Darryl looked at Vintner with suspicion. He remembered how nice Vintner had been to him. He had given Darryl good advice about hitting. Still, he was skeptical. "You don't have a glove," Darryl said.
"That's okay," Vintner replied. "You throw it soft and I can catch it with my hands. I'll give you some grounders so that you can work on your fielding." Darryl couldn't see any harm in it. It was just a game of catch. They were out in the open. Besides, the man seemed nice and Darryl didn't want to go home.
"Okay," Darryl replied.
"You go to second base," Vintner said, motioning with his head as he walked on to the field, "I'll stand near home plate." Vintner smiled as he stepped onto the soft yellow dirt of the infield. "It's been a while though kid, so go easy on me." He'd seen Darryl play and knew that, even if he lacked power as a hitter, Darryl could really throw the ball. Vintner stood near home plate and clapped his hands together to signal that he was ready. Darryl lobbed his perfectly white ball in towards Vintner. Vintner caught it, cradling it lightly with two hands like it were an egg. Once he had the ball in his hands, he looked at it. There were a few scuffs on the side so the ball had been used but it was completely free of dirt. The kid must clean it after he uses it, Vintner thought. He turned the ball over in his hands and gripped it, feeling the stitching along his fingers. It had been a long time. He shifted his weight and tossed the ball back at Darryl. He could feel his muscles contract and loosen as he threw. Darryl caught the ball with his glove. He threw it back, this time with a little less arc, though still slow enough that Vintner could catch it bare handed.
"So how's the hitting coming?" Vintner asked before throwing the ball back again.
"Good," Darryl said with a smile that he couldn't be faked. "I had two doubles on Monday and three hits on Tuesday. I had to go to my grandma's house on Wednesday but yesterday I almost had a homerun." Vintner smiled at the boy's enthusiasm. He was sure that if he asked Darryl what type of pitches each of his hits came off of, the boy would know.
"It's all about the shoulder, right?" Vintner said, heaving another throw towards Darryl. Each of Vintner's throws felt better than the last. The ball moved quickly through the air and Darryl snapped it into his glove.
"Yeah," Darryl replied. "I don't even need to touch my chin to my shoulder any more. I just make sure that it stays up."
"That's good," Vintner replied. Darryl threw the ball to him again, this time a little harder than the last.
"So what's your name kid?" Vintner asked.
"Darryl," the boy replied.
"Hi Darryl, I'm Vintner," Vintner said as he hauled back and threw the ball as hard as he could at Darryl. He could still get some torque on the ball but he was sure Darryl could handle it. Darryl picked it out of the air with ease. "You lived around here for a long time Darryl?" Vintner asked.
"My whole life." Darryl shrugged at the silliness of the question. Darryl couldn't imagine living anywhere else, could picture life outside of his neighborhood. He zipped the ball back to Vintner. Vintner caught it with his two hands and it stung. Still, he didn't tell Darryl to slow it down. He enjoyed the sting. He threw a two hopper to Darryl. Darryl took two quick steps to his right and nabbed the ball quickly after its second bounce.
"How long you been coming down here?" Vintner asked as Darryl threw the ball back to him. Then Vintner threw the ball high into the air, giving Darryl a pop up to catch. The ball arced across the blue sky, shifting only slightly in the breeze that blew across the fields.
Darryl moved under the ball and answered Vintner's question as the ball fell towards his glove. "About two years," Darryl replied, "but they didn't let me play at first." Darryl caught the ball and turned to throw it like an outfielder trying to nail a runner at the plate. Vintner had to duck out of the way of the ball, knowing that this one was too fast for him to catch with his bare hands. He didn't want to risk breaking a finger. The ball clanged against the chain link backstop. "Sorry," Darryl laughed.
"No problem," Vintner replied, going back to retrieve the ball. "Why didn't they let you play?" He tossed the ball back to Darryl and found his spot again near home plate.
"I was young and they told me that black kids didn't play baseball." Vintner and Darryl began to develop a gentle rhythm with their throws, talking mostly while the ball was in the air.
"Black kids don't play baseball, huh?" Vintner echoed. "Did you tell them about Jackie Robinson? Willie Mays? Hank Aaron? Rickey Henderson?" Vintner named a different player with each throw.
"Those aren't kids," Darryl replied. "They're old.:"
"What about Barry Bonds? He's not that old."
"He is to old," Darryl replied, fielding another grounder that Vintner had thrown to him, this one forcing him to range to his left. "Besides, I don't like Barry Bonds."
"Why not?"
"Cause he's a cheater," Darryl replied.
"Fair enough." Vintner knew better than to argue with a boy Darryl's age about moral ambiguities. For his own part, Vintner was all too aware of them. He didn't want to do anything to shatter that part of the boy's world, the part where right is right and wrong is wrong.
"So who do you like?" Vintner asked.
