“Are you following me?” Oscar asked.
The weasel nodded.
“Well, I’m lost, so you can stop.”
The weasel looked as if she wasn’t sure what to do next. She cocked her head and snapped her teeth.
Oscar read the snaps, just as he did Auntie Gormley’s language of darting eyes and blinks. “Where do you want to go?”
Oscar was astonished. He said, “Can you help me? You know these tunnels, right?”
The weasel gave a chirp and nodded.
“I want to go to the place under home plate. Can you take me?”
“To the Pooka?” The weasel’s teeth snapped out a little code. “Are you sure?”
“How did you know?”
She didn’t answer.
“Yes,” Oscar said. “I’m sure.”
“Okay then,” the weasel snapped, “but only if you let me come with you for the pooka ride.”
Oscar paused. “How did you know about that too?” he asked.
She just blinked at him.
Oscar didn’t want to take a weasel with him, but he had no choice. He wasn’t in a good negotiating spot. He nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, okay, sure.”
“Okay,” the weasel snapped. “Follow me.”
The weasel scampered ahead, and Oscar followed. They both were sprinting through the tunnels now this way and that. Oscar had always wanted a dog. The landlord didn’t allow them, though. Weirdly enough, this was as close as he’d ever come: boy and weasel running through the underground passageways of Fenway Park to meet a pooka. He was having fun. He wasn’t as scared as he had been. He loved to run. He’d been the fastest base runner on his team last year.
The weasel stopped dead in her tracks. She lifted her nose in the air, pulsed her tiny nostrils. “Mice,” she snapped.
And then Oscar could hear them, too—a wave of them, just like before, with his father. “No!” he shouted. “Run!” But it was too late. The mice were upon them, a rising tide lifting them up. Oscar and the weasel bobbed swiftly this way and that, speeding down the twists and turns. Oscar was terrified. Where would they end up? Surely he’d miss the meeting with the Pooka now, and he’d have to find a way somehow to get back to the Door to the Past and start all over again!
The mice took a hard turn to the left. Oscar and the weasel slammed into a wall and fell to the ground. The wave of mice continued on without them down another darkened tunnel.
Oscar rubbed his shoulder. “What are we going to do now?” he asked the weasel.
But much to his surprise, she snapped, “It’s just around that corner there.”
“What is?”
“The spot beneath home plate,” she snapped.
“The mice dropped us right where we need to be!”
Oscar paused a moment. Had the mice played their position just like the Curse said? He decided they had. The echo of their scrabbling claws grew quieter and quieter in the distance.
The weasel snapped, “Pick me up. Put me in your pocket.”
Oscar scooped up the rodent and shoved her in his jacket pocket. “Okay, ready?” He was asking himself more than he was the weasel, but the weasel gave a snap of approval. Oscar was glad now that the weasel was coming. He wanted the company.
He turned the final corner. It was dark at first, and all he could see were two flames floating like lamps. But then he saw that the lamps lit a large, dark muzzle and nostrils, and that they weren’t two flames at all but eyes. The whole horse face turned, and the Pooka examined Oscar with only one of his glowing eyes. Oscar could see his gleaming coat, his triangular ears, his broad chest, and the mane running down the middle of his back. The Pooka took two steps forward on his hooves, and then he reached out his hand. A man’s hand—pale and strong.
Oscar went to shake it, but that wasn’t what the Pooka had in mind. He grabbed Oscar’s hand; and with amazing strength, he hurled Oscar on his back. “Let’s go!” he shouted. Oscar barely had time to grab the Pooka’s mane before he took off at a gallop.
The Pooka wove his way, hurtling down the tunnels so fast that Oscar’s eyes teared in the wind. The weasel in Oscar’s jacket pocket nestled down low, with only the tip of her head peeking out. The Pooka didn’t slow down as the tunnel rose toward the ceiling. He simply rammed his horse head into the dirt, and another trapdoor flew open at the edge of the outfield, peeling back the tarp. He stopped without warning, used his back hooves to kick the trapdoor back into place, and then galloped on a bit more until they were no longer on the ground but leaping with such force that it seemed as if they were flying up the stands, climbing higher and higher toward the final row.
