The Fool's Progress Read online

  Hain’t the Sunday?

  No sir, Saturday.

  Any child of mine plays that baseball game on Sunday I’ll peel the hide off his back with a drawknife, hang him by the ears to yon ole snag. Ginter gestured toward the dead butternut tree in the yard. Like I would a blacksnake. Till he stops wigglin’. Ain’t Christian to play games on the Sunday.

  No sir, it’s Saturday.

  Old Jeff relented. They’re out at the pigpen sloppin’ the sow, him and Leroy. Leroy’s name suggested an afterthought. Now you mind and let Leroy play too or by God Red don’t play.

  Will and Henry glanced at each other. Will shrugged. They had no choice.

  Yes sir, Henry said.

  Behind the barn they found Red Ginter leaning on the pigpen fence, watching his little brother Leroy. Red was six feet six inches tall, weighed 240 pounds, had a small red-haired skull that tapered to a point between his ears. Like his father he wore bib overalls, long-sleeved gray underwear, no shoes.

  Henry said hello. Red ignored him, ignored Will who said nothing but stood close by, ready for trouble. Will never did talk much—but then like Red Ginter he didn’t have to. They stared at young Leroy.

  Leroy, crouched on hands and knees inside the pen, was creeping over the muck toward a three-hundred-pound sow. The sow lay on her side, eyes closed, giving suck to a litter of eight. Leroy, twelve years old, was playing piglet. Ernk, ernk, he grunted, lowering his belly to the ground, wriggling forward, ernk, ernk, mumma…. Leroy’s pink harelip formed what he understood as an ingratiating, shoatlike appeal.

  Red encouraged him. Keep a-goin’, Leroy. No sign of malice in Red’s pale, dull eyes. And don’t settle for hind tit neither.

  Leroy squirmed closer. Ernk, ernk, mumma, gimme suck too. He was barefoot; his ragged bleached-out overalls seemed two sizes too small. The reddish hair on his head was thin, fine, short, giving him a half-bald look. Ernk, mumma, he crooned in begging tones, ernk, ernk….

  The great sow, lying peacefully in the April sun, at ease in the cool mud, opened one tiny red eye and saw Leroy inching toward her and her children. She grunted.

  Leroy hesitated. Ernk…? He raised his head.

  The sow grunted again and scrambled to her feet. Leroy rose to his hands and knees. The sow squealed with outrage and charged. Her brood hung swinging from her tough teats, unwilling to let go. Leroy jumped up, turned. Nom nam nun of a nitch! he yelled, I gotta get the nom nam outa here! He leaped for the fence and rolled over, falling to the ground outside. The sow crashed into the planks and stopped, backed off and shook her head. She glared at Leroy.

  Red Ginter, bland-eyed and unmoved, turned his face to Will and Henry. Henry explained the purpose of the visit.

  I play first or nothin’, Red says.

  That’s okay, Red.

  Bat first too.

  Will and Henry looked at each other. No options.

  Leroy bats second, Red went on.

  What? says Henry. Not Leroy!

  You heard me, Red says. He picked up a wooden bucket full of skim milk, potato peelings, turnip greens, muskrat entrails, chicken heads, eggshells, bacon rinds. He emptied the bucket into the wooden trough inside the fence. The sow shuffled to the trough, snorted, plunged her snout into the swill. Red thumped the bucket on her head, clearing the bottom. The sow twitched her ears and kept on feeding. The piglets hung from her udders, still suckling.

  III

  Henry and Will tramped homeward over the ridge, into the Big Woods, past the forgotten sawmill, through the gloom of the trees. A hoot owl hooted from the darkness of a hollow sycamore, calling for its mate. Another answered from a faraway pine.

  You hear that, Henry? says Will, as they paused before the splitrail fence that marked the Lightcap frontier.

  Henry listened carefully. The owls called again, first one, then after a few moments of thought, the second.

  Will grinned at his little brother; the bright teeth shone in his brown honest face. Will said, They’re a boy owl and a girl owl.

  Baloney. How do you know?

  Because the first owl says, Hoo hoo, wanna screw? And the second owl she says, Hoo hoo, not with you.

  Bull-loney.

  They went down the hill into Lightcap’s Hollow. While poor Henry, nursing in silence the secret of his desolate, hopeless incapacity, thought of Wilma Fetterman climbing into the school bus, of Betsy Kennedy draping her splendid cashmere-sweatered breasts over the back of her chair as she turned to tease him, of Donna Shoemaker turning cartwheels in her cheerleader uniform at the pregame pep rally. A pang of agony coursed upward through Henry’s aching core, from the misaligned piston rod of his groin to the undifferentiated longing in his heart. Never, never with a girl.

