JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 150 из 425You must’ve, or you wouldn’t have risked eatinghamburgers with Jezebel.” I wanted to get away from that, if I could—her anger was understandable but useless. Of course it was easier for me to see that; it wasn’t my kid who had been turned into the handkerchief tied at the center of a tug-of-war rope. “They still play softball at Warrington’s?
Even though Devore bought the place?”
“Yes indeed. He goes down to the field in his motorized wheelchair every Tuesday evening and watches.
There are other things he’s done since he came back here that are just attempts to buy the town’s good opinion, but I think he genuinely loves the softball games. The Whit-more woman goes, too. Brings an extra oxygen tank along in a little red wheelbarrow with a whitewall tire on the front. She keeps a fielder’s mitt in there, too, in case any foul pops come up over the backstop to where he sits. He caught one near the start of the season, I heard, and got a standing O from the players and the folks who come to watch.”
“Going to the games puts him in touch with his son, you think?” Mattie smiled grimly. “I don’t think Lance so much as crosses his mind, not when he’s at the ballfield. They play hard at Warrington’s—slide into home with their feet up, jump into the puckerbrush for the flyballs, curse each other when they do something wrong—and that’s what old Max Devore enjoys, that’s why he never misses a Tuesdayevening game. He likes to watch them slide and get up bleeding.”
“Is that how Lance played?” She thought about it carefully.
“He played hard, but he wasn’t crazed. He was there just for the fun of it. We all were. We women—shit, really just us girls, Barney Therriault’s wife, Cindy, was only sixteen—we’d stand behind the backstop on the first-base side, smoking cigarettes or waving punks to keep the bugs away, cheering our guys when they did something good, laughing when they did something stupid. We’d swap sodas or share a can of beer. I’d admire Helen Geary’s twins and she’d kiss Ki under the chin until Ki giggled. Sometimes we’d go down to the Village Cafe afterward and Buddy’d make us pizzas, losers pay. All friends again, you know, a ter the game. We’d sit there laughing and yelling and blowing straw-wrappers around, some of the guys half-loaded but nobody mean. In those days they got all the mean out on the ballfield. And you know what? None of them come to see me. Not Helen Geary, who was my best friend. Not Richie Lattimore, who was Lance’s best riend—the two of them would talk about rocks and birds and the kinds of trees there were across the lake for hours on end.
Even though Devore bought the place?”
“Yes indeed. He goes down to the field in his motorized wheelchair every Tuesday evening and watches.
There are other things he’s done since he came back here that are just attempts to buy the town’s good opinion, but I think he genuinely loves the softball games. The Whit-more woman goes, too. Brings an extra oxygen tank along in a little red wheelbarrow with a whitewall tire on the front. She keeps a fielder’s mitt in there, too, in case any foul pops come up over the backstop to where he sits. He caught one near the start of the season, I heard, and got a standing O from the players and the folks who come to watch.”
“Going to the games puts him in touch with his son, you think?” Mattie smiled grimly. “I don’t think Lance so much as crosses his mind, not when he’s at the ballfield. They play hard at Warrington’s—slide into home with their feet up, jump into the puckerbrush for the flyballs, curse each other when they do something wrong—and that’s what old Max Devore enjoys, that’s why he never misses a Tuesdayevening game. He likes to watch them slide and get up bleeding.”
“Is that how Lance played?” She thought about it carefully.
“He played hard, but he wasn’t crazed. He was there just for the fun of it. We all were. We women—shit, really just us girls, Barney Therriault’s wife, Cindy, was only sixteen—we’d stand behind the backstop on the first-base side, smoking cigarettes or waving punks to keep the bugs away, cheering our guys when they did something good, laughing when they did something stupid. We’d swap sodas or share a can of beer. I’d admire Helen Geary’s twins and she’d kiss Ki under the chin until Ki giggled. Sometimes we’d go down to the Village Cafe afterward and Buddy’d make us pizzas, losers pay. All friends again, you know, a ter the game. We’d sit there laughing and yelling and blowing straw-wrappers around, some of the guys half-loaded but nobody mean. In those days they got all the mean out on the ballfield. And you know what? None of them come to see me. Not Helen Geary, who was my best friend. Not Richie Lattimore, who was Lance’s best riend—the two of them would talk about rocks and birds and the kinds of trees there were across the lake for hours on end.