Chapter LI: Old Man Down The Road
Chapter Fifty-One: Old Man Down The Road
It was freezing outside, but I didn't want to go back and get a coat. And now that Poncho was gone, and I hadn't fixed my bike chain yet, I had no choice but to hoof it. I stumbled up Elwyn Avenue, clutching my shirt and trailing the tape ribbon of Game Six in a long black line behind me in the slush. I passed Gentle Gena's old house and was nearly run over by a car full of high school kids racing down South Street hill near the sheep and geese.
“Get out of the road you pisser,” they yelled.
I didn't want to waste time looking for Wynn's grave, but I still took a slightly new route through the south street cemetery and tried to read the names on each head stone as I passed. No luck. Just a bunch of names like Richardson and Kinney and Douthit. No Wynter anywhere. I crossed Sagamore Road and passed silently onto Jones Avenue, past the Clipper Old Age Home and the Denniford scrap metal yard. I quickly bypassed the dump gate with the “CLOSED NO TRESPASSING” sign by walking through the snowy forest, crunching my way around some trees and around the fence. The sound tore through the silence in the direction of Ogden's Point. I knew how dangerous it was to return to the Youthfire site with fresh memories about Lacy but there was only one place Darcy's sock would turn up.
I scurried down the straight road, keeping an eye out for Bonigan or any of the other Wraiths who prowled the woods, to the mounds of trash, diving immediately into the hunt for fresh trash and any sign of my pretty sock. I found nothing but ash and bits of tin. The hills smelled like a giant sparkler had been discarded nearby. Presently, I was searching in the vicinity of the Hobo's camp. He was crouched in front of a fire, singing a song I couldn't recognize.
“Hey, buddy. Have you seen a sock? I just lost it so it should be on top. Hey?”
The hobo looked up with watery eyes. His crooked shack was covered with snow and various artifacts hung from the corners and walls. I actually recognized my old backpack that he had stolen during my camping trip with Erin. But there was no time to bicker about meaningless items like a backpack.
“Listen, it's just a sock. Darcy Devins gave it to me. She's my girlfriend. Have you seen it?” I'll pay for it.”
I held my hands about four inches apart to demonstrate how long the sock was. If this man was going to help me he would need all the visual help I could give him. A picture would have been nice but I had never remembered to take one when I had a camera. The hobo spoke slowly, as if it had been ages since he'd opened his mouth.
“My name is Duke Snider...no that's the name of ballplayer I want. I had a trading card with Duke Snider on it. Have you seen it? I know it's here.”
Frowning, I said, “No. You aren't listening. There aren't any baseball cards out here. But there's a sock. Have you seen it? It's pink and it's small and my girlfriend gave it to me. It got misplaced. I lost it.”
The H. shook his natty bean and put his hands closer to the fire.
“Sock? No. I haven't seen one of those in a while. I see lots of things come through here. Not so much anymore. I'm waiting for my baseball card. My mother threw it out on accident. She didn't know. I had a Duke Snider car and he had signed it himself when I went to New York to see the Dodgers. I saw them play and then he signed his own card and it was mine and the Dodgers were my team. But my mother got rid of it on accident and she said it might come to the dump so I came here and I'm waiting for it. You haven't seen it.”
A likely story. Wine had clearly rotted this boy's brain out.
“Dude, you came here over ten years ago, right? You've been waiting for a baseball card for ten years? What's wrong with you? There is no way a baseball card is going to survive one winter here, let alone ten or twenty. Forget the card. I think Wynn gave me a Duke Snider card. I'll give it to you if you can find me my sock. I just lost it so there's still a chance it's here. Have you seen it?”
“I don't see socks here much anymore,” The hobo repeated. “No one comes here like they use to. It's just me. You can wait with me, if you want. Maybe your sock and my card will come on the same truck. That would be nice, yes?”
