in Tacoma and Seattle. But the people of Clam Island knew that this saying was not entirely true. They knew – it was one of the first things they learned as children about their home – that at the westernmost tip of the island, in the summertime, it never rained. Not even for a minute and a half. A tiny, freak weather system ensured that this zone of the island, perhaps a square mile in all, knew a June, July, and August that were perfectly dry and sunshiny.
Clam Island, seen on a map, looked like a boar that was running west. It had a big snout – called the West End – tipped with a single long jagged tusk. Most of the locals called this westernmost spit where it never rained in the summer the Boar Tooth, or the West Tooth, or just the Tooth; to others it was always known as Summerland. The Tooth was where the island’s young people went to while away their long vacations, where the club picnics, league barbecues, and summer weddings were put on, and, above all, it was where the islanders went to play baseball.
They had been playing there since shortly after the arrival of the Clam Island pioneers in 1872. At the back of Hurley’s Hardware, in town, there was a photograph of a bunch of tough-looking loggers and fishermen, in old-time flannels and moustaches, posing with their bats in the shade of a spreading madrona tree. The picture was captioned CLAM ISLAND NINE, SUMMERLAND, 1883.
For a long time – so long that men were born, grew up, and died in the arms of the game – baseball flourished on Clam Island. There were a dozen different leagues, made up of players of all ages, both male and female. Times had been better on Clam Island in those days. People were once more partial to eating raw shellfish than they are now. An ordinary American working man, not so long ago, thought nothing of tossing back three or four dozen salty, slippery bivalves at lunch. The Clam Boom and the universal love of baseball had gone hand in hand for many years. Now the clam beds had been mostly spoiled by plankton blooms and pollution, and as for the young people of Clam Island, even though some of them could hit, run, and catch the ball, the sad truth was that none of them really cared for baseball very much. Many preferred basketball, and others preferred riding dirt bicycles, and some just liked to watch sports on television. By the time of the season I want to tell you about, the Clam Island Mustang League was home to just four teams. There were the Shopway Angels, the Dick Helsing Realty Reds, the Bigfoot Tavern Bigfoots – and the Roosters, who had, as has already been mentioned, lost all of their first seven games. In the grand scheme of the universe, losing the first seven games of the season is nothing too grave, but to the Roosters it felt awful. Ethan was not the only one who had contemplated quitting the team.
“Now, listen, you kids,” Mr. Olafssen said, that afternoon, gathering the Roosters around him before the game. Mr. Olafssen was a very tall, thin man with hair the colour of yellowed newspaper, and a sad expression. He’d had the expression even before the season began, so Ethan knew that it was not his fault that Mr. Olafssen looked so sad, but nevertheless whenever he looked at his coach, Ethan felt guilty. Kyle Olafssen, Mr. Olafssen’s son, played third base, and he was also the Roosters’ second-best pitcher after Danny Desjardins. He could throw pretty hard for a kid, but without much control, and since he was always in a bad mood the kids on the other teams were a little afraid of him. That was probably the best thing that Kyle had going for himself as a pitcher – he was a sourpuss, and wild.
“I know some of you left the last game feeling a little down,” Mr. Olafssen continued. “And it was a tough loss.” Ethan could feel, like a kind of magnetic force acting on the fillings of his teeth or something, how hard Mr. Olafssen was trying not to look at him, and his three errors, with those sad pale eyes. Ethan was grateful to Mr. Olafssen – nothing made Ethan Feld happier than the knowledge that nobody was looking at him – but he blushed all the same. “Now, you look at our record, you see oh and seven, I know it’s hard not to feel a little down. But what is a record? It’s just some numbers on a piece of paper. It doesn’t reflect who we are as people, and it doesn’t reflect who we are as a team.”
“Actually,” said a deep voice, “if you had enough data, you could reduce every human being to a series of numbers and coordinates on a piece of paper.”
The Roosters, who had been listening to Mr. Olafssen with a certain amount of trust, hope, and willingness to believe him, now burst into derisive laughter. Mr. Olafssen frowned as his point was spoiled. He turned, looking very annoyed, towards Thor Wignutt, who stood, as ever, just outside the circle of kids.
Though he was the same age as all of them, Thor towered over the other Roosters and was, in fact, the tallest eleven-year-old on Clam Island, as he had been the tallest nine-year-old, and the tallest five-year-old, and the tallest toddler, too. The top of Thor’s head reached almost to the base of Mr. Olafssen’s throat, and he was, if anything, broader in the shoulders. Thor was a kind of prodigy of growth in every way. He had a voice like stones rolling in a metal drum, and dark hair on his lips and cheek. He wore heavy black glasses and was generally regarded as smart, but unfortunately he was under the impression – most of the time – that he was a synthetic humanoid named TW03. TW03, as Thor never tired of explaining, was the most sophisticated and marvellous piece of machinery in the history of the universe. But of course like all synthetic humanoids, for some reason he wanted nothing more than to be human. Thinking of himself as somebody who was not human, but was trying very hard, as you might imagine, often got in the way of Thor’s relations with other kids his age. With his big arms and shoulders, he looked like he would be a fabulous power hitter, but usually he was out on three pitches.
“Thor,” Mr. Olafssen said.” What have I told you about interrupting me to make these ridiculous statements of yours without offering the slightest shred of evidence to back them up?”
During the last game, Thor had distracted everyone with his theory that there was an active underground volcano directly beneath the Tooth that was responsible for keeping the place dry in the summertime. He claimed to be able to detect seismic disturbances with his “logical sensor array.” His constant reiteration of “one of these days that thing is going to blow this entire quadrant to atoms” had irritated Mr. Olafssen nearly as much as Ethan’s poor play in the field.
“Can you prove it, Thor?” Mr. Olafssen wanted to know. “Have you got a piece of paper with me written on it?”
Thor blinked. He was standing right behind Jennifer T., who was the only person on the team, and perhaps on the entire island, who ever bothered to treat Thor like a more or less normal person. She had even been over to his house, where, it was said, Mrs. Wignutt, immensely fat, lived inside a clear plastic tent breathing air out of a tank. According to Jennifer T., however, there had been no sign of any tent, or of Thor’s gigantic mother, for that matter.
“It’s true,” Thor insisted finally. He was very stubborn in his ideas, which Ethan supposed was the case with synthetic humanoids, given the fact that they were, well, programmed. Ethan was probably the person, after Jennifer T., who was the friendliest with Thor, but he never treated Thor like a more or less normal person. It was clear to Ethan that Thor was not.
“Have you brought us any charts, Thor?” Mr. Olafssen pressed on. He seemed determined to beat Thor at his own game.” Do you have any proof at all?”
Thor hesitated, then shook his head.
“Then I’ll thank you to keep your chipset occupied with solving calculations involving balls and bats.”
“Yes, sir,” Thor said.
“Now, then,” Mr. Olafssen began, glancing across the field at the Angels, whose coach, Mr. Ganse, was passing out a pair of wristbands, in the Angels colours of red and blue, to each of the boys on his team. The Angels had told everyone about the wristbands that they would be receiving that afternoon, as their reward for having won all of their first seven games that season. They were each ornamented with a picture of the great Rodrigo Buendía, the star slugger for the
