“This year the ratings have slipped. Do you know why?”

  Scooter watched the blonde’s bat fall short by fifty feet and waited for the speakers to announce strike one before he said, “Yeah.”

  “There isn’t a team in the league that’s getting enough hits,” the assistant director continued gamely. “That’s why we’ve enlisted the help of people like you, Scarlata. Famous baseball players.” His pause lent his next words weight. “That’s why we’re paying you the money we are. You’re going to get a hit.”

  “I’ll try,” Scooter said.

  “No.” The assistant director’s voice sounded as firm as the voices of assistant directors ever get. “Let me say it again. You. Are. Going. To. Get. A. Hit. The first pitch will be a slider, not too fast. Understand?”

  Scooter nodded.

  “If you miss it—and you won’t, I know you won’t—the next will be a change-up.”

  Scooter nodded again.

  “I’m going to let you choose the third. I’ll have plenty of time to set it up, so what would you like?”

  Scooter spat over the rail. “I guess you never saw me play.”

  “You were before my time.” The assistant director sounded happy about it. “What would you like?”

  “Fastball, in on the hands.”

  The assistant director looked dubious. “A fastball? Are you sure?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  “Okay, I’ll tell them. Have you met Jack Keech?”

  Scooter shook his head, but the expert who had told him the fog was closing in said, “We’ve been chatting.”

  “Good. Jack’s our boat man. He’s worked on all the balls and raced speedboats.”

  Keech said, “I’m the ball boy, in other words.”

  Scooter nodded. “I got it.”

  “After you get your hit, you take the wheel so we can show you there. Then you get out of the way and let Jack do it.”

  “I’m a singles hitter.” Scooter spat at the rail, wishing it had been in the assistant director’s face. “That’s what I been hearing all my life. Just a singles hitter. In forty-six—”

  “We need a home run,” the assistant director put in.

  Scooter ignored him. “I hit for the cycle. That’s a single, a double, a triple, and a homer, all in one game. You ever go to Cooperstown?”

  “STRIKE TWO!” blared the loudspeakers.

  “I have,” Keech said.

  “You see me there? My picture? My number?”

  Keech shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  “You didn’t, ’cause I’m not in there. To get in, you gotta be a slugger. You gotta hit lotsa homers. Nothin’ else matters, see? Four gold gloves? Don’t matter!”

  “We understand,” the assistant director said. “Now, for God’s sake, shut up and listen. We have to have a home run from you. Not a single, not a double, not a triple. A home run. And the last thing in the world we need is for your hit to be caught in the infield. You know the rules.”

  Scooter shrugged. “Sure. And I know this cruise boat’s no burner.”

  Keech said, “Ship, Scooter. This is a cruise ship.”

  Scooter wanted to spit again. “Not a fast one, it ain’t.”

  “You’re correct,” the assistant director told him, “It isn’t. If you’re caught in the infield, the Sunrise will be out. Out automatically, under the rules. If you’re caught in the outfield—well, it won’t take them long to get their team on the ball. The Sunrise might easily be thrown out at first. Even if it isn’t, we don’t need a single. We’ve got to have a home run. It means the ball has to touch land—”

  Keech put in, “Over the fence, Scooter.”

  “Correct. Without being caught. It can beach, or tie up at a pier. That doesn’t matter. As soon as a single member of your team steps ashore, that’s a—

  The loudspeakers blared, “STRIKE THREE.”

  “Put on your earphones, Jack,” the assistant director whispered.

  “YOU KNOW HIM FROM THE WHITE SOX, THE BRAVES, AND THE WORLD CHAMPION PITTSBURGH PIRATES! OUR NEXT BATTER WILL BE ONE OF BASEBALL’S LEGENDARY SHORTSTOPS. I MEAN NONE OTHER THAN OLD NUMBER EIGHTEEN HIMSELF! NONE OTHER THAN THE GREAT SCOOTER SCARLATA!

  · · · ·

  The bat was papier-mâché, but surprisingly heavy at the head where the firework was. Scooter took a few practice swings for the TV cameras, as he had been told he must, feeling his shoulder muscles loosen with every swing. What would the first pitch be? A slider?