  The owls hooted softly after him through the soft green cruelty of April, down the hills of the Allegheny. The ghosts of Shawnee warriors watched from the shadows of the red oaks.

  IV

  A light rain fell Saturday morning, leaving pools of water on the base paths, but the sun appeared on time at noon. Henry and Will and little Paul filled burlap sacks with sand and paced off the bases. Chuck Tait came soon after with a bag of lime to mark the batter’s boxes, the base lines, the coaching positions. They built up the pitcher’s mound, chased Prothrow’s cows into deep left field and shoveled the fresh cow patties off the infield. They filled in the pools with dry dirt, creating deceptive mudholes which only the home team need know about. They patched the backstop with chicken wire and scrap lumber. The Fetterman boys came with their gloves and a new bat, then the Adams brothers with gloves and two fractured, taped bats. (Both were cross-handed hitters.) No sign of the Ginters. There was time for a little practice; Will batted hot grounders to Chuck and the Adams boys, high-flying fungos to Paul and Elman and Junior in the outfield.

  Henry felt he was ready; he’d spent an hour every day for six months throwing a tennis ball at a strike zone painted on the barn door, scooping up the ball one-handed as it bounced down the entrance ramp. Precision control, that was his secret. He only had three pitches: an overhand fastball, not very fast; a sidearm curve that sometimes broke and sometimes didn’t; and his newly developed Rip Sewell blooper, a high floating change of pace which he lofted forward with the palm of his hand, a tempting mushball of a pitch that rose high in the air and drifted toward the plate like a sinking balloon. Weak pitches—but he had control. He could hit the center of Will’s mitt whenever Will called for it.

  The Blacklick team arrived an hour late, Tony Kovalchick the captain driving his father’s twelve-cylinder 1928 Packard sedan. The three smallest boys sat in the trunk holding up the lid with a bat. The Blacklick players fingered rosaries; they wore sacred medals. Stump Creek surrendered the field to the visitors for a ten-minute warm-up.

  Tony and Henry compared scorecards.

  Your guys are too old, Henry complained. Those are all senior high school guys.

  That’s our team, Tony says. You wanta play baseball or you wanta go home and cry?

  Carci, Watta, Jock Spivak—those are football players.

  You got Will and Chuck, they’re varsity. And who’s this Red Ginter? Ain’t he the one nearly killed some coal miner in the fight at Rocky Glen Tavern Saturday night?

  Not Red, you got him mixed up with somebody else. Henry pointed to the Packard. A pale little fellow with strabismic eyes sat on the running board. Who’s he? He’s not in your lineup.

  That’s Joe Glemp. He’s our umpire.

  Umpire? He’s cross-eyed!

  Yeah, don’t make fun of him. He’s kind of sensitive. He can’t play ball worth a shit. But he’s a good ump.

  You’re crazy. He can’t see anything but his own nose. Anyhow Mr. Prothrow’s gonna be umpire. Henry looked around; old Frank Prothrow was nowhere in sight.

  The visiting team always brings the umpire, Tony said complacently. You know that, Lightcap.

  You’re nuts.

  It’s in the rule book. Black and white.

  Not in
any rule book I ever saw. Let’s see this rule book.

  Let’s see this Mr. Prothrow.

  Henry looked again. No Prothrow in view. But there came the Ginters, Red and Leroy, tramping up the dirt road, Red carrying his ax-hewn homemade hickory bat on his shoulder. The one with the square shaft, like a tapered four-by-four. Henry appointed little Paul the field umpire. The Stump Creek nine took the field, Red Ginter on first nonchalantly catching Chuck Tait’s rifle-shot throws from short, Henry on the mound, the children at second, third and scattered across the outfield among the grazing milk cows.

  Play ball! hollered little Joe Glemp with harsh authority, masked and armored, crouching behind the broad back of Will Lightcap hunkered down at home plate. Tony Kovalchick, batting right-handed, stepped into the box, tapped mud from his cleated shoes, made the sign of the cross and dug in for the first pitch.

  Henry, glove in armpit, rubbed the sweet new Spalding between moist palms and surveyed his team. All were in place except Leroy in deep right yelling obscenities at a cow.