Stinging rain slashed Oscar’s cheeks, but that was the least of his problems.
“Watch out!” Oscar shouted. “Slow down! There aren’t any more seats!”
The Pooka kept on, though. He wasn’t listening, only striding higher; and at the final row of seats, Oscar shut his eyes. The Pooka leaped, and they were stalled in midair, falling. Oscar screamed. But then the Pooka’s hooves began to churn, and they were galloping again—on nothing more than the cold wind—the Pooka’s glowing eyes lighting the way.
The city lights bobbed below. Oscar could see Boston Harbor, its polished black surface reflecting the tall buildings of downtown Boston, and the boat lights and the planes landing on the strip of land that jutted into the harbor. At first Oscar found himself swallowing the cold air in gulps, tensing at the slaps of rain. The wind was so strong it filled his lungs as if they were a pair of bagpipes. He tried to speak, but his voice just squeaked. He could barely breathe. So he closed his mouth, shut his eyes, and took shallow breaths through his nose. The weasel had burrowed down in Oscar’s pocket and was curled into a trembling knot.
Once Oscar caught his breath, he asked, “Where are you taking me?”
The Pooka didn’t answer.
Oscar kept frantically weaving his fingers into the Pooka’s mane more and more tightly. The ride was jarring, not rhythmic like a horse ride. Oscar clung to the Pooka’s back, trying to stay as close as possible. The air was colder up here. It stung his face and hands until they went numb. His shoulders were wet. He sneezed and blew his nose into his sleeve.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked again.
The Pooka went faster. The lights of Boston were long gone now, and there was only ocean off to the left—the occasional lights of a ship, the pulsing red blips of a passing airplane. The water below was a dark sheet. And to the right there were clusters of lights—cities—with more lights stringing them together. “Don’t drop me,” Oscar said.
They rode on for what seemed like an hour or more, and now Oscar felt as if his runny nose had turned into a chest cold. He felt a little fevered. There was more ocean, more cities. The Pooka was slowing down. He had a wheeze in his lungs as well.
“Are we going down? Tell me where you’re taking me!”
Finally the Pooka said, “I’m taking you where your heart wants to be.”
“My heart?” Oscar said. “What do you mean? My heart?”
The Pooka circled over a city, and then a certain spot within the city. He circled and descended as if galloping down a huge spiral staircase, and finally landed, quite precisely, on the landing of a fire escape. He stood on his hind legs. Oscar let go of his mane, though his hands were cramped from holding on so tightly. And he slid down the Pooka’s back, landing on the cold metal. He felt weak. He coughed and coughed and then, finally, caught his breath. The Pooka looked tired. The glow in his eyes was dimming. The weasel looked sickly, too. Her eyes were red, her lids droopy. She jumped out of Oscar’s pocket, bobbed around on the landing, and then threw up over the edge. Oscar thought of his father in Pizzeria Uno, how pale and sickly he always looked. And, for the first time, Oscar understood that he was truly cursed.
“So this is how you make people disappear?” Oscar said. “You either drop them from the sky or you just leave them in the middle of nowhere.”
The Pooka s
hook his horse head, his mane flipped on his back. He looked at Oscar with his softly glowing eyes. “No,” he said. “I’ve never made anyone disappear.”
“Not true,” the weasel snapped. “Two Cursed Creatures went for a ride with him and didn’t come back. Scalper, who lingered on Yawkey Way and lived under Concourse B, and Ticket Taker, who was sickly.”
“What about Scalper and Ticket Taker?” Oscar asked.
“Sometimes the Cursed Creatures want to go. They come to me, and I help them. You’ll die eventually if you leave the ballpark for too long. They both wanted to see Ireland again. And so I took them. They refused to go back.”
Oscar looked around. “Are we in Ireland?”
The Pooka shook his head. “Does your heart want to go to Ireland?”
“I don’t think so,” Oscar said.
“Well, then, think. Where does your heart want to go?”
