The Youngest Hero Read Free

by bagging
     groceries.
    In Elgin’s eyes, of course, his dad was a giant.
    “I’m praying you’ll forgive him, Momma,” he’d say.
    “I’m bitter,” I told him. “And it tears me up. But I don’t believe the man, and I don’t think I can ever forgive him. I know
     I can’t trust him. I don’t even like you bein with him. You ever smell liquor on his breath, you get away, you hear?”
    “I asked him if he still drank,” Elgin said.
    I looked at him. ‘You did? Good for you!”
    “I told him he didn’t have to tell me if he didn’t want to.”
    “Oh, I’m sure he told you. But did he tell you the truth?”
    “Yeah, he did.”
    “How do you know?”
    “He said he was a lot of things, but that he doesn’t lie when he’s sober. He has a six-pack every night after ball games to
     help him sleep, and he says he knows enough to stay off the road. On Fridays and Saturdays he has only a couple of beers becausethey’re testing drivers at the track now, and any more than that shows up.”
    “He can’t afford to lose that ride.”
    “That’s what he said, Mom. He needs the money.”
    “What about weekends? He drinkin on weekends?”
    Elgin nodded.
    “Saturday night after the races and all day Sunday he drinks a good bit. He says he’s pretty wiped out till he goes to work
     on Monday mornings.”
    I’d seen Neal in the grocery on Mondays, his eyes red and puffy, tiny slits against the sun that streamed through the plate
     glass.
    On muggy summer evenings in Hattiesburg, I had taken Elgin to the library where I taught myself the tax return filing business.
     For a year I couldn’t get him to read anything but baseball books: how-to’s, biographies, histories, you name it. If it had
     to do with baseball, Elgin read it, including every baseball novel for children.
    When he ran out of stuff at his reading level, I moved him up to adult baseball books. He expanded his vocabulary by checking
     with me on words he didn’t recognize. I’d been an honor roll student and had dreamed of college. When I didn’t know a word,
     I made Elgin look it up. Whenever I felt impatient or frustrated with him, I hid it. I had to do the loving for two parents,
     and I wanted Elgin to feel deeply loved.
    “Momma,” he would tell me, “there’s no game like baseball. It has so many things happening at the same time. It’s a team sport
     but every play is also individual. You know what I mean?”
    All that talk of baseball made me think of Neal, but I worked at never shutting Elgin off.
    “No,” I’d say. “What do you mean?”
    “Tennis and golf are sports you play alone. I mean you’re against everybody else, but it’s just you and the ball and there’s
     no team to help or hurt you. Baseball is a team sport, but when the ball is hit to you, it’s an individual sport until you
     catch it. Then it’s a team sport because you have to throw it to someoneelse. And when you’re batting, it’s all up to you. You have to get the sign, do what you’re told, and get on base. But then
     it’s a team sport because the next hitter has to do something or you die on base.”
    I understood what he was saying, but I couldn’t see the beauty, the importance of it. That was all right. Someday I would
     see him play, and that would be even better than watching Neal play. My love for him was long gone. Elgin often asked if I
     liked watching his dad play.
    “Everybody likes watchin your father play, Elgin. He’s gifted. But I suppose I resent that he’s that good at anything. Sometimes
     I wish he was as bad a ballplayer as he is a race driver.”
    Even Elgin had to laugh.
    Neal hardly ever won a race, but I guess his sponsors kept him in because he was so daring. He was always on the brink of
     disaster, scraping guardrails or tapping other cars into the infield. Fans loved him. He seemed to love to drive fast without
     having mastered the sport. Two guys he drove against graduated to the NASCAR circuit, but Neal