The weasel ran off—a quick scamper—and Oscar was alone in the tunnels again with no idea which direction to turn.
Oscar wandered for what seemed like a long time. He was exhausted and thirsty; but now that he was back in Fenway Park, he no longer felt sickly. Just a little sad. He kept thinking of his mother crying at the sink. He missed her; and being lost in the underbelly of Fenway Park among the nettles, keeping an ear out for a wave of mice—none of this helped any. If he failed now, the Curse would be permanent. He would be stuck here forever. This made him miss his mother even more sharply. He felt like sitting down. He could feel the tears welling up just behind his eyelids.
He came to a stop and released a huffing sob; but before the crying could really start, he heard voices in the tunnel, calling his name. “Oscar! Where are you? You down here?” It was a gravelly voice, low and deep. Smoker?
Oscar saw the cloud first. It was gathering speed, headed right for him. He could see the glowing tips of Smoker’s cigarettes and hear him saying, “You’re in big trouble. Everybody’s been looking for you! I was called away from my precious work!”
And then Oscar was swallowed whole by a cloud of smoke. He could barely see. Luckily the horned organist, with cigarettes dangling from both corners of his mouth, had his arm around Oscar like a protective wing. “Do you know how worried everyone’s been?” he said. “They say you went through the doorway of the Door to the Past. They say you went on a ride with the Pooka. Is it true?”
“Yes.” Oscar coughed.
“Oscar!” His father’s voice was echoing through the tunnels. “Oscar!”
“And you survived!” Smoker said, his gravelly voice rumbling with excitement. “They say you’re going to break the Curse. Is it true?”
“I don’t know,” Oscar said. He felt a little dizzy from the ride or the smoke or both. Was he going to be able to break the Curse? How was the Pooka going to be able to let Oscar know where the ball was without violating the Curse? Oscar then heard his father’s voice close by. “Oscar? Are you in there?” His father’s face poked into the smoky cloud—cheeks red and hardened by anger, lips stiff. Oscar was suddenly terrified, even more so than he’d been on the back of the Pooka.
But his father’s anger suddenly melted. He grabbed Oscar, lifted him off the ground, and said, “You’re alive! You’re safe. You’re home.”
Soon enough, Oscar found himself at the kitchen table again, the faces all pressed in. It was strange how big and flushed and eager everyone was, all poised to hear what he had to say. It was warm in the kitchen, which reminded him of the moist heat of the dry cleaners—how it would fill the apartment, warming the bathroom tiles, making the windows sweat. The faces were ones he knew well by now; but this close, they seemed to ring around him like giant, fleshy beads on a necklace. Auntie Oonagh’s head tilting so that her good ear was closest; Auntie Fedelma, her overcast eyes—those milky beetles—darting behind her thick glasses; Auntie Gormley, whose pruned lips were puffing and whinnying as she snored, sleeping soundly; and Oscar’s father, his face still creased with leftover worry but also proud—all cheeks and eyes.
“What was he like up close?” Oscar’s father asked. “Did he talk to you?”
“Um…,” Oscar said.
“Was it very scary?” Auntie Oonagh asked.
“Where did you go?”
Oscar nodded. “It was a hard ride, and cold, too.”
“Did he try to pitch you off?” Auntie Fedelma asked.
“He didn’t try to pitch me off. He isn’t like that. He’s, well…” Oscar wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t tell them what he wanted desperately to say, which was that the Pooka was Keeffe. They hadn’t been abandoned. Keeffe had cursed himself as well, and he was stuck and heartbroken, too. “He’s actually good. He’s actually trying to help.”
“To help?” Auntie Fedelma snorted.
“No, no, no,” Oscar’s father said. “The Pooka can’t be good. He can’t. You could have died. He’s made people disappear.”
“They wanted to,” Oscar said.
“Wanted to disappear?” Oscar’s father asked.
Oscar nodded. “They missed their homes.”
“Are you saying that you’re friends with the Pooka now? Going to have him over for dinner?” Auntie Fedelma said.
“I’m not having him over for dinner,” Oscar said. “I don’t think he’s the type that would come if you invited him.”