  Henry faced the batter, noticing at once that Tony choked his bat by three inches. Will gave Henry the sign, fastball wide and low. Henry wound up and threw exactly where Will wanted it, cutting the outside corner. Tony let it go by.

  Ball one! shouted the umpire.

  Will held the ball for a few moments to indicate contempt for the call, then without rising tossed it back to Henry. Tony crowded the plate a little more. Will asked for another fastball, high and inside. Ball—began the umpire as Tony tipped it foul. One ball, one strike, little Joe Glemp conceded.

  He can’t see but he can hear pretty good, thought Henry, rubbing the ball like a pro. Will called for the sidearm curve, low and outside. Backing off slightly (weakness!), Tony swung and tipped the pitch off the end of the bat. Two strikes. He scowled at the pitcher. Now we got him, Henry thought, he’s getting mad. Will called for the floater, mixing them up, and Tony waited, watching the ball sail in a high arc toward him, and lost patience and swung furiously much too soon, nearly breaking his spine. He picked himself up, brushing mud from his knees, and stormed back to the visitors’ bench.

  A fat Italian boy named Frank Carci now stood in the box, anxious, tense, well away from the plate. A second-string center, he was better known as Snotrag: both on and off the field, the entire football team used the tail of Carci’s jersey for noseblowing. Henry and Will struck out Snotrag with three fastballs high and inside, the batter drawing away from the plate as he swung, each time missing the ball by a foot.

  Big Stan Watta came to bat. Stan was big but the next batter, Jock Spivak, fullback, was bigger. After a brief conference Henry and Will agreed to pitch to Watta and then, if necessary, walk Jock. Will called for the sidearm slider, low and outside. Henry threw it, the ball failed to slide, Watta trotted into second base with a stand-up double.

  Jock Spivak took his stance deep in the batter’s box, measuring the plate with his slugger’s bat. Will and Henry stuck with their plan: a free pass to first for the big man. On deck was the easy third out Mike Spivak, Jock’s kid brother, a weak hitter.

  Henry checked the runner at second, then threw the pitchout high and outside into Will’s guiding mitt. Ball one. Watta returned to second. Henry repeated the pitch, Will standing away from the plate to catch it. Ball two. Quickly now, impatient to get at the easy batter, Henry threw ball three. Jock Spivak spat on the plate, moved forward a step and grinned like a tiger.

  Henry threw the ball neck high and a foot outside. Laughing, Jock stepped across the plate—Ball four! shouted Glemp—and smacked the pitch true, hard and high into far right field. Leroy Ginter dreamed out there, wiggling bare toes in a fresh cowpie. The Stump Creek team hollered for attention. Leroy wiped the drool from his chin and ran three steps to the left, four to the right, slipped in another pile of cowshit and fell to his knees. Nom nam nun of a nitch! he screamed, throwing his glove at the ball. Missed. The ball bounced into the weeds along the fence. Leroy made no move to retrieve it. Stan Watta crossed home plate. Laughing all the way, Jock Spivak jogged toward third. Junior Fetterman found the ball and pegged it to Chuck Tait at short, who relayed it to Sonny Adams at third. Sonny dropped the ball. Half sick with laughter, Spivak headed for home. Sonny threw the ball to Will, trapping Spivak between home plate and third. Spivak stopped but couldn’t stop laughing. Will ran him down and tagged him out.

  Backlick 1, Stump Creek 0, bottom of the first. The home team came to bat.

  Red Ginter slouched into the batter’s box with the squared-off log on his shoulder. He took a few underhand practice swings, like a golfer at the tee, spat on the ground and waited for the pitch. He wore the same greasy bib overalls, the same grime-gray flannel underwear he’d been wearing all winter and would not remove till May. Like his old man, Red knew only two seasons, winter and summer. Let the weather change, not him. He waited, cheek bulging, peering at the pitcher from beneath his dangling, reddish forelock, a sloping, pale and freckled brow. His small eyes, set close together, betrayed no gleam of human light.

  The pitcher, Tony Kovalchick, raised both arms above his head and began an elaborate windup.

  Ginter waited, legs far apart, rotating the bulk of his club in slow ominous circles behind his shoulder. The first pitch sped in like a bullet straight down the middle. Ginter reared back and took an awkward but vicious cut at the ball, swinging eighteen inches beneath it. His bat scraped a groove through the dirt behind the plate.

  Sta-rike! yells Glemp, jabbing the air with his thumb.

