Every Saturday morning Mom would do the weekly grocery shopping. On Friday evenings she would circle the loss leaders in each grocery ad or flyer, then we’d tour the supermarkets buying only the items on sale.

  I was holding Byron’s hand, walking from the house, across the lawn, which Dad kept smooth as a golf green, toward our Ford Maverick, parked at the curb. The car was a shade of gold that Dad laughingly said the used-car salesman had referred to as Freudian Gilt.

  The day was hot and breezy, with a few sheep-sized white clouds floating across the sky. Mom was wearing a white dress with red anchors patterned on it, white shoes, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with a red ribbon around the crown. Her family had been over for dinner the previous Sunday and Mom had borrowed some folding chairs from Grandma Palichuk, which we were going to return after shopping.

  Mom had the trunk of the car open, had one chair inside and was reaching for a second when a gust of wind whipped her hat off. The hat hit the pavement beside the car, turned on edge, and rolled like a plate into the street. Mom moved instinctively to chase it.

  She only took about three steps, the street was narrow and three steps was far enough for her to move right into the path of an oncoming car, driven by George Franklin, who lived only a block down the street. George Franklin didn’t even have time to apply the brakes. The car hit Mom, carried her about twenty feet down the street and deposited her on the pavement. I can still hear the sound of her head hitting the street. She died instantly, the doctor who arrived with the ambulance said.

  Dad was mowing the back yard with a gas lawnmower, so he didn’t know anything unusual was going on. Someone had to go to the back yard and get him. The neighbors didn’t think to keep Byron and me away from the scene. I was sobbing because I knew what had happened was not play. Byron and I looked down at Mom, and Byron said, “Mama sleeping?” and through my tears I said, “Yes, Mama’s sleeping.”

  Then a woman in a swirling gray housedress took us each by the hand and hurried us into her house. Even though the doctor pronounced Mom dead at the scene, Dad insisted on riding with the ambulance to the hospital.

  Mr. Franklin was not at fault. He wasn’t speeding. He was in the correct lane. His car was in good mechanical condition. Between the accident and the funeral, Dad walked us down the block to Mr. Franklin’s house. I held onto his right hand, and he carried Byron in the crook of his left arm.

  Mr. Franklin was a tall, gaunt man with a hairline that went back like a horseshoe, a crooked nose, and sad blue eyes that protruded slightly.

  “I just want you to know I realize what happened was an accident,” Dad said to him. “There was nothing you could do. Gracie should have looked before she ran into the street after her hat. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened to anyone.” Dad held out his hand to Mr. Franklin.

  Mr. Franklin’s hand was trembling violently as he reached to shake my dad’s extended hand. He spoke very softly. He said he hadn’t slept since the accident, didn’t know if he’d ever sleep again.

  “Don’t be hard on yourself,” Dad said. “It could have been your wife. It could have been me driving home from the hardware store on a Saturday morning.”

  There was no way Dad could have done more — I don’t know if I could be so generous in similar circumstances — but what he did wasn’t enough. Mr. Franklin had a nervous breakdown, lost his job as an accountant with the Grain Exchange. He stopped driving. His family left him. He stayed home alone and drank all day. On the first anniversary of my mother’s death Mr. Franklin put a gun to his head and ended his pain.

  Dad had a married sister in Kansas City; my mother had one in Chicago and one in Milwaukee; and Grandma Palichuk lived only a ten-minute drive from us. Each of them volunteered to take Byron and me, to care for us and to raise us as their own.

  And some good cases were made, the best by my dad’s sister in Kansas City, my Aunt Noreen, who was married to a lawyer, lived in a five-bedroom house with a swimming pool, had only one child, a girl, Phoebe, and was desperate for a son, but unable to bear any more children. No one considered for a moment that Dad might want to raise his own sons.

  But my dad, big awkward rough diamond that he was, refused all their offers, even ignored Aunt Noreen, who, after being turned down threatened to sue for custody on the grounds that Dad lacked the ability to care for us properly It was about ten years before Dad forgave his sister for that threat. He intended to look after us himself, he said. And when Dad says something, he means it.

