The Trophies Cutler Took Back From the Curb
“Who’s next?” he said.
Jerry Underwood was next. He drove up from Hastings at six that morning. He’s a county road supervisor now, bald as an egg, and when he lifted the 1984 trophy out of the box his hands shook. “Cutler Tigers, 1984,” he read. “Jerry Underwood, pitcher.” He read all 14 names in a steady voice and put the trophy up on the shelf next to Marty’s.
Then they came, one at a time, then two and three together. Each man found his own year by the plates, read his name out loud in front of the rest, and carried it to the window. Luis Mendoza read his in Spanish first, for his father, who stood on the curb in a pressed shirt with his hat against his chest, and then again in English.
Kyle was the one who finally came down the single step to the sidewalk. He stood a few feet from the line with his hands at his sides.
“I took those out on Thursday,” he said, to Marty more than to anyone. “I never read one plate. I should have asked somebody who knew what they were.”
Nobody answered. Then a woman near the back said, not unkindly, “Well, son, you’re reading them now.”
Kyle walked to the open tailgate, took a trophy out of the box, held it up to the light, and started to read the plate.
“Cutler Tigers,” he read. “1996.”
It was the one with no bat.
“Somebody broke him,” he said, to the batter. “That was me.”
“That’s mine,” said Luis Mendoza, stepping forward. “That was mine.”
“I’ll fix it,” Kyle said. “Let me fix it.”
It was Mason, in the end, who got to hold the little bat from the curb.
I almost missed it. I was busy lifting boxes. But I heard a small voice, and I turned and there was a boy of seven with a broom taller than he was, standing at his father’s knee, looking up.
“Dad,” he said. “The one you picked up on Thursday. The broken bat. Can I hold it?”
Kyle had kept it. I had seen him pick the little gold bat up off the sidewalk, but I hadn’t known he’d carried it in his shirt pocket for two days. He drew it out now and put it in his son’s palm.
Mason closed his fingers around it. Then he did what he had watched all those men do. He walked to the tailgate, reached into the box, and pulled out the nearest trophy, a small one with a plate on the base, and sounded it out.
“Nineteen eighty-eight,” Mason read. “Cutler Tigers. And a bunch of names.” His finger moved. “Q. Pelham. Is Q. Pelham here?”
There was a silence on the street. And from the back of the crowd, a thin voice said, “I am.”
Quentin Pelham came forward slowly. I would not have known him. He’s 49, tall and stoop-shouldered, a school bus driver, with a gray mustache and big hands he didn’t seem to know what to do with. I think nobody had told him in a long while that he was worth a plate.