Graves' Retreat Read Online Free PDF Page A

some miracle elixir. “Indeed it does!”
        Edmonds patted him again. “That’s how I like my answers, Les. Short and enthusiastic.” He turned sharply to Byron Fuller. “Isn’t that right, Byron?”
        Byron snapped to attention the way he’d learned in military school. “That’s exactly how you like them, sir. Short and enthusiastic.” Edmonds nodded to both of them and then strode back to his office.
        Byron said, “I’ve got to admit something to you, Les.”
        “What’s that-sir?”
        Byron smiled. “It’s just the two of us now. You don’t have to call me ‘sir.’ Anyway, that’s Clinton’s idea, not mine.” He leaned closer. “I’ve been sort of jealous of you.”
        “You have?” For a terrible moment, Les wondered if Byron had discovered the truth about him and Susan.
        “Yes.”
        “But-why? I mean you’re intelligent, you’re well educated, you come from one of the best and oldest families in town and-”
        “But I’m not a pitcher.”
        Les laughed out loud in relief. Baseball. That was all. “Oh, God, Byron-that’s nothing.”
        “Well, if you would have heard Susan last night when she got back-”
        “She wouldn’t be any different about a track and field star or a football star.”
        "I’m not so sure. You seem to have caught her fancy. When we were growing up together, she used to taunt me about how much I liked sports. She’d never even go to a baseball game until-” He paused to think. “As a matter of fact, the first game she went to was this year. To see you pitch.”
        “Well, why don’t you try out for the team yourself?”
        Byron shrugged. “That’s the problem. I'm tall, reasonably well-built, and I’ve certainly got the enthusiasm.”
        “Then what’s stopping you?”
        Now it was Byron’s turn to laugh. “I’m missing only one thing, my friend.”
        “What’s that?”
        “Manual dexterity. I’m the world’s clumsiest man.”
        And with that, Byron went to his office and Les to his teller station and the afternoon began.
        Kids with freckles and kids with chocolate smeared over their faces and kids with bright pieces of straw between their front teeth lined the fence along the bottom of the bleachers watching another scrimmage game between the municipal team’s first and second teams.
        Behind them sat the adults. Word had spread quickly through the town that Cedar Rapids would play Sterling. Local citizens considered baseball second in sacred duty only to churchgoing. So the stands were filled. Rich men in fine-cut coats and silk ties sat side by side with workingmen in denim shirts and pants who, in turn, sat next to farmers from the periphery of the city. They sat in the last of the sunlight on sanded wooden boards smoking cigars and cigarettes and pipes and drinking three-cent glasses of sarsaparilla and champagne cider and birch beer. Most of the women drank a local favorite called the Spafizz. It cost a nickel. A few people let balloons go up against the blue sky. In six days, July 4, the game would be played and not even another war between the states would be as important as the forthcoming event.
        Les Graves was on the mound.
        By now, nearly six o’clock, he had faced ten batters. Four had struck out. Two had grounded out. One had walked. And two had flown out.
        The eleventh batter now stepped to the plate.
        Les, who had studied photographs of all the great pitchers, had spent two previous summers learning the vagaries of overhand pitching. At first he had considered overhand sort of feminine, but gradually he saw that you had more control and could throw more kinds of pitches.
        He snapped one across the plate.
        “Strike!” called the umpire.
        The boys along the fence broke into a unison chant: “Les! Les! Us!”
        The