  It wasn’t easy. There were housekeepers, play schools, and day-care centers. There were babysitters who did exactly that — sat — often having friends over who ate everything not locked up. There were housekeepers who drank, who entertained boyfriends, who quit on a moment’s notice, stealing whatever they were able to carry.

  There were also some wonderful women who tried to be mothers to Byron and me, some hoping Dad would take a fancy to them if they were nice enough to us and kept the house spotless. Others simply loved children. One was a middle-aged lady named Mrs. Watts, a black woman whose family had a cottage on a lake some fifty miles out of Chicago. She took us to the lake for two weeks when I was eight and Byron was six. Dad came down on the weekends and slept in a hammock on the porch of the cabin, and we went fishing and boating and collected rocks and shells. But Mrs. Watts’ mother became ill and she had to go look after her instead of us.

  It was Dad who enrolled me in Little League, where I immediately showed skill and power beyond my years.

  “Did you ever play ball?” I asked him.

  “I used to play in a commercial league when I was a teenager. I played third base with all the grace of King Kong. The thing I did best was get hit by the pitcher. The ball didn’t hurt so much because I have big bones. I’d lean over the plate and dare the pitcher to hit me, and often enough he would.”

  We muddled through. By the time I was in first grade I’d mastered the washer and dryer, the vacuum cleaner and the dishwasher. We went to school in clean if unironed clothes. I did the dishes as soon as I got home from school. Byron learned to cook, first out of necessity then for pleasure. I can see him standing on a chair in front of the stove, five years old, frying pork chops, boiling carrots that I had cut up, salting, peppering, shooing me away if I tried to help. We got our share of burns and scrapes and cuts, but we were truly scared only once. When I was six, I reached up and put my finger under the knife as Dad was slicing bread for Sunday morning toast. I still have the scar. There was blood everywhere, and Byron kept a washcloth pressed tightly about my finger as Dad hurried us to Emergency, the cloth turning raspberry colored in spite of the pressure Byron put on it.

  “How long will he be on the disabled list?” Dad asked the doctor after he had stitched me up. “This boy’s the star of his Little League team and he’s only six.” I was pale and still snuffling a little. My knees were like water, and I didn’t feel the least like a star baseball player.

  The hand recovered, and I roared through every league I played in. Our high-school team won twenty-seven games in a row my freshman year and, though we lost in the first round of the Illinois State Championships, I was voted outstanding player.

  Afterward, my coach told me a scout from the White Sox had been in the stands for a couple of games.

  “Didn’t want to put any pressure on you, Son, so I didn’t tell you. You’ve got a big-league future in front of you, or I don’t know my baseball players. You’ve got all the tools. Speed, a strong arm, and a good eye will make up for your lack of power. You’re gonna be a great one.”

  Had he not told me about the scout because he knew I didn’t play well under pressure? Or hadn’t he noticed? I’d gone 0-5 in our tournament loss, and made an error.

  TWO

  I was in my second year of high school the day a Cadillac the color of thick, rich cream pulled up in front of Mrs. Grover’s Springtime Café and Ice Cream Parlor. Our main street was paved but narrow, with six feet of gravel between the edge of the pavement and the sidewalk. Dust from the gravel whooshed past the car and oozed through the screen door of the café.

  Byron and I were seated at a glass-topped table, our feet hooked on the insect-legged chairs. We were sharing a dish of vanilla ice cream, savoring each bite, trying to make it outlast the heat of high July.

  It was easy to tell the Cadillac owner was a man who cared about his car. He checked his rear view carefully before opening the driver’s door. After he got out — “unwound” would be a better description, for he was six foot five if he was an inch — he closed the door gently but firmly, then wiped something off the side-view mirror with his thumb. On the way around the Caddy, he picked something off the grille and flicked it onto the road.

  He took a seat in a corner of the café where he could watch his car and everyone else in the café which was me, Byron, and Mrs. Grover.

