A Face in the Crowd

monologues. “I say, I say, Miss Pritchett, ma’am, I do declayuh I have done done dooty in these heah britches.”
    On-screen, Upton leapt to his feet, looking back at the sprawled catcher and signaling safe just as the umpire punched the air with a clenched fist. A different camera zoomed out to show Joe Maddon charging from the dugout in high dudgeon. The sellout crowd was going wild.
    In the replay—even before Evers paused and ran it back with the clicker—Lester Embree and his doofy bowl cut were visible above the FOX 13 ad recessed into the wall’s blue padding, and then, as Upton clearly evaded the tag with a nifty hook slide, the quiet boy Evers and his friends had witnessed being pulled wrinkled and fingerless from Marsden’s Pond rose and pointed one fish-nibbled stub not at the play developing right in front of him, but, as if he could see into the air-conditioned, dimly lit condo, directly at Evers. His lips were moving, and it didn’t look like he was saying Kill the ump .
    “Come on,” Evers scoffed, as if at the bad call. “Jesus, I was a kid .”
    The TV returned to live action—very lively, in fact. Joe Maddon and the home plate ump stood toe to toe and nose to nose. Both were jawing away, and you didn’t have to be a fortune-teller to know that Maddon would soon be following the game from the clubhouse. Evers had no interest in watching the Rays’ manager get the hook. He used his remote to run the picture back to where Lester Embree had come into view.
    Maybe he won’t be there, Evers thought. Maybe you can’t DVR ghosts any more than you can see vampires in a mirror .
    Only Lester Embree was right there in the stands—in the expensive seats, no less—and Evers suddenly remembered the day at Fairlawn Grammar when old Soupy had been waiting at Evers’s locker. Just seeing him there had made Evers want to haul off and paste him one. The little fucker was trespassing, after all. They’ll stop if you tell ’em to , Soupy had said in that crackerbarrel drawl of his. Even Kaz will stop.
    He’d been talking about Chuckie Kazmierski, only no one called him Chuckie, not even now. Evers could attest to that, because Kaz was the only friend from his childhood who was still a friend. He lived in Punta Gorda, and sometimes they got together for a round of golf. Just two happy retirees, one divorced, one a widower. They reminisced a lot—really, what else were old men good for?—but it had been years since they talked about Soupy Embree. Evers had to wonder now just why that was. Shame? Guilt? Maybe on his part, but probably not on Kaz’s. As the youngest of six brothers and the runt of their scruffy pack, Kaz had had to fight for every inch of respect. He’d earned his spot as top dog the hard way, with knuckles and blood, and he took Lester Embree’s helplessness as a personal insult. No one had ever given him a break, and now this whingeing hillbilly was asking for a free pass? “Nothing’s free,” Kaz used to say, shaking his head as if it was a sad truth. “Somehow, some way, somebody got to pay.”
    Probably Kaz doesn’t even remember, Evers thought. Neither did I, till tonight. Tonight he was having total recall. Mostly what he remembered was the kid’s pleading eyes that day by his locker. Big and blue and soft. And that wheedling, cornpone voice, begging him, like it was really in his power to do it.
    You’re the one Kaz and the rest of them listen to. Gimme a break, won’t you? Ah’ll give you money. Two bucks a week, that’s mah whole allowance. All Ah want’s to get along .
    Little as he liked to, Evers could remember his answer, delivered in a jeering mockery of the boy’s accent: If’n all you want’s to git along, you git along raht out of heah, Soupy. Ah don’t want yoah money, hit’s prob’ly crawlin wit’ fag germs .
    A loyal lieutenant (not the general, as Lester Embree had assumed), Evers immediately brought the matter to Kaz, embellishing the scene further, laughing at his own drawl. Later, in the shadow of the flagpole, he egged Kaz on from the nervous circle surrounding the fight. Technically, it wasn’t a fight at all, because Soupy never defended himself. He folded at Kaz’s first blow, curling into a ball on the ground while Kaz slugged and kicked him at will. And then, as if he’d tired, Kaz straddled him, grabbed his wrists, and pinned his arms back above his head. Soupy was weeping, his split lip blowing bloody bubbles. In the tussle,