Wally came out of the pit and down the side of the lane and sat on the bench. Augie gave him a Squirt. It was ice cold and the bottle was sweating, and he drank half of it at once.
"You been watching," Augie said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah."
"Good. That's the best seat in the house back there. Nobody knows it. Every great bowler I ever saw, Eddie included, spent a year in a pit somewhere watching." Augie set his own bottle on the floor. Then he reached under the bench and brought out a ball.
It was a house ball, but not one Wally had seen before, an old blue Ebonite with a chip in it near the thumb hole. It was small. Augie put it in Wally's lap.
"Ten pounds," Augie said. "I drilled it last night. Put your fingers in."
Wally put his fingers in. He had been putting his fingers in bowling balls all his life, and every time it had been like putting his hands into somebody else's gloves. This was different. The holes fit. Not loose, not tight. They closed around his fingers like they had been waiting for them.
Then he noticed something.
"The holes are backwards," he said.
"No, they ain't," said Augie. "They're drilled for a lefty."
Wally looked at him.
"I watched you throw that shoe, kid. I been watching people throw things down lanes for sixty years. That was the best release I seen in this building since your old man, and you did it with the wrong hand." Augie leaned back. "Or the right hand. Depending how you look at it. Your grandma says you write righty."
"You talked to Busia?"
"Everybody talks to your Busia. She calls me. She calls me every Saturday at twelve-thirty to ask if you ate." Augie nodded down at the lane. "Go on. Throw it. Not your dad's way. Not anybody's way. Just do what you did with the shoe."
"I'm in my sneakers."