“You shouldn’t have snuck out,” Auntie Fedelma said. “Are we punishing him? Shouldn’t he be grounded?”
“I’m not sure what to do,” Oscar’s father said.
“Flog him!” Auntie Fedelma shouted.
Oscar knew that he deserved to be punished somehow. He’d disobeyed his father. But he didn’t want to lose any ground. What about the clues from the Pooka? Would the weasel have news for him? Did she get to the Pooka in time to spy on him? “I still have to try to break the Curse,” Oscar said. “I want to make it up to you all.”
Auntie Fedelma was glaring at Oscar. “You aren’t GOING to BREAK THE CURSE! How many times do I have to tell you?”
Everyone stared at her, shocked.
“Don’t you all know that it’s better to know the future even if it is bad than it is to not know? What has not knowing gotten us? A swamp! And then a ball field! And then a curse! At least we can rely on the Curse. We know the Curse! Why do something and risk making it worse?”
Oscar stared at Auntie Fedelma. He wanted to call her crazy, but there was something about what she was saying that didn’t sound crazy at all. Hadn’t he put up with Drew Sizemore? He never tried to change that. He knew that Drew Sizemore wanted to make his life miserable, and all Oscar did was try to be invisible. But now that Auntie Fedelma was saying it out loud, Oscar knew it was wrong. What if people such as Jackie Robinson had just put up with the way things were? “We have to at least hope for something better, at least try,” Oscar said.
Auntie Fedelma wasn’t listening. “I’m saying this for your own good.”
Oscar let out a forceful sigh. He looked at Auntie Gormley, who must have been in the middle of a vivid dream. Her eyebrows knitted together. Her eyes shut more tightly. It was almost as if she were trying to explain something very important to someone in her dream. Oscar wondered what she would tell him now if she were awake. Would she tell him to be strong, to have hope? Oscar said, “You’ve got to have faith! The Curse can be broken. I know it.”
At this Auntie Fedelma stood up stiffly. “I’m going out! I have an appointment!”
This time, no one said a word. Fedelma hobbled out of the kitchen, her wings rustling behind her. She put on her moth-bitten coat and walked out the front door, into the tunnels.
“She’s up to no good,” Auntie Oonagh said.
But that’s when it dawned on Oscar that Auntie Fedelma, who was surely up to no good, actually thought he could break the Curse. She saw him as a real threat. Oscar said, “But she believes in me more than any of you.”
“That’s not true,” Oscar’s father said.
“It is true,” Oscar said, “and I think you know it’s true, deep down.”
Oscar stood up too. He walked out of the kitchen and climbed the ladder up to the crawl space. He lay down on his bedding. This was it. Regardless of whether his father really believed in him or not, they were closer than they’d ever been before to breaking the Curse. He couldn’t wait for the weasel to come with news. He jiggled his feet and tapped his hands on his chest in rhythm to his fast-paced heart. He felt electric.
Aboveground, on the flip side of the dirt ceiling, the wet grass was being aired for that night’s game. Ortiz, Damon, Martinez, Bellhorn, Lowe—all of the Red Sox were somewhere in Boston, thinking their own thoughts, maybe praying, maybe running through their own pregame mantras. The field’s soil was sorrowful; the Curse had hunkered down here, deep in the bones and bowels of Fenway Park. These were the Boston Red Sox, who had the weight and momentum of eighty-
six years of losing. But things were different this time. Oscar knew he could help. He remembered that Babe Ruth had told him, “You can’t beat the person who never gives up.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Teams
THE WEASEL FOLLOWED THE POOKA through the passageways, up the tunnel inside of the Green Monster. When the Pooka had opened the door to the scorekeeper’s room, he’d left it open a crack—just enough for a weasel to pass through without making the door squeak. Which is just what she did.
The Pooka pushed open a small, cabinetlike door near the floor of the scorekeeper’s room, under the scoring table. It was undetectable until the Pooka pushed it, and then it revealed a small cupboard with a cardboard box inside. The Pooka moved quickly. He put the box on the table and rummaged through it. He pulled out a bunch of wool yarn, then a handful of thin string, and then a small, tough, rubber ball. He began winding the wool around the rubber ball, keeping an eye on the dark outside of the slit in the wall and on the clock. His hands were a blur of motion. When the wool was wound tightly, he started in on the string. He wound and wound at a demonic pace, his hands orbiting the ball in superfast motion. None of this made any sense to the weasel until the Pooka had run out of string and was holding something the size and shape of a baseball.
