The Whore's Child

not like to put his younger boys in pressure-packed situations where they’d feel terrible if they failed, so he was adamant about not putting Hugo into any game without a cushion, preferably a large one. Being ahead or behind by a dozen runs or more, Lin had noticed, made it a Hugo situation.
    Since their confrontation on the first day of practice, the two boys had spoken to each other only once. And the conversation, initiated by Hugo, had been one-sided. “My dad knows your dad from the hotel,” he said, grinning unpleasantly. “My dad
tips
your dad.” Since then, when neither was in the game, they sat on opposite ends of the bench. At first their mutual aversion had been wholly satisfying to Lin, who didn’t want to be associated with a boy so pitifully lacking in baseball skills—who
looked
so little like a baseball player. But as the season wore on he began to suspect that Hugo was equally content with the arrangement. Ever since that first practice when Lin had been struck in the forehead by the grounder, he’d remained timid about any ball hit in his direction, and batters continued to beat easy groundouts because he was afraid to charge the ball. As a result he thought he detected a triumphant curl of Hugo Wentz’s lip. By midsummer he’d even given up his nightly game of snagging line drives in his room since his heroic fantasy was no longer sustainable. Every time he dove recklessly and smothered a hard-hit liner, landing fully extended on his bed, he’d see Hugo’s lip curl and know the truth—that a rubber ball wasn’t a baseball, his soft mattress not a hard-packed infield. It was ironic, of course, that his enemy should be the reason both that he no longer loved baseball and that he didn’t quit. For as long as Hugo remained on the team, he, not Lin, would be regarded as its worst player. The pure joy was gone, though, and when the final game of the season rolled around, Lin was relieved.
    American Legion games, usually high-scoring affairs, were seven innings, and it wasn’t until the bottom of the sixth, with a two-run lead, that Lin was inserted as a pinch hitter. The Stop & Shop coach was making similar end-of-season moves, and the boy brought in to pitch to Lin walked him on a full count. By the time the inning was over and Elm Photo took the field, their lead had swollen to four runs. Spirits were running high until Mr. Christie was seen handing the baseball to Hugo Wentz, who started to mope out onto the field without his mitt and had to be called back in for it.
    â€œBear down now,” his father called out from the bleachers as he warmed up. “Those sissies can’t hit.”
    But of course they didn’t have to. Hugo Wentz never had any trouble throwing the ball over the plate during warm-ups, but something happened as soon as a boy stood there with a bat in his hands. You could actually see it happening. The first pitch or two might be close to the strike zone, but after that Hugo’s eyes would glaze over as if he was watching the game on some inner screen that only he could see and which bore little relation to the one being played on the field. His pitches got wilder and wilder, one in the dirt, the next halfway up the backstop. Unless Lin was mistaken, there was for Hugo just one physical reality once he was on the mound: the sound of his father’s voice in the bleachers, a voice that did not take long to grow impatient. Only by plunging deep into something akin to a coma was the boy able to sever that last link with reality.
    After loading the bases without throwing a single strike, the coach of the Stop & Shop team called his next batter back to the on-deck circle for a conference, and though he was whispering, it was painfully clear to everyone on both sides of the diamond that his instructions were: Don’t swing.
    â€œHe’s got no stick, Hugo,” Mr. Wentz shouted. “Just throw the damn ball over the plate. He couldn’t hit it off a tee.”
    Good advice, Lin thought, but Hugo was no longer, strictly speaking, there to hear it, and his next four pitches were even wilder, the last eluding the backstop completely. The runner on third trotted home, the bases still loaded, nobody out. Next batter, same result.
    â€œGo settle him down, Coach,” Mr. Wentz yelled. “Don’t you know anything?”
    In fact, Mr. Christie was already on his way to the mound, but when Hugo