  The stranger looked to be in his mid-thirties. He had rusty hair combed into a high pompadour that accentuated his tall front teeth and made his face look longer than it really was. Across his upper lip was a wide coppery-red mustache with the corners turned up and waxed, the kind worn by 1890s baseball players.

  Though everything about him was expensive, down to the diamond ring on his left baby finger, he looked like the type who didn’t like to conform. I guessed he had grown his hair down past his shoulders when he was a teenager. His hair was now combed back, hiding the top half of his ears and the back of his collar. He was wearing a black suit with fine gray pinstripes, a white-on-white shirt, and shoes that must have cost three hundred dollars.

  “I’d like something tall and cool,” he said.

  “I have pink lemonade,” Mrs. Grover said in a tiny voice that belied her 250 pounds. She had waddled halfway from the counter to his table, but stopped when the stranger spoke.

  “I’ll have the largest one you’ve got,” he said.

  Mrs. Grover delivered the lemonade in a sweaty, opaque glass. He took a long drink, stretched his legs, and looked around the room.

  “What do you figure he does?” whispered Byron.

  When I didn’t answer quickly enough he went on. “A banker, I bet — or an undertaker, maybe.”

  “He’s suntanned,” I said, “and bankers have short hair.” The big brother pointing out the obvious to the little brother. “And look at his hands.”

  The knuckles were scarred, the fingers callused.

  “What then?”

  “Howdy, boys,” the stranger said, and raised his glass to us. His voice was deep and soft.

  “Hi,” we said.

  “I see you’re ballplayers.” He nodded toward our gloves, which rested on the floor by the chair legs. “Is there much baseball played in these parts?”

  The question was like opening a floodgate. We told him about everything from Little League to the high-school team I played for, to the commercial leagues where the little towns, subdivisions, and bedroom communities competed, to the Cubs and White Sox in nearby Chicago.

  I ended the baseball lecture saying, “My brother doesn’t play much baseball, at least not the way I do. I’m gonna play pro some day.”

  “How did your team do this year?” he asked me, not in the patronizing way most adults have, but speaking with a genuine interest.

  “Well,” I said, a little embarrassed, “last year we went to the State Championships, but this season we were two and nineteen. But we’re really a lot better ball club than that,” I rushed on before he could interrupt — or laugh, as most adults did when I announced our dismal record.

  “I keep statistics,” I said. “We scored more runs than any team in the league. We’re good hitters and average fielders, but we didn’t have anyone who could pitch. A bad team gets beat seventeen to two. We’d get beat seventeen to fourteen, nineteen to twelve, eighteen to sixteen.”

  “They’re really good hitters, especially Mike here,” Byron broke in. “Mike’s gonna make it to the Bigs.”

  “I practice three hours a day all year round,” I said. “I’m a singles hitter. A second-base man. I walk a lot and steal a lot.”

  “If you’re good you’ll make it,” the stranger said.

  “You look like you might be a player yourself,” I said.

  “I’ve pitched a few innings in my day,” he said, with what I recognized as understatement, and he made his way, in two long strides, to our table.

  “The thought struck me that you boys might like another dish of ice cream. Since you’re sharing I assume your budget is tight.”

  “You’ve had a good thought,” said Byron.

  “I notice my lemonade cost seventy-five cents, as does a dish of ice cream. I might be willing to make a small wager.”

  “What kind?” we both asked, staring up at him.

  “Well now, I’m willing to bet I can tell you the exact distance in miles between any two major American cities.”

  “How far is it from Algonquin to Peoria?” Byron asked quickly.

  “Algonquin, at least, is not a major American city,” said the stranger gently, “but I did notice as I was driving that the distance from DeKalb to Peoria was 118 miles, so you just add the distance from DeKalb to Algonquin.” Byron looked disappointed.

  “What I had in mind, though, were large cities. Chicago, of course, would qualify, so would Des Moines, St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, and, if you insist,” and he smiled in a quick and disarming manner at Byron, “I’ll throw in Peoria.”

  “How far from New York to Chicago?” I asked.

