Ironweed - William Kennedy [64]
“That’s how it’s done,” he said. “You get so’s you can do it, the batter’s gonna think you got a little animal inside that ball, flyin’ it like an airplane.”
“Let’s go outside and try it,” Daniel said. “I’ll get another glove.”
“Glove,” said Francis, and he turned to Annie. “By some fluke you still got my old glove stuck away somewheres in the house? That possible, Annie?”
“There’s a whole trunk of your things in the attic,” she said. “It might be there.”
“It is,” Daniel said. “I know it is. I saw it. I’ll get it.”
“You will not,” Annie said. “That trunk is none of your affair.”
“But I’ve already seen it. There’s a pair of spikes too, and clothes and newspapers and old pictures.”
“All that,” Francis said to Annie. “You saved it.”
“You had no business in that trunk,” Annie said.
“Billy and I looked at the pictures and the clippings one day,” Daniel said. “Billy looked just as much as I did. He’s in lots of ‘em.” And he pointed at his grandfather.
“Maybe you’d want to have a look at what’s there,” Annie said to Francis.
“Could be. Might find me a new shoelace.”
Annie led him up the stairs, Daniel already far ahead of them. They heard the boy saying: “Get up, Billy, Grandpa’s here”; and when they reached the second floor Billy was standing in the doorway of his room, in his robe and white socks, disheveled and only half awake.
“Hey, Billy. How you gettin’ on?” Francis said.
“Hey,” said Billy. “You made it.”
“Yep.”
“I woulda bet against it happenin’.”
“You’da lost. Brought a turkey too, like I said.”
“A turkey, yeah?”
“We’re having it for dinner,” Annie said.
“I’m supposed to be downtown tonight,” Billy said. “I just told Martin I’d meet him.”
“Call him back,” Annie said. “He’ll understand.”
“Red Tom Fitzsimmons and Martin both called to tell me things are all right again on Broadway. You know, I told you I had trouble with the McCalls,” Billy said to his father.
“I ‘member.”
“I wouldn’t do all they wanted and they marked me lousy. Couldn’t gamble, couldn’t even get a drink on Broadway.”
“I read that story Martin wrote,” Francis said. “He called you a magician.”
“Martin’s full of malarkey. I didn’t do diddley. I just mentioned Newark to them and it turns out that’s where they trapped some of the kidnap gang.”
“You did somethin’, then,” Francis said. “Mentionin’ Newark was somethin’. Who’d you mention it to?”
“Bindy. But I didn’t know those guys were in Newark or I wouldn’t of said anything. I could never rat on anybody.”
“Then why’d you mention it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s how come you’re a magician.”
“That’s Martin’s baloney. But he turned somebody’s head around with it, ‘cause I’m back in good odor with the pols, is how he put it on the phone. In other words, I don’t stink to them no more.”
Francis smelled himself and knew he had to wash as soon as possible. The junk wagon’s stink and the bummy odor of his old suitcoat was unbearable now that he was among these people. Dirty butchers go out of business.
“You can’t go out now, Billy,” Annie said. “Not with your father home and staying for dinner. We’re going up in the attic to look at his things.”
“You like turkey?” Francis asked Billy.
“Who the hell don’t like turkey, not to give you a short answer,” Billy said. He looked at his father. “Listen, use my razor in the bathroom if you want to shave.”
“Don’t be telling people what to do,” Annie said. “Get dressed and come downstairs.”
And then Francis and Annie ascended the stairway to the attic.
o o o
When Francis opened the trunk lid the odor of lost time filled the attic air, a cloying reek of imprisoned flowers that unsettled the dust and fluttered the window shades. Francis felt drugged by the scent of the reconstituted past, and then stunned by his first look inside the trunk, for there, staring out from a photo, was his own face at age nineteen. The picture lay among rolled socks and a small American flag, a Washington Senators cap, a pile of newspaper clippings and other photos, all in a scatter on the trunk