Oscar looked up at his father. He heard Drew Sizemore’s chant in his ear again—Who’s your daddy? Who’s your daddy?—but it didn’t mean the same thing to him now. “Who are you?” Oscar asked.
“You know who I am,” Oscar’s father said, a little confused by the question but smiling. “I’m your father.” And then he stood up. “Well, well,” he said, looking around. “We’re here.”
The tunnel looked the same as all the other tunnels they’d been in—the nettles, the vines. “We’re where?” Oscar asked.
“Home, of course!”
CHAPTER FOUR
Home, of Course!
OSCAR’S FATHER VERY CAREFULLY FIT his hand through some barbed vines. He found a cord and gave it a tug. Oscar heard a distant, warbled chime, like the recorded song from a dying ice-cream truck—the opening notes of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”? But it was so muffled and warped that he couldn’t be sure.
A voice piped up. It was a woman’s voice, gravelly and raspy. It sounded out of what looked like an old tin funnel—an old-fashioned fluted speaker—mounted above the pull cord. “Who are you?” the voice said. “Do you realize what time it is? Who wants to be woken up at this early hour!”
This was strange to Oscar. He didn’t know the exact time, but it had to be close to dinner.
Oscar’s father gave a sigh. “Let me in,” he said.
“Let who in?” the voice said.
“It’s Old Boy,” his father said. “I said I’d be back, and here I am.”
“You’re late!”
“I’m sorry. I ran into trouble.” Was that what Oscar was to him? Trouble? This stung.
His father seemed to know he’d said the wrong thing. He looked down at Oscar, put a hand on his shoulder—just for a second, as if to say he was sorry for that. He looked at him, and the sadness was back, just briefly. He seemed to want to say something to Oscar.
Another voice shouted out from the speaker, a more lilting, dithering voice. “Are you sick? Are you unwell? You’ve been gone so long! I’ve been up for hours, worrying!”
“I’m fine. I’m hungry,” his father said, and then Oscar noticed again that his father hadn’t coughed at all since they’d entered the manhole. He didn’t look sickly the way he always did in Pizzeria Uno. He looked tall; and with his shoulders pushed back, he looked broad, too.
“What did he say?” the lilting voice asked. “I couldn’t hear him!”
“He said he’s fine. Whoever he is!” the gravelly voice shouted. “How do we know it’s you?”
“Because you do.”
“If you aren’t who you say you are, then, then”—the gravelly voice grew deeper and venomous—
“may your own horse kick you in the head in your very own fallow potato fields and may your wife beat you with a pan and may your…”
Oscar’s father leaned against the tunnel wall. “Auntie Fedelma, we don’t have potato fields anymore. We don’t own a horse. I’m divorced. You haven’t had the power to curse in ages. You know that.”
“Wicked, you are, Old Boy! Can’t you let me enjoy my worthless curses in my old age.”
“Can I let him in?” the lilting voice asked.
Someone must have said yes, because just then a crack in the shape of a door formed in the wall; and Oscar’s father fit his fingers into the crack, lifted some wires over the top of the door, and pulled.
Warm light spilled into the tunnel—heavy with the scent of hot pretzels, cocoa, buttery popcorn, and hot dogs—and something else, something medicinal and sharp. His father stepped in and set down his duffel bag. Oscar walked in behind him, holding on to his antique suitcase. Compared to the dark tunnel, the room was so blindingly bright that Oscar could only make out three old wizened faces staring at him—ancient old ladies.
They were wearing old uniform jerseys; and their long skirts, like quilts, were made of bits of cloth with numbers and Red Sox insignia stitched together. They wore cleats that were too big for them and curled up at the toes. They were seated in what looked to be a short row of bleacher seats, and they’d been eating from large, rectangular plates. It took Oscar a moment to see that the plates were made of scoreboard placards with the edges turned slightly upward.
One old lady was thin and pruned, with a crooked jaw and a sour expression. She adjusted her thick eyeglasses and squinted at Oscar. “Wait a minute. I see two figures! What have you brought, Old Boy?” Oscar recognized her as the gravelly voice that had uttered curses at them in the tunnel. “Have you brought a small beast? What is that fuzzy form? I can’t make it out!”
