Fenway Fever (7 page)

After scanning the entry on his screen, Stats said, “Oh, yeah, the interconnectedness of everything.” He looked up. “Ray Bradbury’s idea. Yeah, okay …” Still reading, he added, “And string theory branches off of it. Yeah, I know a little bit about that.”

Mark turned quickly. “You do?”

“Well, it comes from science fiction, mostly time travel stories, where a guy goes back into the past and even if he only changes one tiny thing, that act causes the whole future to morph—since, you know, everything’s connected.”

Mark sat wide-eyed, stunned.

“Pops,” said Billee, “the kid’s got a brain in there, I’ll tell you.”

“And I’ll tell you,” said Pops, “he didn’t get it from me.” They both laughed.

Stats got back on point. “So, Billee, what are you saying about the butterfly effect?”

“Basically that a curse is a chain reaction that might be caused by the tiniest thing. So instead of looking around at all the latest construction or all the years of rat problems, maybe we only need to go back and undo one little butterfly flap.”

“You lost me, big-time,” said Mark.

Stats thought he might have followed Billee’s statement well enough, but pressed for clarification. “You mean we need to
find the source of the imbalance, right? Like whatever butterfly flap of the wings sort of thing started the first bit of bad luck?”

“Exactamundo,” said Billee. “But here’s what hit me as I was driving home.” He leaned in close. “Maybe it’s not a butterfly we’re looking for. Maybe it’s a hawk.”

A normal boy would have, at this point, simply smiled, nodded in agreement, and dismissed everything he had just heard as the mind-bouncings of a spaceman.

Was that all Billee had? Find the tiny cause of this monumental imbalance? Some sort of a hawk wing flap? And then, undo it?

But Stats, of course, was not a normal boy. In fact, he had never aspired to be one. Sure, he wished he could play baseball at least once in his life, the way normal boys of normal height and weight so often do. But he would never trade his love of numbers, his world of complex calculations, his joy of puzzling out solutions to multifarious mysteries for anything. That is, not for anything normal.

And so, even though he figured the chances of fulfilling Billee’s request were somewhere between slim and none—and slim had long ago left the ballpark—Stats merely filed away the challenge, then turned to Mark and Pops and let them in on what Billee was talking about.

“A hawk flew around and screeched at us today. We think it might have been giving us a message connected to this new curse.”

Mark did his best at stifling an automatic laugh, and was at least able to keep it to a muffled squeak.

The concept, however, did not faze Pops at all.

“A hawk, eh?” he said. “Now, that’s possible. My father, may he rest in providence, always told me the same story whenever we saw a hawk. One that goes back to the old country.”

“He means Italy,” said Mark.

Billee thrust his chin in Mark’s direction.

“Papa claimed that whatever thought you’re thinking when a hawk appears in your life is one you better pay attention to. A hawk brings resolution.” He shaped his fingers into a claw. “‘Grab it now,’ he’s saying.”

Then Pops straightened and shrugged, lifting both palms high. “I don’t know. That’s what he always told me, anyway, and I never forgot it.”

“Did it ever work for you?” asked Mark. “Did you ever do something you were thinking of when a hawk flew by?”

“Only one time that I can say for sure. Right after your mother and I got married, we were driving home from out in Sudbury, where she used to live, and she just happened to wonder out loud whether or not she should start her little grocery store.”

Pops smiled. But he did not speak, not for quite a while. Soon all eyes left him and his pinched mouth and focused on the table.

In a moment, Pops regrouped. “So right then and there,” he continued, his words full of breath, “a hawk flies straight across the roadway in front of us.”

A big laugh now
and
the smile. “What could I say to her?” he could barely say through a hoarse laugh. Again, his hands flew up shoulder high, now signaling surrender.

“You followed your heart,” said Billee, to the rescue. “You both did. You followed through and opened her store, which is exactly what I would’ve done.”

“Me too,” said Mark.

Stats hummed softly in agreement, keeping his eyes below the brim of his cap.

Pops reached out, gathering Billee’s empty glass and plate into his hands, and rose. “Anything else?”

“No, no, all set. Thanks.”

Pops trundled off into the kitchen.

Billee tapped the table with his fingernails, digesting the moment. As though by brotherly instinct, he then lifted Stats’s cap and reset it on his head.

“You need to grow your hair out, Stat Man. So your hat’ll fit right.”

Stats knew how he looked. He’d ordered the smallest size cap available, but it was still too big. And since it was professional style, it was not adjustable. Thus, when he snugged it down the way he liked it, to where he could feel his lucky Ted Williams all-star card against his skull, it did tend to make his ears fold over, much like a puppy dog’s.

Truthfully, he didn’t care. He preferred his hair short. One day, he figured, his head would fit the hat—or else, he could just stack a few more baseball cards inside. Besides, as the photo on the card of his current co-occupant showed, the Splendid Splinter’s uniform had hung a little loose on him, too, at first.

“When I was a kid,” Billee went on, “my curly hair was so wild, my dad wanted me to get it buzzed completely off. But my mom loved it. So there was always a big scene every time I got a haircut. It was like Samson and Goliath.”

Everyone laughed, though the reference didn’t quite make sense to Stats.

Billee wagged his head. Then, spotting Pops returning to the room, he added, “But like Shakespeare said, ‘Hair today, gone tomorrow.’ Right, Pops?”

“Hey, watch it, there!” Pops, whose once-dark curly locks were now mostly reduced to a global fringe, sent Billee a stern glare from the table side. But he could not hold it, as a burst of laughter again rocked the room.

