“Why’d you pick him?”
“His fingers were moving funny,” Manfred said.
But the man, who was in his fifties, balding, and heavy, didn’t do anything odd during the top of the second inning. If he was jinxing the Lady Falcon batters by altering the pitches, he wasn’t helping the Lady Mudbug hitters.
The Lady Falcon pitcher struggled but held the Lady Mudbugs at bay. During the bottom of the inning, Jacqueline Prescott (sixth in the Falcon batting order) did something wholly unexpected. The girl, tall and bony and brunette, was obviously nervous . . . so she swung at a ball she absolutely should not have tried to hit. Hit it she did, leaning forward and sideways to do so, while there was an audible chorus of “Oh, no!” from the Falcon stands. The ball thudded to the ground just behind the shortstop and the second baseman, both of whom scrambled for the ball without calling it. In the resulting collision, Jacqueline made it to first. She looked astonished when she realized she was safe. “Yeah, she ought to be surprised,” muttered Blondie. Even the Lady Falcons’ Coach Zanelli shook her head in amazement, before clapping.
“He looks pissed,” murmured the blonde. Following her gaze, Manfred saw that the Lady Mudbugs’ assistant coach did indeed look angry.
“He didn’t allow for the wild card,” the blonde said with some satisfaction.
“I think he’ll try harder now; he’s mad,” Manfred said.
And sure enough, the coach’s fingers moved with every succeeding pitch. Jacqueline stole second base, but the next three batters fell by the wayside, and the Lady Falcons took the field at the top of the third with the score still one–nothing. Manfred kept his eyes on the coach, but Fleming appeared to be doing regular coach stuff. He called the batting lineup and kept the team stats. Apparently, the burly man wasn’t going to aid his own team, just hinder the opposing one by making Mudbug pitches do unpredictable things.
“He seems to have a code,” Manfred said dryly.
“Yeah,” the blonde said. “His code is screwing with the challenger. I got to have a word with that asshole.”
Manfred could feel the anger rising from her like steam, especially after the Mudbugs scored four runs in the top of the third. The Lady Falcon pitcher had clearly lost her momentum, and a different pitcher was warming up.
At the coaches’ request, the pitcher’s circle was leveled out by means of a device dragged by the Gator, which created a short break. The announcer took advantage of the lull to say, “Be sure and visit the refreshment stand! The Softball Moms have fixed popcorn, cold soda, hot chocolate, candy bars, and homemade cupcakes. Hot dogs are going on the grill! Go get yourself a chili dog! All proceeds go to support softball. And now, since we’ve got an unexpected break, instead of waiting until after the game, we’ll take this moment to ask players from the past to take the field.”
Manfred’s companion rose and clambered down the bleachers, greeting people as she went. She stepped out onto the field with eleven other women ranging in age from sixty-five to nineteen. There was a lot more hugging and back-patting. With a sort of proprietary smugness, Manfred decided his blonde was the prettiest woman on the field, if not the most popular. The other women either embraced her with special vehemence or avoided her.
After all this bonhomie, the women quickly lined up in age order to be introduced. When she came to Manfred’s blonde, the announcer said, “And we all remember the three-years-in-a-row All-Conference, All-State player, Sookie Stackhouse, one of the best right fielders in the history of Bon Temps!”
Sookie Stackhouse (What a name, thought Manfred) smiled and waved like all the others. The people who cheered the loudest were the girls in the dugout.
“She helps coach the team when she can get a few hours off,” said the older woman sitting past the spot where Sookie Stackhouse had been.
“Sookie told me something about that,” he said agreeably, to prime the pump.
The older woman nodded. She was heavy and plain, but Manfred could see the polished goodness in her. “My son is her brother’s best friend,” she said, as if her exact connection to Manfred’s new buddy were important. “They don’t come no better than Sookie. No matter what people say.” She gave his eyebrow piercings a cold flick of her eyes, as if to imply he might be one of those gossipers.
Manfred would have been fascinated to know exactly what people had been saying, but he didn’t dare to ask.
