A Stranger in the Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher Read Free Book Online

life. To wit, hunting, fishing, and playing ball. Besides, if I did run for that job and somehow managed to land it, I’d have to clap half of my hunting and fishing buddies and three-quarters of my ex-clients behind bars within six months. And that, as a distinguished newspaper editor well known to us both would say, is definitely the beginning and the end of it.”
    â€œNot quite,” Athena said from the doorway, where she was getting into her boots. “You want to know the
real
reason he won’t run, Mr. Kinneson? The real reason is that the prosecutor’s job pays five thousand dollars a year. What excuse would old Hank here have left then not to put an end to the longest engagement in the history of Kingdom County and marry me? Right, Mr. Williams?”
    â€œNope,” Charlie said, grinning. “The real reason is I’m pretty sure you’d frown on my diet of rare steak every night and pork chops, cooked extra crisp, for breakfast.”
    â€œTo each his own,” Athena said with a tight smile, and headed out the door.
    â€œI give up, Jimmy,” Charlie said. “I give up.”
    â€œHappy birthday, James,” my father said in a tone of voice not generally employed for such felicitations. “Don’t forget that tonight’s Production Night. I want you to do the first run.”
    Without another word he paid the bill and walked out.
    â€œI nearly forgot,” Charlie said as we stood up and put on our hunting jackets. “Many happy returns, buddy.”
    Out of his jacket pocket my brother handed me a baseball. But not just an ordinary baseball. This was a brand-new official American League baseball, inscribed with the signatures of most of the 1951 Boston Red Sox players. Early that morning my folks had given me my first really good catcher’s glove. Now with the baseball my day seemed complete, though when I tried to thank him Charlie just laughed and said he’d take it out of my hide if he caught me batting it around the pasture across from the house or so much as tossing it up in the air and playing catch with it.
    Outside, we stood on the long porch of the hotel where the pensioners sat on summer evenings watching the trains go by, and listened to the low steady growl of the High Falls behind the hotel—a sound that is so much a part of the village for a month after iceout that you’re aware of it only when you’ve been away for a time. It was dusk now. Across the tracks a woodcock landed on a single bare patch of ground along the north edge of the snowy common and began making its low intermittent buzz. Charlie nudged me and pointed. After a minute the bird flew high over the village rooftops in a series of widening spirals, then tumbled down through the twilight, whistling rapidly:
    â€œHe’d better find himself some cover,” my brother said. “It’s going to snow again tonight. Smell it coming?”
    I wasn’t sure I did but nodded just as a three-note horn bleated out and a souped-up Fairlane flying Confederate colors came racing over the knoll on the east edge of the village. It bounced across the tracks, headed down along the common, and slewed to a stop beside Charlie’s wagon. The horn sounded again, this time the opening bars of “Dixie.” Three of the players on Charlie’s team piled out, shouting his name: ex-high school standouts, or near-standouts, now mostly in their twenties, who as I look back at them probably would have gladly traded whatever they had—jobs, cars, wives, kids—to have those four glorious years to play over again with what they knew now.
    At the time, I was enormously impressed by Charlie’s teammates, legendary figures whose names—Stub Poulin, Royce St. Onge, the three Kittredge brothers from Lord Hollow—were embossed with my brother’s on a dozen or so Northern Border Town League and five state championship trophies in the lobby case of