Stats enjoyed the feeling and silently sent up a prayer that Billee would always be a member of this clan. Then he returned to the matter at hand.

“What were we thinking, Billee, when we saw the hawk? Do you remember?”

Billee perused the plaster ceiling overhead. “Weren’t we thinking about a connection between mice and rats and a bad-luck streak?”

“Oh, yeah. Do you think that confirms a connection?”

“Now more than ever.”

“Hmm,” said Mark, as if he were preparing to add something. But that was, in fact, all he said.

Billee gave him a nod, then sat back.

“Marko,” he asked, “how’s your season going?”

“Okay.” He brightened. Baseball was in Mark’s blood. It was all he dreamed about, though he seldom said so out loud.

“Better’n okay,” said Stats. “Ever since we put up a batting cage on the roof, he’s been hammering the ball.”

“A batting cage? You’re kidding. Who pitches?”

“I do,” said Stats. “Well, actually I stand behind an old mattress we propped up and toss the ball like a hand grenade. Then I duck.”

“That’s exactly how I learned to pitch,” Billee said, giving Stats a soft poke on the arm. “Can I see it?”

Both Stats and Mark jumped up and headed for the door to the back veranda, where the roof ladder was attached.

Billee followed them outside. His trip up the vertical metal ladder, though, seemed to be a strain. Not physically, but mentally. He kept his jaw clenched and his silvery eyes focused in front of him the whole way, slowly ascending one rung at a time. Once he climbed over the short parapet wall and his foot touched the flat asphalt roof, he relaxed.

He smiled.

Neither boy said a word. Stats figured Billee’s caution had something to do with his balance—which had, as he well knew, been off lately. He spun around and opened the door to the chicken-wired wood-framed batting cage, which was wrapped in a second layer of black netting.

Billee walked forward and surveyed the homemade cage, which Stats now realized looked precisely the way one would expect such an enclosure, built out of scavenged neighborhood scraps, baling wire, and duct tape, to look.

“Beautiful,” the pitcher said. “Amazing.”

Billee appreciated creativity. Stats knew that from last season, after he designed a customized baseball card just for Billee.

Most cards list career stats as well as personal info, such as whether a player bats or throws left handed or right. On the card he handed to Billee during one of the first few times he’d stopped by Papa Pagano’s, Stats listed the following:

It cracked Billee up so much, he caused a minor laugh riot at the stand, reading it off to everyone in line. From then on, it was as if Stats had inherited a best friend. Even Mark had said so, without a speck of jealousy.

Billee studied the batting cage a bit longer, then pushed back from the frame and stepped over to a dried-out, once-blue kitchen chair parked nearby. He took a seat.

“You guys ever come up here at night and just look at the stars?”

“All the time,” said Stats. “Well,
I
do.”

“Me,” said Mark, “not so much. I have a life.”

In his own defense Stats added, “He comes up when we spend the night. I bring my telescope, and he looks, too.”

“Good on you both. Like Einstein always said, ‘Never lose touch with nature. It ain’t natural.’”

“When did he say that?” asked Stats.

“Well, words to that effect. Basically, stay connected to the balance of nature. Honor it. No matter if you’re a hitter or a pitcher or a whole ball club. Balance is vital. That’s what Einstein meant.”

So now Billee’s interpreting Einstein, thought Stats, amused at the concept, though he could not quibble with the conclusion. Billee was, in his own way, a genius as well.

The pitcher folded his arms and tipped the chair back on its hind legs. “It’s all balance. The whole world revolves around balance. Without it, the earth would wobble, right, Stat Man?”

“Well, it actually does anyway.”

“See? Lack of balance. It affects everything. Imagine I’m a tightrope walker, and I have you guys balanced on my shoulders, and we’re crossing the street from here, say, to Sam Alone’s bar over there. If any one of us lost his balance, we’d all be asphalt.”

He pointed to both boys. “Why? Because we’re all connected.”

“Yeah,” said Mark. “I saw that happen once on ESPN with a bunch of cheerleaders in a pyramid. Someone in the middle lost it and, dude, legs and other assorted body parts were flying everywhere.” Mark shook his head. “Cheerleaders are nuts.”

He walked over and picked up one of his bats lying next to the cage. He stepped in. “Billee, throw me a few?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Billee, “just a few. Getting dark.”

Eyeing Stats, he said, “What do you like to look at up here?”

“Everything. Planets, stars. Constellations. Especially Orion and Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. But my favorite is Pegasus, the Flying Horse. It’s right in the middle this month.”

“Pegasus is my favorite, too!” said Billee. He held out his hand. “Gimme skin, buddy.” They slapped palms.

Billee looked into the dusk. “I remember as a kid looking up at night, waiting for the Flying Horse to rise. My whole life, I’ve always felt like I was some guy who just got dropped off on this planet one day by mistake, that I didn’t really belong. And I always pretended Pegasus was my rescue ship.” He smiled into the sky, then lowered his gaze. “Someday, huh, bud?”

Stats grinned and nodded. His heart fluttered. To ride off someday on a flying horse? What an idea.

As Billee stepped into the batting cage, he added, “Once I get back from out of town, I’ll help you sort things out. Okay, Stat Man? It’s a long trip. Ten days, then we’re home for six. So dig up anything you can. About hawks, about rats, wing flaps, energy vibes, and maybe dig up a few quahogs, if you got the time.” He winked.

Stats beamed. Being a clam chowder fanatic, the mere image of going out quahog digging along Ipswich Bay with his four-pronged clam rake at least gave him a starting point.

Plus, it provided another point to ponder. Would a clam closing up its shell count as a wing flap?