Finally the Pooka reached inside of the box again and pulled out two pale leather skins—hour-glass shaped. The weasel knew that this was it: the cursed ball, the one that Oscar was looking for in order to break the Curse. The weasel waited for the Pooka’s next move: to stitch the leather skins together with red thread.
But the Pooka didn’t reach into the box for anything else. He simply held the ball in his cupped hands, and he began to weep. A few bright tears ran from his eyes, down his horse cheeks, and onto the score table. He looked up at the clock. It was five a.m. Soon it would be light outside. He held the ball in his hands and looked out of the slit. Off in the distance there was organ music—something classical overrun by an inevitable rally song—Smoker at the bench. The Pooka kept staring out of the slot; and then, suddenly, he drew in his breath.
“There she is,” he said softly, as if he were speaking to the weasel now. “Dancing.”
The Banshee? Dancing at dawn? It had to be her. Gormley didn’t quite understand why her father would want her to see the Banshee. Gormley’s soul felt ragged with sadness. She couldn’t take her weasel eyes off of the Pooka, her father. His hands—she had remembered them well: muscular and strong, the knuckles a bit tough. His true old eyes in the center of his horse eyes—she recognized them from the way he used to look at her when he was singing ballads.
The Pooka stood there holding the ball for a while, and then sunlight started creeping into the scorekeeper’s room. He pulled away from the slit. The organ music came to an abrupt end, as if Smoker had been suddenly called away.
“Smoker,” the Pooka said, tilting his horse head as if struck by an idea. “Music. Coded messages!”
He put the skins back into the box, and then he sighed heavily. He dropped the ball; and holding on to the end of the string, he let the ball unwind and roll to a corner, where it kicked around as the Pooka undid all of his work.
Auntie Fedelma took her usual fifteen steps and waited for Weasel-man. He arrived breathless, late. The weasels were sprinting beside him, twisting their leashes. He was jangled and wrung his hands nervously. “What’s happened? Did they find the boy? I haven’t heard a thing.”
“We lost that game, Weasel-man. Failure! Loss!”
“He’s alive?”
She nodded. “He’s alive and well and seems as if he’s made a friend.”
“A friend?”
“The Pooka himself!”
“Oh,” Weasel-man said. He was stunned. He stared down at the weasels bounding over one another. “I didn’t expect that.”
“No, I bet you didn’t. So, now what?”
“I don’t know,” Weasel-man said.
“You’re of no use. I need…I need…” Her eyes glistened; a smile curled across her face. “I need a team of my own! Where are Stickler and the Bobs?”
“In the training room, I bet,” Weasel-man answered, confused. “Stickler likes to take a soak.”
“Take me there!”
“Why do you want them?” he asked.
“Just take me there!”
Weasel-man obliged. He held out his arm and let Fedelma grab hold. He led her through the tunnels. It was still very early in the morning. Fedelma held tight to Weasel-man’s arm. They took the twisting routes underground: right and then left, and then Fedelma stopped in her tracks.
“Wait. Hush,” she said to Weasel-man. Over the occasional chirps of weasels, she heard something in the distance: a rhythmic clomping. “Hear that?”
“What?”
Then there was a whinny. “That,” she said. “The Pooka! Let’s hurry! What if he’s after us?”
Weasel-man sped up, giving the weasels’ leashes a giddyap; but Fedelma started losing her footing. “No,” she said, “you’ll have to carry me!”
Weasel-man bent down, and she climbed onto his back. She looked down one of the passages and saw a faint glow. “The other way!” she whispered loudly. “Hurry!”
Weasel-man took off in the opposite direction.
She struck his shoulder again and again. “Faster!” she said. “He’s here somewhere with us! Faster!”
Finally they came to an unmarked spot among the barbed vines and nettle bushes.
“Here it is,” Weasel-man said, easing Fedelma off of his back to the ground. Her cleats hit the ground and she wobbled a bit, her heart rattling in her frail chest. She listened for the hooves, for a stray whinny; but there was nothing. “Let’s go,” she said.
