Fenway Fever (12 page)

Stats looked up. Billee sat grim-faced with his arms pressed against his chest.

“It seems like all this fits together, right?” said Stats. “I mean, there must be a connection … somehow.”

Billee nodded. “There is.”

He rose. He said nothing as he walked to the bull pen fence and rested his arms on top, facing home. For a while he simply looked out over the ballfield.

“Can you see it?”

“See what?” said Stats.

Billee pointed across the diamond. “From ancient times, the balance of nature on this land meant a natural park, right here. White oaks and silver maples towering out of the marshlands, like we had out where I grew up.”

“Like you saw in that dream you told me about.”

“When did I tell you about that dream?”

“You know. In the hospital.”

“
When
was that?”

“Oh, never mind. I think I was dreaming.”

Billee stared. “You dreamed my dream?”

“Were you flying over Fenway?”

Billee nodded.

Stats opened his mouth wide. “Whoa.”

Billee stood stunned. “Oh, my goggles. Dude, I don’t believe that happened! Okay, okay. This is big. This tells me something. On this land, on this sacred ground we’re standing on, there has always been a balance. There’s been a special energy, a …”

“… a
chi
?”

Billee grinned. “Exactamundo. And what I mean is, it connects me and you as much as anything else.” He knelt down, facing Stats, taking him by the shoulders. “Stat Man, this is our big break. No wonder the first curse lasted eighty-six years. It’s not the ballpark that’s out of whack. It’s not even the team. It’s the balance of nature. It’s the chi. The hawks! That’s our wing flap.”

He turned toward the right-field bleachers and shouted, “We need to bring back the hawks!”

As with any diagnosis, naming the problem and solving the problem were, of course, two different things. Billee was convinced that the natural chi must be returned to Fenway by way of bringing back the displaced hawks. Fine, thought Stats, but how?

Then an idea hit. As he and Mark rode the Route 8 bus home that night, he announced, “When I see Billee tomorrow, I’m going to suggest that we get boxes of rats and frogs and dump them all around Fenway Park. What do you think?”

“What, you think that’s gonna attract some hawks?” said Mark. “Balance things out?”

Stats shrugged. “I guess. Gotta think of something.”

“If the hawks were so important to the winning energy at Fenway, why haven’t we heard about them before? Wouldn’t you think that they would’ve noticed big imbalances at least a few times in the past? I’ve read all about 1967 and ’78 and ’86—all those heartbreak years—but nobody ever said, ‘Hey,
guys, look at all these rats running around. Better get some hawks over here, pronto.’”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s because they used poisons instead, the way they always did. But Red Gruffin did complain about the rats in ’86. It’s just that nobody ever thought of using the natural approach.”

The bus jerked to a stop. Mark rose and grabbed his bag. “You mean, until 2004?”

“Well, even that wasn’t on purpose, but, yeah, that’s what me and Red think. That year, with all the construction, the hawks were left alone to do their job.” Stats pushed himself up. “And in 2007, Ol’ Red actually saw a nest.”

As they headed to the exit, Mark thanked John Dog, the Route 8 driver, as he always did.

“Yeah,” Stats added, “thanks, Mr. Daemon. See ya next time.”

The driver casually tucked a hank of long loose hair behind his ear. “You cowboys take care.”

Stats followed his brother off the bus. They walked quietly for a while, approaching their block.

“Well, in a, you know, ecological kind of way,” said Mark, “it sorta makes sense, what you guys are thinking. But on the other hand, Freddy, remember, Billee is pretty well known for being about six outs shy of a complete game. So, you know …”

“Don’t worry. I know it sounds loopy. But at least it feels like I’m doing something. I mean, what if it turns out we could’ve done something to help the Sox, and we didn’t?”

“I hear you. I’m just saying, don’t go too overboard on all this, okay? They don’t call him Spacebird for nothing.”

Stats let that comment stew as they arrived home. Silently, they climbed the stairs. Creaking open the front door, Stats saw that Pops was still up. He had several manila folders and sheets of paper spread out all over their big mahogany table.

He did not greet them with his usual exuberance.

“How did it go, boys?”

That question alone was surprising. Didn’t he know?

“They lost,” said Stats.

“Ah, geez.” In what appeared to be a bit of guarded stealth, Pops cleared the table with quick hands, not bothering to sort, and slid the papers together, placing them inside a single folder. Then he set all the folders on a shelf in the alcove facedown. Turning back, his mood seemed to have brightened.

“Had a little success with my chili dog buns today. Added some rye flour, and they held together a lot better. Think I’m getting closer.”

Mark joined Pops in his elevated mood. “Hey, that’s good to hear. No more soggy middles.” Playfully, he slapped his father on his rather abundant middle and pulled back, in a boxing pose.

Pops only grinned while tapping his knuckles against his head. “Knock on wood.”

“Let us try it out next,” said Stats.

“You bet,” said Pops. “I’ll have a new batch ready tomorrow. Oh, and Alfredo, don’t forget. We have that doctor’s appointment in the morning.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, although he had, until then, forgotten.

They each exchanged tired good nights and headed to their rooms. On the way, Stats sneaked a glance at the upside-down folders on the shelf, though they remained a mystery. Was Pops working on another plan to raise money? he wondered. What would he think of selling this time?

True to his word, Pops had both chili dog buns and hotcakes ready for Stats and Mark as they stumbled out of their room the next morning.

