Стивен Кинг: The Outsider

The next pitch was wide, but Trevor flailed at it, anyway.

“Strike him out, Fritz!” a leather-lung shouted from high up in the bleachers—almost surely the fireballer’s father, from the way the kid snapped his head in that direction. “Strike him owwwwwt !”

Trevor didn’t offer at the next pitch, which was close—too close to take, really, but the ump called it a ball, and it was the Bears’ fans’ turn to groan. Someone suggested that the ump needed stronger glasses. Another fan mentioned something about a seeing-eye dog.

Two and two now, and Terry had a strong sense that the Dragons’ season hung on the next pitch. Either they would play the Panthers for the City championship, and go on to compete in the States—games that were actually televised—or they would go home and meet just one more time, at the barbecue in the Maitland backyard that traditionally marked the end of the season.

He turned to look at Marcy and the girls, sitting where they always did, in lawn chairs behind the home plate screen. His daughters were flanking his wife like pretty bookends. All three waved crossed fingers at him. Terry gave them a wink and a smile and two thumbs up, although he still didn’t feel right. It wasn’t just the game. He hadn’t felt right for some time now. Not quite.

Marcy’s return smile faltered into a puzzled frown. She was looking to her left, and jerked a thumb that way. Terry turned and saw two city cops walking in lockstep down the third base line, past Barry Houlihan, who was coaching there.

“Time, time!” the home plate umpire bellowed, stopping the Bears pitcher just as he went into his wind-up. Trevor Michaels stepped out of the batter’s box, and with an expression of relief, Terry thought. The crowd had grown quiet, looking at the two cops. One of them was reaching behind his back. The other had his hand on the butt of his holstered service weapon.

“Off the field!” the ump was shouting. “Off the field!”

Troy Ramage and Tom Yates ignored him. They walked into the Dragons’ dugout—a makeshift affair containing a long bench, three baskets of equipment, and a bucket of dirty practice balls—and directly to where Terry was standing. From the back of his belt, Ramage produced a pair of handcuffs. The crowd saw them, and raised a murmur that was two parts confusion and one part excitement: Ooooo.

“Hey, you guys!” Gavin said, hustling up (and almost tripping over Richie Gallant’s discarded first baseman’s mitt). “We’ve got a game to finish here!”

Yates pushed him back, shaking his head. The crowd was dead silent now. The Bears had abandoned their tense defensive postures and were just watching, their gloves dangling. The catcher trotted out to his pitcher, and they stood together halfway between the mound and home plate.

Terry knew the one holding the cuffs a little; he and his brother sometimes came to watch the Pop Warner games in the fall. “Troy? What is this? What’s the deal?”

Ramage saw nothing on the man’s face except what looked like honest bewilderment, but he had been a cop since the nineties, and knew that the really bad ones had that Who, me? look down to a science. And this guy was as bad as they came. Remembering Anderson’s instructions (and not minding a bit), he raised his voice so he could be heard by the entire crowd, which the next day’s paper would announce as 1,588.

“Terence Maitland, I am arresting you for the murder of Frank Peterson.”

Another Ooooo from the bleachers, this one louder, the sound of a rising wind.

Terry frowned at Ramage. He understood the words, they were simple English words forming a simple declarative sentence, he knew who Frankie Peterson was and what had happened to him, but the meaning of the words eluded him. All he could say was “What? Are you kidding?” and that was when the sports photographer from the Flint City Call snapped his picture, the one that appeared on the front page the next day. His mouth was open, his eyes were wide, his hair was sticking out around the edges of his Golden Dragons cap. In that photo he looked both enfeebled and guilty.

“ What did you say?”

“Hold out your wrists, please.”

Terry looked at Marcy and his daughters, still sitting in their chairs behind the chickenwire, staring at him with identical expressions of frozen surprise. Horror would come later. Baibir Patel left third base and started to walk toward the dugout, taking off his batting helmet to show the sweaty mat of his black hair, and Terry saw the kid was starting to cry.

“Get back there!” Gavin shouted at him. “Game’s not over.”

But Baibir only stood in foul territory, staring at Terry and bawling. Terry stared back, positive ( almost positive) he was dreaming all this, and then Tom Yates grabbed him and yanked his arms out with enough force to make Terry stumble forward. Ramage snapped on the cuffs. Real ones, not the plastic strips, big and heavy, gleaming in the late sun. In that same rolling voice, he proclaimed: “You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions, but if you choose to speak, anything you say can be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney during questioning now or in the future. Do you understand?”

“Troy?” Terry could hardly hear his own voice. He felt as if the wind had been punched out of him. “What in God’s name is this?”

Ramage took no notice. “Do you understand?”

Marcy came to the chickenwire, hooked her fingers through it, and shook it. Behind her, Sarah and Grace were crying. Grace was on her knees beside Sarah’s lawn chair; her own had fallen over and lay in the dirt. “What are you doing?” Marcy shouted. “What in God’s name are you doing? And why are you doing it here ?”

“Do you understand?”

What Terry understood was that he had been handcuffed and was now being read his rights in front of almost sixteen hundred staring people, his wife and two young daughters among them. It was not a dream, and it was not simply an arrest. It was, for reasons he could not comprehend, a public shaming. Best to get it over as fast as possible, and get this thing straightened out. Although, even in his shock and bewilderment, he understood that his life would not be going back to normal for a long time.

“I understand,” he said, and then: “Coach Frick, get back.”

Gavin, who had been approaching the cops with his fists clenched and his fat face flushed a hectic red, lowered his arms and stepped back. He looked through the chickenwire at Marcy, raised his enormous shoulders, spread his pudgy hands.

In the same rolling tones, like a town crier belting out the week’s big news in a New England town square, Troy Ramage continued. Ralph Anderson could hear him from where he stood leaning against the unmarked unit. He was doing a good job, was Troy. It was ugly, and Ralph supposed he might be reprimanded for it, but he would not be reprimanded by Frankie Peterson’s parents. No, not by them.

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you before any questioning, if you desire. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Terry said. “I understand something else, too.” He turned to the crowd. “I have no idea why I’m being arrested! Gavin Frick will finish coaching the game!” And then, as an afterthought: “Baibir, get back to third, and remember to run in foul territory.”

There was a smatter of applause, but only a smatter. The leather-lung in the bleachers yelled again, “What’d you say he did?” And the crowd responding to the question, muttering the two words that would soon be all over the West Side and the rest of the city: Frank Peterson’s name.