He smiled at me and I saw he had no teeth left. His mouth was a flesh orifice or red gums and a probing tongue. His beard reached below his chest and his brown hair was matted. I wasn't even sure what race he was. He was wearing abundant clothes for the cold weather, layers upon layers of women's overcoats and men's sweaters and parkas and ski pants and he hovered near the fire. I tried to get him on the same train.
“Can't you help? I only want my sock back. It's mine and my girlfriend gave it to me. She gave it and I can't lose it. Do you or don't you know where it is?”
“Maybe it'll come on the next truck. Maybe not. Cold these days. Come closer to the fire.”
There wasn't much else I could do accept wait. I edged close to the fire and shuddered as I smelled the hobo's clothes. Then I noticed that the fire was dying.
“You'll need more wood, chief. Do you think the truck will be here soon?”
The hobo didn't respond. He had leaned closer to the fire and started to whisper, actually to sing a song I had no memory of. It was mysterious and sung low into the flames. The fire grew until I had to step back from the heat.
“No wood here,” said the Hobo as he looked up from the wreath of flame. “If you stay long enough you'll see. They all see. I don't know when the next truck will come. I've been waiting for my Duke Snider to come back to me. It's been a long time, see? You can stay. I can tell you about the time I went to the swimming hole and met a girl. She was pretty. I forget her name. We went to school together. She was quite fond of me. Puppy love.”
The fire warmed me and held me in a light of clarity. The hobo's fire, his tribe, his hook were here on the banks of the Sagamore River, my own antique battlefield. His baseball card would never arrive and neither would my sock. We were here, at a station through which no trains ran.
“Oh, trains pass through here, Oggy. It's not as empty as you think.”
I recognized the voice and saw the Hobo look to his left. Toddy Bonigan was approaching and he was holding the precious sock.
“Have you seen a Duke Snider card,” asked the hobo as he clutched his coat.
Bonigan's gaze was wilting.
“You're not ready to have your card, old man. You aren't ready to sacrifice.”
“I've given you everything,” was the Hobo's short reply. “What more is there?”
Hadn't I asked the same thing on evenings before the television as Ray Knight came to the plate in the bottom of the tenth inning? The answer never came. I didn't know what was left, But Bonigan appeared to know.
“What more is there? Are you two blind? Give me the ticket. Just give the ticket to me.”
Bonigan reached his hand out but the hobo shrank into his overcoat. I was waiting for a moment when I could steal Darcy's sock and run with it into the forest where the remains of my plywood shack could protect me. I'd be alone again with Darcy's sock and I would find a way to keep it forever, to die with it if necessary, like Butch Cassidy.
“But the ticket is mine. I bought the ticket and he promised he would come. I know he'll get there. How can I see the show if I don't have the ticket?”
Bonigan urged on, “You won't see the show if you don't give me the ticket.”
“But Buddy Holly is coming to Moorhead and I need to have the ticket.”
Evidently there was more to the hobo than a psycho collecting aluminum. That should have been clear by the fact that there wasn't any aluminum in sight. He was at the dump awaiting the arrival of his Duke Snider baseball card while at the same time clinging to a ticket, a ticket he was now clutching in his bare fingers, to see Buddy Holly. IT wasn't a Buddy Holly tribute band he was talking about, either. This guy was actually talking about the 1959 Buddy Holly, the dead guy my father sometimes listened to when his medication was working.
“You see, Oggy. You see what clinging to these trinkets gets you? I ask for a simple thing, a trifle, and he balks. Why?”
“I don't have any idea what you two are talking about. Just give me back my sock and I'll leave you to squabble over baseball cards and useless concert tickets.”
“Useless? You fahk!” This invective surprised me coming from the previously soft-spoken hobo. “You slut. This ticket isn't useless. This ticket will get me into Buddy Holly's next concert in Moorhead, Minnesota. You don't know anything. You open your mouth and talk but you don't know shit. You don't know Buddy Holly. You don't know Jerry Lee Lewis. You're just a punk. I watched you run around here with your Air Supply T-shirts and your Blondie patches. I know your type. You think you understand music. You are just a young punk. You don't know sacrifice. But I'll be the one laughing when Buddy Holly lands in Moorhead for his concert. Then I'll laugh because I'll have a ticket.”
