Shoeless Joe Read Online Free Page A

from the angle of the bat where the ball is going to be hit, and, it he’s good, how hard.”

    I look down at Karin. She cocks one green eye at me, wrinkling her nose, then snuggles into my chest, the index finger of her right hand tracing tiny circles around her nose.
    The crack of the bat is sharp as the yelp of a kicked cur. Shoeless Joe whirls, takes five loping strides directly toward us, turns again, reaches up, and the ball smacks into the glove. The final batter dawdles in the on-deck circle.
    “Can I come back again?” Joe asks.
    “I built this left field for you. It’s yours anytime you want to use it. They play one hundred sixty-two games a season now.”
    “There are others,” he says. “If you were to finish the infield, why, old Chick Gandil could play first base, and we’d have the Swede at shortstop and Buck Weaver at third.” I can feel his excitement rising. “We could stick McMullin in at second, and Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams would like to pitch again. Do you think you could finish center field? It would mean a lot to Happy Felsch.”
    “Consider it done,” I say, hardly thinking of the time, the money, the backbreaking labor it would entail. “Consider it done,” I say again, then stop suddenly as an idea creeps into my brain like a runner inching off first base.
    “I know a catcher,” I say. “He never made the majors, but in his prime he was good. Really good. Played Class B ball in Florida and California …”
    “We could give him a try,” says Shoeless Joe. “You give us a place to play and we’ll look at your catcher.”
    I swear the stars have moved in close enough to eavesdrop as I sit in this single rickety bleacher that I built with my unskilled hands, looking down at Shoeless Joe Jackson. A breath of clover travels on the summer wind. Behind me, just yards away, brook water plashes softly in the darkness, a frog shrills, fireflies dazzle the night like red pepper. A petal falls.
    “God what an outfield,” he says. “What a left field.” He looks up at me and I look down at him. “This must be heaven,” he says.
    “No. It’s Iowa,” I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass smell that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoeless Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.

    “I think you’re right, Joe,” I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration.

2. They Tore Down the Polo Grounds in 1964
    We have been trading promises like baseball cards, Shoeless Joe and I. First I had to keep my rashly given vow to finish the baseball field. As I did, Shoeless Joe, or whoever or whatever breathed this magic down onto my Iowa farm, provided me with another live baseball player each time I finished constructing a section of the field: another of the Unlucky Eight who were banished for life from organized baseball in 1920 for supposedly betraying the game they loved.
    I completed the home-plate area first. In fact I was out there the very next morning digging and leveling, for besides being the easiest part to do, it was the most important to me. Home plate cost $14.95 at my friendly sporting-goods store in Iowa City. It surprised me that I could buy a mass-produced home plate, although I don’t know why it should have, considering that one can custom-order a baby nowadays. But somehow I had pictured myself measuring and cutting a section from a piny-smelling plank, the sawdust clinging like gold to my jeans. I installed it carefully, securely, like a grave marker, then laid out a batter’s box and baselines.
    But nothing happened.

    I continued to work on the rest of the field, but less