The Youngest Hero (41 page)

“Lucas! You shaved your beautiful beard!”

“You’re kidding, right? I thought you hated it.”

“I never said I hated it,” I said as I pulled the door shut and we started down the hall. “I just said I had never seen you
without it.”

“Well, here I am,” he said.

“I like your face,” I said.

“You should. Your son says I look like you.”

I let out a laugh. I noticed he was carrying a manila envelope. “Now what’s tonight all about?”

“I just thought we ought to have a formal date,” he said. “We never really have, you know. You didn’t have to accept.”

“How could I have refused?” I teased. “Sent our courier back to you?”

We boarded the el a few blocks away. I had dressed as if for church. Luke wore a tie and a corduroy jacket. He looked great,
but I had complimented him enough for one evening.

He took me to a family restaurant a few miles west. I felt like a teenager. And that envelope intrigued me.

The food was plain and moderately priced. I worried about Lucas spending money on me. Because he was frugal and careful, he
seemed to have discretionary income. He was not in the least extravagant, but this meal alone would have been a burden for
my budget.

Cradling my wrist in my other hand, I went upstairs to the flat. I held it under the cold water tap.

I turned on the Cubs and sat on the couch with a large bowl full of ice cubes, my wrist throbbing and my head aching. The
cubes turned to water as the Cubs lost big. I rummaged for some change and headed to the pay phone to call Mr. Thatcher at
the Hyatt.

I was impressed when Lucas paid the waitress and asked if she minded if we sat and talked awhile. The girl noticed the generous
tip and smiled as she left.

“Well,” Luke said, focusing on me. “I can’t put this off any longer.”

“You make it sound like bad news.”

“Oh, it’s not. At least I hope it’s not. This morning, I visited Mr. Thatcher.”

I squinted, my mind racing.

“I just wanted to make a few things clear to him and ask him to help me make them clear to you. One of the things I like so
much about you is how unselfish you’re being with Elgin. It’s great that you’re worried about the money and what people will
think of you because of it. And Billy Ray’s, uh, Mr. Thatcher’s working for just his hourly fee, well, that’s incredible.”

“Mr. Thatcher is wonderful,” I said. “Of course, his hourly fee is about half a week’s salary for me.”

“But he’s not going to charge you unless there’s some income for Elgin.”

“I know that,” I said evenly.

“And he’s not charging you expenses, like his car and hotel and travel and all that.”

Something about Lucas’s having thought all this through bothered me. I knew he had overheard much of it and I had told him
the rest, so why was he reminding me?

“I’m aware of that too,” I said.

Luke reached for my hand. “I’m sorry, Miriam. I don’t mean to be telling you anything you already know. It’s just that I’ve
become more and more impressed with Mr. Thatcher.” He pulled back, producing a folder from the manila envelope. “I asked Mr.
Thatcher to draw this up today, but only if he let me pay him. It was hard to talk him into it, but I finally did get to pay
for the typing and copying and notary public stuff done by a service in the hotel.”

I was at a loss.
What in the world
? Lucas handed me the folder with a smile.

Two pages were filled with legal mumbo jumbo, but I recognized my name and Elgin’s name and “To all parties concerned as of
this date and following re: present and future earnings of one Elgin Neal Woodell, etc., etc.”

The thing carried “whereases” and “wherefores” and “there-fores,” and a “Be it known to all—“ and my heart sank. My eyes darted
back and forth over the pages until the words swam. I wondered if I could speak. My impulse was to jump and run, to leave
the document, to find Billy Ray. How could Lucas reduce our relationship to paper and try to benefit from it?

Mr. Thatcher’s line was busy, and I didn’t have much change.

“Is this an emergency?” the Hyatt operator said.

“Um, yeah. It sort of is.”

“If it’s an emergency I can interrupt the call he’s on. If it’s just sort of important, I can keep an eye on when he hangs
up and ring him right away.”

“That would be good.”

“Let me have that number.”

I hung up and slid to the floor under the pay phone. I stayed there even when smelly, old Mrs. Majda gave me a dirty look
while using the phone to order her nightly smelly, old pizza. I was still sitting there when Mr. Bravura’s holler came that
she had a delivery. She gave me the same dirty look on her way down to get it.

I only hoped Mr. Thatcher had not tried to reach me while she was on the phone.

I
gradually regained my composure, placed the documents back in the folder, and handed them across the table. Luke was still
smiling.

“Lucas, why don’t you just tell me in your own words what this thing says? I don’t understand the language, and I want to
hear it from you.”

“Okay,” he said, ‘just so you know I went about it the right way, got it done up legally, and that it’s binding with my signature.”

“You can’t bind anything that has to do with Elgin or me without our signatures.”

Luke’s smile froze. “You don’t understand,” he said.

“No, I don’t. That’s why I want to hear it from your own lips.”

He stalled, opening and closing the folder, then opening it again and perusing the document. He replaced it in the envelope.

“Well, this is not easy for me to say,” he began. “I wasn’t very good about romantic stuff, even when I was married.”

Romantic stuff
? I had not imagined I could become more uncomfortable.

Lucas continued. “That was one of Lucy’s complaints—that I didn’t know how to express my feelings for her. But I told you
once I wouldn’t even hold your hand unless, unless I, you know, really cared for you.”

“And you’ve since held my hand.”

“Right.” He was smiling again.

“Your late wife was right,” I said. “You don’t express yourself well directly.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sobering quickly. “I’m trying. Don’t make it more difficult for me.”

Difficult for him
?

“I held your hand,” he said, “because I was falling in love with you.” He spoke quietly, haltingly. How I had longed to hear
those words. They begged a response, one I thought I had been prepared to give.

“I thought maybe we felt the same about each other,” he said. “I didn’t know where our relationship might lead.”

I hated to be so passive, but if he had made some huge assumption about how Elgin’s future would impact his, I wasn’t prepared
to encourage him.

“The last thing I wanted,” Lucas said, “was for you to think I was, what do they call it, an opportunist.”

“That’s the last thing I’d want to think,” I said.

“I know, even though we really don’t know each other all that well yet.”

“We sure don’t,” I said. I so wanted him to get to the point. Would this be the end of us? If it had to be, it had to be.

“So, anyway, I got to thinkin about that stupid little gift I gave you. I wasn’t trying to mock you. I just wanted you to
know that I hear you when you talk. And when you said that about not ever seein me without my beard, I thought,
Hey, why not? Girl I’m in love with wants to see what she might be getting herself into
. I don’t want you to have any surprises—not that I’m saying we’re gonna wind up spending the rest of our lives together.”

“And thus this legal thing here, related to me and Elgin.”

“Right.”

I took a deep breath and had to fight to keep from shaking my head. “So are you ready to tell me what it says?”

“What’s up, son?” Mr. Thatcher said, and I had never heard a more welcome voice. Half an hour later I had left a note for
my mother and was in Billy Ray’s car.

“You did the right thing,” the lawyer said. “Doesn’t look like the ulna or the radius is broken, but you’ve at least got a
deep bruise on either the tendon or the membrane.”

“Nothing’s gonna keep me out for long,” I said. “I can’t slow down.”

“I hope you’re right, Elgin. You want to know why?”

“Sure.”

“You, my young friend, are about to meet the commissioner of baseball.”