"Huh?" Darryl replied, not hearing Vintner as he ranged back to catch another fly ball. Other than that one throw, Darryl kept throwing the ball fast but not too fast for Vintner to catch.
"Who's your favorite player?" Vintner asked.
"Darryl Strawberry," Darryl answered with confidence. Vintner took the ball and held it in his hands for a moment.
"How old are you," Vintner asked without throwing the ball.
"Thirteen," Darryl responded.
"How do you even know who Darryl Strawberry is?" Vintner threw the ball again, restarting their rhythm.
"My dad told me about him. He told me that he hit longer home runs than anybody else. He told me that you could close your eyes and just listen and you could tell that Strawberry was batting because the ball sounded different when Strawberry hit it."
"Is that who you are named after?" Vintner asked.
"Yeah," Darryl replied proudly.
"He was a hell of a hitter," Vintner said, squeezing another of Darryl's throws between his hands. Vintner's hands were beginning to get numb. With each throw he could feel his back tightening. Vintner knew that he was going to be sore the next day but he had no interest in stopping.
"Did you ever see him play?" Darryl asked. It was the first question Darryl asked Vintner during the whole conversation. Until then, Vintner had asked all the questions.
"A couple of times," Vintner said. "I'm more of a Yankee fan so I saw him a bunch of times when he played for the Yankees but I also saw a couple games at Shea."
"Darryl Strawberry played for the Yankees?" Darryl asked.
"Yup," Vintner replied. "It was later in his career and he couldn't hit like he did when he was on the Mets, but he played on the Yanks for a couple of years." Darryl didn't respond. He just caught ball and threw ball and tried to process the information.
"I saw him once at Shea when he hit a home run into the parking lot."
"Really?" Darryl's eyes grew big at the thought.
"Really," Vintner replied, throwing the ball high in the air again. He tried to remember that day, decades earlier. He was almost a young man then. All Vintner felt like he could remember was memories of memories, unclear pictures that had been processed so many times they had begun to fade. "Your dad take you to a lot of games?" Vintner asked, believing it to be an innocent question.
Darryl shook his head. "I don't see my dad very much," Darryl replied. Vintner could feel the tension in Darryl's next throw. It stung his hands. It was the hardest ball Darryl had thrown since he ricocheted the ball off the backstop.
"Did he ever take you to a game?" Vintner asked, unsure of how far he should push the questions.
"No," Darryl responded. He paused. "I've never been to a pro game," Darryl said the words as if they were a confession. The two of them continued to throw but, after that, the conversation lagged. It was just as easy, sometimes easier, to throw the ball without talking.
They played catch for what must have been hours, not slowing down until the late afternoon. None of the other kids returned to the baseball field that day. Darryl and Vintner only stopped when Darryl said that he had to get home, that his mother liked it when he got home before she did. Vintner was a disappointed when Darryl said he had to leave. His body was already aching but he would have kept on playing.
Once Darryl said he had to go, Vintner threw the ball to him one last time and Darryl caught it in his glove. Then Darryl tucked his glove under his armpit and started running home. He always ran home. He never walked. He waved goodbye to Vintner only after he'd already run halfway across the outfield. He didn't even stop running to do so, instead simply turning and waving while running backwards. From a distance, Darryl looked like he was dropping back to catch a long fly ball. Vintner waved back and then Darryl turned and was gone.
The skin on Vintner's hands had worn thin from catching Darryl's hard throws without a glove. Both his palms were bleeding slightly and Vintner worried that he might have gotten blood stains on Darryl's pristine ball. He didn't worry about it too much though. He was pretty sure he knew a way to make it up to him.
Madam Huldah's opened at noon. She was unwilling to open it any earlier no matter how much extra money Jim offered to pay her to do so. "Proper rest is essential in the fortune telling business, as in life," she offered. So, for the second day in a row, Jim arrived at Madam Huldah's before she unlocked the iron grate protecting her storefront. Madam Huldah arrived ten minutes after Jim. She was, despite Jim's eagerness to get started as early as possible, right on time. Jim knew that Madam Huldah had negotiated for more money than she could possibly make in a single day and she didn't even have to read any fortunes. All she had to do was sit with Jim and watch the street until the stranger walked by. She raised her rates because she told Jim that she was going to have to reschedule a number of the appointments that she had with regulars and she was charging Jim for the loss of goodwill. Jim didn't care. It was his client's money.
"Good morning, Jim," Madam Huldah said, as she stepped passed Jim, reaching to unlock the padlock holding the grate down. "Do you mind?" she asked, handing Jim her cup of coffee so that she had two free hands to work the lock.
"Whatever you need," Jim replied. Madam Huldah had on the same dark eyeliner as she wore the day before. She was wearing a flowing green dress and had matching bracelets running up and down both her arms. As she leaned down to unlock the gate, Jim noticed a small tattoo midway between Madam Huldah's shoulder blades. It was a small brown triangle facing downward, as if pointing further down her back. Jim would have expected something flashier. "Can I ask you about your tattoo?" Jim asked as Madam Huldah stood up, pulling up the rumbling grate as she did so. She turned back towards Jim and took her coffee from him.
