“I’ll get something when I get back.” He stepped toward the driveway. “You want me to stay around?”
She looked up, surprised, and shook her head. He popped his fist into his glove and jogged around front.
They got into a game with others at the field and played late into the afternoon. He played badly. While someone was retrieving a foul ball that had gone into the street, Dom left his position and walked over to him at second base.
“You won’t play second next year if you can’t turn two,” he said. He kept his voice down. Biddy moved away, wishing he hadn’t come home from the beach. His father watched them from the pitcher’s mound. Biddy wanted to play better. He wanted to handle himself competently, even if only momentarily. His father was frequently of the opinion that he couldn’t piss straight without a ruler.
Dom followed him in a circle around second base. “Look, I’m not trying to make you feel bad. You told me you wanted to learn this game.”
Biddy nodded.
“Well, you’re going to have to start listening. You let that last one play you instead of playing it. Now don’t rush yourself. Are you listening?” Biddy nodded again. “Get to the bag and concentrate on the throw. And get your legs up if the runner’s coming in high.”
He returned to third. “Now Mickey’s on first, so be ready for it if it’s on the ground.”
And the next batter hit one on the ground to third as if on cue, and Dom said, “All right, Biddy,” and crouched for it, and Biddy came across and took the throw on the bag and started to pivot for the relay to first but Mickey hadn’t gone into his slide yet and only at the last moment was he able to get the throw up higher, to clear Mickey’s head. It pulled Louis, playing first, high off the bag.
He stood where the throw had left him, hating the ball. His father and Dom were looking at him, he knew. No one spoke. What was he doing this for? Why was he always somewhere he didn’t want to be?
“I didn’t want to hit Mickey,” he said.
“Don’t worry about Mickey,” Dom said. “Worry about your throw. They’ll do that all day if you let them. Throw it where you’re supposed to throw it. Throw right through the runner. Believe me, he’ll get out of the way.”
His father said something about bearing down. A boy he didn’t know stood on first. He looked at the batter. Hit it to me, he thought miserably. Hit it to me and I’ll throw it into the street. The batter dribbled it back to his father, who twirled and threw it to second, the ball and Biddy converging on the base from different angles, and he stomped on the bag and spun, whipping his arm around and rifling the ball low, and the boy coming into second jerked back and sprawled hard into the dirt as the ball went by his face on a line into Louis’s glove.
“There’s the double play,” his father called, and Dom said, “That’s turning two,” and they slapped each other five and trotted off the field together, Biddy following, stopping to help the boy still on his elbows in the base path up as he went by.
He returned to the beach, unsure of his reason why. It was a Saturday afternoon and blankets spotted the slope to the water but an advancing wall of clouds, high up and reaching infinitely higher, black and gray and darkening the expanse of sound beneath, was approaching from the west, from Bridgeport or New York.
To the east and above them the sky remained clear, the sun warm, as if collaborating in the deception. One or two sailboats rested nose forward on the beach, their masts stripped and topped by multicolored floats, their sails heaped onto the hulls like covering sheets. Other boats cruised smoothly into shore, gently racing the oncoming storm. As they pulled onto the beach, dagger boards were slid up and the hulls made pleasant grinding noises on the sand.
He sat watching the boats, towel still rolled beneath his arm. The metal fittings on the lines clanged against the hollow, swaying masts, and trailers, squeaky and toylike, were rolled to the water’s edge.
The wind was sweeping around him, audible in the sea grass and sand. People rose from the blankets with the wariness of birds, gauging the speed of the incoming storm. Bridgeport was dark and vague with a distant scrim of rain.
Boats rolled by him toward the boat ramp, disassembled masts clanking on the tops of the hulls and wheels rolling heavily through the deeper sand. Bathers, too, were joining the exodus, with lawn chairs and blankets, coolers and small children, falling into line alongside or behind the boats, all streaming past Biddy like tanned and sandy refugees.
His eye caught one boat, still quite a way out, its red-and-white sail sweeping and flapping as it came about. He knew simply from its inept turn, the sail going limp, the motion jagged and wasteful, that it would not beat the oncoming storm. The darkness was rolling in like a curtain and birds swooped and dove past him, fleeing before the gathering violence.
It was noticeably cooler. He shivered, and dug a deep hole, leaning forward on his knees and scooping sand with both hands. A last bather went by. “I don’t think you’re gonna finish that, son,” he said. “That’s a helluva storm coming.” Biddy smiled an acknowledgment and the man trundled off, newspaper flapping against a folded sand chair. With the hole a foot deep he dropped his towel into it and covered it over. He found two large stones, and marked the place.
He was alone on the beach. Bridgeport was gone. A lone gull skimmed by, a shadow along the waterline. His hair lifted from his head. His skin prickled, the tiny hairs on his arm waving.
He was moving the tips of his fingers along the hairs, absorbed, when the storm hit. The rain came down the beach and along the water toward him in an audible track, the shimmering sound on the water and sea grass gaining in intensity until it swept over him and he was shocked by its iciness and power, drenched in seconds. In the half darkness he could see the boat, buffeted, sweeping high over crests, much closer now, struggling in, the two boys on it frantic. The rain swept wet hair across his cheek and eyes and the side facing the wind grew more and more chilled, and he curled lower into the sand, following the boat’s progress. It crested a whitecap and plunged toward the beach at full speed, the boy in back lying across the rudder to hold it steady, the boy in the bow trying to control the flapping, angry sail, both hands on the boom. It surged onto the shore with the dagger board being lifted out at the last possible moment and ground up onto the slope and the boys were jumping out and pulling it up farther, the sail collapsing and the mast teetering dangerously from side to side. Off in the distance to the right, where the sky was the blackest, white flashes lit the lighthouse marking the midpoint of the Sound.
“Leave it,” one of the boys shouted. “We’ll come back and get it,” and there was another flash, and they pulled the boat still farther up the beach, the hull’s slide an overamplified sweep of sandpaper, and they dropped the mast and turned and ran for the boat ramp. They were not dressed for the rain. One stopped and called over, asking if Biddy was all right. “I wouldn’t stick around, kid,” he called, and they looked at each other when he didn’t respond, and shrugged, and were soon gone.
The storm drove the waves before it, the crests surging through the high-water mark, and they crashed and rolled toward the tilted stern of the beached boat, edging the detached rudder backward. With a third great wave it began to slide, and Biddy got up, opening still-warm areas of his body to the cold and wet, and jogged down to the water’s edge, the water foaming no colder than the rain around his toes, the darkness otherworldly. He pulled the rudder across the hull and slipped it under the mast. The hull was a slick, light blue, wider than either a Sunfish or a Sailfish. On a fold in the sail he could make out a circle with an SK-8 inscribed in the center, and a plate near the mast explained the wordplay: “Skate.” He had never heard of one. Lightning flowered high above him, the thunder rolling softly in behind. The Sound was a deep green flecked with white in the darkness, and the boat was fully rigged, all the lines relaxed but still figure-eighted in the stanchions. The darkness seemed to cloak the soft edge of Long Island beyond.