The second pitch almost hit him in the head and he had to dive forward—across the dirt surrounding home plate and into the infield grass. Ball two. Everyone laughed at the explosion of dust created by Owen whacking his uniform; yet Owen made us all wait while he cleaned himself off.
My mother had her back to home plate; she had caught someone’s eye—someone in the bleacher seats—and she was waving to whoever it was. She was past the third-base bag—on the third-base line, but still nearer third base than home plate—when Owen Meany started his swing. He appeared to start his swing before the ball left the pitcher’s hand—it was a fast ball, such as they are in Little League play, but Owen’s swing was well ahead of the ball, with which he made astonishing contact (a little in front of home plate, about chest-high). It was the hardest I’d ever seen him hit a ball, and the force of the contact was such a shock to Owen that he actually stayed on his feet—for once, he didn’t fall down.
The crack of the bat was so unusually sharp and loud for a Little League game that the noise captured even my mother’s wandering attention. She turned her head toward home plate—I guess, to see who had hit such a shot—and the ball struck her left temple, spinning her so quickly that one of her high heels broke and she fell forward, facing the stands, her knees splayed apart, her face hitting the ground first because her hands never moved from her sides (not even to break her fall), which later gave rise to the speculation that she was dead before she touched the earth.
Whether she died that quickly, I don’t know; but she was dead by the time Mr. Chickering reached her. He was the first one to her. He lifted her head, then turned her face to a slightly more comfortable position; someone said later that he closed her eyes before he let her head rest back on the ground. I remember that he pulled the skirt of her dress down—it was as high as midthigh—and he pinched her knees together. Then he stood up, removing his warm-up jacket, which he held in front of him as a bullfighter holds his cape. I was the first of the players to cross the third-base line, but—for a fat man—Mr. Chickering was agile. He caught me, and he threw the warm-up jacket over my head. I could see nothing; it was impossible to struggle effectively.
“No, Johnny! No, Johnny!” Mr. Chickering said. “You don’t want to see her, Johnny,” he said.
Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
Later, I would remember everything. In revisiting the scene of my mother’s death, I can remember everyone who was in the stands that day; I remember who wasn’t there, too—and what everyone said, and didn’t say, to me. But the first visit to that scene was very bare of details. I remember Chief Pike, our Gravesend chief of police—in later years, I would date his daughter. Chief Pike got my attention only because of what a ridiculous question he asked—and how much more absurd was his elaboration on his question!
“Where’s the ball?” the police chief asked—after the area had been cleared, as they say. My mother’s body was gone and I was sitting on the bench in Mr. Chickering’s lap, his warm-up jacket still over my head—now, because I liked it that way: because I had put it there.
“The ball?” Mr. Chickering said. “You want the fucking ball?”
“Well, it’s the murder weapon, kind of,” Chief Pike said. His Christian name was Ben. “The instrument of death, I guess you’d call it,” Ben Pike said.
“The murder weapon!” Mr. Chickering said, squeezing me as he spoke. We were waiting for either my grandmother or my mother’s new husband to come get me. “The instrument of death!” Mr. Chickering said. “Jesus Christ, Ben—it was a baseball!”
“Well, where is it?” Chief Pike said. “If it killed somebody, I’m supposed to see it—actually, I’m supposed to possess it.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Ben,” Mr. Chickering said.
“Did one of your kids take it?” Chief Pike asked our fat coach and manager.
“Ask them—don’t ask me!” Mr. Chickering said.
All the players had been made to stand behind the bleachers while the police took photographs of my mother. They were still standing there, peering out at the murderous field through the empty seats. Several townspeople were standing with the players—mothers and dads and ardent baseball fans. Later, I would remember Owen’s voice, speaking to me in the darkness—because my head was under the warm-up jacket.
“I’M SORRY!”
Bit by bit, over the years, all of it would come back to me—everyone who was standing there behind the bleachers, and everyone who had gone home.
But then I took the warm-up jacket off my head and all I knew was that Owen Meany was not standing there behind the bleachers. Mr. Chickering must have observed the same thing.
“Owen!” he called.
“He went home!” someone called back.
“He had his bike!” someone said.
I could easily imagine him, struggling with his bike up the Maiden Hill Road—first pedaling, then wobbling, then getting off to walk his bike; all the while, in view of the river. In those days, our baseball uniforms were an itchy wool, and I could see Owen’s uniform, heavy with sweat, the number 3 too big for his back—when he tucked his shirt into his pants, he tucked in half the number, too, so that anyone passing him on the Maiden Hill Road would have thought he was number 2.
I suppose there was no reason for him to wait; my mother always gave Owen and his bike a ride home after our Little League games.
Of course, I thought, Owen has the ball. He was a collector; one had to consider only his baseball cards. “After all,” Mr. Chickering would say—in later years—“it was the only decent hit the kid ever made, the only real wood he ever got on the ball. And even then, it was a foul ball. Not to mention that it killed someone.”
So what if Owen has the ball? I was thinking. But at the time I was mainly thinking about my mother; I was already beginning to get angry with her for never telling me who my father was.
At the time, I was only eleven; I had no idea who else had attended that Little League game, and that death—and who had his own reason for wanting to possess the ball that Owen Meany hit.
2
The Armadillo
* * *