"You can ask," she replied, turning away from him to unlock the actual door.
"Does it have any significance?" Jim asked.
Madam Huldah opened the inner door and turned back towards Jim. "During the Holocaust, Jews were made to wear stars on their clothes. Homosexuals were made to wear pink triangles. Gypsies like my grandparents, were made to wear brown triangles. Please, come inside." Madam Huldah held the door open for Jim and he stepped into the waiting room.
"I guess your grandparents made it out?" Jim said. He didn't sit down. He waited to be offered a seat.
"When my grandmother realized she was pregnant with my mother, she put a spell on one of the Nazi guards and made him fall in love with her." Madam Huldah smiled at Jim as she spoke, seemingly enjoying retelling a story that she had told many times before. "Can you imagine, Jim?" When she said Jim's name, it flowed smoothly between her lips. The way she said it, the "j" was soft and she held the sound of the "i" so that the word Jim rhymed with the word stream. "A Nazi in love with a gypsy?" Jim didn't respond, wanting her to continue uninterrupted. "The spell was meant to protect both my grandmother and my grandfather but the guard became so jealous of my grandfather that he killed him. When he saw how distraught my grandmother was at this, the guard helped her escape. He knew that she would never love him but he still could not live with the idea of her hating him. So, he felt that this was the only way that he might be able to get her to forgive him."
"What happened to the guard?"
"He had made my grandmother promise that once she was safe that she would write him a letter. He waited for her letter for weeks and, when he received it, he killed himself with the same gun he murdered my grandfather with."
"That's quite a story," Jim said. "Do you believe it?"
"I heard my mother tell this story many times."
"But do you believe it?" Jim asked again. He smiled at her, trying to read her but it was like trying to read a menu written in a language that you don't speak. Some words looked familiar but it would be risky to make guesses without help.
"The story has been told enough," she replied, "that even if it never happened, it is true." She stopped and looked around the waiting room. "So, where should we be sitting for our stake-out? Do we need to rearrange the furniture?" Jim was glad that she offered. The furniture had been situated so that only one seat faced the window. The other seats had their back to the window, facing the inner chamber. Jim guessed that, when Madam Huldah sat in the waiting area, she faced out so that she could see the world but that when her clients sat in the waiting area, they sat facing in, so that the world couldn't see them. Jim suggested that they move the love seat to the other side of the room, perpendicular to the single chair. Then he let Madam Huldah pick where she wanted to sit. She chose to sit in the chair. Jim sat alone in the love seat. From where he sat, Jim had a clear view of the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.
Jim paid Madam Huldah in advance, not knowing how long they would be sitting there before the stranger walked by. Neither of them spoke at first. After roughly half an hour, Madam Huldah broke the silence. "So what do we do?"
Jim shrugged. "We watch," he replied. "When you see our guy, let me know but don't motion towards him, just calmly describe him to me. I'll get a good look at him; maybe I'll even follow him to try to figure out where he's going or to at least find out something about him. Maybe I'll take his picture," Jim lifted up the small digital camera that he had in his lap.
"That's it?" Madam Huldah asked.
"That's it," Jim replied.
"It is going to be long day," Madam Huldah said, leaning back in her chair. "I hope he comes soon." Silence came again. This time they didn't speak for over an hour. Jim lost himself in the faces of the people walking passed them. He looked at the face of every man that walked by and wondered if this was the person. He studied their gates. He watched their strides to see how each one of them walked. He tried to compare how each man walked with the strides of the figures he had etched in his mind from the zoo footage. Madam Huldah's job was much less interesting. She knew what the person looked like. She saw him nearly every day. For her, the waiting was simply waiting.
"Would you like me to do a reading for you?" Madam Huldah broke the silence again after nearly two hours. "You've paid," she shrugged.
"We can't leave the waiting room," Jim answered without taking his eyes off the passersby across the street.
"I can only do crystal ball inside, but I can do Tarot Cards here." She patted the small table in front of them. The table was strewn with the same types of magazines you might see in the waiting room of a dentist's office.
"I don't want us to miss anything," Jim said.
"Madam Huldah does not miss anything." She smiled at him almost flirtatiously. Jim knew that this was how she sold her reluctant male customers. Only, with Jim, she wasn't interested in money. She simply wanted something to do. "Perhaps you will learn something," she finished, the flirtatiousness dropping from her voice.
"Fine," Jim replied. "But I have to warn you-no offense-- but I don't believe in any of this stuff." Jim waved his hand around, dismissing everything around him.
"What do you believe in, Jim?" Madam Huldah asked. Jim just smiled at her and shook his head. "Still looking for something to believe in?" she asked.
"I stopped looking a long time ago," Jim replied. "But if you think you can do my reading without it distracting you from keeping an eye out on the street, feel free."
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