told Duval, ‘we should keep it to ourselves. You know Vanetta doesn’t like the place.’ Which was true – there was something about the Christian Scientists that Vanetta distrusted.
‘Good idea,’ said Duval with an eagerness that only made Bobby feel worse.
As time passed, he felt stuck with the secret, and might eventually have confessed had not Duval so enjoyed Bobby’s accounts of life over the wall. ‘Is the yellow flowers there?’ he’d ask, and laugh gleefully if Bobby suggested a purple one had moved in and was hogging the sun. ‘That water still flowing?’ and Bobby would say yes, as if it were a matter of course and Duval shouldn’t be so stupid as to ask.
The rain stopped at last. He fetched two bats from the closet and a baseball-sized whiffle ball. ‘Come on, Duval. It’s ball time.’
In the kitchen Vanetta was chopping onions. She looked up. ‘You two going to be warm enough? It ain’t hardly spring out there, you know.’
‘We’re okay,’ said Bobby.
In the back yard they flipped a coin and Bobby won, so he batted first, picking up one of the white ash bats stained with its natural grain. It was his favourite bat – short, only 29 inches long, but signed at the thick end Floyd Robinson, his favourite player. He’d got it free at a White Sox Bat Day.
For once Duval threw a strike, and Bobby swung and missed. When he turned and flipped back the ball, Duval wasn’t looking and it fell onto the grass. Duval’s eyes were on three black boys who had silently entered the yard.
They must have been twelve or thirteen years old, though one of them was as short as Bobby – a runt, thought Bobby. He was very dark, with skin the colour of cooking chocolate and a hard, mean face. Behind him stood a tall lanky kid in a Bears T-shirt, and next to him was a mulatto boy, wide-shouldered, with pigmentation stains on his face.
Bobby saw at once that the runt must be the leader, for his two friends waited while he went up to Duval. ‘Got a dime?’ he asked.
The standard opening gambit with the black ghetto kids who came over from the other side of the Midway. It had never happened to Bobby, but his brother Mike said it happened to him all the time. You could give the dime and not have to fight, though Mike said only a pussy would do that. But if you said no, then you might have to fight. Mike never gave them money, and he’d had lots of fights. But Mike was tough; Bobby wished he was here.
Duval shook his head now, keeping his eyes on the runt, who pointed at Bobby. ‘Check him out, Mule,’ he said, and the mulatto boy came over to Bobby.
‘You got a dime?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Bobby said truthfully, for he didn’t have any money at all. He always emptied his pockets before playing in the back. Change and his pocket comb just got in the way.
Mule looked back at the runt, who said now to Duval, ‘What you doin’ here, man, playing with this ofay? What’s the matter wit you?’
‘Yeah,’ said the skinny kid, joining in, ‘you some kinda Uncle Tom?’
Duval said nothing, and Bobby realised he was scared of these boys. And though the mulatto’s attention had switched back to the runt, Bobby was scared too. Yet Bobby felt he had to say something. ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’ He was holding the baseball bat still in one hand.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ said the runt and turned back to Duval. ‘I asked you a question. What you doin’ here?’
‘Just playing,’ said Duval softly.
‘Don’t give me that jive. When I asks somebody a question I want an answer.’ He spoke with a slight lisp, but there was nothing funny about it – it made him even more menacing. He held his arms down by his waist, like a cowboy getting ready to draw. Duval was standing frozen; Bobby could see his eyes blinking furiously behind his glasses.
Out of nowhere the runt’s right hand landed against Duval’s left ear. Astonished and hurt by the blow, Duval put a hand up to the side of his head, and accidentally knocked his own glasses off.
Bobby moved to pick them up before they got stepped on. But the boy called Mule blocked his way, then shoved him backwards, hard enough for Bobby to stumble and almost drop the bat. He gripped it tightly, worried these