The Youngest Hero (19 page)

“Pleasure doing business with you, ma’am.”

I shook my head as the woman left with her knife in a small paper sack.

“You like that?” Biker asked.

“It was fun.”

“Yeah, for me too. You know what I paid for that knife and what I wanted to get for it?”

I shrugged.

“I paid six. I was hoping to sell it for twelve. Always try to get twice what I paid for something.”

“You told her it was a forty-dollar knife!”

“It is if she’ll pay that.”

“Does anybody ever pay the first price you tell them?”

“It happens. Not often.”

“How much for this basket of useless golf balls that nobody
else in Chicago would want because there’s no place to use them?”

“Good! Good! Well, let me see, there must be sixty, seventy balls in that basket.”

“Less than sixty,” Elgin said. “I counted them.”

“Oh, that was good that you didn’t tell me exactly how many. Okay, if there’s, say, fifty-five at a quarter apiece—“ He wrote
on a piece of scrap paper. “That would be thirteen dollars and seventy-five cents. Let’s make it an even ten.”

Uh-oh
. “Would you sell me just ten of them or so?”

Biker looked at me with a smile. “I want you to have the balls and the bat. We’re down to two bucks on the bat if I can make
a little profit on the balls. What’ve you got?”

“You mean honestly, not dealing anymore?”

“Yeah.”

“Five dollars, and I’m not gonna have any more for a long time.”

“Five will do it, buddy. I hope you learned a little today. I paid ten dollars for that bag of equipment, so I want to sell
it for a couple, three dollars a bat or the whole lot for twenty or more. The catcher’s equipment, if I had time to clean
it up a little, could get me fifteen. So, the skinny bat for two is okay.”

“And the basket of balls?”

“Those are obviously hot. I bought a couple of golf bags, including clubs, one a complete set, and the guy threw in the balls
for another buck.”

“And I have to give you three dollars for them?”

“You sure do! Part of that profit goes for today’s lesson. We got a deal?”

“We do,” I said as the man pulled out a large paper bag. Actually, I couldn’t believe my luck. And I couldn’t wait to get
back to the basement.

“Where you goin in such a rush, man?” Chico called after me. “Ain’t we gonna play today?”

“Later!” I said. ‘Just like yesterday.”

“You ain’t hittin my fastpitch ball with that thing you just bought!”

“I know!” I said, running for home. I doubted my new bat would ever see the light of day again. It was for batting practice
in my own cage, a secret weapon no one would ever have to know about.

E
lgin had promised to be back as soon as he found, or didn’t find, what he was looking for. Of course, he might not come to
the apartment first, now that he had his private hitting place. If I didn’t see him by ten, I planned to mosey down there
and see what he was up to. The last thing he told me was that he needed baseballs to do a final adjustment on the machine
so it wouldn’t pitch over his head.

As I sat at the breakfast table with my toast and coffee, I had the niggling feeling that I had never turned off the batting
machine the night before.

I let the heavy basement door shut and lock behind me and felt for the switch on the wall. Just before I turned it on I stood
stock-still on the steps and listened. My heart raced. What was that noise? The machine was on! Who would be down there in
the dark with the machine running?

It could only be Mr. Bravura. No one else had a key. I carefully set the paper bag in the corner. Carrying the fungo bat I
crept down the stairs in total darkness. I raised the bat as I flipped the light switch in the big room. No one was there.

I trotted back up for the basket of golf balls. I wondered if I had left the machine on myself. I hoped Mr. Bravura hadn’t
been down there and decided he didn’t like my setup. I felt the machine and found the casing warm around the electric motor,
but I figured it always felt that way when it was running. I wouldn’t worry about it unless it became too hot to touch.

I turned the machine off and got a wrench so I could loosen the pitching wheels and set them closer together for the golf
balls. For the first time I became aware that the rubber on those wheels was old, dried, and cracked, especially in the indented
middles of the wheels where the ball was gripped. I wondered what effect that might have on the spin of the balls when they
were thrust out and hurled toward the plate.

The pitching wheels were set flat like a pair of record turntables and spun close to each other. I squatted and closed one
eye, peeking between the wheels as I drew them as close together as possible. Their outer edges almost touched, and there
appeared to be just barely enough room for a golf ball to squeeze through with friction from each wheel. I forced a ball through
by hand, and found I could hardly make it budge. I thought about trying it with the machine on and the wheels spinning, but
I didn’t want to risk getting a finger caught between ball and wheels.

With the ball stuck between the two wheels, I turned on the machine. When it warmed up, I tilted the trough, which started
the wheels. They stuck and grabbed, then they squirted the golf ball out, spinning it wildly. It landed about ten feet in
front of the machine and bounced back and forth before rolling to the side.

I wondered if I should spread the wheels a bit, finally deciding that I wanted to see what would happen if the wheels were
at full speed before the ball was fed through. If it still stalled, then I would allow more room for the ball. I tilted the
trough until the wheels began spinning at top speed. With my other hand I held a ball over the far end of the trough and let
it go.

The ball rolled quickly to the wheels where there was a loud
phfft!

I had a fraction of a second to wonder if the ball had been
launched. In fact, it had happened so fast I didn’t see it. I only heard it. It slammed off the wall nearly forty feet away
and came hurtling back past the machine and right at my face. I jerked my head left without thinking, but the missile caught
me on the right side at the top of my forehead and my head snapped back as my legs buckled.