Sookie did a lot of networking on her way back to her seat, including a brief stop in the booth to have a friendly chat with the announcer, who seemed glad to see her. As the current Lady Falcons took the field, the Gator and its rake having done their job, she clambered back up the risers, giving the woman on her right a cheerful greeting and a half hug. She turned to tell Manfred, “His name is Deke Fleming, in case you didn’t hear it at the beginning. He’s the assistant coach, and he doesn’t usually travel with the girls’ team. He’s usually with the boys. The Lady Mudbugs’ regular assistant was sick, so Fleming came along. The boys’ team has won the state championship in its division the past two years.”
“Let me guess, he became the assistant coach two years ago.”
She nodded. “So he’s a witch,” she whispered.
“Not a warlock, or sorcerer?” Manfred asked.
She gave him a raised-eyebrow look that said clearly, Don’t you know anything?
“No, he’s a witch,” she said flatly. But she kept her voice very low. This was a woman used to telling secrets. “I pure-D can’t stand people who use their special powers to gain unfair advantage,” she added in the same low voice.
“So you think you have to do something about it,” Manfred said, not really asking a question.
“Course I do. You don’t feel that way?”
He shrugged. “This is a small softball tournament between small schools in a poor state. You sure it makes a difference?”
She had a visible struggle with her temper. “Of course it makes a difference,” she said between her teeth. “Using magic always makes a difference. The person it’s used on changes. The person who uses it changes. There’s always a price to pay.”
“You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“I do. You see the Lady Falcon pitcher? The one who just warmed up?” While the Mudbug pitcher finished the third inning—three up, three down—the Falcon girl kept moving, throwing ceaselessly to a member of her team. Olive skinned and raven haired, she had the look of a warrior: tall, broad, sturdy. The announcer had called her Ashley Stark. He nodded.
“Bethany—Coach Zanelli—was trying to save Ashley for the next game. So she put her second pitcher in this game, which was supposed to be easy to win. Ashley is being scouted by LSU and by Louisiana Tech. Her family doesn’t have diddly-squat. If she’s signed by either one of those schools, she can go to college without having a huge debt to pay off.”
“Maybe the other team has someone in the same position,” Manfred argued, simply to see how Sookie would respond.
“If there is such a girl, she has to earn it fair and square,” Sookie said vehemently. “Everyone’s got to stand on her own merits. With this assistant coach, the boys’ team will never get that chance. Today, neither do the girls. The Lady Mudbugs have a reputation for crumpling early. Our girls were sure to win.” Sookie glared across the field at Fleming. She said, “There should be no magic in softball.”
Xylda, did you make me drive all the way to Louisiana to make sure Ashley Stark goes to college? Have I got the answer right, now?
“How the hell do I know why your gran brought you here? My gran seems to remind me of stuff all the time, and it’s always to my good. Maybe Miss Xylda just wants you to do the right thing.”
“One girl’s scholarship?” Manfred felt doubtful, and he didn’t try to conceal it. “That just seems weird. Why would Xylda care?”
She gave him a hard
look. “Well, don’t do anything if you don’t want to,” she said crisply. “And if Miss Xylda wouldn’t care about Ashley, then sadly I think the worse of her. Excuse me. I got to say something to this jerk of a coach.” She rose and began making her way down the bleachers again. But people stopped her to talk to her, and a Softball Mom with a clipboard stopped her to go over a schedule, and the fourth inning raced by while Sookie made her way to the Mudbug dugout.
Manfred watched her progress. He was troubled. Xylda—and even his own, more distant, mother—always had a course of action. Part of Xylda’s game was making him guess until he got it correctly. He just couldn’t figure out what Xylda could possibly want here. Manfred felt he was losing the game. He didn’t know the goal he should be trying to reach. And he didn’t know the stakes.
Deke Fleming was standing behind the Mudbug dugout going over papers on a clipboard while the Mudbug head coach watched the field. By now it was the bottom of the fifth, and the Lady Mudbugs were sticking with the same pitcher, though her form was suffering. All the girls on the field were encouraging her, their voices a shrill chorus. “Way to pitch, Heather. . . . You can do it, Heather. . . . Show ’em what you got. . . . You’re doing great. . . .”