  Then it was time to walk the narrow gangplank (with nearly invisible black nylon railings) away from the ship’s side and into the eternally nodding batter’s box twenty-five feet on the wrong side of the rail. A light flashed overhead as soon as his foot crossed the line, a signal to the Charlotte Amalie that she might launch the ball when ready.

  “One thing for sure,” Scooter muttered to himself, “I’m not gonna get hit by no pitch.”

  For a moment he rested the bat at his feet. Then the ball was on the way, blue lights blazing, coming fast but not too fast. He threw as it faded toward the edge and off the bright plate, his bat vanishing in the shining water a yard or more in front of the ball’s prow and a yard or two short.

  Someone passed him a new bat.

  There was a wait that seemed interminable until the next pitch. At last, the glowing blue boat rushed at him like a fastball—only to slow at the final moment. He threw, and the frantically waving arms of the team aboard the ball knocked his bat to one side and into the water.

  Strike two.

  A solemn bat boy bought a new bat, reminding Scooter that the assistant director’s boat expert had called himself the ball boy. Smiling grimly, Scooter gripped the new bat and took a few more practice swings.

  The fastball was practically standing on end by the time it crossed the plate. It swerved in “on the hands” as promised, and he had only to toss the bat in front of its streaking hull.

  For a split second, ball and bat seemed frozen in time: his bat a scant yard above the golden water of the plate, the dark hull framed in blue about to strike it.

  Then the bat exploded with a bright, harmless flash and an impressive bang, showering ball and plate with glittering confetti.

  Behind him, the loudspeakers went crazy, hysterical in their synthetic excitement. Behind him, his teammates were cheering, or diving, or jumping from the rail into the warm Caribbean. The batter’s box had no nylon rope railing. He had not swum or dived for years before being picked for this; but there had been three days of frantic practice before he boarded the Sunrise, and practice every day in the big salt-water pool on the Lido Deck while he and his team waited for the game to start.

  The ball boy held out a life vest. Scooter stuck his arms into it, and the boy pulled its straps tight and tied them expertly. Kicking off his shoes, Scooter stepped to the edge of the batter’s box and made a creditable dive, knowing that some two hundred million watched.

  · · · ·

  He saw the boat’s soft blue aura as soon as his head broke water. It was moving toward him—not fast. In a moment more, the expert he had spoken to on deck was pulling him out of the water. “Grab on, Scooter!” Like everyone else on board, he was dripping wet.

  “I been picked up by a ball a lot,” Scooter remarked, pushing his hair away from his eyes. “Only this’s the only time it happened after I got a hit.”

  “Right. Take the wheel. We’ve only a got a couple more seconds before the end of the break.”

  Scooter did.

  “Pulling it toward you will speed us up, but don’t try it too fast. Get the feel. Push it forward to slow down. Way forward will reverse the engines, so don’t. I’ll take it as soon as the camera’s off us. Get into position.”

  Scooter did, half sitting in the tiny seat behind the wheel, both hands on the rim.

  “Great.” There was a long pause. “Now go.”

  He jerked the wheel back, and a woman shrieked. The blue lights blazed again, and the whole boat shuddered and leaped as if flung forward by an explosion. In a moment more, the bow had risen so high that he could see only by peering around it.

  “I told you not to do that!” the expert shouted.

  Scooter scarcely heard him. He had discovered a small screen to his left. In it, the Island Princess, the Palm Coast, and the rest of infield were closing in.

  “Expectin’ a dribbler, were ya?” Scooter grinned and headed for the third base line, still holding the wheel all the way back and glorying in the deafening clamor of the engines.

  “Okay! I’ll take it now!” The expert beside him put a hand on the wheel.

  Scooter knocked it away.

  “I can do it! You can’t!” There was so much wind noise, so great a thunder from the engines, that the expert could scarcely make himself heard.

  The Island Princess had been playing third wide; now she was churning water to get on the line. At shortstop, the Palm Coast had almost stopped moving altogether. Scooter chuckled.