The ball hit the ceiling and dropped on my ribs as I lay on my side, dazed, not moving, groaning. What had happened? All I
was aware of was the cold cement floor on my cheek and on the back of the hand that was tucked under me. My other hand cradled
the quickly rising bump on my forehead.

I struggled to my knees but felt dizzy and sat on the floor Indian style. The machine was still humming, but the trough had
fallen back to its original position and I heard the wheels stop spinning. I blinked, feeling pressure on my right eye from
the wound above it. How was I going to explain this to my mother?

Within seconds the bump on my forehead was hot and tender and felt an inch high and scared me. I knew I should get some ice
on it, but how could I do that without scaring Momma and losing my privileges with the machine? I decided that though the
bump was probably ugly and awful-looking, I was not really hurt. My name is Elgin Woodell and I live in Chicago, I told myself.
I wouldn’t know that if I was hurt bad, would I?

I stood and staggered and wondered how close I had come to losing an eye or even getting myself killed. How fast must that
ball have come off the wall? It had traveled more than thirty feet each way and had still knocked me off my feet. I chuckled
at the thought of trying to hit or even catch a pitch like that. I had only heard it hit the far wall, so I didn’t know about
the trajectory. The way it came back, though, made me guess it had hit high off the wall, the way the old baseball had.

I turned off the machine and looked for a way to adjust the trajectory. I finally found that the two front wheels could be
raised and lowered. When I raised them, the front of the machine sat closer to the ground, and when I got behind the machine
and lined it up, it was clearly pointing at a lower spot on the far wall.

I was tempted to try another pitch, but first I wanted to find a place to hide. How could I watch the pitch and still protect
myself? I decided that if I let the machine deliver the balls automatically, the way it was designed, I wouldn’t have to be
standing and could peek out from behind the machine.

I was still woozy when I dumped the bucket of fifty-six golf balls into the container and picked up the fifty-seventh and
tossed it in too. Before turning on the machine, I walked around it, looking for the best place to stay out of the way and
still be able to see where the balls hit off the wall. I was sure that once I could control where they hit and how fast they
were going, I could stand in there with my new bat and take some hitting practice.

I decided to crouch directly behind the machine and peek out around the right side. If the first ball came back that way,
I would just duck back in and stay there until the balls ran out. What I had not thought about, however, was the back wall,
just six or seven feet behind the machine. That first pitch had not hit the back wall only because it had ricocheted off my
head.

Something else I had not thought of was the difference in weight between golf balls and baseballs. When I turned on the machine,
the container rolled and rolled, and I could hear the balls inside aligning themselves to be delivered one at a time to and
from the trough.

However, because they were so much lighter and smaller than baseballs, rather than cooperating with the intent of the machine,
they rolled in a steady stream from the container to the trough, which picked them up, tilted, started the pitching wheels
spinning, and drew all fifty-seven balls through the apparatus in a straight line.

The wheels never slowed, and the trough never tilted back until all the balls had been sucked through and fired at the far
wall, sometimes as fast as two a second. It was as if the pitching machine had been transformed into a submachine gun with
golf balls as its ammunition and the far wall as its target. The bigger problem was that the walls were all concrete, and
with nothing to get in the way of the balls except the basket on the ceiling,
the cord hanging down, and the machine itself, most of the balls kept bouncing off the front and back walls until they had
lost their momentum.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. It was deafening. I was sure I saw one ball bounce off the wall and then
hit head-on the next one just a few inches behind. Two of the first five balls skipped off the cord hanging down in the center
of the room and made it swing and sway, creating a weird shadow. Two balls banged on the wire grate around the light, and
it came loose and began rocking.

But then the machine seemed to settle into a cadence and began firing the balls every half second or so, right to the same
spot, low on the far wall. The balls smashed off the wall and rose quickly over the machine on the rebound. I kept watching
until I heard a ball strike the wall behind me and in the next instant I felt the thud between my shoulder blades. I couldn’t
believe it. The blinding power of the one that had hit my head was worse, because it had not hit a second wall, but this one
stung. And here came another, and another.

I scooted away, but the balls that hit both walls also hit the sides and seemed to hunt me down.

I knew I should get in front of the machine because the balls were coming back over the top of it, but I couldn’t risk that.
My best hope was to make a break for it and try to dive out through the doorway to the landing at the bottom of the stairs.
But if I got hit with a line drive off the wall on the way, I would be hurting.

Six balls hit me hard in the seat and back and I covered my head and curled up into a ball behind the machine. I wasn’t going
to just sit there and take that. I rolled to my left, getting hit a couple more times. Finally, I gave up caution and scrambled
to the door, peeking at the far wall as I went. I had made the mistake of pushing off against the machine as I made my break,
and I had redirected it to shoot into the far corner. Three balls struck me as I reached the doorway and three more bounced
low off the far wall and came back high, two hitting
what was left of the cage and the third knocking it loose and banging it into the light fixture.

Just as the last few balls were being fed into the wheels, two balls hit the fixture and the cord, bringing the whole assemblage
crashing to the floor, cutting out the light, and shutting down the power to the machine.

I lay there, dazed and hurting all over as I heard the machine slowly wind down to a hum and a whine and then stop.

That was unbelievable!
I thought.
When I get this thing figured out and adjusted, it’s going to be great!

I
knocked on the basement door but didn’t hear anything at first. Then I heard footsteps coming up, and finally the door opened.