Oscar sat there and thought. He’d already met Babe Ruth—and it wasn’t really his heart that had wanted to meet Babe. Not really. His heart? What was his heart missing? Well, his mother, of course. He thought of the phone call, and his chest ached. It hadn’t gone well. He still felt sore about it. “My mother,” Oscar said finally. “I guess my heart wants to at least see my mother.”
The Pooka nodded to the window near the fire escape.
With great effort, Oscar stood up and looked inside. There was a kitchen with a shiny stove, a microwave, and a fridge. It was simply an empty kitchen. And then a figure walked in. Oscar’s mother. She was wearing her bathrobe, the one from home that she always wore. She was alone. She opened the fridge, got out a carton of milk, and poured a glass.
“She drinks milk when she can’t sleep,” Oscar said.
His mother leaned on the sink, her back facing him. Her shoulders started to shake. He knew she was crying. “I don’t understand,” Oscar said.
“She misses you. She thinks she’s made a mess of things.”
“Why did you bring me here?” Oscar was angry now. He didn’t want to see his mother crying. He’d seen that all his life. “You were supposed to help me with the Curse. You’re supposed to help me find the baseball.”
“I can’t talk about any of that,” the Pooka said.
“The rules.”
“Yes, I know,” Oscar said, remembering Rule #1; “but I was hoping you could give me a sign, a message. I can read signs. It’s my gift.”
“How does the Curse go?”
“Um, I don’t know. I don’t have it memorized,” Oscar said. His mother was crying harder now. It was distracting. He wanted to go in and comfort her, but he knew he couldn’t. He knew that an action such as that would be breaking a rule, too.
“How does it start?” the Pooka urged him.
The weasel tugged on Oscar’s pant leg. “How does it start?” she snapped. “Think.”
“It starts out about how we’re all orphans,” Oscar said.
“Yes, and then…”
“It talks about Babe Ruth when he was a boy learning a trade.”
“What trade?”
“A tailor.”
“And what did he do at the tailor shop?”
“I don’t know,” Oscar said, frustrated. He felt swimmy headed and flushed. “He made shirts?”
“That he did. That he did.”
“So?” Oscar said. “So what?”
“It takes an orphan to understand an orphan.”
“Are you asking me if I understand Babe Ruth?”
“Not really Ruth, no.”
“Then who?”
“We’re all orphans.”
“I know that. It’s in the Curse. But we aren’t ALL orphans! Ruth and I were abandoned. We understand it, but—”
“Who else has felt abandoned? Who else felt cast out?”
Oscar wasn’t sure what kind of answer the Pooka was digging for, but he knew that the Pooka was deeply anxious. His human hands were shaking. Oscar was shaking, too. He looked at his mother through the window. She’d calmed down some. She was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the picture of herself and Oscar taken at the water park. She blew her nose in a tissue. She was wearing her necklace, but she wasn’t fiddling with the beads. What did it all mean?
The weasel tugged urgently on Oscar’s pants again. “Lift me up,” she snapped. And Oscar did. He could feel her ribs rising and falling quickly—she was breathless. The weasel leaned forward toward the Pooka and stared at him intently. Her eyes were glassy. Oscar thought of the Pooka’s questions again: Who else has felt abandoned? Who else felt cast out? Like the weasel, Oscar now stared into one of the Pooka’s eyes. He looked directly into its center—the pupil, the dark middle—and in it he saw another eye, small and brown and filled with longing. “Are you…,” Oscar began. “Are you who I think you are?” Was this Keeffe? Could it be?
The weasel started to tremble then. She let out a quiet whimper.
“I can’t answer any questions,” the Pooka said.
“It’s against the rules.”
“You know where the baseball is, don’t you?” Oscar asked.
The Pooka held out his hand. “I’ve got to get back home quickly. I have something I have to do,” he said. “No more questions.”
The weasel sobbed and turned away. Oscar wasn’t sure why she was so upset, but he held her to his chest and stroked her head. He looked in through the window one last time. His mother was shuffling across the kitchen. She turned out the light. The Pooka had both hands on the fire escape railing and was looking up at the sky, checking out conditions.