His father whispered to Oscar, “That’s Auntie Fedelma.”
Oscar didn’t think he liked her much. He didn’t like being called a small beast.
“What did you say?” asked the one with the lilting voice. “What is that boy doing here?” She was hefty. Her puffy chins ringed her neck like mini flotation devices, holding up a sweet, rosy face. She lifted a tin funnel to her ear and waited for someone to answer her question.
“And that’s Auntie Oonagh,” Oscar’s father whispered.
“Boy?” said the gravelly voiced old woman, rubbing her eyes. “Is that what it is?”
Now that he’d gotten used to the light, Oscar could see that the room was small and cluttered, near crumbling. He took it all in as quickly as he could. Next to the row of bleacher seats were three hammocks. Their wooden frames had been fashioned from baseball bats and the hammocks themselves from old netting that looked like it had been used around a batting cage. Quilts were draped over the hammocks. The walls were covered with yellowed newspaper clippings, and radios from all different eras were scattered here and there. The cracks in the walls had been filled with baseballs and wadded-up newspapers. Oscar could see through a tilted door frame into the kitchen, where a popcorn machine popped, pretzels hung under a warming bulb, and hot dogs turned on wire rungs.
There was only one old lady whom he hadn’t yet met. She cleared her throat but didn’t say a word. She was very small and was perched in the middle of the short row of bleacher seats. She looked unhealthy. Her breathing was wheezy and strained. His father again whispered, “And that’s Auntie Gormley.” Then he smiled, his chin up, looking as proud as Oscar had ever seen him. “This is my son. Oscar.”
Auntie Fedelma gave a huff, crossed her arms, and glared at Oscar. “That is the Other? That is your Outside World Obligation? Why is he here? What are we going to do with him? I hope he doesn’t eat a lot.”
Auntie Oonagh clapped her hands, tappity, tappity.
And Auntie Gormley, who looked the most ancient of all, stared at Oscar, her eyes wide, and then lifted her small, wrinkled hands to her mouth—and smiled so broadly that her cheeks pinched small tears from her eyes. Oscar didn’t understand it exactly, but he felt as if he’d known Auntie Gormley for a long time, forever maybe; and in this moment he felt warm in his chest.
At the same time everything was so foreign, he felt disoriented. “Where are we?” Oscar asked his father quietly.
“Fenway. I told you,” his father said, and then he pointed to a potbellied stove in the corner. “Warm up, dry out. That used to be in the locker room; but when they put in central heating, we took it for ourselves. Still works!” he said, banging on the wrought iron with his knuckles.
Oscar stood in front of it and held out his hands. The old ladies were watching him. He kept his eyes on his father, who walked into the kitchen. Coolers leaked small puddles on the floor, which was tiled in five-cornered rubber mats—home plates. His father set down the extra cooler next to the others.
“Present from Weasel-man,” Oscar’s father said.
“For who?” Auntie Fedelma asked.
“For you, of course,” Oscar’s father said.
“Weasel-man’s crazy,” she said. “I don’t need another cooler!”
“He said you wanted one,” Oscar’s father said.
“Did I?”
Oscar felt dazed. His body echoed the fe
eling of riding the wave of mice. How had he wound up here in this small, underground hovel filled with Fenway Park castoffs? He asked again. “I know we’re in Fenway, but where?”
“We’re under the mound,” his father said.
“We’re under the pitcher’s mound?” Oscar asked.
“Yep,” his father said.
“And you all don’t go up and watch the games?”
They stared at him with a mix of shock and sympathy, as if he were a foreigner from some distant land who just didn’t quite understand. Aside from the looks they gave him, the question was ignored.
“Fairies live under fairy mounds!” Auntie Fedelma said, staring hard at Oscar through her thick glasses. “It’s a fairy mound first and foremost!”
“Fairies?” Oscar asked.
Auntie Oonagh sang, “Fairies! Fairies! Fairies!”
“I don’t like the term ‘fairies,’” his father said.
“You know I don’t.” He’d gotten two pretzels out from under the bulb and now handed one to Oscar. It was warm but a little tough.
“We are what we are!” Auntie Fedelma said.
“And proud of it!”
Auntie Gormley caught Oscar’s eye and blinked at him. Oscar wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. He took another bite of his pretzel.