I decided I could beat the hobo up using my Ninja training and it would be safe to taunt him some more.
“You can take that ticket back to the place you bought it and trade it in for a nickel and a kick in the ass, you fool. Buddy Holly ain't gonna land in Moorhead, Minnesota any time soon. OK? So get over it. He's dead. Dead.”
“You don't know Richie Valens. You don't know the Big Bopper,” said the hobo bitterly.
“No, I don't, and I don't care. Bullwhip, would you just give me my sock so I can leave this wacko alone.”
Bonigan looked abundantly pleased with himself as he watched the Hobo throw a pebble at my leg.
“I didn't think I'd have you both in one place. My two star pupils. Both of you think you are the masters, both of you think you are superior. How special. One sits in wait for his Snider baseball card, praying for it to arrive so he can go watch Buddy Holly play and the other waits for his Sock, his precious sock that Darcy gave him so he can go help the Red Sox win the '86 world series.”
“The Red Sox?” cried the Hobo happily. “You think the Red Sox are gonna win a world series that took place six years ago? You call me a lunatic? Boy, that bakes the cake. The cold must've gotten to your head, son, because you are thinking like a piss Popsicle.”
I picked up a pebble and bounced it off the Hobo's chest. He returned with a volley of mint candies.
“Bullwhip, make him stop. He has no right. He doesn't know what we know. He doesn't know Ray Knight or Calvin Schiraldi. He doesn't know sacrifice like us.”
“I wouldn't say that, Oggy. Our friend has made a few sacrifices since I first met him. He just isn't ready to make the big one.”
“Dude,” I said to the Hobo. “Give him the stupid ticket. Take your card and go home. What's the big deal?”
“You think you understand? You think all he wants is the ticket? You think all he wants is a piece of paper?”
“Yes. That's all he's asking for.”
“Idiot! He wants memories. He wants all my memories. Don't you see?”
Bonigan's expression was more brutal than it had ever been. Memories? Sure, I had been cheapening all my experiences ever since 1986 by trading them for a moment of warmth at the Youthfire, but I always thought the memories were still mine. Weren't they?
“Wait. What memories does he want? From when? For how long does he get to keep them? It's just a trade, right?”
My urgency betrayed my suspicions and both Bonigan and the hobo grinned.
“He wants all of them,” said the homely one. “Everything from when Holly crashed. I was eleven. He wants all those memories to allow me to go back and warn Buddy that his plane was gonna crash.”
A sensible plan, in my opinion, but there was one thing wrong with it.
“That's impossible. You can't go back. I've tried. I've tried to do it. Nothing works. I had the tape. Look. Here it is.”
I displayed some threads of ribbon from Game Six. Neither men seemed much impressed.
“I've told you before, Oggy. This isn't over. The tape isn't what's holding you back. My friend has explained it as well as I could. I'm surprised it took you this long to figure it out. If you want to go back you have to sacrifice something.”
“You want the last six years?”
“Of course. Don't forget where you come from. History doesn't teach itself. That was what I was saying. I want the last six years from you and the last forty from our friend. But as he's grown older he's grown more attached to them, silly man. The question is: have you? For instance, what happened with Lacy in Connecticut? It looks like you took a shower since I saw you last. And shaved. Now what would make you go and do a thing like that, Oggy? Tell me and you might get your sock back.”
He held Darcy's sock out as an offering and I saw the past six years as in a dream, the High School pep rallies, the baseball games, the talent contests, the graduation hike and the celebrations with Erin and Cristo and Rose and Sully. The trip to Alaska and California and Ecuador, my three-part plan and my manifesto, the pleasant times in Florida at the all night drive-thru window buying tacos were at stake. Was I ready to sacrifice all that for a chance to win the Series? I had a moment of doubt, about two seconds, and then I thought, Of course I'm ready. It was like trading in a VW Bug for a Lamborghini. I could always get those memories again.
