Hearts in Atlantis(176)

'It was on Sully's hand when they found him sitting dead in his car.'

Her eyes went huge and round. In that instant she did not just look like the little girl who had ridden the Ferris wheel with him at Savin Rock; she was that little girl.

'Look on the heel of the glove, there by Alvin Dark's signature. Do you see?'

The light was fading fast now, but she saw, all right.

BG

1464 Dupont Circle Road

Redmont Hills, Pennsylvania

Zone 11

'Your address,' she murmured. 'Your address now.'

'Yes, but look at this.' He tapped the words Zone 11. 'The post office quit zoning mail in the sixties. I checked. Ted either didn't know or forgot.'

'Maybe he put it that way on purpose.'

Bobby nodded. 'It's possible. In any case, Oliver read the address and sent me the glove - said he saw no need to put an old fielder's mitt through probate. He mostly wanted me to know that Sully had died, if I didn't know already, and that there was going to be a memorial service in Harwich. I believe he wanted me to come so he could hear the story of the glove. I couldn't help him much with that, though. Carol, are you sure Willie - '

'I saw him wearing it. I told him to give it back so I could send it to you, but he wouldn't.'

'Do you suppose he gave it to Sully-John later?'

'He must have.' Yet it did not ring true to her, somehow; she felt the truth must be stranger than that. Willie's attitude to the glove itself had been strange, although she could no longer exactly remember how.

'Anyway,' he said, tapping the address on the heel of the glove, 'that's Ted's printing. I'm sure it is. Then I put my hand up inside the glove, and I found something. It's really why I came.'

He reached into the gym bag a third time. The redness was going out of the light now; the remains of the day were a fading pink, the color of wild roses. The radio, still lying in the grass, played 'Don'tcha Just Know It,' by Huey 'Piano' Smith and The Clowns.

Bobby brought out a crumpled piece of paper. It looked remarkably white and fresh. He handed it to Carol.

She held it up to the light and slightly away from her face - her eyes, Bobby saw, were not as good as they once had been. 'It's the title-page from a book,' she said, and then laughed. 'Lord of the Flies, Bobby! Your favorite!'

'Look at the bottom,' he said. 'Read what's there.'

'Faber and Faber, Limited . . . 24 Russell Square . . . London.' She looked at him questioningly.

'It's from the Faber paperback edition published in 1960,' Bobby said. 'That's on the back. But look at it, Carol! It looks brand-new. I think the book this page came from might have been in 1960 only weeks ago. Not the glove, that's a lot more beat-up than when I found it, but the title-page.'

'Bobby, not all old books turn yellow if they're kept well. Even an old paperback might - '

'Turn it over,' he said. 'Take a look at the other side.'

Carol did. Printed below the line reading All rights reserved was this: Tell her she was as brave as a lion.

'That's when I knew I had to come because he thought you'd be here, that you were still alive. I couldn't believe that, it was easier to believe in him than it was to believe - Carol? What's wrong? Is it the thing at the very bottom? What is that thing at the very bottom?'

She was crying now, and crying hard, holding the torn-out title-page in her hand and looking at what had been placed there on the back, squeezed into the scant white space below the conditions of sale:

[image of a heart + a peace sign = information]

'What does it mean? Do you know? You do, don't you?' Carol shook her head. 'It doesn't matter. It's special to me, that's all. Special to me the way the glove is special to you. For an old guy, he sure knows how to push the right buttons, doesn't he?'

'I guess so. Maybe that's what a Breaker does.'

She looked at him. She was still weeping but was not, Bobby thought, truly unhappy. 'Bobby, why would he do this? And how did he know we'd come? Forty years is a long time. People grow up, they grow up and leave the kids they were behind.'

'Do they?'

She continued to look at him in the darkening day. Beyond them, the shadows of the grove deepened. In there - in the trees where he had wept on one day and found her, hurt and alone, the next - dark had almost come.

'Sometimes a little of the magic sticks around,' Bobby said. 'That's what I think. We came because we still hear some of the right voices. Do you hear them? The voices?'

'Sometimes,' she said, almost reluctantly. 'Sometimes I do.'

Bobby took the glove from her. 'Will you excuse me for a second?'

'Sure.'

Bobby went to the grove of trees, dropped down on one knee to get beneath a low-hanging branch, and placed his old baseball glove on the grass with the pocket up to the darkening sky. Then he came back to the bench and sat down beside Carol again. 'That's where it belongs,' he said.

'Some kid'll just come along tomorrow and pick it up, you know that, don't you?' She laughed and wiped her eyes.

'Maybe,' he agreed. 'Or maybe it'll be gone. Back to wherever it came from.'

As the day's last pink faded to ash, she put her head on his shoulder and he put an arm around her. They sat that way without speaking, and from the radio at their feet, The Platters began to sing.