Chapter 4

She left me. I got home after a long Western swing, nine games in ten days with a win and a no-decision for me, and she was gone. Her closet was empty and so was her side of the dresser. A couple of pots and the big, iron frying pan were missing, some books and the ugly potted plant that sat in the dining room window was gone. So was the cat.

She left me a note, one of those little, sticky things, on the TV. It said, “Sorry.”

Well, I just sat down on the floor and cried. I did. But I couldn’t hardly blame her. I mean I’m away half the time, and when I get home, I’m usually tired and grouchy. So, I couldn’t hardly blame her. But it hurt like hell.

Anyhow, I asked everybody and then I went looking every chance I got for the next week or so. I wasn’t worried about her. She had plenty of money, gobs of it, and she might have gone anywhere in the world, but I figured she might go back to where she had her first home, out in the Valley. I knew she liked horses.

The team was doing good despite a lot of injuries ... I think we had used about a dozen outfielders by August and had a first-baseman playing left and a shortstop in right and some rookies in center. I think there were guys playing I hadn’t even met. But we were winning, winning two out of three regularly. We were fifteen games in front and headed for the playoffs. My baseball life was good, couldn’t be better except I still didn’t have a decent curve.

And the operation fixed my eyes and relieved the pressure on my brain, so that was good. But I was worried about her. She’s smart but sometimes we all do dumb things. And she is too darn pretty.

I was doing good. I was back in the rotation after a couple of first-line pitchers got hurt and happy to be out of the bullpen. And I was learning how to throw a slider on account of I still didn’t have a curve.

I didn’t tell anybody about Babe disappearing, but it sure did gnaw at me. I talked to her folks and they claimed they didn’t know anything about it. I talked to her friends and got nothing except funny looks.

So one Saturday morning in early September, when we had a 7 o’clock game, I drove out to her old stomping grounds and showed the picture in the magazine to some people, and one guy in a gas station smiled and nodded and said, “By damn, I saw her. She’s a hot one, driving one of those electric jobs, Taraus, no, what’s it called?”

“Tesla, I think,” I said and he nodded and said she was headed north, down the Valley and stopped to see if they charged electric cars.

So I drove north, looking here and there and seeing a lot of fences and a good number of horses. Weren’t any poor people out that way far as I could see. I wondered where they hid them `cause I know there’s always some poor people around.

I stopped in a country store that looked like it had been there since old Jubal Early’s time or maybe Mosby’s, that might be closer I suppose. `cause old Mosby, he owned the Valley back then, in the Civil War which in the Shenandoah Valley was particularly uncivil. And unforgotten. I showed the woman behind the counter Babe’s picture, and she smiled at me and said, “Nice lady. She sells hay, `bout two miles west, toward the hills, Jamesville Road, you’ll see her sign. Sells good hay, she does., top price. It’s the old Wilkins place”

Since it was about noon I bought some chocolate chip cookies and went hunting, feeling funny inside, half scared I guess. Getting closer, that’s what it was.

Nailed to the splitrail fence along the narrow road was a bright sign that said “hay for sale.” I stopped and saw an old white house, an even older barn, reddish, with a silo and some out-buildings and then fields of grass and some rows of corn and a few chickens.

I drove in and there were a bunch of young men and boys doing various chores and out in the field there was a green tractor with tall, red machine moving through the high grass, cutting wide rows.

I got out and went to the backdoor. No one answered my knock and one of the boys came up and told me, “She’s mowing, out yonder.” He pointed.

‘You guys live here?” I asked.

He smiled and shook his head. “We’re from the home, come out here in the summer `less its raining, on Saturdays. She feeds us and pays us, picks us up and take us back to the subway.”

“The home?” I asked.

“Over near C. U.,” he said. “It’s an orphanage.” I nodded and walked out into the field and watched the small John Deere rig moving toward me, cutting the hay in front and bundling it up and spitting it out in rolls behind.

Babe was driving.

She saw me, stopped the machine, turned it off, hopped down and walked toward me, smiling and wiping her face with a big kerchief that had been tied around her hair.

“Took you long enough,” she said and she kissed my cheek and hugged me. I saw a couple of the boys stop to watch us.

‘You didn’t leave many clues, and I’ve got a job.”

“Uh huh, but you did figure it out.”

‘Knew you had a thing for horses.”