The Whore's Child

standing next to him. When it hit him squarely in the forehead, Lin sat down hard, right on top of second base, the ball suddenly inert on the ground between his legs.
    Being hit didn’t hurt as much as it surprised and frightened him. What scared him most was the sound the impact had made inside his head, as if a snare drum had been struck between his ears, and the sound continued to reverberate as he sat there on second base, his eyes watering, his nose suddenly running like a faucet. Even worse than the
sound
was the odd sensation of things
moving
inside his head at the moment of impact. He’d always imagined that the human head, or at least his own head, was solidly constructed and all of a piece, whereas it now appeared that things were actually floating in it, that he himself was one of the things that floated there. Until being struck by the baseball, he’d always considered his head a safe place to hide out. Now he wasn’t so sure.
    â€œ
That’s
the way to get in front of it,” Mr. Christie called out encouragingly. “Stand up and dust yourself off, Linwood. Here comes another one.”
    ENEMIES
    Namely Hugo Wentz. A sixth grader, one year ahead of Lin at St. Mary’s, Hugo joined the team almost two weeks into the season. The rules were specific: no one whose application form was not handed in by the deadline would be allowed to play American Legion, but an exception was made for Hugo because his father owned Elm Photo. In fact, it was rumored Mr. Wentz had enrolled his boy himself, so he wouldn’t be such a sissy. Lin recalled a day that winter when the fifth- and sixth-grade boys had been combined for gym class to have their fitness evaluated. Many of the boys had been able to climb hand over hand up a thick rope all the way to the rafters, and Lin had made it over halfway. Hugo was the only boy who hadn’t been able to pull himself up the rope at all.
    The other members of the team were already playing catch, waiting for Mr. Christie to show up with the bats and bases, when Lin heard a vehicle bumping along the rutted access road. He turned, expecting it to be Mr. Christie’s pickup, but instead it was a brand-new 1963 Cadillac with tail fins, coming toward them too fast and stirring up a cloud of dirt when it stopped. Hugo sat in the front seat, as far as possible from the man behind the wheel, who put the car in Park and stared across the seat at his son.
    From where he stood against the fence, Lin had a good view of the Wentzes, who greatly resembled each other. Mr. Wentz was a florid man, all belly and jowls, who owned several small, unrelated businesses in town. Perhaps because he was always flitting back and forth between them, Mr. Wentz managed always to convey a cosmic impatience. What he seemed impatient about right that instant was that his son was just sitting in the car, looking straight ahead, almost as if he hadn’t noticed they’d stopped, or as if the arrival at their destination had to be announced, like on a train. Finally, after his father’s lips moved, Hugo got out of the car, closed the door behind him and gazed impassively at the chain-link fence. Though there was no gate, the fence was no more than waist high. Still Hugo regarded it as if it were twenty feet tall and strung at the top with barbed wire. After a moment, the window of the Cadillac rolled down and Mr. Wentz called, “Forget something, Hugo?”
    Apparently his son was still grappling with the problem of the fence, and the expression on his face suggested he couldn’t handle both it and his father’s question at the same time. Either that or he’d concluded that the two things were somehow related. Was his father asking him if he’d forgotten how to fly? Only when Hugo finally turned around did he see his father was holding his mitt. Mr. Wentz, disgusted that the boy had made no move to fetch the glove, Frisbeed it at the boy, who juggled it, then dropped it. The mitt remained there on the ground while father and son stared at each other. At last, Mr. Wentz said, “What?”
    â€œThere’s a fence,” Hugo said.
    His father rubbed his temples with his thumbs. “So climb it,” he said, and then roared off. Hugo watched the Cadillac until it shot between the stone pillars that marked the entrance to Carling Field, then tossed his glove over the fence. Lin assumed he was going to take his father’s advice and climb it,