The Given Day (65 page)

"I don't, boy. Do tell me."

His son turned his head and his eyes were fi lled with an exasperation that gradually gave way to humor. Danny was the only one of his three sons who'd picked up his father's sense of irony. All three boys could be funny--it was a family trait that probably went back several generations--but Joe's humor was the humor of a smart-aleck boy and Connor's was broader and borderline vaudevillian on the rare occa--

THE GIVEN DAYsions he indulged it. Danny was capable of those kinds of humor as well, but more important, he shared Thomas's appreciation for the quietly absurd. He could, in effect, laugh at himself. Particularly in the most dire hours. And that was the bond between them that no difference of opinion could ever break. Thomas had often heard fathers or mothers over the years claim they didn't favor any of their children. What a load of bollocks. Pure bollocks. Your heart was your heart and it chose its loves regardless of your head. The son Thomas favored would surprise no one: Aiden. Of course. Because the boy understood him, to his core, and always had. Which wasn't always to Thomas's advantage, but then he'd always understood Aiden, and that kept the ledger balanced now, didn't it?

"I'd shoot you, old man, if I had my gun."

"You'd miss," Thomas said. "I've seen you shoot, boy."

For the second time in as many days, he found himself in the hostile presence of Nora. She didn't offer him a drink or a place to sit.

She and Danny went over to one corner of the room by themselves and Thomas crossed to his youngest son, who sat at the table by the window.

The boy watched him come, and Thomas was immediately shaken to see a new blankness in Joe's eyes, as if something had been hollowed out of him. He had a black eye and a dark scab over his right ear and, Thomas noted with no small regret, that his throat still bore a circle of red from Thomas's own hand and his lip was still swollen from Thomas's ring.

"Joseph," he said when he reached him.

Joe stared back at him.

Thomas went to one knee by his son and put his hands on his face and kissed his forehead and kissed his hair and pressed him to his chest. "Oh, Jesus, Joseph," he said and closed his eyes and felt all the fear he'd trapped behind his heart these last two days burst through his blood and his muscles and his bones. He tilted his lips to his son's ear and whispered, "I love you, Joe."

540DENNIS LEHANE

Joe stiffened in his arms.

Thomas released his grip and leaned back and ran his hands over his son's cheeks. "I've been worried sick."

Joe whispered, "Yes, sir."

Thomas searched for signs of the boy he'd always known, but a stranger stared back at him.

"What happened to you, boy? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, sir. I got mugged is all. Some boys near the rail yards."

The thought of his flesh and blood being pummeled spiked his rage for a moment, and Thomas almost slapped the boy for giving him such fright and lack of sleep these past few nights. But he caught himself, and the impulse passed.

"That's it? Mugged?"

"Yes, sir."

Jesus, the chill that came off the child! It was the chill of his mother during one of her "moods." The chill of Connor when things didn't go his way. It wasn't part of the Coughlin bloodline, that was for certain.

"Did you know any of the boys?"

Joe shook his head.

"And that's it? That's all that happened."

Joe nodded.

"I've come to take you home, Joseph."

"Yes, sir."

Joe stood and walked past him to the door. There was no child's self-pity, no sense of anguish or joy or emotion of any kind. Something's died in him.

Thomas felt the chill of his own son again and wondered if he was to blame, if this was what he did to those he loved--protected their bodies while deadening their hearts.

He gave Danny and Nora a confident smile. "Well, we'll be off then."

Nora shot him a look of such hatred and contempt, Thomas himself wouldn't have cast it on the worst jungle-bunny rapist in his precinct. It seared the organs in his body.

THE GIVEN DAYShe smoothed Joe's face and hair and kissed his forehead. "Good- bye, Joey."

"Bye."

"Come on," Danny said softly. "I'll walk you both down."

When they reached the street, Marty Kenneally got out of the car and opened Thomas's door, and Joe climbed in. Danny stuck his head into the car and said good-bye and then stood on the sidewalk with Thomas. Thomas felt the soft night around them. Summer in the city and the streets smelled of this afternoon's rain. He loved that smell. He reached out his hand.

Danny shook it.

"They're going to come after you."

"Who?" Danny said.

"The ones you never see," his father said.

"Over the union?"

His father nodded. "What else?"

