Some of these folks spilled into Hitch & Shirleen’s looking for Co-Colas, sweet cakes, chewing gum, tater chips, you name it, at cheaper prices than they’d get them for at the stadium’s concession stands. Phoebe’s daddy’s folks returned to help her handle the extra customers, and I walked across the busy street on my spikes for our pregame meeting at six-thirty. Autograph seekers and advice givers orbited me like gnats. It took fifteen minutes to cover a hundred yards, and I heard some fans from LaGrange grousing that ticketsellers at a couple of gates had turned them away.

“F yall want to see this one,” a man said, “we may have to buy some nigger seats, it’s all that’s left.”

Inside, the stadium seemed to’ve inflated like a balloon. It creaked and wobbled and bulged. And our het-up Hellbender crowd carried us through that killer series’ opener, boosting us to a foot-stamping win. Nutter hurled a tidy five-hitter, and Henry blasted a seventh-inning home run that may’ve come down in the Himalayas, with Yours Truly on board by way of a bunt single. Hoey didn’t do diddly in the game. On my trot towards third base, I didn’t even look at him.

“Nother pissant hit,” I heard him say. He meant my bunt, not Henry’s homer, but I said, “Too bad it cleared the fence,” and jogged home with the only score that really mattered in that game. Behind me, Hoey chewed his vinegary cud.

An inning and a half later, when I stabbed a liner to my right for the game’s final out, fans poured onto the field, and a brigade of GIs marched to Penticuff Strip singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and so many off-color jody chants that fistfights with offended Good Ol Boys broke out.

The win put us a full game up, with only two to play.

In the clubhouse, Mister JayMac said, “Win tomorrow, and that’s it. Except for our honor, I wouldn’t much care if yall shanked Sunday’s game. The ’Darmes could take their cheap win and ride home crying.”

“Amen!” said Jerry Wayne Sosebee.

“So win tomorrow and wrap er all up.”

“Win tomorry!” everybody shouted. “Win tomorry!”

Mister JayMac collared me on my way to the showers and dragged me over to Henry. “Yall meet me out to the gazebo exactly an hour from now, hear?”

“Yessir,” we both said. Mister JayMac vanished into the echoey pandemonium of the understands. Henry and I looked at each other. Then Henry ducked out of the locker room in his uniform-to walk back to McKissic House.

“Gentlemen, jes a few minutes of your time.” Mister JayMac paced the springy flooring of his gazebo on Hellbender Pond while Henry and I sat next to each other on a bench against one of its walls. Mosquitoes whined, and ghostly patches of steam rose from the smoky mirror of the water, the stars overhead as sharp as buffed-up fork tines. “Does either of yall have any idea what I’m about to say?”

“Sir-” Henry began.

“Hold on now. Actually, you see, I’d prefer to break the news, even if you have a hunch about it, Mr Clerval.”

Henry’d gone stiff as a cigar-store Indian. His hip next to mine felt like a curved plank of hickory. He feared, I suddenly realized, Mister JayMac had heard from Miss Giselle’s own mouth the damnable story of their affaire de coeur, and other body parts. Henry had a hand on one knee, and that hand began to twitch-the only movement except for his breathing I’d noticed so far. Me, I suspected a wholly different reason for our interview with Mister JayMac.

“Few would admit you fellas are a sight for sore eyes,” he said, “but yall’ve been that to me-even if sometimes I rode you damnably hard and put you up wet.”

“Kizzy keeps us in fresh towels,” Henry said.

Mister JayMac raised an eyebrow. “Listen. The Phils want yall for the rest of this season. Freddy Fitzsimmons prevailed upon Mr Cox to get him some top-notch help from the minors, and the help he wanted was a coupla fellas from this lowly Class C organization. Yall’ll catch a train out of Highbridge on Tuesday and report to the Phillies soon as you get there, likely for some serious playing time.”

“Hot dog!” I said. “Hot diggety dog!”

“Great joy.” Henry gripped his knee to keep his hand from twitching. “Great, unexpected joy.”

“Unexpected? Henry, a man with forty-plus homers should be asking what kept him stuck at this level until now.”

Henry said, “Very well. What did?”

“I did. The Phils weren’t going nowhere, but we looked to be. God forgive me, Mr Clerval, but I kept you here. I made Fitzsimmons cool his heels.”

“Then God forgive you indeed.”

“Yall could even start. Jimmy Wasdell, Philly’s first baseman, has only two or three homers all year, and Gabby Stewart’s hitting about.200 and trading out at shortstop with Charlie Brewster, no Ruch himself. In other words, yall could actually claim those starting spots.”

“Hot dog!” I got up and did a jig. When I’d finished, Mister JayMac looked out across the pond.

“Don’t know what I’ll do to replace you next year, but yall’re on your way. The Phillies may be too. Jes don’t forget who gave you your shot when you start exercising the scoreboard riggers at Shibe Park.” Mister JayMac stumped down the steps, as if to hike across the lawn to his bungalow.

“Sir!” Henry said.

Mister JayMac turned around.

“Why did you apprise us of our promotions tonight?”

Mister JayMac said, “You mean, before we’ve clinched? I guess it’s because I can never deny myself any small pleasure. I like my dessert first. I flip to the back of murder stories to see who done it. A long-standing vice.”

“If we don’t clinch tomorrow,” Henry said, “you will berate yourself for breaking the news so soon.”

“Probably. Almost certainly.”

“Then make no general announcement until the pennant is in our grasp. Danny and I will remain discreet as well.”

“Excellent,” Mister JayMac said. “Yall get some sleep.” He angled away from us, a shadow in rumpled seersucker. Frogs croaked, fireflies blinked, and the smell of scorched peanuts drifted through the gazebo, oiling the hot night and the steamy surface of the water.

“A dream fulfilled,” Henry said thoughtfully. “A chance to prove myself against the best.”

I pulled Henry off the bench by his shirt front. He had to duck his head to keep from bumping it. “B-big leaguers,” I said. “You and me.”

Henry lifted me to his chest, squeezed my puny bones. In that cockeyed bandbox, he solemnly waltzed me around, swinging me a foot or so off the floor, wagging me like the bob in a grandfather clock. He smelled of soap, rubbed baseballs, and wet clay. I let him drag-waltz me, step-step, step-step, frogs and cicadas chorusing like bullroarers and pennywhistles. At last Henry put me down.

“He’d have t-to admit I could p-pl-play,” I said.

“Who?” Then Henry understood and laid his hand on my head like a priest giving a blessing.

Miss Giselle stood at the foot of the gazebo’s steps, a phantom in a pale organdy gown, white or trout-fin blue. Maybe it was a dressing-gown, maybe her thirty-year-old ballroom getup. Anyway, I sort of boggled. A damped-down glowworm sheen seeped from her. The helmet of her silvery hair shone dully too. She looked old, Miss Giselle did-not old-old, in face and body, but like she’d been shipped forward to us from a temple in Thebes, say.

“Congratulations, Henry.”

Henry nodded a wary thank-you.

“Up to Philadelphia, away from Highbridge.”

“I’m g-g-goin. Good night.”

“Stay here, Daniel,” Miss Giselle said. “Who knows what I’ll do if you leave?”

“Go in, Giselle,” Henry said. “It’s late. The air feels humid and plaguey.”

“Plaguey. Only you’d say plaguey and mean what you mean, but the air’s just fine. I like it.”

“Giselle, this charade must not persist.”