Looking back on it, I probably should have said no and been done with the whole affair. We're talking about sacrificing six years of memories. But we were also talking about giving Dwight Evans the celebration he deserves.
“What do I have to do? I broke the tape. It'll never work. What do I have to do? You can take everything. You can take my fahking whole life. You want to know about Lacy? I'll tell you everything. I only want to see Ray Knight strike out. Please.”
Bonigan smiled at the hobo as if to say, 'See? That wasn't so hard. Why cling to mind trifles?”
The hobo stared silently into the fire. Bullwhip turned to me.
“You want your sock back? You want Dewey to celebrate? Then you have to make it happen, Oggy. You have to strike out Ray Knight.”
This wasn't news to me. I'd been trying to strike Ray Knight out five years.
“But how? I can't even watch the game anymore. I don't know where Ray Knight lives. Poncho is gone. I have no money. I have nothing. Help me.”
To anger me, Bullwhip deliberately smelled Darcy's sock. The thought of his foul lips any where near Darcy's feet was repulsive to me. She gave the sock to me and only me. No one had the right to touch it. I was the one who kissed Rose McCorley. Me.
“Remember when we were kids and we only needed a bat and a ball to have a game?”
“Yes. A bat and a ball. Give me the sock.”
I reached for my sock but Bonigan stepped back.
“Wait. Nothing has changed, Oggy. You find the players and you make it happen. Then you can have your sock back. Then Dewey gets his win.”
Bonigan looked to the hobo for a moment as if to give him the same opportunity to bargain, but the hobo remained silent and ashamed. Bonigan then walked behind a pile of ash as he stashed Darcy's sock in his coat pocket leaving Mr. Buddy Holly freak and I alone. When I had gathered my thoughts I stood up, and as I trod over the dump in the direction of the entrance, I heard the hobo sing again to the rising flames. I recognized the song. “That'll be the day.” by Buddy Holly.
It was freezing outside, but I didn't want to go back and get a coat. And now that Poncho was gone, and I hadn't fixed my bike chain yet, I had no choice but to hoof it. I stumbled up Elwyn Avenue, clutching my shirt and trailing the tape ribbon of Game Six in a long black line behind me in the slush. I passed Gentle Gena's old house and was nearly run over by a car full of high school kids racing down South Street hill near the sheep and geese.
“Get out of the road you pisser,” they yelled.
I didn't want to waste time looking for Wynn's grave, but I still took a slightly new route through the south street cemetery and tried to read the names on each head stone as I passed. No luck. Just a bunch of names like Richardson and Kinney and Douthit. No Wynter anywhere. I crossed Sagamore Road and passed silently onto Jones Avenue, past the Clipper Old Age Home and the Denniford scrap metal yard. I quickly bypassed the dump gate with the “CLOSED NO TRESPASSING” sign by walking through the snowy forest, crunching my way around some trees and around the fence. The sound tore through the silence in the direction of Ogden's Point. I knew how dangerous it was to return to the Youthfire site with fresh memories about Lacy but there was only one place Darcy's sock would turn up.
I scurried down the straight road, keeping an eye out for Bonigan or any of the other Wraiths who prowled the woods, to the mounds of trash, diving immediately into the hunt for fresh trash and any sign of my pretty sock. I found nothing but ash and bits of tin. The hills smelled like a giant sparkler had been discarded nearby. Presently, I was searching in the vicinity of the Hobo's camp. He was crouched in front of a fire, singing a song I couldn't recognize.
“Hey, buddy. Have you seen a sock? I just lost it so it should be on top. Hey?”
The hobo looked up with watery eyes. His crooked shack was covered with snow and various artifacts hung from the corners and walls. I actually recognized my old backpack that he had stolen during my camping trip with Erin. But there was no time to bicker about meaningless items like a backpack.
