Hearts in Atlantis(81)

She made enough pancakes for both of them and they ate breakfast at midnight, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. He insisted on helping her with the dishes even though it was going on toward one by then. Why not? he asked her. There was no school the next day, he could sleep as late as he wanted.

As she was letting the water out of the sink and Bobby was putting the last of their silverware away, Bowser began barking over on Colony Street: roop-roop-roop into the dark of a new day. Bobby's eyes met his mother's, they laughed, and for a moment knowing was all right.

At first he lay in bed the old way, on his back with his heels spread to the lower corners of the mattress, but the old way no longer felt right. It felt exposed, as if anything that wanted to bag a boy could simply burst out of his closet and unzip his upturned belly with one claw. He rolled over on his side and wondered where Ted was now. He reached out, feeling for something that might be Ted, and there was nothing. Just as there had been nothing earlier, on Nasty Gansett Street. Bobby wished he could cry for Ted, but he couldn't. Not yet.

Outside, crossing the dark like a dream, came the sound of the clock in the town square: one single bong. Bobby looked at the luminous hands of the Big Ben on his desk and saw they were standing at one o'clock. That was good.

'They're gone,' Bobby said. 'The low men are gone.' But he slept on his side with his knees drawn up to his chest. His nights of sleeping wide open on his back were over.

11

Wolves and Lions. Bobby at Bat.

Officer Raymer. Bobby and Carol.

Bad Times. An Envelope.

Sully-John returned from camp with a tan, ten thousand healing mosquito bites, and a million tales to tell . . . only Bobby didn't hear many of them. That was the summer the old easy friendship among Bobby and Sully and Carol broke up. The three of them sometimes walked down to Sterling House together, but once they got there they went to different activities. Carol and her girlfriends were signed up for crafts and softball and badminton, Bobby and Sully for Junior Safaris and baseball.

Sully, whose skills were already maturing, moved up from the Wolves to the Lions. And while all the boys went on the swimming and hiking safaris together, sitting in the back of the battered old Sterling House panel truck with their bathing suits and their lunches in paper sacks, S-J more and more often sat with Ronnie Olmquist and Duke Wendell, boys with whom he had been at camp. They told the same old stories about short-sheeting beds and sending the little kids on snipe hunts until Bobby was bored with them. You'd think Sully had been at camp for . . ., fifty years.

On the Fourth of July the Wolves and Lions played their annual head-to-head game. In the decade and a half going back to the end of World War II the Wolves had never won one of these matches, but in the 1960 contest they at least made a game of it - mostly because of Bobby Garfield. He went three-for-three and even without his Alvin Dark glove made a spectacular diving catch in center field. (Getting up and hearing the applause, he wished only briefly for his mother, who hadn't come to the annual holiday outing at Lake Canton.)

Bobby's last hit came during the Wolves' final turn at bat. They were down by two with a runner at second. Bobby drove the ball deep to left field, and as he took off toward first he heard S-J grunt 'Good hit, Bob!' from his catcher's position behind the plate. It was a good hit, but he was the potential tying run and should have stopped at second base. Instead he tried to stretch it. Kids under the age of thirteen were almost never able to get the ball back into the infield accurately, but this time Sully's Camp Winnie friend Duke Wendell threw a bullet from left field to Sully's other Camp Winnie friend, Ronnie Olmquist. Bobby slid but felt Ronnie's glove slap his ankle a split second before his sneaker touched the bag.

'Yerrrrr-ROUT!' cried the umpire, who had raced up from home plate to be on top of the play. On the sidelines, the friends and relatives of the Lions cheered hysterically.

Bobby got up glaring at the ump, a Sterling House counsellor of about twenty with a whistle and a white smear of zinc oxide on his nose. 'I was safe!'

'Sorry, Bob,' the kid said, dropping his ump impersonation and becoming a counsellor again. 'It was a good hit and a great slide but you were out.'

'Was not! You cheater! Why do you want to cheat?'

'Throw im out!' someone's dad called. 'There's no call for guff like that!'

'Go sit down, Bobby,' the counsellor said.

'I was safe! Bobby shouted. 'Safe by a mile!' He pointed at the man who had advised he be tossed from the game. 'Did he pay you to make sure we lost? That fatso there?'

'Quit it, Bobby,' the counsellor said. How stupid he looked with his little beanie hat from some nimrod college fraternity and his whistle! 'I'm warning you.'

Ronnie Olmquist turned away as if disgusted by the argument. Bobby hated him, too.

'You're nothing but a cheater,' Bobby said. He could hold back the tears pricking the corners of his eyes but not the waver in his voice.

'That's the last I'll take,' the counsellor said. 'Go sit down and cool off. You-'

'Cheating cocksucker. That's what you are.'

A woman close to third gasped and turned away.

'That's it,' the counsellor said in a toneless voice. 'Get off the field. Right now.'

Bobby walked halfway down the baseline between third and home, his sneakers scuffling, then turned back. 'By the way, a bird shit on your nose. I guess you're too dumb to figure that out. Better go wipe it off.'