Danny dropped his hand and chuckled. "Let 'em come."

Thomas shook his head. "Don't ever say that. Don't ever tempt the gods like that. Ever, Aiden. Ever, boy."

Danny shrugged. "Fuck 'em. What can they do to me?"

Thomas placed his foot on the edge of the step. "You think because you've a good heart and a good cause that it'll be enough? Give me a fight against a man with a good heart any day, Aiden, because that man doesn't see the angles."

"What angles?"

"You've proved my point."

"If you're trying to scare me, you--"

"I'm trying to save you, you foolish boy. Are you so naive as to still believe in a fair fight? Did you learn anything as my son? They know your name. Your presence has been noted."

"So let them bring the fight. And when they come, I'll--"

"You won't see them come," his father said. "No one ever does.

542DENNIS LEHANE

That's what I'm trying to tell you. You pick a fight with these boys? Jesus, son, you best be prepared to bleed all night."

He waved his hand in exasperation and left his son on the stoop. " 'Night, Dad."

Marty came around to open his door and Thomas leaned on it for a moment and looked back up at his son. So strong. So proud. So unaware.

"Tessa."

"What?" Danny said.

He leaned on the door and stared at his son. "They'll come after you with Tessa."

Danny said nothing for a bit.

"Tessa?"

Thomas patted the door. "That's what I'd do."

He tipped his hat to his son and climbed into the car with Joe and told Marty to take them straight home.

BABE RUTH and the SUMMER SWOON chapter thirty-two It was a crazy summer. No predicting it. Every time Babe thought he had a grip on it, it slipped free and went running off like a barnyard pig that smelled the ax. The attorney general's home bombed, strikes and walkouts everywhere you looked, race riots, first in D. C., then in Chicago. The Chicago coloreds actually fought back, turning a race riot into a race war and scaring the ever-loving shit out of the entire country.

Not that it was all bad. No, sir. Who could have predicted what Babe would do with the white ball, for starters? No one, that's who. He'd had an embarrassing May, trying to swing too big, too often, and still being asked to pitch every fifth game, so his average found the cellar: .180. Good Lord. He hadn't seen .180 since "A" ball with Baltimore. But then Coach Barrow allowed him to lay off the pitching starts until further notice, and Babe tweaked his timing, forced himself to begin his cuts a little earlier but a little slower, too, not rev up to full power until he was halfway into the swing.

And June was glorious.

But July? July was volcanic.

546DENNIS LEHANE

The month arrived with a curl of fear at its back when word spread that the goddamned subversives and Bolshies had planned another wave of national carnage for Inde pendence Day. Every federal facility in Boston was surrounded by soldiers, and in New York City, the entire police force was sent to guard the public buildings. By the end of the day, though, nothing had happened except for the walkout of the New England Fishermen's Union, and Babe didn't give a shit about that anyway because he never ate anything that couldn't walk on its own.

On the next day, he hit two home runs in one game. Two of the fuckers--sky-high. He'd never done that before. A week later, he ripped his eleventh of the season straight at the Chicago skyline, and even the White Sox fans cheered. Last year he'd led the league with a fi nal tally of eleven. This year, he wasn't even warm yet, and the fans knew it. Middle of the month, in Cleveland, he hit his second home run of the game in the ninth. An impressive accomplishment on its own, another twofer, but this was a grand slam to win the game. The hometown crowd didn't boo. Babe couldn't believe it. He'd just driven the nail straight through the fucking coffin and down into the funeral parlor floor but the folks in the stands rose to their feet as one joyous, addled mass and chanted his name as he rounded the bases. When he crossed home, they were still standing and they were still chopping the air with their fists and still calling his name.

Babe.

Babe.

Babe . . .

In Detroit three days later, Babe took an 0-2 pitch, down and away, and hit the longest home run in Detroit history. The papers, always a step or two behind the fans, finally noticed. The American League single- season home run record, set in 1902, by Socks Seybold, was sixteen. Babe, heading into the third week of that stupendous July, had already smacked fourteen. And he was heading home to Boston, to sweet, sweet Fenway. Sorry, Socks, I hope you've done something else for people to remember you by, because I'm just going to snatch up that little ol' record of yours, wrap my cigar in it, and set a torch to it.

