The Trophies Cutler Took Back From the Curb

Quentin Pelham batted .063 that summer. I know because my father told me, years later, laughing so hard he had to put down his coffee. One hit in 16 at-bats. Every other kid on that team got a team plate and no more. But Quentin got his own cup, because my father decided a boy who went to the plate 16 times and came back to the dugout anyway deserved a thing with his name on it.

He put the cup in the window next to the Tigers’ trophy. It stood there for 38 years.

The hospital room at Good Samaritan smelled of lotion and burnt coffee. Dad was propped up on three pillows with the right side of his face gone slack, and Lance was in the chair, trying to read a newspaper and failing. He had always been a man who talked. Now the words came one at a time, like coins he had to dig for.

“Lori,” he said.

“I’m here, Dad.”

“Store.”

My stomach dropped. I had promised myself I would not lie to him, and I had also promised myself I would not tell him everything. “Store’s fine,” I said, which was true.

“Window.”

He had known. I don’t know how. Maybe he’d asked a nurse, maybe somebody called, maybe a man who has stood at the same glass for 47 years simply feels the draft when it changes.

I took the tin cup out of my pocket and set it on his tray table, on the white plastic, where his good hand could reach it.

His left hand moved slowly. It found the base of the cup. His thumb passed over the brass, and I watched it travel, letter by letter, the way my mother used to read the Bible with her finger under each word when her eyes had gone bad.

“Quentin,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Pelham.”

“Yes, Dad.”

The corner of his mouth, the side that still worked, lifted. “Got. A hit.” He stopped and breathed. “Week. Nine.”

Week nine. I hadn’t known that part. I had only known he had one hit.

“Left. Field. Fell. Down,” Dad said, and his whole good side shook, and I realized he was laughing. “Quentin. Ran. Anyway.”

I stood by my father’s bed. That man could not tell the nurse the day of the week that morning, and he could tell me what happened in the ninth week of a Little League season 38 years ago. He still had every one of them. They were just waiting for somebody to put a name in his hand.

“Dad,” I said when I could. “Somebody moved the trophies out of the window. I’ve got them. They’re safe. I’m going to bring them home.”

He turned his head slowly and looked at me for a long time. Then he moved his thumb across the plate once more and said four words, one at a time.

“Not. Home. Lori. Window.”

“Dad…”

“Their. Name.” His good hand closed on the cup. “Window.”

I understood him perfectly. I’d planned a tidy shelf in the shop. He was telling me, in the few words he had, where they went.

“All right,” I said. “The window.”

Lance followed me out into the hall and put his arm around my shoulders and held on, and a nurse named Gwen went by with a cart and pretended not to see, which I will thank her for until I die.