Ironweed - William Kennedy [63]
And too, the vagrant chitchat allowed Francis to stare out at the yard and watch the dog and become aware that the yard was beginning to function as the site of a visitation, although nothing in it except his expectation when he looked out at the grass lent credence to that possibility.
He stared and he knew that he was in the throes of flight, not outward this time but upward. He felt feathers growing from his back, knew soon he would soar to regions unimaginable, knew too that what had brought him home was not explicable without a year of talking, but a scenario nevertheless took shape in his mind: a pair of kings on a pair of trolley cars moving toward a single track, and the trolleys, when they meet at the junction, do not wreck each other but fuse into a single car inside which the kings rise up against each other in imperial intrigue, neither in control, each driving the car, a careening thing, wild, anarchic, dangerous to all else, and then Billy leaps aboard and grabs the power handle and the kings instantly yield control to the wizard.
He give me a Camel cigarette when I was coughin’ my lungs up, Francis thought.
He knows what, a man needs, Billy does.
o o o
Annie was setting the dining-room table with a white linen tablecloth, with the silver Iron Joe gave them for their wedding, and with china Francis did not recognize, when Daniel Quinn arrived home. The boy tossed his schoolbag in a corner of the dining room, then stopped in midmotion when he saw Francis standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Hulooo,” Francis said to him.
“Danny, this is your grandfather,” Annie said. “He just came to see us and he’s staying for dinner.” Daniel stared at Francis’s face and slowly extended his right hand. Francis shook it.
“Pleased to meet you,” Daniel said.
“The feeling’s mutual, boy. You’re a big lad for ten.”
“I’ll be eleven in January.”
“You comin’ from school, are ye?”
“From instructions, religion.”
“Oh, religion. I guess I just seen you crossin’ the street and didn’t even know it. Learn anything, did you?”
“Learned about today. All Saints’ Day.”
“What about it?”
“It’s a holy day. You have to go to church. It’s the day we remember the martyrs who died for the faith and nobody knows their names.”
“Oh yeah,” Francis said. “I remember them fellas.”
“What happened to your teeth?”
“Daniel.”
“My teeth,” Francis said. “Me and them parted company, most of ‘em. I got a few left.”
“Are you Grampa Phelan or Grampa Quinn?”
“Phelan,” Annie said. “His name is Francis Aloysius Phelan.”
“Francis Aloysius, right,” said Francis with a chuckle. “Long time since I heard that.”
“You’re the ball player,” Danny said. “The big-leaguer. You played with the Washington Senators.”
“Used to. Don’t play anymore.”
“Billy says you taught him how to throw an inshoot.”
“He remembers that, does he?”
“Will you teach me?”
“You a pitcher, are ye?”
“Sometimes. I can throw a knuckle ball.”
“Change of pace. Hard to hit. You get a baseball, I’ll show you how to hold it for an inshoot.” And Daniel ran into the kitchen, then the pantry, and emerged with a ball and glove, which he handed to Francis. The glove was much too small for Francis’s hand but he put a few fingers inside it and held the ball in his right hand, studied its seams. Then he gripped it with his thumb and one and a half fingers.
“What happened to your finger?” Daniel asked.
“Me and it parted company too. Sort of an accident.”
“Does that make any difference throwing an inshoot?”
“Sure does, but not to me. I don’t throw no more at all. Never was a pitcher, you know, but talked with plenty of ‘em. Walter Johnson was my buddy. You know him? The Big Train?”
The boy shook his head.
“Don’t matter. But he taught me how it was done and I ain’t forgot. Put your first two fingers right on the seams, like this, and then you snap your wrist out, like this, and if you