Oscar said, “It’s you. It’s been you all along, all of these years!”
The weasel seemed stricken by this—weak and sobbing—as if it were all too much to take. She nosed her way back into the pocket while the Pooka looked at Oscar with faked innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why did you make that curse?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said weakly.
“They all think you’ve abandoned them, that you got out while the getting was good.”
The Pooka hung his head low, covered his glowing eyes with his hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why did you do it?”
The Pooka looked at Oscar. “Do you think I’m happy? Look at me.”
Oscar couldn’t. He was ashamed that he’d gotten so angry with the Pooka. He hadn’t just cursed Fenway Park and left. He’d cursed himself, too. There was more to the story than Oscar knew right now, but the Pooka couldn’t tell it. The Curse had rules; and if Oscar was going to break the Curse, the Pooka had to be careful about what he said or the Curse would become permanent.
“I’m sorry,” Oscar said.
“It’s okay,” the Pooka said. He grabbed Oscar by the shoulder and gave him a gentle rattle. “That weasel would make a good spy. Do you understand?”
“Not really,” Oscar said, patting the weasel in his pocket. Why had she reacted so strongly to the Pooka? She seemed to have gone limp.
“You will.”
The Pooka held out his hand and looked at Oscar gravely. “Tell no one about our conversation. Do you promise? No one.”
Oscar said, “I promise.”
He grabbed the Pooka’s hand, and the Pooka swung him onto his back. “That tailor shop where Babe Ruth learned his trade used to be not very far from here,” the Pooka said, trying to sound casual. “I’d take you there, but it doesn’t exist anymore.”
“You’ve been to that tailor shop before?” Oscar asked.
“Once,” the Pooka said. “Just once. Let’s go home now. Let’s go home.” He climbed the railing, gave a leap, and galloped up into the dark clouds.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Weasel Spy
THE RIDE BACK TO BOSTON was even more jarring than the ride to Baltimore. The Pooka was frantic. He kept repeating, “I have to hurry. I’ve got to go faster!”
Oscar was clamped to the Pooka’s back
, hands wrapped in the mane; the weasel curled in a ball deep in Oscar’s vest pocket. He got the wind kicked out of him each time the Pooka leaped unexpectedly.
“Why are you going so fast?” Oscar shouted.
“I have a task. I must do it or I won’t see her.”
“Who?”
“No one,” the Pooka said. “No one at all.”
The Pooka clamored over the stadium wall and galloped across the field to home plate. Steam pouring from his wide nostrils, he kicked open the seamless trapdoor near home plate and jumped through the opening, with Oscar still on his back. Then he reached up and pulled the door down after him.
The tunnel grew dark. Oscar slid to the ground. His legs and arms felt rubbery and loose in the joints.
“I’ve got to run. You’ll find your way back,” the Pooka said.
“Wait,” Oscar said. “There’s more to the story, and I have to understand it if I’m going to find the baseball and break the Curse. You have to tell me what I need to know. Send me a message somehow. Promise?”
“You know,” the Pooka said, pointing to the weasel in Oscar’s pocket, “that what we need first of all is a spy.”
The weasel poked her head out. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the Pooka’s hands. It was as if she was trying to memorize them. Oscar stared at the weasel; and when he looked back up, the Pooka was already a blur in the distance.
Oscar stood there for a moment. He didn’t know how to sort anything out: Babe Ruth, the Pooka, his own mother at the kitchen sink. The weasel broke his concentration. She snapped her teeth.
“What?” Oscar said. “What is it?”
She snapped, “I’m going to follow him.”
“What?” Oscar said.
“I would make a good spy. He said it twice. He wants me to spy on him.”
Oscar picked the weasel up out of his pocket and set her on the floor. “Okay then. Are you all right?”
The weasel nodded, but she wasn’t convincing. “I have to keep my head and find out what he’s got to do, why he was in such a hurry.”
“Right,” Oscar said. “Go, hurry!”