any longer. The grass in the outfield was several feet high, and when Edward Everett arrived, a bushwhacker rumbled across it, not so much mowing the grass as harvesting it, leaving thick cuttings in its wake. On the pitching mound, a high school boy was pushing a steel turf roller to smooth it, while near first base, another worked away at a mound of stones, hefting them into the back of a pickup parked there.
Beyond the poor condition of the field, there were also no dugouts—only two long, weathered wooden benches running beside the first and third base lines, separated from the field by rusting chain-link fencing. Behind the bench on the home team side, a ramshackle concession stand sat against a stone retaining wall holding back the hill that rose behind it.
“There is an upside,” Vincent said from the top of the steps. When Edward Everett turned around, Vincent pointed to the hill beyond right field and the edge of the fairgrounds visible above the rise. “We get a honey of a seat for the fireworks show the last weekend of August. Come on and I’ll show you the clubhouse. Or I should say ‘clubhouse.’ ” He wiggled his fingers, drawing quotation marks in the air.
The “clubhouse” was what had once been the boys’ locker room. “The visitors get the girls’,” Vincent said, smirking, opening the door, showing Edward Everett what was little more than a dank concrete cave with two facing lines of steel lockers; ductwork and copper plumbing crisscrossed the ceiling. Martinez and Mraz were already there, the first of his players to arrive, neither in uniform, their equipment bags unopened on the floor.
“This is a big fucking joke,” Martinez said when Edward Everett came in.
“My high school was eighty times better than this POS,” Mraz said, kicking at a locker, which popped open, a sheaf of papers spilling across the cement floor. “What fucking dipshit organization did I get traded to?”
“This is home,” Edward Everett said, trying to conceal his rage at Collier. Whatever his feelings toward him, it would not help his players if he fed their disgust. “Pitching rubber is still sixty feet six inches from home; bases are still ninety feet apart.” At least he hoped that was true. He realized he had no office here. In the back, in a small alcove just before the shower room, sat a small desk stacked with cardboard boxes, soccer goal netting and metal basketball hoops. He began collecting the junk from the desktop and putting it into one of the cartons.
“What if we refuse to play?” Mraz said.
“Then we forfeit,” Edward Everett said.
“Shit,” Mraz said, kicking at another locker, popping another door open, this one filled with football pads, which clattered out.
“It’s not the best, but it’s what we have for the rest of the year,” Edward Everett said, putting the last armload of junk from the desk into the cardboard box. He sat at the desk, unsnapping the elastic binding from around the accordion folder with his scorebooks and game logs.
“Maybe we could call Webber,” Mraz said. “He’s got a couple mill. Maybe he could buy us a new park.”
“He’s probably sitting on his ass on a beach,” Martinez said, “drinking mai tais and hitting on supermodels.”
“He’s the only one of us who got any brains,” Mraz said.
“Who is?” Tanner said, coming in with Sandford. He groaned. “What the fuck?”
“Webber is,” Mraz said.
“He’s the only one of us who ain’t going to play again,” Sandford said.
“Jesus, Sand, bring everyone down,” Mraz said.
By game time, the crowd was pathetic. In fact, Edward Everett thought, to call it a crowd was inaccurate. He did not know whether Collier—who did not show up—put a sign at the ballpark or how the pitifully small number of people had found their way to St. Aloysius, but there were fewer than a hundred scattered throughout the bleachers. Edward Everett was curious whether Nelson would appear and realized he was worried both that Nelson would show up and that he would not. Whenever anyone ventured down the steps, he glanced at them, wondering if it was Nelson; it never was.
Just before first pitch, as Edward Everett exchanged his lineup card with the umpires and the Quad Cities manager, the plate umpire poked a chaw of tobacco between his cheek and gum and asked, “What crime did ya’ll commit to end up here?”
“Must’ve been a major felony,” Edward Everett said, grimacing, not wanting them to think this was his doing—he didn’t flood