“I thought they were in jail,” he said.
“They were,” Kate Devlin said. “But they let them go.”
“How come?”
Her face was troubled but she spoke in soothing tones, as if concerned about upsetting him before the examinations.
“The district attorney said you would have to testify against them. They came to see me at the Grandview, and I told them you couldn’t remember much about the night. It was too quick. I said I was willing to talk to them, but they said anything I had to say was just hearsay. They needed you. I told them they couldn’t have you. And that is bloody well that.”
Michael remembered her cold fury when she saw him in the hospital. Now something had changed her. Maybe she just couldn’t allow her son to be an informer. Maybe she was afraid.
“It’s a terrible thing,” she said. “Them getting away with it, I mean. But we’ll talk about it after your tests.”
“They can’t get away with it forever, Mom.”
“I hope not.”
She dropped him at the school at five minutes to ten, and he swung into his classroom on the crutches. The room was completely empty except for Brother Donard, a younger teacher with curly red hair. Brother Donard told him to choose a seat and they could begin.
The exams seemed like the pink spaldeen that morning when he and Sonny and Jimmy were still musketeers. Big and fat. All you had to do was swing. He was finished with all of them before one o’clock. Brother Donard glanced at the clock and looked surprised; he picked up the papers and told Michael to enjoy the summer. The same to you, Michael said, and swung down the empty corridor on his crutches. Then he stopped.
Down by the double doors leading to the schoolyard, he saw Sonny Montemarano walking in. Sonny saw him too, turned slightly, and seemed about to run.
“Sonny! Hey, Sonny, wait a minute!”
Sonny looked vaguely ashamed of himself as he waited for Michael to teach him.
“Where you been?” Michael said. “What are you doing here?”
“Summer school.”
“In what?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” Sonny said, his head and eyes moving around in search of witnesses. The corridor was empty.
“Says who?”
“Says everybody.”
“How come?”
“They say you’re a rat.”
“That’s bullshit, Sonny, and you know it.”
Sonny said nothing.
“Sonny, the charges were dropped against those guys. I just saw Skids and the Russian in front of the poolroom. The reason they’re out? I wouldn’t talk.”
“They say you ratted them out and then got ascared of them. That’s what they say.”
“The cops came to see me in the hospital, Abbott and Costello themselves. But I wouldn’t say anything. I swear to God. Go ask them.”
“Why would anybody believe them? They’re cops!”
“Why would anybody believe the pricks who did this to me? Four on one, they held me, they beat the crap out of me, for what? What are they, goddamned heroes? You believe them before you believe me, Sonny, and you’re supposed to be my friend?”
Sonny glanced at Michael’s face, then at the cast, and stared into the schoolyard.
“I’m sorry, Michael,” he said. “I think you didn’t rat. But everybody else thinks you did.”
“They’re all wrong.”
“But we gotta live with them.”
“Okay,” Michael said, and pushed forward on the crutches to leave.
“Hey, Michael,” Sonny shouted.
“Don’t bother, Sonny,” Michael said. “I heard what you were saying. I’ll see you.”
“Maybe later, you get the cast off, we could play a little ball.”
“Where? The Bronx?”
He swung away on his crutches, angry and alone, feeling that a part of his life was over.
29
On the last Tuesday in June, with the sun high in the Brooklyn sky and a clean breeze blowing from the harbor, they went together to Ebbets Field. They met at the entrance to Prospect Park, the rabbi in his black suit, black hat, and white socks, Michael in gabardine slacks and a windbreaker. The boy made good speed on his crutches. His face was no longer black and swollen, but there were still purple smudges under his eyes and his ribs hurt when he laughed. In the pockets of the windbreaker he carried cheese sandwiches prepared by his mother.
“We should take a taxi,” the rabbi said.
“It costs too much, Rabbi,” Michael said. “Besides, I’m getting pretty good with these things. And I need the exercise.”
As they crossed a transverse road into the Big Meadow, he gazed from a hill upon the long lines of fans coming across the swards of summer green. Kids and grown-ups, grown-ups and kids, in groups of six or seven, but following each other in a steady movement, carrying bags of food and cases of beer and soda. He and the rabbi moved to join the long lines, the rubber tips of Michael’s crutches digging into the grass, slowing him down. Some fans wore Dodgers caps and T-shirts, others wore the clothes of workingmen. Some carried portable radios, and music echoed through the great meadow, bouncing off the hill where the Quaker cemetery had been since before the American Revolution. Michael told the rabbi that George Washington had retreated across this park after losing the Battle of Long Island, and the rabbi looked around alertly, as if remembering other hills and other retreats.
The smaller groups came together at the path that snaked around past the Swan Lake. The voices were abruptly louder in the narrow space, the music clashing and then blending like the sound of a carnival. They went past Devil’s Cave and over a stone bridge, with the zoo to the left, another lake to the right, the trees higher, the earth darker. There were no signs giving directions, but they were not needed; everybody knew the way to Ebbets Field.
“In the legs, you will have big muscles, like a soccer player,” the rabbi said, as they reached another roadway through the park and followed the thickening crowd.
“I never played soccer,” Michael said. “Did you?”
“In secret,” the rabbi confided. “My father worried too much, and then my secret he discovered. He stopped me.”
He sighed and shook his head.
“My father said Jews don’t play soccer, and rabbis never!” he explained. “Maybe he was right. I don’t think so.”
Then other lines of people were joining the throng, men and boys and a few women from other parts of Brooklyn, converging like pilgrims coming to a shrine.
“I love America!” Rabbi Hirsch suddenly exclaimed.
Michael smiled.
“Look at it! All around is America! You see it? Crazy people coming for the baseball, for the bunts and the triples and the rhubarbs! Look: Irish and Jews and Italians and Spanish, every kind of people. Poles too! I hear them talking. Listen: words from every place. From all countries! Coming to Abbot’s Field!”
“Ebbets Field,” Michael said.
“That’s what I said. Abbot’s Field! Look at the fanatics, boychik. Up in the morning with nothing to do except see the baseball? What a country.”
“Well, school is out and—”
“But the men! Look at the men! On a Tuesday! How can they not work? In every country, on a Tuesday, you work!”
“Maybe they work nights. Maybe they’re on vacation.”
“No. No, it’s — they are Americans.”