“We’re only half-and-half of what we are,” Oscar’s father corrected.
“Half fairy and half human,” Auntie Oonagh said.
“It’s how we got kicked out in the first place,” his father said. “We didn’t fit in, and so now we’re here.”
This struck Oscar. He felt half-and-half, too. He knew why he didn’t seem to fit in, but he didn’t know why his father felt that way. What did it mean to be half fairy, half human? And what land did they get kicked out of? He reached up and pressed down his hair, and he immediately wished he hadn’t. It would only draw attention, but he couldn’t have stopped himself anyway. It was a nervous reaction.
“Fairies! Fairies!” Auntie Oonagh sang.
“Living under a fairy mound as fairies do and have always done!” Auntie Fedelma said, still eyeing Oscar suspiciously.
“You look like regular people to me.” Oscar felt strange saying it. He decided that they were all pretty crazy—maybe his father, too. He was twelve. He didn’t believe in fairies, really. Weren’t they children the size of mice with wings, who fluttered around in gardens? What twelve-year-old would believe in fairies?
“Yes, we look like humans,” Oscar’s father said.
“We got the human height and bulk, mostly.” He glanced at Auntie Gormley, who was quite small.
“But…” Auntie Fedelma stood up. “I was born in 1846, I think. I don’t know when. I stayed a girl for thirty years or so. Your father here was born…when was that? 1913? He should be an ancient old man, or dead already. But he isn’t. He only looks to be about forty.”
“Fairies live forever,” Auntie Oonagh explained.
“And half fairies just feel like they do.”
“We age slowly—the human part of us kicking in. And we can die,” Oscar’s father said. “We all do eventually die.”
And here Auntie Gormley lifted a finger in protest.
Oscar’s father corrected himself. “Well, we’re not sure that we’re able to die right now. Because of the Curse, we’re stuck here…in many ways.”
“And we have plenty of fairy in us too. Don’t forget these,” Auntie Fedelma stood up from her chair and turned ever so slowly. On her back, Oscar saw what seemed to be a pair of crumpled, decrepit, pale-colored umbrellas—spiny legs with thin material stretched between. They sprouted from two small holes in her shirt. She spread them open a bit, but they only looked more pathetic. “Wings!” she said.
“Wings?” Oscar repeated.
“Mine have nearly shriveled up from disuse,” Auntie Oonagh said, showing her wide back, where two wizened wings the size of handheld fans sat limply.
Oscar turned to his father. He couldn’t remember ever seeing his father without a shirt. In fact, his father usually wore a jacket, too. Had he been hiding wings all of these years? “Do you have wings?” he asked.
“I keep them to myself,” his father said, obviously embarrassed by his aunties’ displays.
Oscar looked at Auntie Gormley. “Me, too,” she mouthed.
Oscar was so surprised, he wasn’t sure what to say or do or even where to cast his eyes. And although some part of him felt a little betrayed by his father’s secret—why hadn’t his father confided in him?—he was also relieved. His father understood what it was like to be two in one. His father had wings. His father had a part of himself that he wasn’t sure what to do with.
The wings seemed so personal. Oscar didn’t want to be caught gawking like those fishers who were always trying to find some trace of him in his parents. He decided to change the subject. “Where’s the pitcher’s mound or, um, the fairy mound?” He wasn’t sure which one was the proper term now.
“It’s up there,” Auntie Oonagh said reverently, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “Old Boy was given the gift of the land; he knows the secrets of the ground above us.”
Auntie Fedelma cut in. “What good is the gift of the land to us here? He was supposed to be a farmer one day. We used to have real land,” she said. “He’s nothing more than a groundskeeper!”
Oscar’s father explained. “There’s a tradition among our branch of you-know-whats that when a child turns twelve, his aunties give him a gift, a blessing. Mine was to know the secrets of the earth, the gifts of the land—a typical gift to give a boy from landowning fairies.” He sighed heavily, as if this was a great burden. “And this land—Fenway Park—has so many secrets, but not ones any of us ever could have predicted.”
“I’d love to know the secrets of Fenway Park,” Oscar said, thinking of his own birthday, which was only a day away.
“You’d love to know what?” Auntie Oonagh asked Oscar, fitting the funnel to her ear. “Speak up! Speak up!”
