“I was down in the cellar.”
“You got a good view of this? What are you standing there for? Get the ladder!”
He ran to the ladder. It was stuck in the thick hedges near the garden.
“What did you, lose interest? What’re you doing?”
“It’s stuck in the hedges. I’m trying not to wreck them.”
“You’re trying not to wreck them.”
Mr. Fraser appeared near his garage. “You all right, Walt?”
“Fine, Bill. Can’t you tell? Biddy! Where’d he go now?”
Mr. Fraser bustled over and took hold of the ladder and yanked it free. He swung it back toward the house, suggesting they put it up next to him.
“No, Bill, put it up on the other side of the house, and I’ll crawl around.”
Kristi came to the screen. “Biddy, Mom wants you. Is Dad down yet? Hi, Mr. Fraser.”
“Hello, Kristi. Your father’s in a bit of trouble here.”
“Could we hurry with the ladder?”
“All right, Walt, don’t get excited. Got your foot in it? Get your foot in it.”
Biddy’s mother screamed. “Walt! What happened? Get down from there!”
“Isn’t this something? Everyone’s gone nuts,” his father said. He swung sideways and hooked his leg around the ladder.
It began to slip on Biddy’s side and he looked down to see it scraping across the cement and sliding away. He shot a look up and his father was tipping, the huge spiny antenna caught in his sleeve, the final twisted strip of metal holding it giving way with a tiny sharp sighing sound, and the ladder wrenched from his hands and spun away from him and up, his father arcing by overhead and clearing the driveway completely, coming down with a crash that neighbors three full blocks away later claimed to have heard.
And three days after that, when his father was just beginning to lose his limp and Biddy was sitting in the front yard playing dice baseball, he sent Lady out into the street, just because she was bothering him, and got her killed.
He had just rolled into a double play and Lady in her exuberance had run right across the page, demanding attention, and he’d yelled and shoved her rear, splaying it out to the side as she went by, and, spooked, she’d continued into the street and he’d seen it as he’d see it again and again, the dog trying to turn out of the way and ducking, her eyes closed and muzzle turned from the impact. There was the inanimate sound of someone dropping a large bag of flour to the pavement and she’d flown forward and rolled, finishing on her side in some gravel.
She was quiet, twitching, when he reached her. He squatted near disbelieving, touching her, thinking he should get her tongue out of the sand. He started crying and Mr. Fraser crouched beside him with a stick, prodding her with it until, satisfied, he took her by the loose skin of her neck and rear and dragged her out of the road and into the grass. Biddy followed, dimly aware of the occupants of the car, a young girl and her boyfriend. “I feel just awful,” the girl said.
Mr. Fraser disappeared and returned with his pickup. He lowered the tailgate and dropped Lady in like a sack.
When he’d driven away Biddy had sprinted back to the house, past his mother running the opposite way, ignoring her questions. He’d run up the stairs and had climbed into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain closed behind him and lay, face down, crying into the hard surface of the porcelain.
They didn’t find him. No one looked. There was an uproar when his father came home, slammed doors, a glass smashed against the back of the garage. His father had gone up and down the street barefoot and talking to himself. He’d finally gone into the garage and rolled the door shut to sit in the dark. And until very late that night that was the way the Sieberts had remained, Kristi and Judy in the kitchen, Walter in the garage, and Biddy upstairs in the bathroom.
He was hapless, an unspoken embarrassment. He was batting 1000. He had not reached base. And yet he was still there, still digging in, still unwilling to give up. He leaned in against Goose Gossage, clearly hearing over the crowd DeCinces’s admonition to wait him out. Gossage stood erect and slit-eyed on the mound. Behind him Bumbry edged crablike off second, alert. Protect the plate, he thought. But don’t go for a bad pitch. Gossage reared, growing larger as he uncoiled toward Biddy, and the ball was on him and he lashed at it way too late and struck out, staying where his swing had left him, the roar of the crowd filling his ears. Gossage walked free from the mound in one direction, Bumbry from second in another.
On the bench he was given undeserved support and encouragement. Don’t go for anything on the corners, DeCinces told him. Make him work for it. What’re you going to do with Gossage out there? Know what you can and can’t do. In this situation the best you can hope for is to draw the walk. They shifted, watching Murray bat. Patience. That ball was tailing away even before it broke in on you.
Biddy relived it and closed his eyes, trying to learn.
Ah, it’s easy for me to talk, DeCinces said. You’re scared. It’s a lot to face. Yankee Stadium, Goose Gossage, and the whole bit. But you’re gonna have to hang on because you’re not going to hit him. Not now anyway. You’re going to have to hang on because things don’t always work out that easy.
In the ninth Bumbry tripled and Singleton was intentionally walked and DeCinces, batting in front of Biddy, worked the count to 3 and 2 and fouled off three straight pitches before drawing a walk to load the bases. There were two outs and the Orioles were down by one run, and all he could think as he advanced from the on-deck circle, swinging his bat in tight little circles, was: Why don’t they pinch-hit for me?
The scoreboard flashed his batting average. The crowd roared. He could see his parents in the stands, having to look at those bright yellow numbers.
He hoped the first pitch would miss and it didn’t. The crowd’s roar intensified. The second was belt-high. He was down no balls and two strikes. The stadium shook with the anticipated strikeout. He couldn’t look out toward first and DeCinces. Gossage reared, teetered, and lunged and the ball curved in and he swung, even as it dipped out of the strike zone.
He crouched beside the plate, head down. His ears filled with sound. Cerone and Gossage and the other Yankees crowded into the dugout accepting congratulations. The fans danced and gesticulated in their seats. DeCinces tapped the plate with a bat. C’mon, he said. This is just one time. You can feel as bad as you want but it’s not going to change anything.
Every year there was a spirited debate about whether walks should be allowed at the Sikorsky father-son baseball game. A compromise was finally settled upon: the fathers would alternate pitching each inning with their sons. When the fathers pitched, they’d just lob it over and walks would be disallowed. When the sons pitched, things could get a little more serious.
Biddy’s father stood on first base after getting a hit, looking hopefully at his son, who was up next. Biddy, he’d been telling people, was still wandering around like he was on Queer Street — like a punch-drunk fighter — and it had been a week and a half. He had stopped crying that same night in the bathtub. He’d shown no interest in the upcoming father-son game. He hadn’t shown any interest in anything. It had been hoped that the game would help, so they had gone. As Dom had added, how could it hurt? Biddy had played so far as though he were in a coma.
The first time up he had taken three called strikes; the second, he’d been hit by a pitch and then picked off first. Now it was his third and final at bat, with men on first and third and the score tied, and he looked for all the world, stepping up to the plate bat in hand, as though he didn’t care. The pitcher, a big kid, reared back and fired one in for a strike.