  “We lost two or three people!” The expert yelled.

  “They got jackets! Umpire’ll pick ’em up!”

  The blonde who had struck out was at his left elbow. Saying something he could not hear, she linked an arm through his. Her pink halter looked black in the boat’s blue light. It was soaked, and clung like paint.

  “Ever see a hit split short and third?” Scooter shouted to her. “Watch this!”

  An overhead view in the small TV screen showed a dozen men hurriedly readying a glove on the Island Princess’s big foredeck.

  Scooter edged over the wheel until their boiling wake diverged from the base line, then edged it over a quarter turn more. “They’re gonna be scared they’ll run into each other! Watch!”

  The blonde’s reply was inaudible, but she smiled warmly and tightened her grip on his arm.

  “I never hit lots of homers! Only this’s the first hit I could steer!”

  The boat expert rushed him, shoving him aside and clawing at the wheel. Scooter’s knee caught his groin a split second before Scooter’s fist landed a hard, hooking left just below his chin. Grabbing the expert’s headphones as he went down, Scooter tossed them over his shoulder into the boiling wake.

  “There’re gonna thmash uth!” Terrified, the blonde made herself heard.

  “Naw!” Scooter shook his head. “They don’t wanna hit.”

  As lofty as beetling cliffs, the sharp prows of the cruise ships were closing on them—already nearly closed—when Scooter steered between them. A second later he heard the grinding crash of their collision, too loud for even his roaring engines to drown out.

  The blonde was pointing ahead and shouting.

  “Sure! I see him! That’s Martinique, left field.”

  The expert was standing again. “You moron! We’re going right to her!”

  “You bet we are!” Scooter grinned. “Ain’t no ball so hard to catch as one coming straight at you fast.”

  It was perhaps thirty tense seconds later when the Martinique fired her glove, silver rockets spreading a wide and gleaming net. They raced beneath it, and most of the team turned to watch it fall into the sea.

  · · · ·

  The white line of breakers appeared long before the rocks—long, in this case, being seven seconds at least. In those seven seconds, the expert made one last desperate attempt to take the wheel, before they hit. And failed.

  A home run! He had hit a home run! What did the Hall of Fame matter now? Yet he would be in the Hall of Fame. He would be there because he would have to be there. He would have to be there because every visitor would want to know where he was.

  It seemed to him then that the water was sinking below him. Eight or ten stories down, though wisps of fog, he could see three teammates stumbling ashore—see himself, still wearing the orange life vest the bat boy had strapped on him, rolling in the surf. See his body, and hear the cheers that shook the stadium.

  Higher, until the circle of the horizon was visible on every side. Had he not waited in circles like this before?

  Far away, where the dark sky met a darker sea, they were coming for him. Coming, and they shone, filled with a white radiance brighter than their spotless uniforms. They were coming, and he knew them—he, who had studied their photographs so often: Ernie Banks and Pee Wee Reese.

  Both waved, and the cheers were louder than ever, cheering that felt as if it would never end.

  Uncaged

  I ought never to have read the letter. More signally, I ought never to have returned to the Ivory Coast. The letter found me at Cape Town. It was accompanied by another, from one Dubois. His went something like this:

  For the present, monsieur, I have the honor to hold the position of your good friend M. Bercole, who is, alas, somewhat ill. This is to say, I am acting administrator general of this district. It is to be hoped that my term of office will be but short. The letter I enclose reached my hands only yesterday, though it has been weeks, it may be months, in the hands of others. Rest assured, monsieur, that it has been read not by M. Bercole nor by myself, and that those who placed it in our hands had not the capacity.

  I have saved the letter itself. I will transcribe it here.

