mother’s name.

  She called to him. He tied a string around the glove with the ball in it so it would develop a deep pocket, making it easier to catch the ball. Then he floated, the way bodies do in a dream, off to find his mother.

  He smelled the applesauce cake in the kitchen, and he heard his mother singing to herself, singing the song she had sung to House when he was little, the symphony song: After the dazzle of day is gone, she sang.

  His mother was high in the sky, in the same cirrus clouds he’d seen over Norwood Boyd’s house that morning. He joined her, light as a feather and free from all worry. She kissed him right in the middle of his forehead, smiled, and looked deeply into his eyes. He saw her perfectly, for that was the blessing of dreams—he could remember every detail now. The comfort was enormous. House began to cry.

  His mother said, You’ll be fine now, House. Remember to listen for the symphony true.

  The symphony! House sprang up in his dream—I have to tell you! he began—but his mother dissolved, faded into the cloud, became a hazy memory again. The sky disappeared. House was falling, falling back to Earth and darkness.

  12

  Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

  —JACKIE ROBINSON, SECOND BASEMAN, BROOKLYN DODGERS

  House opened his eyes. It was mud-dark, the time just before full-dark, when the heat of the day fizzed its last and gave way to the cooler, velvet summer night. He lay on his bed on the sleeping porch and listened to the leftover raindrops drip from the pine needles onto the dirt yard. He looked at the clock by the bed. He had slept right through the storm, right through dinner, right through Honey’s bedtime. Soon his father would go to bed as well.

  He stared at the ceiling, at the lines and cracks in the plaster. His heart beat a steady, strong beat, and it took him a while to come back to himself. He breathed in and out, just as Mr. Norwood Boyd had done that very morning just before daylight. Just as his mother had done six years ago. Just as he would do one day. His father had said, “That day’s a long ways off, House, you don’t need to worry about that.” But sometimes he did.

  He didn’t need a light to find what he wanted, as the moon was rising early after the rain. The baseball mitt his mother had given him when he was six was on the top shelf in his closet. There. He folded it open, shut, open. He poked his hand into its cool cavern but of course it no longer fit his hand. The smell of neat’s-foot oil lingered in the creases. The ball was gone. He couldn’t remember why it was gone, or if it had indeed said Elizabeth—maybe that was just his dream.

  He heard a familiar click and looked down the hall. His father had switched on his reading light. On House’s door was taped a note in his father’s handwriting:

  Cleebo called.

  No practice.

  Team meets 8am at the Halleluia ball field.

  Leftovers in the fridge.

  It was time. House left the sleeping porch, careful not to let the screen door slap. The warm night air was damp and alive with the racket of katydids, crickets, and frogs. The moon was a bone white circle. House made his way out to the dirt road, where he walked the half mile to Mr. Norwood Boyd’s home. The gate was still open. House went right to the honeysuckle bush beside the front porch. He crawled inside. The wet branches slicked him with leftover rain.

  There she was. A little whine, a little lick, a little snuffle. House patted Eudora. “Good dog.” He removed the tutu from around her neck and hung it on an inside branch. “Honey loves you,” he said. “You could get used to her, you know.”

  He reached into his pocket and unfolded the note that Eudora Welty had worn around her neck only that morning. When he first read it, he had been stunned. His mother was here, in this note. Moonlight sifted through the honeysuckle branches as House read for the hundredth time the words written with a fountain pen in Norwood Boyd’s old-school, perfect handwriting:

  After the dazzle of day is gone,

  Only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars.

  After the clangor of organ majestic, or chorus, or perfect band,

  Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.

  —Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

  His hands shook. There they were, those words of his mother’s, her song, the song she had sung so many times, the symphony song. They were written by someone named Walt Whitman. He thought his mother had made them up.

  He had forgotten most of the words. It was hard, after all, for a six-year-old to remember or even know what clangor meant. What was athwart? But symphony true—he had remembered that. After the dazzle of day is gone—he remembered that. And the dark, dark night. Like now. Dark, dark night, with a brilliant moon rising.

  Mr. Norwood Boyd had written more:

  From the library doorway, five bookcases to the right, seventh shelf up, the only green spine.

  He had penned three more lines:

  Your mother gave these words to me;

  Now I give them to you as treasure for the days ahead.

  Look for me in every atom that you see.

  House swallowed. None of the words on the page spoke more loudly to him than the knowledge they conveyed: His mother had known Norwood Boyd.