THE GIVEN DAYHe hit his fifteenth in the first game back home, against the Yanks, plopped it high in the upper deck of the right-fi eld bleachers, watched the fans up in those cheap seats fight for it like it was food or a job as he trotted down the first base line and he noticed how full the seats were across the entire park. Double, easily, what they'd had for the World Series last year. They were in third place right now, third and sliding toward the basement. No one had any illusions about a pennant this year, so about the only thing to keep the fans coming to the ballpark was Ruth and his dingers.

And, boy, did they come. Even when they lost to Detroit a few days later, no one seemed to care because Babe hit his sixteenth long ball of the year. Sixteen. Poor Socks Seybold now had company on the podium. The streetcar and el operators had walked off the job that week (Babe thinking, for the second time that year, that the whole fucking world was walking off the job), but the stands filled anyway the next day when Babe went for magic number seventeen against those wonderfully generous Tigers.

He could feel it from inside the dugout. Ossie Vitt was up and Scott was on deck, but Babe was batting third, and the whole park knew it. He risked a glance out of the dugout as he wiped down his bat with a rag, saw half the eyes in the stadium flicking his way, hoping for a glimpse of a god, and he ducked back in again as his whole body went cold. Ice cream cold. The kind of cold he imagined you only felt just after you'd died but before they put you in the coffin, when some part of you thought you still breathed. It took him a second to realize what he'd seen. What could have done this to him. What ripped the confi - dence from his limbs and his soul so completely that, as he watched Ossie Vitt ground out to short and went to take his place in the on-deck circle, he feared he might never get another hit the rest of the season.

Luther.

Babe risked another sideways glance from the on- deck circle, his eyes flitting along the row just past the dugout. The front row. The money row. No way any colored man would be sitting in those seats. Never happened before, no reason to think it would happen now. A

548DENNIS LEHANE strange optical illusion then, a trick of the mind, maybe some of the pressure getting to Babe, pressure he hadn't acknowledged until now. Silly, really, when you thought what--

There he was. Sure as summer, certain as dusk. Luther Laurence. Same light smattering of scars on his face. Same hooded, sullen eyes, and those eyes looking right at Ruth as a smile appeared in them, a tiny, knowing glint, and Luther raised his fingers to the brim of his hat, and tipped it at Ruth.

Ruth tried to smile back, but the muscles in his face wouldn't comply as Scott popped out to shallow right. He heard the announcer call his name. He walked to the batter's box, feeling Luther's knowing eyes on his back the whole way. He stepped up to the plate and hit the first pitch he saw straight back into the pitcher's glove.

So this Clayton Tomes was a friend of yours, wasn't he?" Danny caught the eye of the peanut vendor and held up two fi ngers. Luther nodded. "He was. Musta had jackrabbit in him, though. Didn't say a word to me, just picked up and left."

"Huh," Danny said. "I met him a few times. He didn't strike me that way. Struck me more as a sweet kid, a boy really."

The oily brown bags came sailing through the air and Danny caught the first but let the second pass by, and it glanced off Luther's forehead and landed in his lap.

"Thought you were some kind of baseball player." Danny handed a nickel down the row of fans and the last man handed it to the peanut vendor.

"Gotta lot on my mind." Luther took the first warm peanut from his bag and flicked his wrist and it bounced off Danny's Adam's apple and fell into his shirt. "What Mrs. Wagenfeld say about it?"

"Just chalked it up to something you darker folk do," Danny said, reaching into his shirt. "Hired herself another houseman straightaway." "Colored?"

"No. I guess the new prevailing theory on the east side after you and Clayton didn't work out is to keep it whiter up there."

THE GIVEN DAY"Like this here park, uh?"

Danny chuckled. Maybe twenty-five thousand faces in Fenway that day, and not a one besides Luther's any darker than the ball. The teams were changing sides after Ruth's line- out to the pitcher, and the round man trotted out to left on his ballerina toes, his shoulders hunched like he was expecting a blow from behind. Luther knew Ruth had seen him, and that the seeing had rattled him. Shame had filled the man's face like it had come from a hose. Luther almost pitied him, but then he remembered the game in Ohio, the way those white boys had soiled its simple beauty and he thought: You don't want to feel shame? Don't do shameful things, white boy.