Sunset Park Read Online Free PDF Page B

can’t be certain, but he wonders if she isn’t thinking about her parents and their abrupt and terrible deaths, the bad luck that took them from her when she was still so young, still so much in need of them, and he regrets having brought up the subject, feels ashamed of himself for having caused her this hurt. To lift her spirits, he tosses the paper aside and launches into another story, another one of the many stories his father used to tell him, but this one is special, it was folklore around the house for years, and he hopes it will erase the gloom from her eyes. Lucky Lohrke, he says. Has she ever heard of him? No, of course not, she answers, smiling ever so slightly at the sound of the name. Anotherbaseball player? Yes, he replies, but not a very distinguished one. A utility infielder for the Giants and Phillies in the late forties and early fifties, a career .240 hitter, of no particular interest except for the fact that this fellow, Jack Lohrke, a.k.a. Lucky, is the mythic embodiment of a theory of life that contends that not all luck is bad luck. Consider this, he says. While serving in the army during World War II, not only did he survive the D-day invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, but one afternoon, in the thick of combat, he was marching along with four other soldiers, two on either side of him, when a bomb exploded. The four other soldiers were killed instantly, but Lohrke walked through without a scratch. Or this, he continues. The war ends, and Lucky is about to get on a plane that will fly him back home to California. At the last moment, a major or a colonel shows up, pulls rank on him, takes his seat, and Lucky is bumped from the flight. The plane takes off, the plane crashes, and everyone on board is killed.
    This is a true story? Pilar asks.
    One hundred percent true. If you don’t believe me, look it up.
    You know the weirdest things, Miles.
    Wait. There’s still one more to go. It’s nineteen forty-six, and Lucky is back on the West Coast, playing baseball in the minor leagues. His team is on the road, traveling by bus. They stop somewhere for lunch, and a call comes for the manager, telling him that Lucky has been promoted to a higher league. Lucky has to report to his new team rightaway, on the double, and so rather than get back on the bus with his old team, he gathers up his belongings and hitchhikes home. The bus continues, it’s a long trip, hours and hours of driving, and in the middle of the night it starts to rain. They’re high up in the mountains somewhere, surrounded by darkness, wetness, and the driver loses control of the wheel, the bus goes tumbling into a ravine, and nine players are killed. Awful. But our little man has been spared again. Think of the odds, Pili. Death comes looking for him three times, and three times he manages to escape.
    Lucky Lohrke, she whispers. Is he still alive?
    I think so. He’d be well into his eighties by now, but yes, I think he’s still with us.
    Some days after that, Pilar finds out the scores of her SATs. The news is good, as good or better than he hoped it would be. With her unbroken run of A’s in high school and these results from the test, he is convinced she will be accepted by any college she applies to, any college in the country. Ignoring his oath about not eating in restaurants, he takes her to a celebratory dinner the next night and struggles throughout the meal not to touch her in public. He is so proud of her, he says, he wants to kiss every inch of her body, to gobble her up. They discuss the various possibilities in front of her, and he urges her to think about leaving Florida, to take a stab at some of the Ivy League schools up north, but Pilar is reluctant to consider such astep, she can’t imagine being so far away from her sisters. You never know, he tells her, things could change between now and then, and it won’t do any harm to try—just to see if you can get in. Yes, she answers, but the applications are expensive,