“Listen, it's just a sock. Darcy Devins gave it to me. She's my girlfriend. Have you seen it?” I'll pay for it.”
I held my hands about four inches apart to demonstrate how long the sock was. If this man was going to help me he would need all the visual help I could give him. A picture would have been nice but I had never remembered to take one when I had a camera. The hobo spoke slowly, as if it had been ages since he'd opened his mouth.
“My name is Duke Snider...no that's the name of ballplayer I want. I had a trading card with Duke Snider on it. Have you seen it? I know it's here.”
Frowning, I said, “No. You aren't listening. There aren't any baseball cards out here. But there's a sock. Have you seen it? It's pink and it's small and my girlfriend gave it to me. It got misplaced. I lost it.”
The H. shook his natty bean and put his hands closer to the fire.
“Sock? No. I haven't seen one of those in a while. I see lots of things come through here. Not so much anymore. I'm waiting for my baseball card. My mother threw it out on accident. She didn't know. I had a Duke Snider car and he had signed it himself when I went to New York to see the Dodgers. I saw them play and then he signed his own card and it was mine and the Dodgers were my team. But my mother got rid of it on accident and she said it might come to the dump so I came here and I'm waiting for it. You haven't seen it.”
A likely story. Wine had clearly rotted this boy's brain out.
“Dude, you came here over ten years ago, right? You've been waiting for a baseball card for ten years? What's wrong with you? There is no way a baseball card is going to survive one winter here, let alone ten or twenty. Forget the card. I think Wynn gave me a Duke Snider card. I'll give it to you if you can find me my sock. I just lost it so there's still a chance it's here. Have you seen it?”
“I don't see socks here much anymore,” The hobo repeated. “No one comes here like they use to. It's just me. You can wait with me, if you want. Maybe your sock and my card will come on the same truck. That would be nice, yes?”
He smiled at me and I saw he had no teeth left. His mouth was a flesh orifice or red gums and a probing tongue. His beard reached below his chest and his brown hair was matted. I wasn't even sure what race he was. He was wearing abundant clothes for the cold weather, layers upon layers of women's overcoats and men's sweaters and parkas and ski pants and he hovered near the fire. I tried to get him on the same train.
“Can't you help? I only want my sock back. It's mine and my girlfriend gave it to me. She gave it and I can't lose it. Do you or don't you know where it is?”
“Maybe it'll come on the next truck. Maybe not. Cold these days. Come closer to the fire.”
There wasn't much else I could do accept wait. I edged close to the fire and shuddered as I smelled the hobo's clothes. Then I noticed that the fire was dying.
“You'll need more wood, chief. Do you think the truck will be here soon?”
The hobo didn't respond. He had leaned closer to the fire and started to whisper, actually to sing a song I had no memory of. It was mysterious and sung low into the flames. The fire grew until I had to step back from the heat.
“No wood here,” said the Hobo as he looked up from the wreath of flame. “If you stay long enough you'll see. They all see. I don't know when the next truck will come. I've been waiting for my Duke Snider to come back to me. It's been a long time, see? You can stay. I can tell you about the time I went to the swimming hole and met a girl. She was pretty. I forget her name. We went to school together. She was quite fond of me. Puppy love.”
The fire warmed me and held me in a light of clarity. The hobo's fire, his tribe, his hook were here on the banks of the Sagamore River, my own antique battlefield. His baseball card would never arrive and neither would my sock. We were here, at a station through which no trains ran.
“Oh, trains pass through here, Oggy. It's not as empty as you think.”
I recognized the voice and saw the Hobo look to his left. Toddy Bonigan was approaching and he was holding the precious sock.
“Have you seen a Duke Snider card,” asked the hobo as he clutched his coat.
Bonigan's gaze was wilting.
“You're not ready to have your card, old man. You aren't ready to sacrifice.”
“I've given you everything,” was the Hobo's short reply. “What more is there?”
Hadn't I asked the same thing on evenings before the television as Ray Knight came to the plate in the bottom of the tenth inning? The answer never came. I didn't know what was left, But Bonigan appeared to know.
