He spoke to no
one. He went to the far end of the
dugout that they left empty for him when he was pitching. He was too young to ask for that, but he was
good enough to get it without asking; they gave it to him early in the year,
when they saw he needed it, this young pitcher Billy Wells who talked and joked
and yelled at the field and the other dugout for nine innings of the three
nights he didn’t pitch, but on his pitching night sat quietly, looking neither
relaxed nor tense, and only spoke when politeness required it. Always he was polite. Soon they made a space for him on the bench,
where he sat now knowing he would be alright.
He did not think about it, for he knew as the insomniac does that to
give it words summons it up to dance; he knew that the pain he had brought with
him to the park was still there; he even knew it would probably always still be
there; but for a good while now it was gone.
It would lie in wait for him and strike him again when he was drained
and he had a heart full of room for it.
But that was a long time now, and in the shower or back in the hotel,
longer than the two and a half hours or whatever he would use pitching the
game; longer than a clock could measure.
Right now it seemed a great deal of his life would pass before the
shower. When he trotted out to the mound
they stood and cheered and, before he threw his first warm-up pitch, he tipped
his cap.
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