He thought, for no reason he could name, about a man in a store in Quincy, turning every bat in the rack under the light. He thought about a woman at an upstairs window. He thought about his mother on Fulton Street with a beach towel. He thought about how many hands this piece of wood had been through to get to him, and how none of them had broken it.
He stepped back in. He did not think about the third row. He did not think about anything. He saw the ball come out of the left-hander's hand, a fastball, up, and his hands stayed down and short and level, the way the basement ceiling had taught him, and the bat went through and the sound came back like a door closing firmly in a quiet house.
The ball went into the gap in left-center and kept rolling. Pinky Brockway scored. Garrick was around second before the left fielder got to it and he did not stop at second, because Coach Amundsen was down in the third-base box windmilling his arm like a man fighting off bees, and Garrick slid into third in a cloud of red dust half a second ahead of the throw, and the umpire spread his arms flat, and it was five to four.
He stood up on third and dusted off his pants, and the noise came down on him from the bleachers. Not a roar. Keokuk did not roar. But a long, rising sound, like the river.
And Shug Kettleman walked to the plate.
He had his black Easton aluminum. Garrick could see his face from third, the jaw tight, the shoulders up. He could see Vern in the third row, the notebook open, the pencil ready. He could see Shug's hands creep up before the first pitch, the old flinch, and the left-hander's fastball came in and Shug swung late and over it, and the Burlington bleachers whooped again.
Garrick did not say anything. There was nothing to say from third base. But Shug stepped out of the box and looked down the line at him, just for a second, and Garrick, without thinking about it, held his hands out in front of his chest, low and flat, the way he had a hundred times on the carpet square. Shorter. Down.
Shug looked at him. Then he stepped back in.