“What more is there? Are you two blind? Give me the ticket. Just give the ticket to me.”
Bonigan reached his hand out but the hobo shrank into his overcoat. I was waiting for a moment when I could steal Darcy's sock and run with it into the forest where the remains of my plywood shack could protect me. I'd be alone again with Darcy's sock and I would find a way to keep it forever, to die with it if necessary, like Butch Cassidy.
“But the ticket is mine. I bought the ticket and he promised he would come. I know he'll get there. How can I see the show if I don't have the ticket?”
Bonigan urged on, “You won't see the show if you don't give me the ticket.”
“But Buddy Holly is coming to Moorhead and I need to have the ticket.”
Evidently there was more to the hobo than a psycho collecting aluminum. That should have been clear by the fact that there wasn't any aluminum in sight. He was at the dump awaiting the arrival of his Duke Snider baseball card while at the same time clinging to a ticket, a ticket he was now clutching in his bare fingers, to see Buddy Holly. IT wasn't a Buddy Holly tribute band he was talking about, either. This guy was actually talking about the 1959 Buddy Holly, the dead guy my father sometimes listened to when his medication was working.
“You see, Oggy. You see what clinging to these trinkets gets you? I ask for a simple thing, a trifle, and he balks. Why?”
“I don't have any idea what you two are talking about. Just give me back my sock and I'll leave you to squabble over baseball cards and useless concert tickets.”
“Useless? You fahk!” This invective surprised me coming from the previously soft-spoken hobo. “You slut. This ticket isn't useless. This ticket will get me into Buddy Holly's next concert in Moorhead, Minnesota. You don't know anything. You open your mouth and talk but you don't know shit. You don't know Buddy Holly. You don't know Jerry Lee Lewis. You're just a punk. I watched you run around here with your Air Supply T-shirts and your Blondie patches. I know your type. You think you understand music. You are just a young punk. You don't know sacrifice. But I'll be the one laughing when Buddy Holly lands in Moorhead for his concert. Then I'll laugh because I'll have a ticket.”
I decided I could beat the hobo up using my Ninja training and it would be safe to taunt him some more.
“You can take that ticket back to the place you bought it and trade it in for a nickel and a kick in the ass, you fool. Buddy Holly ain't gonna land in Moorhead, Minnesota any time soon. OK? So get over it. He's dead. Dead.”
“You don't know Richie Valens. You don't know the Big Bopper,” said the hobo bitterly.
“No, I don't, and I don't care. Bullwhip, would you just give me my sock so I can leave this wacko alone.”
Bonigan looked abundantly pleased with himself as he watched the Hobo throw a pebble at my leg.
“I didn't think I'd have you both in one place. My two star pupils. Both of you think you are the masters, both of you think you are superior. How special. One sits in wait for his Snider baseball card, praying for it to arrive so he can go watch Buddy Holly play and the other waits for his Sock, his precious sock that Darcy gave him so he can go help the Red Sox win the '86 world series.”
“The Red Sox?” cried the Hobo happily. “You think the Red Sox are gonna win a world series that took place six years ago? You call me a lunatic? Boy, that bakes the cake. The cold must've gotten to your head, son, because you are thinking like a piss Popsicle.”
I picked up a pebble and bounced it off the Hobo's chest. He returned with a volley of mint candies.
“Bullwhip, make him stop. He has no right. He doesn't know what we know. He doesn't know Ray Knight or Calvin Schiraldi. He doesn't know sacrifice like us.”
“I wouldn't say that, Oggy. Our friend has made a few sacrifices since I first met him. He just isn't ready to make the big one.”
“Dude,” I said to the Hobo. “Give him the stupid ticket. Take your card and go home. What's the big deal?”
“You think you understand? You think all he wants is the ticket? You think all he wants is a piece of paper?”
“Yes. That's all he's asking for.”
“Idiot! He wants memories. He wants all my memories. Don't you see?”