  “Exactly 809 miles,” said the stranger.

  “How do we know you’re not making that up?” I said.

  “A good question. Out in my car I have a road atlas, and inside it is a United States mileage chart. If one of you boys would like to get it …”

  As he spoke he reached a large hand into a side pocket and withdrew his keys. I had grabbed them and was halfway across the room before Byron could untangle his feet from the chair legs.

  The interior of the car was still cool from the air conditioning. It smelled of leather and of lime after-shave. There was nothing in sight except a State Farm road atlas on the front seat. The very neatness of the car told a lot about its owner, I thought: methodical, the type of man who would care about distances.

  I carried the atlas into the café, where the stranger was now seated across the table from Byron.

  “Let’s just check out New York to Chicago,” he said. “There’s always a chance I’m wrong.”

  He turned to the United States mileage chart, and all three of us studied it. There were eighty cities listed down the side of the chart, and sixty names across the top. Where the two names intersected on the chart was the mileage between them.

  “Yes, sir, 809 miles, just as I said.”

  The stranger put a big, square fingertip down on the chart at the point where New York and Chicago intersected.

  I noticed the stranger had a lantern jaw. He was also more muscular than I would have guessed, his shoulders square as a robot’s. His eyes were golden.

  I quickly calculated that there were nearly five thousand squares on the mileage chart. He can’t know them all, I thought.

  “Would either of you care to test me?” he asked, as if reading my mind. He smiled. “By the way, my name’s Roger Cash.”

  “Mike Houle,” I said. “And this is my kid brother, Byron.”

  We were sharing the ice cream because we were saving for a Cubs’ home stand. Dad had promised to take us into the city every night as long as we could afford to buy our own tickets.

  “Well …”

  “No bets, then. Just name some places. Distances are my hobby.”

  “Omaha and New Orleans,” I said.

  “Approximately 1,026,” Roger Cash replied, after an appropriate pause.

  We checked it, and he was right.

  “St. Louis to Los Angeles,” said Byron.

  “Exactly 1,838 miles,” said Roger.

  Again he was right.

  “Milwaukee to Kansas City,” I said.

  “One thousand, seven hundred and seventy-nine,” he replied quickly.

  We checked the chart.

  “Wrong!” we chorused together. “It’s 1,797.”

  “Doggone,” said Roger, grinning sheepishly, “sometimes I tend to reverse numbers. Seeing as how I couldn’t do it three times in a row, I’ll buy each of you men a dish of ice cream, or something larger if you want. A banana split? You choose.”

  It wasn’t often we could afford top-of-the-line treats. I ordered a banana split with chopped almonds and chocolate sauce on all three scoops. Byron ordered a tall chocolate malt, thick as cement. Roger had another pink lemonade.

  “What made you memorize the mileage chart?” I asked between mouthfuls of banana split.

  “Nothing made me,” said Roger, leaning back and straightening out his legs. “I spend a lot of time traveling, a lot of nights alone in hotel and motel rooms. It passes the time, beats drinking or reading the Gideon Bible.

  “I’ve been known to gamble on my ability to remember mileages,” he went on, “and on the outcome of baseball games in which I am the pitcher. I never gamble unless the odds are in my favor, substantially in my favor.”

  “Do you pitch for anyone in particular?” I asked.

  “One season, I tried to take a team barnstorming. But,” and he shook his head sadly, “that era is dead and gone. When I was a boy I watched the House of David play, and the Kansas City Monarchs. Must have been about the last season they toured. Costs too much to support a traveling team these days, and with television and all, people don’t go out to minor-league parks to see their home team let alone a team of barnstormers.

  “No, what I do now is arrange for a pickup team to back me up — play an exhibition game against a well-known local team…. Say,” he said, as if he had just been struck by a brilliant idea. “Do you suppose you men could round up the rest of your high-school team?”

  “Byron’s not in high school yet,” I said. “But I probably could. Most of the players live close by, a few on farms. Some will be away on vacation, but I think I could round up a full team without too much trouble.”

 

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