deference and privilege and Edward Everett watched them, wondering if he ever would belong among them. At one point, a stranger opened the door and peeked in: a gaunt man with his greasy black hair in an obvious comb-over. He gave a slow blink and Edward Everett caught his eye. He realized that, to the man with the comb-over, he was no different than the men at the loud tables, part of the fraternity. He leaned into the player beside him and made a comment about the waitress who’d just brushed against him laying a roll onto his plate. The player laughed and Edward Everett glanced again at the man with the comb-over, who blushed, shutting the door.
The bakers and grocers in his uncle’s territory were, in their own ways, that man with bad hair. They drove Cadillacs or Lincolns; they spent January in Florida or Arizona; they earned ten times what Edward Everett ever had but, in his presence, they became again their boyish selves who had dreamed of playing ball, asking, What’s it like up there? as if he had been to a country their passports would not allow them to enter.
He told them stories—some true, some embellished, some patently false.
“Never disappoint,” his uncle told him, and he didn’t. If they asked about Gibson, he gave them the Gibson he thought they wanted. If they wanted a Gibson who was a fierce competitor, he described a Gibson who knocked down a hitter with a high-and-tight pitch; if they wanted a friendly Gibson, he invented a story about Gibson fronting a rookie meal money, telling him to forget about paying it back.
In the first week of February, his uncle took him to lunch at a country club he belonged to in St. Martinsville. It was past the noon rush and the tables were mostly empty, white-coated busboys gathering tablecloths and replacing them with fresh linens. They knew his uncle there; the hostess chatted with him in an easy way as she led them to a table beside a large window that looked out onto the golf course. The temperature was in the twenties but the course was free of snow and outside a foursome trailed up a slight rise in the tenth fairway, pulling wheeled golf carts behind them.
“Gotta admire the passion,” his uncle said, nodding toward the golfers and taking a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, extracting one and lighting it with a silver lighter engraved with his initials and the logo of the flour company.
A waitress brought a tumbler of scotch and water on the rocks and set it in front of his uncle although Edward Everett had not heard him order a drink.
“Thanks, dear,” his uncle said, giving her a slight pat on her hip.
“Would you …” she said, nodding to Edward Everett.
“Yes, he would,” his uncle said, and the waitress left them there.
“I don’t really—” Edward Everett said.
“Today you do,” his uncle said, reaching into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pulling out a cream-colored business envelope with the word “Ed” typed where an address would be. His uncle held it out for him and gestured with a slight nod that he should take it. “Go ahead and open it,” he said. Inside was a payroll check for January from the mill: one thousand thirty-seven dollars and eleven cents, along with a check stub enumerating deductions for Social Security, state and federal taxes. Aside from his signing bonus ten years earlier he had never held a single check for so much money.
“In two more months, you can get the health insurance,” his uncle said. “You can also sign up for payroll deductions for the stock plan.”
The waitress came back with a drink for him and his uncle picked up his own glass and clinked it against Edward Everett’s. “L’chaim,” he said, taking a swallow. Edward Everett took a drink himself. He had expected it to burn but it didn’t. Instead, it filled his entire body with a sense of warmth.
“Your mom asked if I would take you under my wing. She’s had a hard time. Even before your dad—may he rest in peace.” His uncle traced a perfunctory sign of the cross. “I thought, Hell, I’ll do it for a month, tell her we gave it our best shot, but …” His uncle shrugged. “You’re raw but you have more of a gift than you know.”