The Spoiler Read Online Free PDF

now from the Springfield reporter’s questions.
    â€œWhere’s Sparks?”
    The first baseman shrugged also. “Split, I guess. Probably in the showers.”
    He should have guessed. After leaving the dugout area, he ran up the third base side toward the small brick building that served as the Holyoke team’s clubhouse, general office, and meeting room. He ran by the players, scanning for Sparks. Instead, he found Coach Barker.
    â€œWhere’s Sparks?”
    Lofton was out of breath. Barker did not answer.
    â€œCan I ask you a question?”
    â€œYou just did,” said Barker. Lofton ignored the crack.
    â€œJust tell me, what are Sparks’s chances of making it up to the majors?”
    â€œThis year? I don’t know about those things. The Blues have—”
    â€œI don’t mean now. I mean ever.”
    â€œSparks is a major league prospect.”
    Coach Barker looked at the dirt as he said it. It was just a line. He would say the same about any player.
    â€œThen how come you pitch him so often? His arm can’t survive that.”
    Barker kept looking at the dirt as he walked toward the clubhouse. Lofton asked again.
    â€œBecause that’s what he wants. Simple.” Barker still did not look up. He grabbed the handle of the clubhouse door. Lofton stopped. Barker had a policy, no reporters inside. At least not until you had been around for a while.
    Lofton waited outside. Lumpy, the catcher, came out dressed in street clothes, a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. If he had showered, it did not look it.
    â€œWhere’s Sparks?”
    â€œDunno.”
    â€œInside?”
    â€œAin’t seen him.”
    Lofton gave up and left the stadium.
    Outside in the parking lot he saw him. Sparks, still dressed in his Holyoke whites, stood talking to a woman. Amanti. Sparks seemed animated, upset. Amanti, on the other hand, looked placid as a cat. Maureen’s black cat, Lofton thought; then he instantly remembered Garcia was dead, run over by a car.
    Soon the conversation ended. The Amanti woman walked away, and Sparks, his head down, remained staring at the asphalt.
    â€œI miss that cat,” Lofton whispered to himself, and left Sparks alone in the darkness.
    He took the back way home, along the less well-lighted streets. A longer way, but he was in no hurry, even though he had to have his story ready for the Dispatch by early morning.
    The streets were dark and dirty; they smelled of wet ash and rotting plywood. Many of the tenement buildings had been burned, their doors and windows covered with old wood and nailed shut. Men sat on their porch steps, their wives talking to one another in the shadows behind them. Kids straddled their banana-seat Sting Rays and laughed to one another. A Hispanic man in his early twenties, long black hair tied in a ponytail, cupped his hands and yelled out in Spanish. Lofton could not tell if the man was yelling at him, only that what the man yelled was an insult. The man stood on his porch step and glared. Lofton kept walking.
    His old redbrick hotel stood on Cabot Street near a canal where the Connecticut River had been siphoned off into a green and unmoving stream between two old mills. He asked the night clerk if there had been any calls for him. No one had called, but there was a letter from his wife. He put the letter in his shirt pocket and went up the narrow stairs. He could smell the heavy odor of Puerto Rican cooking, tomatoes and grease, and could hear the thick Spanish of the family on the first floor.
    When he lay down in his room, he could not get himself to read the letter in his pocket. He got up and took a cigarette from the pack of Viceroys on top of the old Crosley refrigerator—he had cigarettes everywhere—and opened the refrigerator door for a beer. Again he went back to the bed. He still did not open the letter.
    He had met Maureen at his brother’s house in Denver. He had just come out from