The Trophies Cutler Took Back From the Curb
“I thought they were all gone,” Quentin said. “I drove by the window Friday and it was empty and I figured that was the end of it.” He crouched down in front of Mason, joints cracking. “Son, how’d you come to be holding that bat?”
“My dad picked it up,” Mason said. “He didn’t want it to get lost.”
Quentin looked at Kyle. Something went across his face, and Kyle looked at the sidewalk.
“Well,” Quentin said. He stood the 1988 trophy upright on his palm and looked at the names. “Mr. Tate gave me a little cup besides, you know. Most Improved. I got my hit in the ninth week. Left field fell down.”
“He told me the same thing,” I said, behind him.
“He did?”
“Yesterday. In the hospital. He’s got your cup right there on his tray. He said your whole name, and then week nine, and he laughed so hard his whole good side shook.”
Quentin Pelham stood up and put his hand over his eyes in front of twenty people, and nobody looked away from him, and nobody said a word. After a moment Marty Hollis walked over and set his big hand flat between Quentin’s shoulder blades and left it there.
By noon the window was full.
I don’t think I can explain what it looked like. The sun came in from the east and lit three oak shelves of gold, rank on rank. Forty years of September. And along the bottom shelf, the smallest ones, the tin cups and plain brass plates my father had given to the boys the town would otherwise have overlooked.
Luis Mendoza’s 1996 trophy stood in the middle, its hands still empty, until the bat could be put back.
Before the crowd broke up, Shannon Reiter came out of the store. She had Mason by the hand. She walked right up to me.
“Lori,” she said. “I want to say something and I don’t want you to answer it.”
“All right.”
“I told Kyle on Thursday night that I felt sick,” she said. “He said it was only trophies. And I kept thinking, somebody made them. I’m not going to ask for them to come down on Monday. The rep can say what he wants. This is the window. It was always the window. We just didn’t know it.”
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it.
“Kyle’s going to build a case, glass doors, so they don’t gather dust. And a new plate for every one that’s cracked or worn. He wants to go see your father.”
“Come Sunday at four,” I said. “Bring Mason. The nurse will bend for a boy.”
Saturday night I drove to Kearney and asked my father straight out whether he wanted the men to come see him. I told him it was his say, not mine and not theirs. He took his time.
“Yes,” he said. “Names.”
So on Sunday afternoon four of them stood in the hallway outside his room at Good Samaritan with their caps in their hands, and Marty Hollis had a trophy tucked under his arm like a newborn. The nurse at the desk, Gwen, looked at the four of them, looked at the clock, and said, “I believe it’s a slow afternoon. You can go in by twos.”