The Fall of the Year by Howard Frank Mosher

Author:Howard Frank Mosher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

6

Night School

All citizens of the Kingdom Republic will enjoy complete personal freedom so long as their actions and beliefs do not encroach on the freedom of other Republic citizens.

—The Kingdom Republic Constitution, as quoted in Father George, “A Short History”

AT SIXTY-EIGHT, with chronic angina, Father George needed more help in the parish than I could give him that summer. From time to time a priest from Memphremagog or Pond in the Sky would come to Kingdom Common to celebrate Sunday mass when Father George simply didn’t feel up to doing it himself. At other times he seemed much the same as ever. But as the summer wore on, it was evident that the job was becoming too much for him.

One of my duties that summer was to drive Father George to his doctor appointments and, two or three times a week, out into the country for short rides. While returning from one of these excursions one afternoon, soon after I’d visited Sam Rong in Staten Island, he asked me to pull up beside the baseball infield at the south end of the common. We got out and walked over to the unpainted bleachers along the third-base line, where Father George sat down. Although it was a hot day, I had brought his lap blanket from the car. I arranged the blanket over his legs and sat down beside him.

Father George leaned over and pulled up a few blades of grass. He tossed them into the air to see which way the breeze was blowing, in or out, an old power hitter’s habit. It was something the greatest scholar and third baseman in the history of Kingdom County had done a thousand times while kneeling in the on-deck circle or waiting at third for the surprise bunt, the smashing line drive, the soaring, windblown foul fly ball. But today the grass fell straight back to the field; there was no wind at all.

As we looked out over the diamond in the late-afternoon sunlight, I suddenly began to laugh. I’d remembered an evening here on the ball field, one of many, when I was twelve or thirteen. I was crouched at home plate with my twenty-eight-inch Adirondack while Father George, then in his fifties, stood out on the mound beside a gallon pail of baseballs and threw me one pitch after another, trying to teach me how to hit a curve ball.

“What’s funny?” he said.

“You and me. Us. Remember those batting practice sessions? You were pretty tough on me.”

“I was tough on all my players.”

“You were tougher on me. One evening you were out there with a bucket of balls—I can see us right now—and you told me if I didn’t learn to wait on your curve and go with it, I’d never amount to anything.”

Father George grinned. Though he’d lost weight recently, his voice was still strong, and as wryly humorous as ever. “Did I say that?”

“You did. It was almost too dark to see the ball, at least until it was right on me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.