  The Blacklick catcher—squat square massive Dominic Del Poggio—chuckled as he flipped the ball to Tony. The pitcher allowed himself a smile. Both could see already that this game was going to be such a laugher they might not make it through the fifth inning.

  Untroubled, Red awaited the second pitch. It came: a repeat of the first. He let it go by. No balls, two strikes.

  Teasing the batter this time—anything for a laugh—Tony threw a careless slider inside and too low, almost on the ground. Red swung down and up, digging another furrow through the dirt, and golfed the ball foul in a drive of flat trajectory toward deep left, where it struck a cow on the head and caromed into the weeds. The cow sank to its knees, then fell on its side, where it lay comatose for half an hour. The count at the plate remained the same: no balls, two strikes.

  Red Ginter waited, pale eyes bland and empty. The pitcher and catcher—after brief talk—played the next pitch safe: a fastball chest-high across the center of the plate. The long-ball hitter’s dream pitch. Red watched it go by. Three strikes and out. Leroy Ginter, second batter, took his place.

  As Red shuffled back to the bench Chuck Tait rose to meet him. Look, Red, Chuck says, you’re swinging way under the ball. He imitated Red’s underhand swing. Now watch: you have to level your stroke. Watch. He demonstrated a swift beautifully smooth perfectly level swing, in the manner of Williams and DiMaggio. See? Like that. He gave a second demonstration, pure grace, sweet perfection.

  Chewing on his plug of Red Man, leaning on his four-by-four, Red stared down at Chuck from ten superior inches, some eighty extra pounds, and spat a jet of tobacco juice onto Chuck’s shoe. You bat your way, baby face, he says, and I’ll bat mine. He tramped past Chuck and sat on the bench.

  Chuck stared at the dirty splotch on his clean new sneakers and said nothing. But to Henry and Will, later, he grumbled, No team spirit. None of your guys have the real team spirit.

  Clowning at the plate, Leroy struck out in three wild swings, two from the left side and one from the right. He slammed his taped bat on the plate—Nom nam nun of a nitch!—broke it again, and ran off toward the elderberry bushes beside the creek, where two heifers browsed on the shrubbery.

  Chuck Tait stepped up and cracked the first pitch between first and second, a clean single. He danced back and forth on the base path as Will came to bat. Will let the first pitch go by and Chuck stole second. Will waited out a second pitch, then doubled Chuck home with a drive ov
er third base. Henry Lightcap came to bat, anxious and eager, aware of Wilma Fetterman and the other girls watching from the sidelines. Trying hard to be a hero, he popped out to second base.

  Blacklick 1, Stump Creek 1, top of the second. Hating himself, Henry took his place on the mound, threw a few warmup pitches and checked his fielders. Nobody in right field. Leroy had disappeared. Thank God. He signaled little Paul to take Leroy’s place and faced the batter, Mike Spivak. Henry pitched carefully, following Will’s instructions; Mike hit an easy grounder to second. But Clarence Adams bobbled the ball and Mike slid safely into first base. He always slid into first; nobody knew why.

  Now the dangerous Dominic Del Poggio waited at the plate, ready for the pitch. Will, keeping one eye on Spivak edging off first base, called for an outside pitch. Henry threw it, Spivak ran for second, Will hurled the ball precisely to Chuck, covering the base, for what should have been an easy out. But Clarence, thinking the throw was meant for him, leaped for the ball and got run over by the base runner, piling them both in the mud. Chuck tagged the runner out. A discussion followed.

  Joe Glemp, peering sternly at his own nose, declared the runner safe on grounds of interference; furthermore he penalized the home team by awarding Mike Spivak free passage to third base. The decision led to more discussion, bitter, prolonged, hectic. But the umpire stood firm. Dominic waited, grinning.

  Concentrating on the batter, Henry threw two strikes low and inside, then jammed him with an inside curveball. Dominic swung and hit the ball with the handle of his bat, an easy slow roller toward Red Ginter at first base. Red waited for it, waited and waited, one foot on the bag; the runner got there before the ball.

  Blacklick scored another five runs. The cow hoisted herself erect and staggered into center field. The game, like the cow, lurched into the shadows of the afternoon. The visiting team led, inning after inning, but not by much: Chuck Tait, Will Lightcap and Henry (after the first inning) managed to single, double or triple each time they came to bat, for Kovalchick’s pitching turned out to be steady and predictable: nothing but fastballs down the middle. By the end of the fifth inning every player on the Stump Creek team had got on base at least once. Even Elman. Even Paul, the baby.