It was like baseball, he supposed. There were the home-run hitters and there were the guys who threw out the opponents' runner at the plate, who stole bases quietly and without a big fuss, who executed double plays as if they could do it in their sleep. Charlie Arnott was that kind of hero, Ganny thought. And that was not such a bad kind of hero to be.

He climbed the stairs to his room thinking these things and stopped unaccountably on the threshold, reluctant to enter. He was reluctant, he realized, because of what he feared he might find on his dresser.

He scoffed at himself. What-did he think that just because the Waitkus Baseball was back on his dresser, the c.o.c.kroach would come back to the ball?

"What's the matter, kid? Fall asleep on your feet?" Nikolai shoved past him into the room, flicking on the light as he went in.

Ignoring his brother's use of the humiliating word, Ganny made himself step across the threshold-made himself walk to the dresser and look.

The Baseball sat there, next to his box of marbles. Empty. Not a c.o.c.kroach in sight.

He relaxed, laughing at himself and wondering if he'd inherited his imagination from Baba Irina or if she'd merely fed it up with her stories.

oOo Summer began and the days settled into a pattern of ch.o.r.es and movies and clarinet practice and ballgames usually attended by Ganady, Nikolai, and Yevgeny, occasionally by Mr. Ouspensky and less frequently by their Da. Since Vitaly Puzdrovsky had a.s.sumed a manager's role at the machine shop, he seemed to have less time these Sat.u.r.days to spend on such things as baseball games.

If his attendance at ma.s.s was any standard, Nikolai would soon be eligible for sainthood, or at least beatification. He had gotten on well enough with Mrs. Guercino, but Mr. Guercino never spoke a word to him except to grunt when he said h.e.l.lo. Stefano continued to hate his guts.

Nothing much came of this hatred for some time, for Nikolai was careful in his attentions to Annie, timing them to her brother's absences. But, inevitably, there came another evening upon which Nick hadn't arrived home by the time his younger brother was abed, and the household was filled with a tense but hopeful dread.

When Ganady awoke in the morning to see the familiar and comforting lump in his brother's bed, he was relieved. But relief quickly turned to curiosity and curiosity to frustration. While Nikolai snored beneath his covers, Ganady burned to know where he'd been so late and if anything had been said when he arrived home.

As he debated whether to wake his brother, their mother called up the stairs that breakfast would be on the table in a matter of minutes.

The lump that was Nikolai stirred and mumbled.

"Nikki!" Ganady called.

"Yeah?" came m.u.f.fled from beneath the covers.

"What time did you get home?"

"Late."

"How late?"

"I don't know...around midnight."

"Why? Where were you?"

"At the movies."

"Until midnight?"

"I took Annie home."

"Until midnight?" Ganady's voice squeaked.

"On the way home, I had a long talk with her brother."

Ganny sat up. "A talk? What did he say?"

"That he hates my guts and doesn't want me around his sister."

"You already knew that."

"And how," said Nikolai.

"Did Da yell?"

"You hear yelling?"

"Well, no."

"Then I guess not."

"Mama didn't cry?"

"Mama wasn't up still. Only Da."

"But he didn't yell?"

"No yelling."

"Nick? Ganny?" Their mother was at the bottom of the stairs. "Breakfast, you lazy boys!"

Ganady hopped out of bed. "Better hurry," he said. "Mama will want us to beat the rugs today before we go to the game."

Nick was silent. He hadn't moved. "I don't think I'm going to the game today."

"Not go to the game?" Ganny repeated through the fabric of a half-pulled-on tee shirt. "Why not? You sick?"

Another, more disturbing thought occurred to him. He pulled the tee shirt full on and circled Nick's bed to stand where he could see his brother's dark thatch of hair poking out of the covers.

"Are you in trouble with Mama and Da?"

"No, but I think Steve Guercino is." Nick shook off the covers and sat up, leaving his younger brother speechless.

oOo "He looked like one of those monsters from the Sat.u.r.day matinee last week."

"The zombies or the frogmen?" Yevgeny wanted to know.

"The zombies."

It was the middle of the second inning. The two boys sat along the first base line, watching the Phillies trot onto the field.

"He had a fat lip and two black eyes and his jaw was swollen so bad he had to eat oatmeal for breakfast. His hands were swollen, too," he added as an afterthought.

"You mean, he hit back?" asked Yevgeny incredulously.

"Here we go, boys. Peanuts."

Mr. Ouspensky slid into his seat, red-and-white-striped bags of hot, roasted peanuts in his gnarled hands.

"Who's got a fat lip?" he asked Ganady, pa.s.sing out the treats. "That big brother of yours?"

The boys glanced at each other. The old man seemed to have exceptionally sharp ears.

Mr. O leaned toward Ganny. "Girl trouble, eh?" He winked.

