“That’s not what this visit is about.”
“What’s it about?” she asked, before saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to ask you so many questions. I don’t get very many visitors, and I forget how to act.” She smiled. “Forgive me.”
“Business. This is just about business.”
“Well, I won’t ask you what kind of business you’re in,” she said. “I’ve asked enough questions.”
The room grew quiet, and the ice cubes popped and resettled themselves in the glasses. She stared at the table before lifting her eyes toward me. “I have to tell you that I haven’t seen my son in years, Mr. Pruitt. I honestly can’t remember the last time I even spoke with him.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Why?” she asked. “In case your business takes you there as well?”
“Perhaps it will.”
“That doesn’t sound good to me, Mr. Pruitt,” she said. “It seems that you want to find my son to do more than catch up and talk about baseball. But it doesn’t matter what it seems like to me. I’ve already told you I don’t know where he is, and I have no idea how to contact him.”
“It’s just old baseball stuff. That’s all.”
“Old baseball stuff,” she said. “Of course.” She looked down at her glass as if trying to remember what it was she was drinking. “Would you like to see something, Mr. Pruitt? I think it will bring back good memories of ‘old baseball stuff.’ ” She set her glass back on the tray and stood. “Come on,” she said, turning toward the hallway. “Follow me.”
After standing with her and stepping around the coffee table, I stopped before walking down the hallway. The Glock had been left behind, stuffed down behind the cushion. She must have heard my feet turning away from her.
“No,” she said. “Leave it. I’ll get the glasses later. Follow me.”
She shuffled past what must’ve been her bedroom with its made bed and framed photographs on the dresser, past a small, dark bathroom to the end of the hall where two closed doors faced each other. She went to the door on the left and ran her hand along it until her fingers closed around the doorknob. She looked back toward me without saying anything, and then she opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was hot and bright from the sun that poured through the windows in the far corner of the room. It was a boy’s room, clearly the room Wade Chesterfield had grown up in, and it hadn’t changed since he was a boy. Posters of baseball players from the 1970s covered the walls: Jim Kaat, Ron Guidry, Tommy John before his elbow surgery, and Steve Carlton-all of them lefties like Wade had been. Trophies sat on every flat surface, most of them crowned with tiny gold figurines either poised with bats on their shoulders or in the middle of their windups, their knees raised against their chests and the ball tucked into their mitts. The bed was made neatly and the burgundy carpet showed the tracks left by a vacuum cleaner. It smelled old and closed off like places smell when no one visits them for a long time.
She stood in the doorway with me standing behind her, and like mine, her eyes seemed to take inventory of everything in the room, even though she was only seeing it through a memory. When she stepped farther inside her right hand reached out and felt along the wall to a desk that was covered in trophies. Her fingertips flitted across the tops of each one, stopping when they found the tallest. Her hand rested there as she turned to face me.
“All of these before he graduated from high school, Mr. Pruitt,” she said. She turned back toward the trophies as if assessing them in some way. “It’s all here. Right from the very beginning: every single bit of it.” She lifted her hand from the trophy and let it drop to her side. “And now I’m the only one who ever comes in here.”
She stood there for another moment before shuffling across the room and skirting the bed under the windows. Her hand lifted to touch the bedside table as she drew closer to it. Once she touched it she stopped and reached down for something hidden between the table and the bed, and when she stood up straight she held a twenty-six-inch Louisville Slugger; it was almost black with age and use and the barrel was chipped and dented. She held it with both hands in front of her and stared down at it like an offering.
“This was his first bat,” she said. She looked toward me. “I bet you haven’t seen one this small in a very long time.” She held the bat out to me, and when my right hand took it my left hand searched my back pocket for my batting gloves, finding them and slipping them on. To swing it made the bat feel even smaller and lighter, almost like a nightstick a police officer would carry on a belt. She still faced me, and my mind wondered what she thought at that moment while standing in this dusty old bedroom that was still decorated for a boy’s life with a boy’s things, not speaking but just listening to the sound of the tiny bat cut through the air. My feet set themselves as if stepping into the batter’s box.
“Wade’s father bought that bat for him on his sixth birthday,” she said. “He was so happy to have a boy, and he was even happier when he saw that Wade was going to be a lefty.” She turned and raised her right hand and pointed toward the window that looked into the backyard. “His father would take him to the ball field behind the elementary school at-” My eyes caught sight of it a split second before it happened, a split second before the bird’s body smashed against the window. The sound startled her, and she stumbled against the table; her left hand came down and knocked a lamp onto the floor, her right hand reaching out for the bed as she tried to steady herself.
The room was quiet now. The only sound was her breath coming in short bursts. She brought her hand to her chest as if feeling for a heartbeat. The child’s bat hung down by my side.
“What was that?” she asked.
My mind replayed the memory of the bird smacking the window, my eyes watching it gather itself a half second later before flying away. But she hadn’t seen any of that, and now, in the silence afterward, her heart raced and her mind spun, struggling to imagine the unknown. She stood there, not looking at me but looking for me, waiting for me to say something. Instead, my feet stepped closer to her at the center of the room and set themselves while my hands raised the tiny bat to my shoulder. When my eyes closed, a picture of Wade Chesterfield as a boy in this same bedroom flashed before them-perhaps he’d stood in the very same place where she stood now. But when my eyes opened they saw past the boy in this room and decades into the future to the place where Wade Chesterfield the man waited to be found.
Easter Quillby
CHAPTER 21
The next morning, Wade checked us out of the hotel and then drove across the parking lot to Bojangles’. He went inside by himself and told us to roll the windows down. The heat was killing me after a cold night in our room, and it was miserable inside that car with me and Ruby both sweating and wondering where Wade was taking us next. He came out and handed us sausage biscuits and orange juice, and then he started up the car and didn’t say a word until an hour later when he parked it on the side of the road in a neighborhood full of little brick houses that all looked the same, and even then he didn’t say nothing but “This is the street I grew up on.”
“Which house was it?” I asked, but it seemed like he didn’t even hear me.
“The one with the green garage door,” he finally said. “It looks nice, doesn’t it? Somebody’s been taking care of things.”
“Is that thunder?” Ruby asked.
“No,” Wade said. “Those are planes. There’s an airport back there.”