Boys Life

kid! How old are you?”
    “Nine,” was the answer. “Almost nine and a half.”
    I could tell Davy was as puzzled as I was about Nemo’s size; there should have been no way on earth for a runt like that to drill a baseball into a mitt as he had. “Go stand on second base, Johnny!” I shouted, and Johnny waved and ran over to take the position. “You want to throw some, Nemo?”
    “I don’t know. I’m thaposed to be gettin’ home thoon.”
    “It won’t take long. I’d kinda like to see what you can do. Davy, can he wear your glove?”
    Davy took it off. The glove swallowed Nemo’s left hand like a brown whale. “Why don’t you stand on the pitcher’s mound and throw Johnny a few?” I suggested.
    Nemo looked at the pitcher’s mound, at second base, and then at home plate. “I’ll thand right there,” he said, and he walked to the batter’s box while Davy and I stood dumbfounded. From home plate to second base was quite a toss for guys our age, much less anybody nine-and-a-half years old. “You sure, Nemo?” I asked, and he said, “Thure.”
    Nemo took the ball out of the glove with what might have been reverence. I watched his long fingers work around it, find a grip on the seams, and fasten themselves. “Ready?” he called.
    “Yeah, I’m ready! Let ’er ri-”
    Smack!
    If we hadn’t seen such a thing with our own eyes, none of us would ever have believed it. Nemo had wound up and pitched in a heartbeat, and if Johnny hadn’t been extra quick, the ball would’ve caught him right in the center of his chest and knocked him flat. As it was, the sheer power of the pitch made Johnny stagger back off second base, dust smoking from the ball in his clenched glove. Johnny began to walk around in a circle, his face pinched with pain.
    “You okay?” Davy shouted.
    “Hurts a little,” Johnny answered. Davy and I knew it must be bad for Johnny to admit it. “I can take another one.” We were too far away to hear him say, under his breath, “I hope.” He threw the ball back in a high arc to Nemo, who stepped forward six paces, watched the ball speed downward toward his face, and plucked it out of the air at the very last second. The kid knew what economy of movement was all about, but I swear he’d been an instant away from a smashed nose.
    Nemo returned to the plate. He wiped dust off the tops of his brown loafers by rubbing them on the backs of his jeans legs. He started to wind up, and Johnny braced for the throw. Nemo unwound and put the ball back in his glove. “Throwin’ ain’t nothin’,” he told us, as if all this attention embarrassed him. “Anybody with an arm can do it.”
    “Not like that!” Davy Ray said.
    “You guyth think thith is a big deal or thomethin’?”
    “It’s fast,” I said. “Real fast, Nemo. The pitcher on our team’s not even as fast, and he’s twice your size.”
    “Thith ith eathy thuff.” Nemo looked out at Johnny. “Run for turd bayth!”
    “What?”
    “Run for turd bayth!” Nemo repeated. “Hold your glove anywhere, just keep it open and where I can thee it!”
    “Huh?”
    “Run as fath as you can!” Nemo urged. “You don’t have to look at me, jutht keep your glove open!”
    “Go ahead, Johnny!” Davy called. “Do it!”
    Johnny was a brave fellow. He showed it right then, as he started pounding the dirt between second and third bases. He didn’t look toward home, but his head and shoulders were pulled in tight and his glove was down in front of his chest, the pocket open and facing Nemo Curliss.
    Nemo pulled in a quick breath. He drew back, his white arm flashed, and the ball went like a bullet.
    Johnny was going full out, his gaze fixed on third base. The ball popped into his glove when he was still a half-dozen steps from third, and the feel of it wedging solidly into the pocket was so startling that Johnny lost his balance and went down on the ground in a slide that boiled up yellow dust. When the dust began to clear, Johnny was sitting on third base staring at the ball in his glove. “Wow,” he said, stunned. “Wow.”
    I had never in my life seen a baseball thrown with such amazing accuracy. Johnny hadn’t even had to reach an inch for it; in fact, he hadn’t even known the ball was coming until it hit him in the glove. “Nemo?” I said. “You ever pitched on a Little League team before?”
    “Nope.”
    “But you’ve played ball before, haven’t you?” Davy Ray asked.
    “Nope.” He frowned and pushed