“And, hey,” said Pops, once the boys found their way to the table, “there was something I forgot to mention. After you two left to go inside the park last night, a couple of the Boston Red Sox people stopped by. They said they wanted me to record one of those centennial messages for the Fenway Fever celebration.”

“Whoa, Pops!” Mark drummed the table. “That is huge. What are you gonna say?”

“I said I’d think about it and let them know.”

“No, no,” said Mark, “I mean on the JumboTron. You definitely have to tell the Sox you’ll do it. You just have to figure out your message. We can help.”

“Yeah,” said Stats, “it’ll be fun.”

“Well, see, that’s what I want to talk to you boys about.” Pops made his way around the table, a griddle full of Wenham Lake blueberry pancakes in one hand and a spatula in the other.

“Those Fen-Cent messages, I’ve seen a bunch of them. They play ’em on TV during the games, and I’m always thinking, the
problem is, it’s all grown-ups. I keep wishing they’d get some kids up there for some of those announcements instead of all these old people talking about the old days all the time. To you boys, someday these will be the old days, eh?”

He dumped a leaning tower of hotcakes onto Mark’s plate.

“So what I decided was, I’m passing the honor on to you two. What do you say?”

Mark hunched forward, head bent. He held the hot maple syrup tin by its wooden handle, but did not pour. “You sure you wanna do that? I don’t exactly have any stories to tell.” He looked up. “You’re the guy who runs the best hot dog stand in Boston. Zillions of people know you. Come on, Pops. You do it.”

Pops turned to Stats. “What say you, Alfredo?”

Stats cut down into his buttered stack with a fork edge. “I’ll do it.”

“You will?” Mark stared wide-eyed.

Stats shrugged. “I love Fenway, I love the Red Sox, I love baseball. I could come up with something, I guess.”

Pops cast a reading glance. “It’s up to you, Alfredo. No one is saying you have to.”

“I know. But it’ll be sort of like a webcam, right? You just stare at the camera and talk. I’ve done stuff like that before.”

“So should I call Mr. Lucchesi and tell him?”

“Yeah,” said Stats, stabbing his cuttings and raising his fork. “Go ahead, let him know.”

The worst I could do, he figured, is fall flat on my face. But, hey, the way the Sox are playing, who’s gonna notice?

Stats and Pops arrived at Doc Roberts’s office ten minutes late for an appointment neither was in a hurry to attend. Today there would be no tests. Today they would receive no new results. The facts were in. This meeting centered on prognosis—that is, what to do next.

“As I have said before,” Doc began, “vagus nerve disorders can be tricky.”

Strewn across the cluttered desk in front of him, Stats could see medical charts and printed material, as if Doc had done some recent research on the matter.

“In children,” he continued, “we generally let things go forward awhile because in many cases they can improve on their own.”

Strike one, thought Stats. His “defects” were still in their near-original condition, as far as he could tell.

Doc focused on Pops. “In this case, Angelo, we see that
Alfredo’s condition is actually slipping somewhat. That is to say, the episodes of heartbeat irregularity seem to be increasing.”

Strike two, thought Stats.

“So what can we do?” Pops shifted in the small chair and leaned forward, pressing his palms into his knees.

“One fairly common approach is to implant a pacemaker. A simple regulator will catch the arrhythmia right away and signal the heart so it returns to a normal beat rate.”

“A pacemaker?” said Pops. “That’s for old guys, isn’t it? They use those on kids?”

“In some cases we do, and the results can be exactly what we want.”

“But they might not be …”

“In children there are some risks that most older patients don’t face.”

Strike three. Stats already felt defeated.

Finally, Doc Roberts looked at him. “Alfredo is in the bottom five percentile for kids his age in weight, and he’s in the bottom ten percentile for boys his age in height.”

Stats knew these stats by heart, so to speak. The old height-weight data. Yes, he was a flea, the tiniest kid in his class. So what? That condition by itself did not affect his happiness. What affected his happiness was when people pointed it out.

Pops cast a sideward glance. “He’s slight, I know.”

Slight
was a nice word, thought Stats. Pops always knew how to go easy on a guy.

“Right,” said the doctor. “And that’s not uncommon for a
boy with bradyarrhythmia. That is, a slow heart rate. But once a strong steady rate is established, it would go a long way toward allowing Alfredo here to attain a more normal stature and enjoy a more active lifestyle.”

Would it allow me to play baseball? Stats wondered. He did not dare ask, however. Even though Doc would probably say yes, there was no way he would be imagining the kind of baseball Stats had in mind.

“Risks, though,” said Pops. “You said there might be risks.”

“A while back the Boston Children’s Hospital and the Department of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical concluded a twenty-year study looking into long-term outcomes for children with pacemaker implants. They found that younger patients, specifically those under the age of twelve, had significantly higher incidents of complications.”

Technically, I’m over the age of twelve, thought Stats, who was born on Valentine’s Day in the year 2000.

He quickly calculated his exact age at 12.3333 years, his last birthday having been precisely four months ago.

“And the number one factor,” Doc continued, “contributing to problems is the physical size of the patient.”

Stats slumped and folded his arms.

“Another contributing factor is future growth that may cramp or dislodge the unit. Overall, physical activity tends to increase, which is good, but with that comes the risk of displacing the unit’s electrical wiring where it connects to the heart.”