Free The Devil's Own Rag Doll by Mitchell Bartoy

years.
    I stomped up the wooden steps to the wide porch and pounded my fist on the doorframe before coming in.
    Alex was sitting on the sofa, working the pocket of his ball glove. “What’s with the skiff, Uncle Pete? It’s a hundred-ten degrees out.”
    â€œIt might cool off later, you never know,” I said. I pulled off my hat and looked at the boy, tried to see his father in him. But Alex was softer at the edges than Tommy had ever been; he favored his mother, maybe.
    â€œYour uncle is a formal guy with his hat and all,” Eileen called from the kitchen. “At least he dresses for dinner.”
    â€œAt least I’m not wearing my spikes!” Alex’s voice wavered, a bit too loud, a bit too blustery.
    â€œHe’s crazy about baseball,” said Eileen.
    â€œWell, don’t get fresh with your mother, kid, or I’ll wallop ya.” I felt the lead weight of my joking with the boy. I wanted to make up for what he was missing since his father had been killed, but I could not think of a way. Though I had known him since he was shitting yellow in his diapers, I couldn’t just grab up the know-how to deal with a kid of any age overnight. It was clear that he felt some resentment about the way things were, but he covered it well. Fourteen years old. A bad age to be without a father.
    â€œDinner’s almost ready,” Eileen said, draining potatoes in the sink.
    â€œMaybe we’ll go see the Tigers sometime, ah?” I said. “Yanks coming to town next week.” I watched the boy closely.
    â€œMaybe,” said Alex. He shrugged.
    Alex had grown up in Pittsburgh, where Tommy had graduated from college. After I lost my eye and our father died, Tommy thought it best to pull up his family and come back to Detroit. When the boy finally saw me with the patch over my socket and the missing fingers—he was only seven or eight years old at the time—he was the only one who didn’t offer any sympathy or try to get me to look on the bright side of things.
    â€œMan oh man, Uncle Pete,” he said. “Man oh man.”
    I let him rub his thumb over the long, ragged scar on my hand, and on the sly I even gave him a look at the empty socket. He marveled like it was monkeys riding bicycles at the zoo, which didn’t bother me. Kids don’t give a damn what you look like. Alex had been goofy as a kid anyway, prone to laughing out loud when he was playing alone. He was clumsy, forever falling out of trees or getting hung up by his trousers from the top of a fence.
    Alex hadn’t changed so much even two years ago, when Tommy and I pulled him out of school to play hooky at the ball game. We had box seats just a little beyond third base, right along the rail. Even though I was loopy from lack of sleep, having worked the graveyard shift the night before, and even though I had only the one eye, I managed to snag a hot foul tip with my bare hand. Pinky Higgins, who was playing third base, cranked his head and tipped his cap to me as I was sitting back down. It went so quickly that I don’t think Alex even knew what had happened until I handed him the ball.
    â€œMan oh man, Uncle Pete,” he said. “That’s some pepper.”
    â€œThat’s the lightning right that laid down the Bomber,” said Tommy. “Laid him out like a bindle stiff on the Bowery. Crossed his eyes and—”
    â€œDon’t start telling stories,” I said.
    â€œDid you or did you not lay down the Bomber with that right hand?”
    â€œHe wasn’t the Bomber then,” I said. “He was just a kid.”
    â€œDon’t try to bog me down with technicalities, Pete. You should have seen him, Alex. What a mauler your uncle was!”
    â€œYou weren’t even there,” I said.
    â€œTechnicalities,” said Tommy. He had been saving up to try to go back to school for a law degree.
    â€œCan you teach me how to fight, Uncle