Crow Fair by Thomas McGuane Read Free Book Online Page A

Ben, the youngest and sweetest, was disabled and mentally handicapped, but he loved baseball above all things; he had a statistician’s capacity for memorizing numbers and had learned to field a ball with one crippled hand and to make a respectable throw with the other. To Owen, Ben’s attributes were nothing remarkable: he had his challenges; Ben had others.
    It was rare to have full teams, and occasional lone outfielders started at center field and prepared to run. Eventually, Ben was moved off first base and into the outfield. With his short arms, he couldn’t keep his foot on the bag and reach far enough for bad throws. Double plays came along only about three times a summer, and no one wanted to put them at risk. So long as Ben could identify with a renowned player who had played his position—in this case, Hoot Evers—he was happy to occupy it, and physically he did better with flies than with grounders.
    Owen was happy with his George Kell spot at third base, and he didn’t intend to relinquish it. He was a poor hitter—he was trying to graduate from choking the bat, though he was still not strong enough to hold it at the grip—but his ability to cover stinging grounders close to the foul line was considered compensation for his small production at the plate. He had learned to commit late to the ball’s trajectory—grounders often changed angles, thanks to the field’s irregularities—and he went fairly early when they chose up sides. Chuck Wood went late,despite being the most muscular boy there, as he always swung for the fence in wan hope of a home run and was widely considered a showboater. Ben was a polished bunter and could run like the wind, assuring his team of at least one man on base. He was picked early, sometimes first, but never got to be captain, because in the hand-over-hand-on-the-bat ritual for choosing sides, his hand wouldn’t fit anywhere below the label. In the beginning, Mrs. Kershaw had stuck around to make sure that he was treated fairly, announcing, “If Ben doesn’t play, nobody plays.” But now he belonged, and she restricted her supervision to meeting him as he got off the school bus and casting an authoritarian glance through the other passengers’ windows.
    After a game, the equipment was stored on the back porch of the Kershaw house, where Terry ran his newspaper operation and often recruited the players to help him fold for the evening delivery. The Kershaws’ small black schipperke dog, Smudge, watched from a corner. Doug put a few drops of neat’s-foot oil in the pocket of his mitt, folded a ball into it, and placed it on the broad shelf that held shin guards, a catcher’s mask, and a cracked Hillerich & Bradsby thirty-four-inch bat that Mr. Kershaw thought could be glued. It had been a mistake to go from oak to maple, he said. Eventually, Mrs. Kershaw would appear, mopping her hands on her apron before making an announcement: “Kershaw dinner. All other players begone.” Owen and the other boys would rush out, with ceremonial doorway collisions, looking up at the sky through the trees: still light enough to play.
    Owen would walk home, reflecting on the game, his hits, if he’d had any, his errors and fielding accomplishments. His parents dined late and by candlelight, in an atmosphere that was disquieting to Owen and at odds with thoughts about baseball.He eventually gave up on family dinners altogether and fed himself on cold cereal. Sometimes he arrived home in time for an argument, his father booming over his mother’s more penetrating vehemence. There were times when his parents seemed to be entertaining themselves this way, and times when they seemed to draw blood. Owen would flip his glove onto the hall bench and slip upstairs to his room and his growing collection of hubcaps. He’d still never been caught. He had once been on probation with the Kershaws, though: Doug, hiding in the bushes with a flashlight, had caught him soaping their windows on