The Crazy Horse Electric Game Read Online Free

He’d gladly take Sal Whitworth on today. Instead he goes to the kitchen, makes up a couple quarts of lemonade and they sit in the shade and relax.
    â€œActually,” Big Will says, “we were in a motel in Seattle, as near as I can figure. Our ‘doodads’ were in a drawer in Coho. If you tell Johnny Rivers that, you won’t see sunrise.”
    Willie crosses his heart solemnly and raises his right hand. “You know your lurid secrets are always safe with me, Dad. Gimme five bucks.”
    Willie sways gently in the hammock and his mind runs back to Missy, like it does sometimes. It isn’t so crazy anymore; not like it was right after, when he tried with all his might to force it out of his head because it was just so awful to think about. Finally his mom toldhim to just let it be there; let it come in when it wants to, and finally he learned to do that and then things were better. He wishes he were sure his mom could follow her own advice.
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    Three days after Willie’s twelfth birthday, on a hot summer afternoon just before he was supposed to go to practice, his baby sister stopped breathing. Willie had gone into her room to show her off to Johnny and she was blue. He ran into the living room screaming for his mother, couldn’t find her anywhere, then ran back to Missy’s room and shook her. She looked less blue and he thought for a brief second she was okay, but the pasty color still wasn’t right, so he ran back out, frantically searching for Eastern Montana’s Mother of the year, whose baby was dying; screaming through the house and out into the yard. His mom was standing on the sidewalk across the street talking to Mrs. Burke, and Willie babbled Missy’s name and that something was wrong, awful wrong, she was sick or maybe knocked out but that couldn’t be because she was still in her crib, and his mother flew across the street and almost got hit by a car and Willie stood out by the sidewalk on their side of the street, down from the steps, under the flowering crab-apple tree that never put out any crab applesand hardly any flowers either and he heard frantic movement inside and his mother yelling. He watched her helplessly through the open door, dialing the phone, then dialing again like maybe she couldn’t get the number right, and then she burst out of the house with Missy like a rag in her arms and threw her into the front seat of the car and was gone.
    That was the last time Willie saw his sister. She was six months old. The doctor called it SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
    A chink appeared that day in the Weaver family coat-of-arms; left things just a little off. They all assured each other it was no one’s fault, even went to therapy for a little while over in Helena, trying to find something to do with the ugly specter of guilt that knifed into Willie’s gut on its own whim, with no notice; and into his mother’s gut, too. Big Will held the family together with his powerful, stoic presence, and finally time began to dull the sharp, searing edge.
    But Willie could see the Weaver universe had shifted, if almost imperceptibly, like when the sound is a tiny bit off the picture. For the first time there was something Big Will couldn’t take head on, something he had to turn his back on, and there seemed no way to get it back on course, really.

CHAPTER 3
    By the bottom of the seventh inning, the Crazy Horse Electric game belongs to Willie Weaver; it is his to win or lose. Samson Floral is ahead 1–0 on Willie’s triple in the fifth, a hard drive to deep left field that scored Petey Shropshire after his second walk of the day. Crouched into his normal batting position, Petey has the strike zone of a growth-stunted Munchkin, and though he rarely hits over .200, he gets on base a lot.
    Willie has had a great day on the mound so far. No batter has reached second base and only twice has he pitched to more than three hitters in an