  He’s an old friend of the family, his father had said, a little peculiar, but nothing to worry about, he’d said. But this note said more: Elizabeth Jackson had known Norwood Boyd very well.

  He shoved the note back into his pocket and stroked Eudora Welty. “Want to go inside,
girl?” He led Eudora out of the honeysuckle and together they went around to the back porch, to the door that opened into the summer kitchen, which was a large room with a six-burner stove, a deep enamel sink, and a long wooden table. Ages ago someone canned tomatoes and green beans in this room; ages ago children took baths in here with water that had been heated on the stove and poured into tin tubs sitting on the old wood floor. Maybe one of those children had been Mr. Norwood Boyd—long, long ago.

  The summer kitchen hadn’t been used in years, much like the rest of the house. Cobwebs drifted from the rafters and the windows were covered in dust. House had never been inside Mr. Norwood Boyd’s house alone at night. It was creepy.

  He hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight, but he knew there was one in Mr. Norwood Boyd’s bedroom. He would have to brave the summer kitchen, the dining room, and the wide hallway to get to the front bedroom where Mr. Norwood Boyd had spent most of his time. The library was across the hall from the bedroom. That would be his final destination.

  Eudora headed straight for her food and water and began to slurp and crunch. The sounds were comforting, normal. House took a breath. Took a step. Took another. He tiptoed through the rooms as if there were someone still in the house. As if every atom were alive and watching him.

  Down the long, wide hallway he crept until he found himself in front of the door to Mr. Norwood Boyd’s bedroom. It was closed. Now that he was faced with turning the knob and walking into the room where Mr. Norwood had died, he couldn’t bring himself to go in. He could see well enough in the moonlit dark, he told himself. So he turned around and faced the library door. It, too, was closed. House put his hand on the library doorknob, nervous at another closed door. How many times had he been in this room, finding the next book on Mr. Norwood Boyd’s list to be read aloud? And now there was something waiting for him in the library. A treasure.

  As he gripped the doorknob and began to turn it, he heard a click! behind him from Mr. Norwood Boyd’s bedroom door, then the squeeeeeak! of the door as it swung wide.

  He whirled. A flashlight beam struck him in the eyes and blinded him—he stumbled backward into a narrow table against the hallway wall. A scream gargled in his throat as a hand clapped itself over his mouth.

  Someone else’s hand.

  A cold hand.

  A ghost!

  13

  Each of us inevitable, each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  House strangled on his screams. He flailed his arms as if he could shoo away whatever was upon him. He twisted himself away.

  “Whoa, son!” It was a man’s voice, not a ghost’s—a voice alive and strong, breaking through the dark, through the flashlight’s beam. House thudded to the floor with a yelp.

  “Hush, child!” said the voice. “No need to scream to the high heavens.”

  Pip! House squinted into the dancing light—now he could see him. Parting Schotz. Frances’s great-grandfather. Pip extended a knobby hand to House.

  “I . . . I . . .” House tried to think of something to say but his heart was still in his throat and he couldn’t breathe.

  “Give me your hand,” said Pip.

  House did as he was told and Pip pulled him to his feet. House sucked in as much air as he could, which set him to coughing. Pip slapped him on the back until he stopped.

  “Nobody’s going to get you,” he said. “What are you doing here, House?”

  Eudora Welty trotted down the hallway and blinked at them. House pointed to her. “Dog,” he said. “Dog.”

  Pip called Eudora to him and scratched her back. “I’ll bet she’s feeling lost.”

  “Yessir.” House tried to breathe slowly. He was lightheaded.

  “Well,” said Pip, “she’s used to you being here, so maybe that’s a comfort to her right now.” He gave Eudora a last pat on the head. “You find Norwood this mornin’?”

  House colored up. “Yessir,” he said. He willed Pip not to ask him any more questions.

  “Thought so,” said Pip. “I figured it was you who called it in. What are you doing here now?”

  House touched Eudora between her ears. “I figure she needs looking after.”

  “You going to take her home?” asked Pip.

  House shrugged. “I thought I might.”

  “You come over mighty late.”

  House concentrated on scratching Eudora’s ears. “Yessir.” It was all he could think to say while he waited for his heartbeat to return to normal.

  Pip persisted, as if he were asking test questions. “Where did you find her?”

  “Under the honeysuckle bush,” said House.

  “But you’re in the house . . .”

  “Well . . .”

  Pip nodded. He seemed satisfied. He didn’t ask for more. But House did. He asked before he even let himself think about it. “You’re in the house, too, Mr. Pip.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Pip. He didn’t offer an explanation.

