Needful Things

5

“Sandy Koufax,” Mr. Gaunt said thoughtfully. “How interesting.”

“Well, not Sandy Koufax himself,” Brian said, “but his baseball card. “Topps or Fleers?” Mr. Gaunt asked.

Brian hadn’t believed the afternoon could get any better, but suddenly it had. Mr. Gaunt knew about baseball cards as well as splinters and geodes. It was amazing, really amazing.

“Topps.”

“I suppose it’s his rookie card you’d be interested in,” Mr. Gaunt said regretfully. “I don’t think I could help you there, but-”

“No,” Brian said. “Not 1954. ’56. That’s the one I’d like to have.

I’ve got a collection of 1956 baseball cards. My dad got me going on it. It’s fun, and there are only a few of them that are really expensive AlKaline, Mel Parnell, Roy Campanella, guys like that.

I’ve got over fifty already. Including AlKaline. He was thirty-eight bucks. I mowed a lot of lawns to get Al.”

“I bet you did,” Mr. Gaunt said with a smile.

“Well, like I say, most ’56 cards aren’t really expensive-they cost five dollars, seven dollars, sometimes ten. But a Sandy Koufax in good condition costs ninety or even a hundred bucks. He wasn’t a big star that year, but of course he turned out to be great, and that was when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. Everybody called them Da Burns back then. That’s what my dad says, at least.”

“Your dad is two hundred per cent correct,” said Mr. Gaunt.

“I believe I have something that’s going to make you very happy, Brian. Wait right here.”

He brushed back through the curtained doorway and left Brian standing by the case with the splinter and the Polaroid and the picture of The King in it. Brian was almost dancing from one foot to the other in hope and anticipation. He told himself to stop being such a wuss; even if Mr. Gaunt did have a Sandy Koufax card, and even if it was a Topps card from the fifties, it would probably turn out to be a ’55 or a ’57. And suppose it really was a ’56? What good was that going to do him, with less than a buck in his pocket?

Well, I can look at it, can’t I? Brian thought. It doesn’t cost anything to look, does it? This was also another of his mother’s favorite sayings.

From the room behind the curtain there came the sounds of boxes being shifted and mild thuds as they were set on the floor.

“Just a minute, Brian,” Mr. Gaunt called. He sounded a little out of breath. “I’m sure there’s a shoebox here someplace…”

“Don’t go to any trouble on my account, Mr. Gaunt!” Brian called back, hoping like mad that Mr. Gaunt would go to as much trouble as was necessary.

“Maybe that box is in one of the shipments still en route,” Mr.

Gaunt said dubiously.

Brian’s heart sank.

Then: “But I was sure… wait! Here it is! Right here!”

Brian’s heart rose-did more than rise. it soared and did a backover flip.

Mr. Gaunt came back through the curtain. His hair was a trifle disarrayed, and there was a smudge of dust on one lapel of his smoking jacket. In his hands he held a box which had once contained a pair of Air Jordan sneakers. He set it on the counter and took off the top.

Brian stood by his left arm, looking in. The box was full of baseball cards, each inserted in its own plastic envelope, just like the ones Brian sometimes bought at The Baseball Card Shop in North Conway, New Hampshire.

“I thought there might be an inventory sheet in here, but no such luck,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Still, I have a pretty good idea of what I have in stock, as I told you-it’s the key to ru

He trailed off and began flipping rapidly through the cards.

Brian watched the cards flash by, speechless with astonishment.

The guy who ran The Baseball Card Shop had what his dad called “a pretty country-fair” selection of old cards, but the contents of the whole store couldn’t hold a candle to the treasures tucked away in this one sneaker box. There were chewing-tobacco cards with pictures of Ty Cobb and Pie Traynor on them. There were cigarette cards with pictures of Babe Ruth and Dom DiMaggio and Big George Keller and even Hiram Dissen, the one-armed pitcher who had chucked for the White Sox during the forties. LUCKY STRIKE GREEN HAS GONE TO WAR! many of the cigarette cards proclaimed. And there, just glimpsed, a broad, solemn face above a Pittsburgh uniform shirt"My God, wasn’t that Bonus

Wagner?” Brian gasped. His heart felt like a very small bird which had blundered into his throat and now fluttered there, trapped.

“That’s the rarest baseball card in the universe!”

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Gaunt said absently. His long fingers shuttled speedily through the cards, faces from another age trapped under transparent plastic coverings, men who had whacked the pill and chucked the apple and covered the anchors, heroes of a grand and bygone golden age, an age of which this boy still harbored cheerful and lively dreams. “A little of everything, that’s what a successful business is all about, Brian. Diversity, pleasure, amazement, fulfillment… what a successful life is all about, for that matter… I don’t give advice, but if I did, you could do worse than to remember that now let me see… somewhere… somewhere… ah!”

He pulled a card from the middle of the box like a magician doing a trick and placed it triumphantly in Brian’s hand.

It was Sandy Koufax.

It was a ’56 Topps card.

And it was signed.

“To my good friend Brian, with best wishes, Sandy Koufax,” Brian read in a hoarse whisper.

And then found he could say nothing at all.

6

He looked up at Mr. Gaunt, his mouth working. Mr. Gaunt smiled.

“I didn’t plant it or plan it, Brian. It’s just a coincidence… but a nice sort of coincidence, don’t you think?”

Brian still couldn’t talk, and so settled for a single nod of his head. The plastic envelope with its precious cargo felt weirdly heavy in his hand.

“Take it out,” Mr. Gaunt invited.

When Brian’s voice finally emerged from his mouth again, it was the croak of a very old invalid. “I don’t dare.”

“Well, I do,” Mr. Gaunt said. He took the envelope from Brian, reached inside with the carefully manicured nail of one finger, and slid the card out. He put it in Brian’s hand.

He could see tiny dents in the surface they had been made by the point of the pen Sandy Koufax had used to sign his name… their names. Koufax’s signature was almost the same as the printed one, except the printed signature said Sanford Koufax and the autograph said Sandy Koufax. Also, it was a thousand times better because it was reat Sandy Koufax had held this card in his hand and had imposed his mark upon it, the mark of his living hand and magic name.

But there was another name on it, as well-Brian’s own. Some boy with his name had been standing by the Ebbets Field bullpen before the game and Sandy Koufax, the real Sandy Koufax, young and strong, his glory years just ahead of him, had taken the offered card, probably still smelling of sweet pink bubblegum, and had set his mark upon it… and mine, too, Brian thought.

Suddenly it came again, the feeling which had swept over him when he held the splinter of petrified wood. Only this time it was much, much stronger.

Smell of grass, sweet and fresh-cut.

Heavy smack of ash on horsehide.

Yells and laughterfrom the batting cage.

“Hello, Mr. Koufax, could you sign your cardfor me?”

A narrow face. Brown eyes. Darkish hair. The cap comes off briefly, he scratches his headjust above the hairline, then puts the cap back on.

“Sure, kid.” He takes the card. “What’s your name?”

“Brian, sir-Brian Seguin,” Scratch, scratch, scratch on the card.

The magic: the inscribed fire.

“You want to be a ballplayer when you grow up, Brian?” The question has the feel of rote recital, and he speaks without raising his face from the card he holds in his large right hand so he can write on it with his soon-to-be-magic left hand.