The Whore's Child

wearing a knowing grin.
    â€œI guess you’re about done here,” he said.
    â€œJust stopped by to pick up my ladder and brushes,” Mr. Christie said.
    â€œGood,” his father said. “Then you’ll be gone when we get back.”
    This remark appeared to sadden Mr. Christie more than anger him. Turning to Lin, he said, “Linwood tell you he saved the game?”
    â€œLin, you mean?” his father said. “My son?”
    Whatever he was driving at, Mr. Christie didn’t seem all that interested. “You should’ve been there,” he smiled, and Lin found himself smiling back. Given how things had worked out, they were friends again.
    â€œI will be, from now on.”
    â€œWell, that’s good,” Mr. Christie said, sounding like he meant it. “Today was just the beginning, right, Linwood? Wait’ll
next
year. All he needs is to grow a little, and then he’ll be a natural shortstop.”
    Lying in bed that night, Lin replayed what had happened that afternoon over and over, trying to decide if he really had saved the game. It was thrilling to think so, and to know this was the conclusion that everybody else had come to, even if he himself wasn’t so sure. The truth, insofar as he was able to reconstruct it, was that he’d been daydreaming when the big Stop & Shop kid uncoiled at Hugo Wentz’s pitch, and what followed wasn’t at all like his nightly fantasies of snagging line drives. For one thing, he didn’t have to dive, because the ball had headed straight for him—was on him, in fact, before he even had time to consider ducking. Rather, his glove had somehow been there in front of his face, and the ball had rocketed into the stiff webbing, closing the mitt around it without Lin even having to squeeze, and then yanking it clean off his wrist. Glove and ball together had described a graceful arc in the air above his head before landing in the dirt behind second base.
    Recalling the moment, Lin realized he’d been in no great hurry to retrieve the glove. The batter, he’d concluded, was out, by virtue of the fact that the ball was still right there in his glove. That the glove was no longer on his hand didn’t seem all that significant, so he was confused by all the yells coming from both teams, as if everybody had forgotten that this was the third out or else couldn’t quite believe that Lin Hart, who always flinched away from slow dribblers, had managed to catch a baseball hit this hard. To prove they were wrong, he picked up the glove, turned toward the umpire to show him that the ball was still in the glove, and, in so doing, collided with the runner who’d been on first and was now bearing down on second. The collision knocked both boys down, but Lin was holding on to the glove with both hands and didn’t drop it, which meant that the runner had been tagged out. Naturally, the other boy protested, complaining that Lin hadn’t even meant to tag him, but the umpire was having none of it. “You don’t have to
mean
anything,” he explained. “This is baseball. You just have to do it.” Lin repeated this last part in the dark, satisfied, more or less, to have done it.
    His parents’ voices were coming up through the heat register now, in the early stages of an argument, unless Lin was mistaken. His mother was saying that of course they were obligated to pay Mr. Christie, whereas his father was of the opinion that it would serve him right if he got stiffed. As they moved through the rooms below, the conversation went from inaudible to audible to inaudible again.
    Earlier in the summer, Lin would’ve concluded that he was hearing all the important parts, that nothing essential to his understanding or well-being would be said if his ear wasn’t receiving and processing the information. Now it seemed just as likely that the really important things— like his parents’ decision to live together again, like his father quitting bartending and selling cars for Uncle Brian, like his mother’s refusal to do as his grandfather, Linwood the Third, had asked—would play out quite naturally in scenes that did not require his presence. Coming home from the restaurant, they’d parked in front of the barbershop and climbed the dark, evil-smelling stairs up to the dingy flat to gather the last of his father’s things. It was an awful place, but Lin understood it