The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(38)

“He’s back?”

“Apparently. The blow to his daughter’s head was supposedly the result of a bike accident.” Ernie stared at me, and I knew where his mind had gone. My “bike accident” remained firmly entrenched in both our memories. “The police report concludes a bike accident, but the emergency room doctor’s report is not consistent. The injuries—a scrape to the knee and one elbow—aren’t severe enough given the kind of accident needed to cause the vision problems.”

“Could it be the mother?”

I shook my head. “Daniela was with him at the time of the injury. I spoke to the emergency room doctor. She has the same suspicions.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have anything to substantiate it unless the mother will support the emergency room doctor’s findings.”

Ernie looked to the television but only for a moment. “Look, Sam, your job is to fix this little girl’s eyesight.”

“And what if I get a call in the middle of the night that the little girl is dead?”

Ernie dropped his gaze to the bar. “My dad is tight with the DA. Let me talk to him tomorrow and find out if there’s anything that can be done. I won’t use any names.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

Ernie looked at his watch, then at the screen. “I better get home.” He’d lost interest in the game. I never really had any after meeting Trina Crouch. “I’ll pick you up for the game at three. I want to get there early for batting practice.”

After Ernie left I contemplated ordering a Moon burger and fries, but with the size of the crowd I knew the game would likely be over before I got my food. So I drank my dinner—three more beers, more than I had drunk in a long time. When I got my bill, Ernie’s beer was not on it, as usual.





4

Outside, it remained warm. A late Indian summer had caused the temperature to soar during the day into the upper eighties, and it had not cooled much. I wasn’t complaining. October baseball in short sleeves? What could be better? I contemplated calling a cab, but I didn’t have far to drive, just a couple of miles down the El Camino.

I was playing with the radio dial to find the station that carried the Forty-Niners postgame show when I heard the blast of a siren and looked up to see spinning lights in my rearview mirror.

“Damn,” I said. The police car had come out of nowhere. I checked my speed, certain I had not been speeding, and equally certain I had not swerved or run a stoplight. I mentally counted the beers and the time span over which I had consumed them. Having not eaten since breakfast, I would be in trouble if given any type of sobriety test, but that was unlikely. Police officers do not like to give tickets to doctors, and for that reason I kept my medical ID card in my wallet directly across from my license. As far as the officer knew, I could be the emergency room surgeon who would someday save his life.

I lowered the window and sucked in fresh air as I turned off the El Camino and made a right into the parking lot of the Presbyterian church, parking behind a tall hedge. The police car pulled behind me, the lights still flashing blue and red. A bright spotlight illuminated the inside of my car. I adjusted the rearview mirror to cut the glare. The officer remained inside his car, no doubt radioing in my license plate and waiting to find out if I had any outstanding warrants. I flipped open the glove box for the registration and pulled my wallet from my back pocket as I glanced again at the side-view mirror. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time before the driver’s side door of the patrol car pushed open and the officer emerged. He fit a cap on his head and adjusted the utility belt at his waist, pushing a billy club into its holster as he approached, still backlit by the bright light. I held up my wallet so my driver’s license and medical ID were obvious, but the officer did not immediately take it. When I looked up, he’d bent down so that his face was even with the window. I felt the blood drain from my face.

The round face had changed, but the eyes had not.

“Well, well,” David Bateman said. “If it isn’t the devil boy himself.”





5

July 1969

Burlingame, California Ernie and I would later refer to the years after David Bateman’s expulsion as “AB,” for “After Bateman.” Our bully seemingly fell off the face of the earth, as far away as Neil Armstrong had been that dramatic day, July 20, 1969, when he took that last step down the ladder and uttered those never to be forgotten words, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” We used to joke that maybe Armstrong had left David Bateman on the moon. I did not see Bateman at the park; he no longer played Little League baseball, and his parents left the OLM parish. Rumors of a Bateman sighting occasionally surfaced, but I didn’t meet anyone who would swear to having seen him. In time, he faded from our thoughts.

Patrick O’Reilly and Tommy Leftkowitz steered clear of me in school after that. My guess is that Father Brogan put the fear of Jesus in them and in their parents. Sister Beatrice also, for the most part, let me be, though I would catch her watching me on the playground, and I took those glances as a subtle warning never to reveal the little secret of the silver flask she kept in the front pouch of her habit.

I never did.





6

Ernie’s mother worked while his father continued doing what he was doing in the garage, so on weekends and in the summer, my mother took Ernie and me to San Francisco’s museums, to watch the children’s theater, or to listen to concerts in Stern Grove. She also frequently took us to the Easton library to pick out books. It seemed my mother handed me a new book every week: Huckleberry Finn, The Black Stallion, Old Yeller, The Mousewife, The Jungle Book. Saturday afternoons before dinner, she would send me upstairs for quiet reading time. It was on one of those Saturdays after we’d started school, as I lay on my bed reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that I heard a car pull into our driveway. I put the book down to look out my shuttered bedroom window and saw the Cantwells’ Volkswagen Beetle. I thundered down the stairs shouting, “Ernie’s here! Ernie’s here!”