Fedelma started to cry. She shook her head and stared at the man before her again. “Father?” she said. “Is it you?”
He nodded. “’Tis,” he said. “Indeed. All of these years.”
Fedelma charged him then, like a tough little girl, arms wide. She buried her face in his shirt. “You’ve got to come and see the others,” she said. “Come on!”
“First things first, my dear,” he said. And he turned to Oscar and held out his hand. “Thank you, sonny. You come, too.”
Oscar took his hand, and they walked toward home plate.
“I have a date,” Keeffe said. “A dancing date to keep at dawn.”
“With the Banshee?” Oscar asked. It was all clear to him now.
Keeffe gave a nod, his eyes teary.
“Come now,” Auntie Fedelma said. “We’ve missed you.”
Auntie Oonagh and Auntie Gormley saw him from a distance. And then Oscar’s father noticed. The three of them walked away from the mad celebration, slowly at first, not sure that they were seeing it correctly: Auntie Fedelma on one side and Oscar on the other and the aunties’ old father beaming at them in the middle. But when they trusted the vision to be true, they began to run.
Oscar’s father got there first—because of his large wings—and the two men wrapped their arms around each other. Auntie Oonagh got there next and then Auntie Gormley.
None of them said a word. They hugged the old man and touched his face and seemed struck by the miracle of it all.
And then Oscar’s father picked up Oscar and set him on his shoulder. “The Curse is broken,” he said.
“But the Red Sox still have to win the rest of the playoff games and the World Series,” Oscar said.
“Now they can. Now it’s up to them! You made it possible!”
“Not alone,” Oscar said. “Not by myself.”
As if his teammates had heard him, they turned and saw Oscar. Pesky and Pumpsie. Teddy and Buckner. Willie and Jackie and Ruth. They cheered and whooped and broke out into a run—each of them sprinting toward Oscar—and it seemed as if they weren’t charging toward him as much as each one of them was charging toward his own undeniable future.
EPILOGUE
OSCAR AND HIS FATHER WATCHED the final game of the World Series, which was being played in a Missouri ballpark, on a small television that Weasel-man had picked up in the Lost and Found. They all gathered around it.
The Bobs were now two separate individuals, each wearing his own tweed jacket, sitting quite happily on two opposite ends of the row of bleacher seats.
Weasel-man had set his weasels free, to lead their own lives. (One weasel had decided to stay behind and spent most of her days curled up on Auntie Gormley’s lap, purring with her soft, whistling purr.) Weasel-man sat next to Auntie Fedelma on one of the bleacher seats, nice and close; and she didn’t seem to mind.
Smoker had quit smoking for good. He was still a nervous man, however, and paced in the kitchen for most of the game.
All of their heads were hornless. The horns had melted away as soon as the cursed baseball had stitched itself back together. No one would have been able to tell that the horns were gone, however. They all still wore their Red Sox caps.
Auntie Gormley and Auntie Oonagh sat on either side of their father, Keeffe Egg, each locked onto one of his arms, as if he might disappear again. But he never went anywhere except for one appointment every day at dawn. He met with his long lost wife and danced with her in the outfield. The Curse was broken, but it couldn’t bring her back to life. She was no longer a wailing banshee, but she was still a banshee nonetheless: a beautiful, ghostly banshee.
And Oscar and his father sat on the floor right in front of the television so they wouldn’t miss a single play.
When the game ended, they could hear joyful hooting and car horns from the streets of Boston overhead. Oscar knew that none of the other Red Sox fans would ever know about the real curse and how it was broken. They would never know about the underbelly of Fenway Park—the mice had quickly dispersed, the nettles had shriveled away—or the once-cursed creatures who lived here. It didn’t matter.
Oddly enough, there wasn’t an uproarious celebration in this small parlor beneath the pitcher’s mound. No. It was a calm moment. A sweet moment. Relief. They all knew that from now on everything would be different, and they weren’t sure what to do with their new freedom. They all stood up and looked at one another, and then they hugged and cried a bit. Auntie Oonagh kept saying, “Well, now! Well, now!”
And then the phone rang. Oscar’s father walked to the kitchen and answered it. He appeared in the doorway with his hand cupped over the mouthpiece. “It’s your mother,” he said to Oscar. He was smiling. He’d cut holes in most of his shirts so that his muscular wings could breathe. They were curled over his shoulders, making him look taller and stronger than before. He handed Oscar the phone. “Tell her that I miss her,” he said.
Oscar took the phone, and his mother was on the line. “They did it!” she said. “They did it! You were right! You had faith in them, Oscar!”
“Eighty-six years,” Oscar said. “It’s been a long time.”
“I’m coming home,” his mother said, her voice cracking. “I need to come home.”
“We miss you,” Oscar said.
“Who do you mean? We?” she asked.
“Dad and I. We miss you.”
She didn’t say anything at first. “You both miss me?” she asked.
“Yep.”
There was another pause. “Eighty-six years is a long time,” she said. “It’s important to always have some faith.” And then she laughed a little, nervously, and Oscar could hear the rattle of her beaded necklace. It was a sign, and he knew how to read it. He knew that his birthday wish would come true, that when he turned thirteen, they would all be together.
Oscar closed his eyes. In the distance he could hear the Banshee singing, but each note was full of hope—as clear and sweet as a struck bell.
HISTORICAL NOTE
IN 2004, THE BOSTON RED SOX made it to the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees. They hadn’t won a World Series title in eighty-six years. They were within three outs of being swept in four straight games. In that fourth game, they won, 6–4, in twelve innings. It stands as one of the great games in baseball history. They went on to do what no other professional baseball team had ever done. They came back from a 3–0 series deficit to win, and then went on to become World Series champions.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I REALIZED EARLY ON WHILE writing The Prince of Fenway Park that to write about the history of baseball with accuracy, I would have to make a commitment to writing about racism.
Although The Prince of Fenway Park is a work of fiction, it relies on and intersects with history. The word nigger appears in this novel three times—on pages 177, 257, and 299. In each of these cases, I was relying on facts and real quotes.
I believe that the word nigger is the most hateful word in the English language. Although it is morally wrong to use this word, censoring it would be an attempt to sanitize the past. I refuse to do so—for the sake of children or any readers, for that matter. When we try to alter history, we cannot truly understand and learn from our mistakes, and we are guilty of diminishing the truly great acts of heroism in the battle against racism. So it was with careful thought and consideration that I used nigger in my book.
For the children who read this novel, if I could whisper one thing that would ride beneath all of the words in this book, it would be this: Go forth. Create a greater nation, a better world. Show us how it’s done.
About the Author
JULIANNA BAGGOTT is a poet and the author of several novels for adult readers, including GIRL TALK, THE MADAM, and THE MISS AMERICA FAMILY, as well as WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU, cowritten with Steve Almond. As the pseudonymous N. E. Bode, she has written THE SLIPPERY MAP, THE ANYBODIES, THE NOBODIES, and THE SOMEBODIES. She lives with her family in Tallaha
ssee, Florida, and can be found online at www.juliannabaggott.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
OTHER BOOKS BY JULIANNA BAGGOTT
(written under the pseudonym N. E. Bode)
The Anybodies
The Nobodies
The Slippery Map
The Somebodies
Credits
Jacket art © 2009 by Tim Jessell
Jacket design by Ray Shappell
Copyright
THE PRINCE OF FENWAY PARK. Copyright © 2009 by Julianna Baggott. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061923159
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Julianna Baggott, The Prince of Fenway Park
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