  My Dear Friend:

  Do not be offended, I beg you, by this salutation. When one drowns, any passerby is the dearest of friends. You may recall that the administrator general advised Joseph to shoot me. For me to appeal to him now would be hopeless. Your eyes were filled with a pity which I then resented. Yes, I was such a fool! Joseph is dead. He was killed by a leopard, the workers say. There is no work for them and no chance of payment should they work. They are fewer each day. I am imprisoned in this cage. Sometimes I am fed. More often I am not. Please help me! You look so kind! Please help! Marthe Hecht

  I went. What else could I do? A trading schooner returned me to the Ivory Coast, a voyage of thirty-two days that might easily have taken much longer. Bercole was clearly too ill to accompany me, though he wished to go. Dubois, the new man, flatly refused. To give him his due, he had nearly worried himself into a breakdown, crushed under the new responsibilities fate had heaped upon him; the trek up-country would have done him good. I tried to persuade him, but he was adamant. Seeing that argument was useless, I left as soon as possible, with four porters and a native gendarme called Jakada. He had brought the letter and so was a potential source of information about the Hecht plantation and specifically about the condition of the late owner’s wife. I write “potential” because I really got few facts from him. She was kai gaibou, a leopard, meaning possessed by a panther spirit. When I inquired concerning her cage, he affirmed that she was locked inside it—but soon spoke of her roaming at night in search of prey. When I reminded him that he had told me she was caged, he shrugged.

  I have written earlier of the baboons. They were as numerous as ever and seemed even more curious about us than before. They were, I believe, simply bolder in their curiosity because my party was smaller than Bercole’s had been. Here I ought not, perhaps, record an experience that I still find uncanny and has no connection that I can see to what was to follow. Between one step and the next I found myself seeing myself and our party through the eyes of a baboon. It (or perhaps she) was normal, as were the rest of the troop, her friends and relations. I was utterly askew, a pale cripple forced to walk on my hind legs alone and covered with scabs. This took, as I have tried to say, no time at all. Then it was over, leaving me with the feeling that something intended for a baboon had been delivered to me by mistake. Before I had taken another ten strides, a young female ran up to me, felt the material of my shorts, and took my hand. For the next quarter hour or so we walked on in that manner, the young female reaching up to clasp my hand and walking easily on three legs. At length she released me and bounded away. I have no explanations to offer. Not even for a moment did I suppose that before a week had passed I would be shooting these same baboons.

  Reaching the Cavally, we forded it and marched upriver for three long days, fording it again when we came in sight of the plantation that had been Hecht’s. It appeared deserted, its fields returning to jungle. Seeing it, I felt quite sure his wife was dead.

  We had come too far, however, to return to the coast without investigating, and it seemed at least possible that a few items of interest might be found in the bungalow. I told Jakada and the porters we would camp here for the night, and perhaps for two nights. When we had set up our camp, Jakada and I entered the bungalow.

  We had no more than set foot in it when a woman’s voice called, “Oku? Amoue?” Tired and sweating as I was, I ran toward it.

  The cage was built against the side of the bungalow. A door of the kitchen gave easy access to it, and to the wide slot in its barred door through which trays were passed. I saw her then, her hands gripping the bars, and saw, too, the unmistakable joy she felt at the sight of me. It touched my heart, and touches it still. Yes, even after all that has happened.

  I would have released her at once if I could, but the cage door was closed with a formidable padlock, and the key was nowhere in sight. When I asked Marthe whether she knew where it was kept, she replied, “Please do not call me by that name. It is not mine. Joseph used it because he wished the world to think me French. Though I loved him, I never loved the name he gave me.”

  I was tempted to question her then, but the chief business of the hour, as I then saw it, was to free her. Thus I asked again where I might find the key.

  “Joseph always returned it to his pocket,” she said. “He used to visit me in the evening. I feel quite certain you understand.”

  Of course I said I did, and went off looking for the key.

  After an hour or so it occurred to me that if I had been in Hecht’s position I would certainly have kept the key in my pocket, and not in a drawer of my desk or any other such place. Some of his employees might well have been minded to assault his wife or even to kill her. They might perhaps have accomplished her death by thrusting spears between the bars of the cage, but it would have been difficult and perhaps impossible. If they could enter her cage, however, one slash of a cane knife might easily have been enough. Those who had found Hecht’s body might well have taken the key, but where were they now? Except for Hecht’s widow, who could not leave, the plantation seemed utterly deserted.