Weasel-man gave a knock on the unmarked spot.
“Just us chickens!” someone yelled.
Weasel-man shoved on the wall, using the heft of his weight. The wall gave way, and he helped Fedelma through the opening, the weasels following quickly behind, and then he closed it. The door faded into the wall again, disappearing from view.
The training room was bright. It smelled of alcohol swabs and sweat and menthol and chlorine. Stickler was waist deep in a single-person hot tub. The Bobs were sitting on a massage table, as if they were waiting for a trainer to tape them up—or, in their case, untape them. Radio was playing in the background—the AM talk radio sports station—in fact, blaring away.
“Fedelma? What are you doing here?” Stickler said, sitting up straight in the foggy steam of the tub.
Auntie Fedelma ignored Stickler. She was still jangled from the run through the tunnels. She walked to the center of the room, squinting all around. Everyone was uneasy. Jowly Bob turned off Radio, and he never did that. But the room still felt as if it were full of static.
“Seriously, Fedelma. When’s the last time you were out here?” Jowly Bob said. His face looked pale and wobbly, like uncooked dough.
“What’s brought you?” Mustache Bob added, tugging on his mustache nervously.
Auntie Fedelma stood there. She stared at Weasel-man, with the pack of weasels at his feet; the two Bobs; Stickler standing in the steaming tub, bare chested, flabby, and sweating. “This is my team,” she muttered. “My lousy team.” She clapped her hands in the air. “Listen up!” she said, walking to a dry erase board. She picked up a marker, popped off its cap. “We’re going to band together. We’re going to get that boy. Put a stop to him once and for all. Weasel-man, you’ll help because you’re loyal to me. Stickler, you’ll help because you never liked Old Boy to begin with. And Bobs, you’ll help because, well, this is the real thing. This isn’t sitting in a booth when there is no game. This isn’t sitting in any booth at all. This is getting in the game!” She glared into the eyes of Weasel-man, Stickler, the Bobs. “And we’re going to win!”
Back in the underbelly tunnels of Fenway Park, the Pooka was still galloping. He had seen, for the briefest moment, Fedelma, his daughter; and now he couldn’t sha
ke the image. It had been such a long time. She looked older and wizened, so much so that at first he didn’t recognize her. But then he caught the sharp angles of her face, the determined set of her jaw, the steely glint of her stare; and his heart broke all over again. His Fedelma, his little girl. For a moment his eyes had gone blurry with tears, and he felt even more breathless. He forgot what he was doing here, running through tunnels. Who was he looking for?
It came back to him: Smoker. He had to get a message to Smoker, who would code it and, hopefully, get it to the boy. He had faith in Oscar. He loved his bright eyes and his open expression. He was a sincere boy with a kind heart and a quick mind. He could do this; the Pooka knew it. He could break the Curse. He was the boy who the Pooka had dreamed of, once upon a time, the boy who would release Fenway Park from all of its suffering.
He regained his full gallop and flexed his nostrils in hopes of picking up a scent. Luckily, Smoker wasn’t too difficult to sniff out; and after taking some winding turns, the Pooka caught a whiff of smoke and followed it until it bloomed around Smoker himself. The glow of the Pooka’s eyes lit up the smoke so that it looked like a sunlit cloud.
“Who’s there?” Smoker said, then coughed jaggedly.
“You know who it is,” the Pooka said.
“No,” Smoker said, still encased in smoke.
“Don’t take me! Don’t hurt me!” he pleaded.
Shoving his hand into the cloud, the Pooka handed Smoker a note. “Read it. Do you understand?” the Pooka asked.
There was a short pause. “No,” Smoker said.
“Good. That’s the way it has to be. I can’t tell anyone, not a soul. But I should be allowed to hand you what you take for nonsense, and you should be able to play it as nonsense, and Oscar should be able to hear it as something else. And in the end, technically, I haven’t told anyone. See what I mean?”
“Not really, no,” Smoker said.
“Well, you don’t have to. I want you to take these words and play them, somehow, in your music. Play it so that Oscar can hear it.”