A Face in the Crowd

actually a relief. Their fling had run its more than pleasant course, and rather than fire her, he kept her closer, making her his executive assistant at double the salary, working beside her day in, day out until, eventually, she accepted a lavish early retirement package. At her farewell party, he made a speech and gave her a Honda Gold Wing and a peck on the cheek, to raised glasses and warm applause. The affair ended with a slide show featuring Martha on her old Harley Tri-Glide, while George Thorogood sang “Ride On Josephine.”
    It was a rare moment for Evers, a happy parting. Beyond the silly intrigue, he’d always liked Martha, her brash laugh and the way she hummed to herself as she typed, a pencil tucked behind one ear. What he said in his speech—that she wasn’t merely an assistant but a dear and trusted friend—was true. Though he hadn’t spoken to her in ages, of all the people he’d worked with, she was the only one he missed. Drowsing now as the Ambien kicked in, he wondered hazily if she was still alive, or if, tomorrow, he’d turn on the game and find her behind home, wearing the sleeveless yellow sundress with the daisies he liked.
    He rose at eight—a full hour past his usual time—and stooped to pick the paper from the mat. He checked the sports page and discovered the Rays had the night off. That was all right; there was always CSI . Evers showered, ate a healthy breakfast in which wheat germ played a major role, then sat down to track Young Doctor Young on the computer. When that marvel of the twenty-first century failed (or maybe he just wasn’t doing it right; Ellie had always been the computer whiz), he picked up the telephone. According to the morgue desk at the Shrewsbury Herald-Crier, the dental bogeyman of Evers’s childhood had died in 1978. Amazingly, he’d been only fifty-nine, nearly a decade younger than Evers was now. Evers pondered the unknowable: was his life cut short by the war, Luckies, dentistry, or all three?
    There was nothing remarkable in his obituary, just the usual survived by and funeral home info. Evers had had absolutely nothing to do with the drunk old butcher’s demise, just the bad luck to be his victim. Exonerated, that night he raised an extra glass or four to Dr. Young. He ordered in, but it took forever, arriving after he was well in the bag. CSI turned out to be one he’d seen before, and all the sitcoms were stupid. Where was Bob Newhart when you needed him? Evers brushed his teeth, took two of Ellie’s Ambiens, then stood swaying in front of the bathroom mirror, his eyes bleeding. “Give me a liver long enough,” he said, “and I’ll move the fucking world.”
    He slept late again, recovering with instant coffee and oatmeal, and was pleased to see in the paper that the Sox were coming in for a big weekend series. He celebrated the opener with steak, setting the DVR to capture whatever malevolent spirit his past might vomit up. If it happened, this time he’d be ready.
    It did, in the seventh inning of a tie game, on a key play at the plate. He would have missed it if he’d gone off to do the dishes, but by then he was poised on the edge of the sofa, totally into the contest and concentrating on every pitch. Longoria doubled to the gap in left center, and Upton tried to score from first. The throw beat him but was wide, up the first baseline. As Sox catcher Kelly Shoppach lunged toward home with a sweep tag, directly behind the screen a scrawny, freckle-faced boy not more than nine rose from his seat.
    His haircut was what used to be called a Dutch boy, or, if you were taunting this particular fellow at school, a soup bowl. “Hey, Soup!” they used to hound him in gym, pummeling him, turning every game into Smear the Queer. “Hey, Soupy, Soup, Soupy!”
    His name was Lester Embree, and here in the shadowy Trop he wore the same threadbare red-and-blue striped shirt and bleached, patched-at-the-knees Tuffskins he always seemed to have on that spring of 1954. He was white but he lived in the black part of town behind the fairgrounds. He had no father, and the kindest rumor about his mother said she worked in the laundry at St. Joe’s hospital. In the middle of the school year he’d come to Shrewsbury from some hick town in Tennessee, a move that seemed foolish, a dunderheaded affront to Evers and his cadre of buddies. They delighted in imitating his soft drawl, drawing out the halting answers he gave in class into Foghorn Leghorn