"Yeah. How'd you guess?"

"Eh. Not so much a guess. I talked to your grandmother. Or maybe I should say, she talked to me."

And the entire congregation of Megidey Tihilim, Ganny suspected. Given a few sabes, every member of every Jewish synagogue and glayzele tey society in the neighborhood would know that Nikolai Puzdrovsky had "girl trouble" as Mr. O had so eloquently put it.

Ganady thought back to the morning; breakfast had turned into a family council. Puzdrovskys great and small had gathered around the dining room table with Nikolai holding the place of honor at one end, his little sister clutching one of his swollen hands. She had cried when she first saw him, and peered up into his damaged face, her chin a-quiver.

Before them, the oatmeal had grown cold.

"Perhaps," said Da, "you should stay away from this girl after all. Perhaps these are not our kind of people."

Nick had not looked up from his untouched oatmeal. "Antonia is our kind of people. It's just her brother. Well, and her Da isn't sure about me either."

"There, you see?" asked Da. "A child learns from his parents how to hate or love. How can you keep company with a girl whose family is against you?"

"Your Da is right, Nikolai," said Baba Irina. "A man can't abide in a land where he has no friends."

"I have a friend. Antonia. She's the only friend I need. And besides, her mother likes me."

"But not her father," Da reminded him.

Nick had merely shrugged. "Not so much."

"They're not our people," Da said again, as if to convince himself.

Mama sniffled.

Nick looked up and met their eyes at last. "Don't you see? That's the whole problem. They don't think I'm their people. But I'm her people. It's just like with you and Da. You told me that, remember?"

"Oh, Nikolai," murmured Mama.

"I love her," Nick said. "I'm going to marry her."

"Oh, Nikolai," repeated Mama, but there was something different in her voice this time. And in her eyes, Ganady was certain he saw the Sheyn vi di Levune look.

Da had gotten up from the table and walked to gaze out the window into the garden.

"We are Catholic; they are Catholic," he'd said after a moment and Baba Irina had made a dainty snort. "We go to the same congregation. We sit in the same pews. We use the same confessionals. We say the same prayers. We hear the litany in the same priestly language. Do they imagine they are better because they do this on a different day?"

Ganady had pondered that, for it seemed almost profound to him.

Now, he said as much to Mr. Ouspensky.

"Religion is like baseball," the old man said, nodding thoughtfully. "Maybe they are one and the same."

"Huh?" Yevgeny grunted around a mouthful of peanuts.

"Your families worship at Saint Stanislaus. Ganny's Baba and I worship at Megidey Tihilim. And there's the Lutheran church over on South 4th and Saint Michael's Orthodox up north on the zibete. And everyone is there out of love. But everyone believes their love is true love; that their rabbis or priests are the best. Now, you and Yevgeny and I, we also worship here at the church of Saint Connie Mack. Don't we think our priests are the best?"

Ganady had never thought of baseball as religion or Connie Mack as a cathedral or the Phillies as priests, but the idea did not seem at all strange. In fact, it had a certain rightness.

After a moment's thought he said, "No. They aren't the best, but they're ours."

"Exactly," said Mr. O.

oOo Ganady had an entire week to contemplate the similarity between baseball and religion. It was a week in which Nick kept a low profile; waiting for the swelling in his various body parts to subside.

His father had asked him to consider staying a comfortable distance from Annie Guercino until perhaps her brother should leave home to take up his own life, but by Thursday night he had relented. A week of his eldest son moping about the house looking tragic was enough to make him reconsider.

That, and a word or two from his beloved Ravke.

"The boy is miserable," she told her husband as they sat on their stoop in the moonlight of a perfect summer evening.

She was unaware that her youngest son, sitting in his window cas.e.m.e.nt with a stack of comic books, was hearing every word.

"How would you have felt if one of our families had said we should ignore one another?" she continued.

"Our families, except for your mother-G.o.d bless her-were back in Poland when we met. Those that still lived."

"Ah, but if they had been there! A Jew and a Catholic, Vitaly. They would have said the same thing as the Guercinos: that Vitaly, he's not our people. That Ravke-she's not a believer that our Vitaly should marry her."

"But..." said Vitaly.

"You know I'm right."

"But..." said Vitaly.

"Even though we were all Poles together, they'd have said it: not our kind. Not our faith."

"But, I'm not saying that," said Vitaly.

"Oh, so it doesn't come from our mouths. But doesn't it amount to the same thing if we ask our boy to heed it when it comes from the mouths of others?"

Da was silent and Mama said in a soft voice that Ganny had to strain to hear: "Would you have stayed away, Vitaly? Would you have kept your distance from me if our families said so?"

"Hm," Da said, which was no answer at all.

His answer-his real answer-came on Friday night at supper just as Baba Irina began the Ritual.