Manfred was amazed all over again at the concept of working in tandem. Being a psychic was an essentially solitary profession.
The assistant coach looked up from his clipboard as Sookie approached; he smiled since he’d seen her on the field in the little recognition ceremony. The smile faded utterly as she leaned close to him and began to talk. The anger in her straight spine was clear to anyone who happened to look their way, and there were some troubled glances exchanged between a few adults.
After a moment, Deke Fleming actually stepped backward, looking both furious and guilty. Then he caught himself. His back stiffened. (Manfred thought, It’s like watching a pantomime.) Sookie’s finger came up and she shook it in Fleming’s face before spinning on her heel and stalking back to the Bon Temps stands. One of the Toussaint moms called out, “Sore loser!” as Sookie walked by, which triggered some anxious laughter. But the umpire, naturally busy at her job of watching the game, wasn’t looking happy, either.
“What’s the matter, Sookie?” asked the older woman who’d talked to Manfred earlier, after Sookie had plopped down on the bleacher with an angry thud. “Why’d you go lay into him?”
“Maxine, I think he’s . . .” she began, and then called herself to order. “I was sure he was playing his roster out of order, and his pitcher is crow-hopping. It makes me so mad! He told me that the ump had already given the pitcher a warning, and that he had just turned in the roster changes to the umpire and the announcer.”
“Hmmm,” said the older woman. “Well . . . did you check?”
“Yes, he just did turn ’em in,” she said, as though she were chewing glass. “And I see he’s going to switch pitchers, so no more crow-hopping.”
Manfred had no idea what that meant, and Sookie didn’t look as though she wanted to explain the game, so he kept silent.
But when Deke Fleming looked up at Sookie in the stands, Manfred watched her tap the area by her eye and then point at the coach, very surreptitiously. Fleming got the point, though. He flushed and looked as though he would have enjoyed something painful happening to her.
The inning was three up and three down for both pitchers, but the tide was beginning to turn for the Lady Falcons, at least psychologically. Not only did the Falcons have Ashley Stark, their star, on the mound, but after the Lady Mudbugs changed their pitcher, the Lady Falcon batters began to relax. Without Coach Fleming’s making the pitches go wild, the Falcons were able to hit, and in the bottom of the sixth the bases were loaded.
Manfred was literally sitting on the edge of his seat. For the first time, he understood how exciting sports could be. And though he found himself waiting for each pitch with almost breathless suspense, in the back of his mind he couldn’t believe this was the point of his presence. Team sports? Really, Xylda? All this way to appreciate bats and balls and team spirit?
When Ashley Stark came up to bat, Sookie directed Manfred’s attention to a man in a purple and gold polo shirt sitting right behind the plate, and a woman in khakis and a bright blue polo shirt who was one row up and a little to the left of him. “Scouts,” she murmured. “Purple and gold is LSU. The blue is Louisiana Tech.” Everyone on the Bon Temps bleachers seemed to catch their breath while they directed their will toward helping their girl to do well. It was their own kind of magic, a natural magic. Ashley was oddly beautiful in the batter’s box, her shoulders level, her grip on the bat relaxed and firm, her face a mask of calm.
The Lady Mudbug pitcher watched the signals from the catcher and gave a quick nod. The tension was so great that Manfred found himself absolutely absorbed in watching the girl wind up and pitch, for the first time appreciating an incredibly complex sequence of movements.
Manfred spared a side glance at Sookie. She was intent on Coach Fleming. The assistant coach was glaring back at her, his hands against his thighs as he stood in the dugout. His fingers were motionless.
Manfred’s gaze cut back to Ashley as she swung the bat. Ashley smacked the ball a mighty blow, and it flew straight and hard . . . directly into the Mudbug pitcher’s mitt. For a second it seemed as though the pitcher would fly away, the ball smacked her mitt with such force, but she seemed to dig her feet into the dirt to stand in place.
