Voices of a Summer Day Read Online Free PDF

But later he had understood what the coach was talking about.
    At any rate, nobody, including Benjamin, was playing with passion on that August afternoon in 1927. He didn’t get a hit all day. In the eighth inning it began to rain, and he slipped and misjudged a long fly that went over his head and rolled into the woods and let in two runs that won the game for Canoga. It was the first error he had made on a fly ball all season. Nobody said anything to him when he came in from the outfield, except Bryant. “Tris Speaker,” Bryant said bitterly. Speaker was the greatest center fielder of the period and the irony was not subtle. “I’m ashamed of you. I’m putting somebody else in for you. You’re no damned good. And you’re not in the lineup against Berkeley tomorrow, either. You’re a jinx, Federov.”
    What a stupid man, Benjamin thought, I didn’t realize how much he wanted to go to Boston. No wonder he’s only second string for Syracuse. He’s probably too dumb to remember the signals.
    The boy who took Benjamin’s place was a pudgy fifteen-year-old named Storch, who struck out on three straight called strikes without taking his bat off his shoulder, and bobbled a grounder in the outfield to let in two more runs for Canoga.
    Benjamin was still too young and too committed to victory for whatever team he played on to get any satisfaction out of Storch’s disgrace and for the rest of the day and evening he kept to himself, brooding and unhappy and wishing the season were over and that he was leaving for home that night.
    The next morning he didn’t even watch the basketball game. He took a canoe out on the Canoga lake by himself and paddled out far enough so that the cries of the spectators around the court could not be heard. He lay back in the spotty sunlight and listened to the water rippling against the canoe and read The Saturday Evening Post. There was a picture of an old cowboy on the cover, listening to a Victrola with a horn. The old cowboy was holding a record marked “Dreams of Long Ago” and was crying. Inside the magazine there was a story that Benjamin read with interest. What was there to help her now? Emily asked herself rather strangely. What was to prevent her, for example, from going straight down over the hill to the gypsy camp yonder, and the violin that was calling, calling, into the dusk?
    Canoga won the basketball game, too, and Bryant lost his temper with everybody. On the long trip that afternoon to Camp Berkeley, the boys were sullen and there was no singing in any of the trucks.

1964
    F EDEROV SHIFTED A LITTLE closer to home plate because the sun was in his eyes now. Andy Roberts was still playing, but the other third baseman had been replaced by Joe Cerrazzi, whose father ran the liquor store in town. Cerrazzi had played for West Virginia a few years before and was the best ballplayer in town, and he made Federov pay attention to the game again. Cerrazzi moved constantly, went up on his toes before each play, with his hands hanging low and loose below his knees, ready for anything. During the inning he swooped in on a bunt, which he picked up with his bare hand, throwing it underhand in the same movement to nip the runner at first base. Then in the next inning, with a man on third, he cut across in front of the shortstop on a slow roller, charged the ball, kept the runner from moving with a quick feint and threw out the batter with a clothesline peg.
    “Hey, Joe,” Federov said, “what’re you wasting your time for? The Mets need you.”
    “I’d rather sell booze,” Cerrazzi said. “I’m an intellectual.”
    He was the first batter up in the next inning and connected squarely with the ball. It went in a screaming drive to dead center. Federov watched Michael turn and race, in what seemed like hopeless optimism, toward the fence that marked off the boundary of the field. At the last moment Michael leaped high against the fence, hitting hard against the wire and falling to