  House searched for something to say as Pip stared at him. “You’ve got real cold hands,” he finally said.

  “I’m old!” said Pip. “I don’t have much heat left in me!”

  “You don’t?”

  “Folks get old and they don’t move as much as they used to,” said Pip. He hiked up his pants by the belt. “Don’t be so shocked! You’ve seen me here with Norwood when you’ve come.”

  “Yessir,” said House. “You brought supper . . .”

  “Yes, sometimes I did. That’s a fact,” said Pip. “But that’s not all of it.”

  House shoved his hands in his pockets. His note was hot, like it was on fire for House to hurry up and do something about it. And here was Pip, about to send him home.

  Pip gazed at House thoughtfully, like he was making up his mind about something. Then he gestured to a place across the hall. “Look here. I’ll show you something you haven’t seen.”

  Pip played his flashlight over the walls. Every inch was covered with framed black-and-white photographs. Faces floated into the yellow cone of light and faded away, like ghosts.

  “Do you know who these folks are?” Pip asked. House shook his head no.

  “Right here,” said Pip, pointing to a young black boy wearing a baseball uniform several sizes too large for him. AURORA ANGELS was sewn onto the jersey in a beautiful sky-blue script. It could have spelled out LOS ANGELES DODGERS, as beautifully made as that uniform was.

  “This is me!” said Pip. House squinted as Pip steadied the light.

  “Don’t you wonder about it?” Pip asked.

  House nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes off the uniform. “We had a Little League team?”

  “Somebody did,” said Pip, “but there wasn’t no ‘we’ about it.”

  “You’re wearing a uniform,” said House.

  “It wasn’t mine.”

  “Whose was it?”

  “Good question. It was a long time ago.” Pip settled into the story. “I was twelve, like you are today. I was the best home run hitter in three counties. And I couldn’t play baseball with the Aurora County boys.” Pip leaned toward House. “I wasn’t allowed.”

  House could feel Pip’s breath on him like a scratchy wool blanket. “Why not?”

  Pip sniffed. “I wasn’t allowed to play because of the color of my skin,” he said in a flat voice. “Just like ol’ Satchel Paige—best pitcher who ever lived—wasn’t allowed to play in the major leagues, had to stay in the Negro leagues nearly his whole career. I couldn’t play with the white boys.”

  House blinked into Pip’s stare. “Really?”

  “Really.” Pip crossed his arms and the cone of light bobbed along the floor.

  “Norwood Boyd was my best friend,” Pip continued. “My mama used to work for his mama, and we played together all day long as little boys. But once we started school, we didn’t play together anymore. We went to different schools, we had different lives. And we didn’t play baseball together
, nosirree. That’s the way it was then.”

  “How did you get the uniform?” House whispered.

  Pip hitched up his pants. “It was Norwood’s. Norwood was a great ballplayer. He was a catcher, as good as Johnny Bench, as good as Josh Gibson, Roy Campanella—did you know that?”

  House shook his head—it was unbelievable to think of that old man in the carved rosewood bed as a baseball catcher as good as Johnny Bench.

  “Norwood could throw clean from home plate to second and get that runner out,” Pip continued. “But I couldn’t play with him, nosirree. I couldn’t even watch him play, unless I watched from the road. And I was some hitter. I could hit that ball like Ted Williams, like Babe Ruth—I could have been as good as Frank Robinson.”

  House thought of Cleebo, who loved baseball, whose skin was a darker brown than Pip’s. House had been playing ball with Cleebo ever since he could remember.

  Pip played the flashlight’s beam on the photographs again. “When Norwood got to be twelve, he decided he wouldn’t play baseball neither, if I couldn’t play. He gave me his uniform.”

  House and Pip both stared at the photograph in the cone of light. In the photograph, Pip’s eyes were crinkled with happiness and an ease seeped out of his pores—you could see it in his stance.

  “Norwood took this picture of me in his uniform—took it with his Kodak camera. And for a while we played catch together. Then we quit. The joy went right out of baseball for both of us. I don’t know to this day who I felt worse about—me, who couldn’t play at all, or Norwood, who refused to play. It didn’t make sense.”

  Pip leaned close to House to make his last point. “Norwood Boyd never again played for a ball team. And you know somethin’?” Pip clapped his hand on House’s shoulder. “Norwood was a young boy then. He was full of the fire of living, like all young folks are. Like you are. What would lead a young boy to make a decision like that? To abandon something he loved so much to stand up for someone else?”