Highpockets by John R. Tunis

Author:John R. Tunis [Tunis, John R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-2113-6
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2011-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

TOO EARLY TO TELL, said Dr. Jansen over the telephone. Too early to tell, said his young assistant surgeon when Highpockets met him in the corridor of the hospital. Too early yet to tell much, said the nurses outside the door of the boy’s room. That was the moment he realized the truth of the doctor’s remark, that with an operation one never knew.

He’s a strong kid, Highpockets kept saying to himself over and over. He’s young, he’s healthy, he has a circulation like the New York Daily News. But suppose things took a turn for the worse; suppose the boy actually had to lose a leg, so he could never run or play games again! All on account of a muffed fly ball and a dispute with a truck driver on a hot street in Brooklyn. If only I hadn’t got mad and started off so fast that evening, he thought. Nope. I shouldn’t feel that way about the accident. The whole thing just happened; it really wasn’t my fault at all. The kid ran out and crashed into my car, and bang! I couldn’t have helped what took place. Besides, I’m paying for the whole operation.

Only suppose it turns out badly! Suppose the kid has to lose a leg. Suppose the infection gets worse ...

These were the thoughts he juggled in his brain as he lay awake night after night in the hot hotel room during the steaming weather at the end of July. He could visit the boy for only a few minutes at a time, but did not forget the stamps for his birthday. In spite of the pain in his leg—the doctors called it discomfort—the boy’s face lit up when he saw the present, and grabbing at the package he pulled the stamps from the envelope.

Knowing nothing whatever about stamps or stamp collecting, Highpockets had bought the lot from a friendly clerk at Gimbel’s, slightly astonished to discover that this was an expensive hobby. There they were, spread out on the bedsheet, sets of new, unused stamps with the numbers on, a fact which the clerk had explained made them more valuable. After one look, however, the face of the boy again dissolved into pain. The stamps in his hand dropped to the bed.

“Yeah, thanks lots. Thanks, Mr. McDade. Only now, see, I don’t c’llect these. I don’t c’llect this kind. I only c’llect up to 1900. I don’t c’llect anything after 1900.”

Highpockets wasn’t sure what he meant by this, yet he understood that the stamps somehow didn’t fit into the boy’s collection and were not what he wanted. Carefully placing them back in their envelope, the ballplayer slipped them into his pocket. Out in the corridor he wrote down what the youngster had said. “Don’t collect after 1900.”

Perhaps it was the strain of the pennant race, perhaps he was baseball-weary after the struggle of the spring and early summer. Perhaps it was worry over the boy’s operation or just an inevitable mid-season slump. At any rate, something seemed to affect Highpockets’ batting.

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