Bonigan's expression was more brutal than it had ever been. Memories? Sure, I had been cheapening all my experiences ever since 1986 by trading them for a moment of warmth at the Youthfire, but I always thought the memories were still mine. Weren't they?
“Wait. What memories does he want? From when? For how long does he get to keep them? It's just a trade, right?”
My urgency betrayed my suspicions and both Bonigan and the hobo grinned.
“He wants all of them,” said the homely one. “Everything from when Holly crashed. I was eleven. He wants all those memories to allow me to go back and warn Buddy that his plane was gonna crash.”
A sensible plan, in my opinion, but there was one thing wrong with it.
“That's impossible. You can't go back. I've tried. I've tried to do it. Nothing works. I had the tape. Look. Here it is.”
I displayed some threads of ribbon from Game Six. Neither men seemed much impressed.
“I've told you before, Oggy. This isn't over. The tape isn't what's holding you back. My friend has explained it as well as I could. I'm surprised it took you this long to figure it out. If you want to go back you have to sacrifice something.”
“You want the last six years?”
“Of course. Don't forget where you come from. History doesn't teach itself. That was what I was saying. I want the last six years from you and the last forty from our friend. But as he's grown older he's grown more attached to them, silly man. The question is: have you? For instance, what happened with Lacy in Connecticut? It looks like you took a shower since I saw you last. And shaved. Now what would make you go and do a thing like that, Oggy? Tell me and you might get your sock back.”
He held Darcy's sock out as an offering and I saw the past six years as in a dream, the High School pep rallies, the baseball games, the talent contests, the graduation hike and the celebrations with Erin and Cristo and Rose and Sully. The trip to Alaska and California and Ecuador, my three-part plan and my manifesto, the pleasant times in Florida at the all night drive-thru window buying tacos were at stake. Was I ready to sacrifice all that for a chance to win the Series? I had a moment of doubt, about two seconds, and then I thought, Of course I'm ready. It was like trading in a VW Bug for a Lamborghini. I could always get those memories again.
Looking back on it, I probably should have said no and been done with the whole affair. We're talking about sacrificing six years of memories. But we were also talking about giving Dwight Evans the celebration he deserves.
“What do I have to do? I broke the tape. It'll never work. What do I have to do? You can take everything. You can take my fahking whole life. You want to know about Lacy? I'll tell you everything. I only want to see Ray Knight strike out. Please.”
Bonigan smiled at the hobo as if to say, 'See? That wasn't so hard. Why cling to mind trifles?”
The hobo stared silently into the fire. Bullwhip turned to me.
“You want your sock back? You want Dewey to celebrate? Then you have to make it happen, Oggy. You have to strike out Ray Knight.”
This wasn't news to me. I'd been trying to strike Ray Knight out five years.
“But how? I can't even watch the game anymore. I don't know where Ray Knight lives. Poncho is gone. I have no money. I have nothing. Help me.”
To anger me, Bullwhip deliberately smelled Darcy's sock. The thought of his foul lips any where near Darcy's feet was repulsive to me. She gave the sock to me and only me. No one had the right to touch it. I was the one who kissed Rose McCorley. Me.
“Remember when we were kids and we only needed a bat and a ball to have a game?”
“Yes. A bat and a ball. Give me the sock.”
I reached for my sock but Bonigan stepped back.
“Wait. Nothing has changed, Oggy. You find the players and you make it happen. Then you can have your sock back. Then Dewey gets his win.”
Bonigan looked to the hobo for a moment as if to give him the same opportunity to bargain, but the hobo remained silent and ashamed. Bonigan then walked behind a pile of ash as he stashed Darcy's sock in his coat pocket leaving Mr. Buddy Holly freak and I alone. When I had gathered my thoughts I stood up, and as I trod over the dump in the direction of the entrance, I heard the hobo sing again to the rising flames. I recognized the song. “That'll be the day.” by Buddy Holly.
posted by Oggy Bleacher | 11:09 PM
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