“I’d love to know the secrets of Fenway Park!” he shouted.
“No, you wouldn’t, Oscar. Trust me,” his father said.
“And what do you do with your gift? Nothing! It’s worthless,” Auntie Fedelma snorted. “We’re here, forever. And we may as well just get used to it!”
“Stuck here? Forever?” Oscar said.
At this Auntie Oonagh started to cry. “Oh, no, no, no,” she muttered. “Oh, no. Don’t, don’t say it! Speak of it not! Don’t say the word!”
Auntie Fedelma leaned in close to Auntie Oonagh. Her face turned red. “Cursed!” she hissed.
Oscar thought of the sign he’d seen that afternoon on the exit ramp: REVERSE CURSE. He wanted to ask his father if curses were real. He didn’t believe in them. He glanced at his father, whose eyes had gone wet and jittery; and Oscar knew this was real. There was a curse. Did they share it with the Red Sox? “What kind of curse?” Oscar asked. “The same one that…”
His father didn’t let him finish. He nodded. “We’re all in it.”
And that’s when Auntie Fedelma said, “I want to see this Other of yours, this Outside World Obligation, more closely.”
“His name is Oscar,” Oscar’s father said.
“Yes, yes. Bring him to me.”
“Why?” Oscar’s father asked. “What does it matter?”
Auntie Fedelma’s mouth twisted into a smile. “I want to see your Oscar. That’s all. I’m an old, old woman. I’m nearly blind. I want a closer look.”
Oscar’s father nudged him. “Go ahead,” he said.
And so Oscar walked over. Auntie Fedelma grabbed him by the arm, so brusquely that he dropped what was left of his pretzel. She leaned in so close that he could smell her. It was that medicinal scent that Oscar had first picked up on when he came in, but now he recognized it: linseed and neat’s-foot—oils he’d used to condition his glove the year before. It was mixed with the stench of pine tar too. She looked at him sharply. Her eyes were shrunken by he
r thick glasses so much so that they seemed to be skittering around like beetles. She stared into his eyes, stared at the top of his head, at his face. He reined in his lips without even thinking about it. She pulled his arm up close to her face and then dropped it. She pushed him away and then motioned for Oscar’s father to come to her.
His father stood his ground. “What is it?”
“He’s a…he’s a—you know. He’s a Robinson!” She whispered it, but loudly enough for Oscar to hear.
“A what?” his father asked.
Oonagh leaned in close to hear, but Auntie Gormley didn’t. She sat back and rocked in her chair, ignoring the fuss.
“He’s a Robinson. A…a Mays, an Aaron,” Auntie Fedelma said.
Oscar’s father pretended not to understand her; but Oscar knew what she meant, naming all of the old baseball legends with dark skin. She was saying that he was black. Oscar stepped farther away; but his foot hit the edge of a throw rug made of grasslike indoor-outdoor carpeting, and he stumbled a bit.
Auntie Fedelma went on. “He’s…” And then she finally blurted it, “He’s from the Negro Leagues!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Oscar’s father said to Auntie Fedelma, and then he leaned in closer. “I’ve shown you pictures all along.”
“But the pictures were so small!”
“It doesn’t matter anyway! It’s not like that anymore,” Oscar’s father said. “None of that matters.”
Oscar agreed. In the world of baseball, there were plenty of players of color. His head was flooded with names: David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Pokey Reese. Not to mention Robinson and Mays and Aaron. He wasn’t sure how or why, but he knew that the color of his skin was important. He didn’t want to be treated badly because of it, but he didn’t want it ignored, either. All of these thoughts were clanging loudly in his head and didn’t help him feel much better. Oscar didn’t want to say anything, but he muttered, “Ortiz, Martinez…”
“What’s that?” Auntie Fedelma asked. “Speak up there.”
“David Ortiz,” Oscar said again. “Martinez…”
“And how have they helped us?” Auntie Fedelma spat. “Ortiz and Martinez! They’ll never set us free! We are a people of a Grand Tradition. We are now imprisoned. And if Old Boy had had a son of his own and not just an Outside World Obligation, then, well, that boy may have helped us. He may have been the one who got the gift that would set us free. But you are of no use to us….”