The Whore's Child

his starched white shirt, clip-on tie and a sport jacket, his smooth cheeks scented with aftershave, what did Mr. Christie
want
when he reached the long-handled collection basket all the way down the pew to where Lin and his mother sat? If it was just their weekly offering, why did the basket linger there, as if he secretly was hoping for something else?
    When the eight rosters had been announced and Lin had learned that he’d be playing for Elm Photo, Mr. Christie’s team, he’d immediately wondered if the coach had asked for him. He hoped so. Maybe their church relationship meant that Mr. Christie would grant his wish to play center field. The form that came in the mail and required his mother’s signature had inquired what position each boy hoped to play. Lin’s father, who now had an apartment over the barbershop downtown and saw him only on weekends, had said the best player usually played center field, so he’d signed up for that. He wasn’t sure he’d be the best player, but thought he probably would be, because he loved the sport and saw himself in his mind’s eye ranging gracefully under a blue sky, high fly balls settling into his new glove. In preparation for American Legion, he’d been playing backyard Wiffle ball all spring long with the neighborhood kids. Afterward, every night in his bedroom, he tossed a baseball-sized rubber ball over his shoulder and then lunged after it, imagining his soft tosses as hard-hit line drives. With each dive he landed full-length on his bed, where he bounced hard but always managed to hang on to the ball. He’d have played this game much longer, making one game-saving catch after another, except all that thudding got on his mother’s nerves and after a while she’d call “Enough!” up the stairs and warn him what would happen if he broke his box spring.
    That he might
not
be the best player on Mr. Christie’s team occurred to him only when he arrived for practice that first day and saw that he was one of the smallest boys there. Playing catch, they seemed to be hurling the baseball at each other as hard as they could, and it made an angry, popping sound in their mitts. They were all public school boys Lin didn’t know. He attended the small Catholic grade school in town. His father had not approved of this, but his mother taught in the public schools and knew what went on there; she had insisted that their son enroll in St. Mary’s. As new boys arrived, they propped their bikes up against the chain-link fence, slipped their soft fielder’s mitts off their handlebars and joined the double line, leaving Lin to marvel at how easy it was for them. He kept hoping some other kid from St. Mary’s would turn up, but none did. So he leaned up against the fence and just watched, waiting for an invitation, though not one of the other boys so much as glanced in his direction.
    When Mr. Christie arrived in his pickup truck, the first thing he did was gather his team into a semicircle and read from the forms they’d filled out several weeks before. It quickly became apparent that every boy wanted to be pitcher or shortstop or outfielder. “Lin Hart, center field,” Mr. Christie read from Lin’s form. Was it his imagination or did some of the other kids grin at one another knowingly when he raised his hand? Actually, center field hadn’t been one of the choices listed on the form. He’d drawn a line through “outfield” and penciled in “center field” for the sake of clarity. If Mr. Christie found this amusing, he didn’t let on. In fact, he gave Lin the same friendly smile he offered all the other boys, never letting on that he knew Lin from church.
    â€œHow come you’ve got a girl’s name?” one of the boys asked.
    â€œThat’s L-Y-N-N,” Mr. Christie explained. “Lin here is L-I-N. Short for Linwood, would be my guess.”
    Lin, red-faced, nodded his head, grateful to Mr. Christie for intuiting his full name and for not making a big deal out of the other boy’s insult. “Well, Lin, we can try you out in the outfield if that’s what you want, but you look to me like a natural second baseman.”
    Lin shrugged, torn between his original idea and the fact that his coach had recognized some special quality in him. Besides, something about Mr. Christie’s tone of voice suggested that a second baseman wasn’t such a