There was a collective groan from the Bon Temps supporters, and an ecstatic shriek from the Toussaint fans.
Sookie covered her face with her hands for a second, then straightened up, shaking the dismay off.
“Are you okay?” Manfred asked. “You went to so much trouble . . .”
“All I wanted was for her to have a fair chance,” Sookie said. “And the rest, well, that was up to her. Maybe the rest of the game will go better.”
Manfred did not comment on the fact that Sookie’s eyes were brimming with tears.
The top of the sixth did go better, to some extent, though Manfred watched it alone. Sookie had to leave since it was her turn in the concessions booth, and Manfred told her he’d come say good-bye as soon as the game was over. He’d known her for less than two hours, but he felt he couldn’t leave Louisiana without speaking to the telepath again.
Ashley Stark kept her composure and pitched beautifully, getting three Lady Mudbugs out in a row. In the bottom of the sixth, to Manfred’s pleasure, the Lady Falcons scored three runs. They were now tied with the Lady Mudbugs. The next inning would be the last. In Sookie’s absence, Manfred considered himself bound to keep a close eye on Coach Fleming, and he also felt obliged, in Sookie’s stead, to add his well-wishing to the swell of support for Ashley Stark.
He wondered what had kept Sookie from getting similar scholarship offers. It wasn’t much of a stretch to understand why she was so invested in the success of the Bon Temps pitcher.
In the bottom of the final inning, with the score still tied, Ashley got the hit that won the game. With two outs, and no one on base, she swung the bat with incredible precision and power. The softball flew over the fence. Ashley trotted around the bases with a broad smile, happy on many different levels. The other Lady Falcons jumped up and down and ran to meet her at home plate. The Lady Falcon supporters went nuts, hollering and jumping. But all her happiness condensed to one thing: she’d done well, she’d won the game for her team.
Was this why I came here, Xylda? To see this girl’s joy at doing something well, something she could only do with the help of others? If I recognize that, do I win, too? He wondered if Xylda was witnessing this moment from the blue hereafter.
On the field, the girls kept their game faces on as they formed two lines and ran past one another, hands held out to touch, chanting, “Good game, good game.” And then the Lady Falcons hugged one another, laughing, while the Lady Mudbugs retreated silently to their
dugout to gather up their stuff. Their second pitcher was crying, and the first pitcher put an arm around her.
Manfred had never been as lonely as he was while he watched the celebration among the Lady Falcons. Most of the Mudbugs looked as though they were locked in their own private unhappiness, especially the assistant coach. They filed out of their dugout to go to their bus.
Xylda, did you want me to learn that even clever dishonesty can go wrong? Though that didn’t seem like a Xylda message. Normally, when Manfred had been able to guess what game Xylda was playing, he’d feel her approval. But he hadn’t felt that today, no matter what he did or guessed. He shrugged. Xylda’s wiles were beyond him today. He scrambled down the stands to work his way to the concession booth, a squat cement-block building. He looked back at the field. He figured the booth workers could get a glimpse of the scoreboards but not a good view of the events.
Manfred got in line, since there was simply no other way to speak to his new friend. The woman ahead of him (whose daughter was playing in the next game, from her cell phone conversation) got nachos, and he had to control his disgust as Sookie poured tortilla chips from a bag into a paper dish and ladled liquid “cheese” over them, topping the whole toxic concoction with jalapeño pepper slices.
The very young woman working the concession booth with Sookie looked up at him while she handed the woman her change. “Next?” she said inquiringly. When their eyes met, something in his gut lurched, not in lust but in recognition.
“Manfred,” Sookie said, “this is Quiana Wong.”
Manfred struggled to absorb many impressions at once. This girl (she couldn’t be more than eighteen) was a racial mixture he’d never encountered. Her hair was straight, coarse, and black. Her eyes were slightly slanted and dark brown. Her skin was golden, like the perfect tan. She was short and skinny . . . and she was a psychic. Like him.
Her desperation rolled over him like a blanket of fog.
He glanced around; for the moment, he was the only customer at this window, but that wouldn’t last.