Michael Chabon - Summerland

Mr. Arch Brody had arrived early at Ian “Jock” MacDougal Regional Ball Field to see to the condition of the turf, and he was the first person to hear the whuffle and hum of the Zeppelina’s small motor, a heavily modified Mitsubishi boat engine. He stood up – he had been dusting the pitcher’s rubber with his little whisk broom – and frowned at the sky. Sure enough, here came that Feld – no more or less of a fool than most off-islanders, though that wasn’t saying much – in his floating flivver. As the ship drew nearer, at a fairly good clip, Mr. Arch Brody could see that the gondola’s convertible top was down, and that the Feld boy was riding beside his father. They were headed directly towards the Tooth. Mr. Brody was not a smiling man, but he could not help himself. He had seen Mr. Feld tooling around over the island many times, making test flights in his blimp. It had never occurred to him that the crazy thing could actually be used to get someplace.

“I’ll be darned,” said Perry Olafssen, coming up behind Mr. Brody. The players and their parents had started to arrive for today’s game between the Ruth’s Fluff ‘n’ Fold Roosters and the Dick Helsing Realty Reds. The boys dropped their equipment bags and ran to the outfield to watch the Victoria Jean make her approach.

“I don’t know if I’d want to be flitting around in that thing today,” Mr. Brody said, resuming his usual gloom. “Not with this sky.”

It was true. The hundred-year spell of perfect summer weather that had made the Tooth so beloved and useful to the islanders, seemed, to the astonishment of everyone, to have mysteriously been broken. If anything the clouds were thicker over Summerland than over the rest of the island, as if years of storms were venting their pent-up resentment on the spot that had eluded them for so long. It had been raining, on and off, since yesterday, and while the rain had stopped for now, the sky hung low and threatening again. In fact Mr. Brody had arrived at Jock MacDougal that day prepared to execute a solemn duty which no Clam Island umpire, in living memory and beyond, had ever been obliged to perform: to call a baseball game on account of rain.

“I bet that thing’s what’s makin’ it rain,” said a voice behind them, muttering and dark. “God only knows what that shiny stuff on the balloon part is.”

Everyone turned. Mr. Brody felt his heart sink; he knew the voice well enough. Everyone on Clam Island did.

“That man’s been messing with our sky ,” said Albert Rideout, sounding, as usual, absolutely sure of his latest ridiculous theory. He had turned up again two nights earlier, bound for someplace else, come from who knew where, with seven ugly stitches in his cheek.

“What do you know about it?” said Jennifer T. to her father. “Are you an aeronautical engineer who studied at M.I.T., like Mr. Feld? Maybe you’d like to explain to us about the Bernoulli principle?”

Albert glowered at her. His battered, pocked cheeks darkened, and he raised his hand as if to give his daughter a swat. Jennifer T. looked up at him without ducking or flinching or showing any emotion at all.

“I wish you would,” she said. “I’d get your butt thrown off this island once and for all. Deputy sheriff said you’re down to your last chance.”

Albert lowered his hand, slowly, and looked around at the other parents, who were watching him to see what he was going to do. They had an idea that he was probably not going to do anything, but with Albert Rideout, you never knew. The fresh scar on his face was testimony to that. They had known Albert since they were all children together, and some of them still remembered what a sweet and fearless boy he had once been, a tricky pitcher with a big, slow curveball, a party to every adventure, and still the best helper Mr. Brody had ever had around the drugstore. Mr. Brody had even cherished a hope that Albert might someday follow in his footsteps and go to pharmacy school. The thought nearly brought a tear to his eye, but he cried even more rarely than he smiled.

“I ain’t afraid of the deputy sheriff,” Albert said at last. “And I sure as hell ain’t afraid of you, you little brat.”

But Jennifer T. wasn’t listening to her father anymore. She had taken off at top speed across the field to catch hold of the mooring line as Mr. Feld tossed it down to the grasping, leaping hands of the children. Before anyone had any idea of what she was doing, or could have begun to try to stop her, she tugged herself up onto the rope, twisting the end of it around her right leg.

The Victoria Jean rolled slightly towards the ground on that side, then righted herself, thanks to her Feld Gyrotronic Pitch-Cancellation (patent pending). Going hand over hand, steadying herself with her right leg, Jennifer T. pulled herself quickly up to the gleaming chrome rail of the black gondola. Mr. Feld and Ethan took hold of her and dragged her aboard. They were both too amazed by her appearance to criticise her for being reckless, or even to say hello.

“Hey,” Ethan managed finally. “Your dad’s here?”

Jennifer T. ignored Ethan. She turned to Mr. Feld.

“Can I bring her in?” she asked him.

Mr. Feld looked down and saw Albert Rideout, red in the face, standing with his arms folded across his chest looking daggers at them. He turned to Jennifer T. and nodded, and stepped to one side. Jennifer T. took the wheel in both hands, as he had taught her to do.

“I was going to set her down by the picnic tables,” Dr. Feld said. “Jennifer T.?”

Jennifer T. didn’t answer him. She had brought the tail of Victoria Jean around, so that they were facing southeast, towards Seattle and the jagged dark jaw of the Cascade Mountains beyond. There was a funny look in her eye, one that Ethan had seen before, especially whenever her dad came around.

“Do we have to?” she said at last. “Couldn’t we just keep on going?”

IT WAS A weird game.

The rain came soon after play began, with the Roosters as the home team taking the field in a kind of stiff mist, not quite a drizzle. The Reds’ pitcher, Andy Dienstag, got into trouble early, loading the bases on three straight walks and then walking in a run. The Reds’ pitching seemed to get worse as the rain grew harder, and by the fifth inning, when they halted play, the score was 7–1 in favour of Mr. Olafssen’s Roosters. Then came a strange, tedious half hour during which they all sat around under their jackets and a couple of tarps fetched from the backs of people’s pickups, and waited to see what the weather and Mr. Arch Brody wanted to do. Mr. Olafssen still had not put Ethan in the game. For the first time this was not a source of relief to Ethan. He was not sure why. Mr. Olafssen had met Mr. Feld’s announcement that Ethan wanted to learn to play catcher with a thin smile and a promise to “kick the idea around a little”. And it was not as if this were the kind of long, slow, blazing green summer afternoon that, according to Peavine, baseball had been invented to help you understand. It was miserable, grey, and dank. But for some reason he wanted to play today.

“I have been accessing my historical database,” Thor said. He was sitting between Jennifer T. and Ethan, holding up the tarp over all of their heads. He had been holding it like that for twenty minutes, straight up in the air, without any sign that his arms were getting tired. Sometimes Ethan wondered if he really were an android. “The last reported precipitation at these coordinates was in 1822.”

“Is that so?” said Jennifer T.” And what does all this rain do to your big undersea volcano theory?”

“Huh,” said Thor.

“Maybe,” Jennifer T. suggested, “you’re experiencing the emotion we humans like to call ‘being full of it’.” She clambered out from under the tarp and stood up. “Shoot!” she said. “I want to play!”