When We Were Wolves

When We Were Wolves Read Free Page A

Book: When We Were Wolves Read Free
Author: Jon Billman
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beginning. The umps were Faith Rotarians who didn’t see any benefit in another Indian coup. Job couldn’t get a called strike, and most of his pitches lacked snap and heat and the Whiskers spent the evening whacking breadbasket strikes into the outfield and sometimes beyond. I knew Job was convinced that throwing the game would be an offering of something more important than the purse money we would never see, a tithe of weather that would bring the Indians something more. Losing would mean rain, a final truce. Job believed he could control the hellish dry spell and its curse on all the land. He was now willing to lose on purpose, a personal sacrifice that he believed with all his soul would bring a saving rain. The other eight of us weren’t convinced and wanted to beat the Whiskers like a drum.
    Job kept shaking off the pitches I called, hurling instead easy fastballs, sliders that didn’t slide, and change-ups that weren’t much of a change. In the fourth I started to the mound to talk some sense into him, but how do you avoid a sermon at a time like that? Our eyes met. He pointed at the storm cell that was building over the Black Hills to the west. I realized I had nothing to say to him that would matter and walked back to my crouch behind the plate. More slow fastballs.
    But the Indians battled hard at the plate as well. A pitching duel this wasn’t. Both teams batted around two innings in a row.

    Indians were up one at the bottom of the ninth, 13 to 12, Whiskers on first and second, two out. From his one-armed stretch Jobchecked the runners. Then again. He shook off my signs until we agreed on a fastball. His eyes were yellow and sorry, like the chiefs on old tobacco cans. He hadn’t licked his fingers or gone to the rosin bag or the seam of his pants for a phonograph needle all game.
    Then Job put a dull fastball into the wheelhouse of Joe Garner, the Whiskers’ cleanup man. Garner stepped into the bucket, swung through, and massacred the easy mushball. A rainmaker. Otis Downwind in left ran underneath it just to say goodbye. The stitched horsehide that Job had always said possessed the spirit of the horse was still traveling skyward into the humidity when the wind came fast and quiet, ambushing the ball, pulling it down into the surprised glove of Otis Downwind, and ending the game.
    From my knees in the dirt—the knees I can feel the big storms with now—I could hear the wall of wind coming toward the diamond like a night train.
    Loud claps of thunder boomed just west of center field. Lightning struck the prairie with a dozen electric arrow’s, “Smell the rain!” the crowd yelled. “The miracle! Do you smell the rain! At last, thank God, the rain!”
    The crowd stood, noses skyward, mouths open, like baby birds. For a moment, the Indians, too, were transfixed by the rush of wheat under the black umbrella of clouds. Then, silently, eight of us ran off the field to the car, Otis desperately throwing himself into the crank, trying to turn the engine over.
    “Job, come on!” I yelled over the wind, but he didn’t move, didn’t even turn to look at us. By now, everyone but Otis and me were piled in the car.
    The crowd reached to touch the weather, and Job, still on the mound, face to the sky, waved his gloved hand and stump in the air in exaltation. Thunder cracked as the engine fired up and the crowd yelled louder. The car sputtered slowly away from the field,picking up speed toward the dirt highway, as Otis and I ran beside it, still calling for Job.
    The storm rolled eastward across the prairie, onto Faith, with the sound of a thousand horses racing to the river, and the wheat was beaten with hailstones the size of baseballs.

e’re on top of my aluminum trailer in Hams Fork, adjusting my satellite dish because the earthquake jounced it cockeyed and instead of the French porn channel Wayne showed me I could get, I now have snow. “I got a dad in Preston, Idaho,” says Wayne, pointing to the

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