Carlton Sortwell
Beginning in June of 2012 I began writing a serial novel on this blog. It was called CARLTON SORTWELL and explored among other things Little League baseball. I finished in March of 2013. Like all of my other novels, it has strong ties to Maine, specifically Wiscasset. In fact, one of the characters, Meredith Sewall, is the daughter of Sam Sewall, the protagonist of THE ECOLOGY OF THE HEART, my e-novel on Amazon. Originally I published it chapter by chapter, but recently I have taken down all but the first. In May, CARLTON was published as a Kindle, joining two other Kindles, creating a trilogy of “Wiscasset Novels.” Two more of these are planned; when the quintet is finished, its timeline will stretch from the 1920’s to the present. I am most grateful for all of the feedback from my readers while I released Carlton’s individual chapters.
What follows is the first chapter from CARLTON SORTWELL:
PART I – SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER, 1998
Chapter 1
The Sortwells used to be a big deal in Wiscasset, a hundred years ago. Once the family was rich as kings, Massachusetts politicians who came rolling downeast to Wiscasset before the turn of the twentieth century and bought for a summerhouse a mansion on Main Street overlooking the Sheepscot River. For a while they ruled Wiscasset’s roost. Carlton knew all this well enough, but none of his people had inherited a cent of the Sortwell swag, which had completely evaporated, at least from Wiscasset. For Carlton, this was no big deal: nobody in the fourth grade at the elementary school gave a poop about his family, even though there was still a tourist attraction in the middle of the village named the Nickels-Sortwell House, and even though Carlton lived at the end of Sortwell Road.
He was a pretty tough kid, and big for the fourth grade, but he was smart and he wasn’t mean. Just tough. He got up at six o’clock each cold morning and split his kindlings; the house was heated as much with a wood stove as with an oil burner, and Carlton was already handy with an axe. His father left for work before seven; school didn’t start until eight-thirty. So he stayed home until it was time for him to leave, watching the ESPN morning report, making his breakfast, packing himself a lunch. For most of the year he bicycled to school, which was about a half mile from his house. Sortwell Road angled back to the village, so he had to ride a quarter-mile out to the Gardiner Road and make a sharp right turn toward school. On rainy days or when snow and ice came along – a blizzard out of the northeast, say – he walked down the road to where the bus turned, but if he was late, it wouldn’t wait for him, and he’d have to walk the whole way.
His mother was dead. He didn’t remember her very well; in a January storm when he was four, she slid her old bald-tired Honda Civic off Route 1 into a saltwater bog in Edgecomb. She was in the water for forty minutes until they pulled her out.
Carlton’s father, Wallace, who was a mechanic at the Honda Barn out on Route 1, blamed himself for letting her drive the old car, which he had picked up for next to nothing when some guy traded it in for an Acura. Shortly after the accident, Carlton overheard his father telling his Aunt Aster and Uncle Peter about it, in flat empty language. His mother, Tansy, had been a pretty, vivacious woman in life, but Carlton’s father said when she was pulled out of the Honda, her skin was completely washed of color. “Her face looked as gray as a bank of fog.”
Carlton liked school. He found it a safe place, ordered and clean, filled with colors. His teachers enjoyed him, and the other kids admired his size and strength. An athlete even in a rural elementary school, he liked all sports – soccer and football and softball during recess, sometimes after school, weekends on town teams. When in a vocabulary lesson he learned the word “stature,” he wrote a poem:
Scott Hatteberg, he’s the catcher,
When he squats, he hides his stature.
There were two things he loved. More recently it was Meredith Sewall, who had appeared like a miracle this year in school. She was tall and slim, as tall as he, with bright blue eyes and a chipped front tooth that he found particularly endearing. Halfway through September he hadn’t yet spoken to her, but – thanks to the alphabet – she sat in the seat in front of him. The Sewalls had moved to Wiscasset during the summer, although Carlton heard her say her father had grown up here.
She had long hair, somewhere between blonde and brown, wore it in a single braid that hung down the middle of her back to her waist. It fascinated him. He imagined it was made of spun honey. On one particular September fourth grade day, during a review session on long division, he checked to make sure no one was looking: he sat in the back seat of the row. Very carefully he reached out and moved the braid’s end – tied in a bright red ribbon – onto his desk. She didn’t feel a thing.
Leaning forward, he put the luxuriant tuft against his nose and inhaled. It smelled fresh and sweet, vaguely like flowers. He stuck out his tongue and licked it, but it was only hair, he discovered, not honey after all. The ribbon was not plastic, but cloth, with little nubs along the edges. Taking the ends, he pulled softly and the bow dissolved. Then the braid began to dissolve, as well.
Crap, he thought. But he ran his fingers through the unraveling strands, which were soft and smooth, almost still warm from hanging next to her. He felt joy crash through him like surf.
Very slowly Meredith turned her head, and the braid slid out of his fingers to fall against her back. Her whisper was neutral, no trace of irony. “So. Do you like my hair?”
“Oh, yeah,” he gasped and buried his head in his arms.
“It’s okay,” she said gently. “You can keep the ribbon.”
Baseball was his other passion. There was a town league for kids, and last spring he had played in the “minors,” the program for nine-year-olds. Nobody in the minors had positions; kids were rotated around the diamond and the dads pitched. The catcher wore a mask, but stood back far enough so basically he (or she, for some girls played, too) just picked up the ball and threw it back to the pitcher.
Carlton and his father watched the Red Sox on NESN from April to September – with a bonus this October, for Boston made the post-season. Wallace Sortwell would have gone without food and drink rather than give up his cable connection during baseball. That summer had been the first season with Pedro Martinez pitching for Boston, and the Sortwells were delighted with him. “That fastball is sneaky,” said Wallace, more than once. Often during East Coast night games and on weekends they sat on the frumpy bumpy couch, Wallace with a Bud Lite and Carlton with a Diet Coke, and watched the Bosox scuffle their way toward second place in the American League East and the wild card slot, Pedro blazing the way.
Carlton knew all their numbers: Pedro’s 45, Nomar Garciaparra’s 5, John Valentin’s 13, Mo Vaughn’s 42, Scott Hatteberg’s 10. He also kept an eye on their stats, knowing what batting averages and ERA’s were and how to compute them. His father brought home a scorebook, and together they kept the book on games they watched, discussing whether a play was a hit or an error, a wild pitch or a passed ball. Carlton saw himself as a catcher, so he was always reluctant to award Scott Hatteberg with a passed ball.
After a Saturday or Sunday game the Sortwells went outside. Carlton took up his mitt, and Wallace pitched to him, starting slow and gradually dialing up some heat. In high school he had been a pretty good pitcher for Wiscasset and still kept in some shape. After Pudge Fisk’s iconic home run in Game 6 of the 1975 Series, Wallace – who was then about the age his son was now – had found a hero. When she married him, Tansy had known at least one thing about her future: her first son was going to be named Carlton.
So on those Saturdays or Sundays after watching the Sox floundering their way to a loss or – if Martinez was on the mound – drilling their way to a win, Wallace threw until he got tired, until Carlton’s mitt hand was burning. The boy never complained.
On Friday the Sox were playing the third game of the American League Division Series against the Indians, and it was all Carlton and his friends could talk about. They were huddled in a circle near the collection of swings and slides known as the Dragon’s Lair.
“It’ll mostly be over by the time we get home,” Carlton said. “Be lucky to see the last two innings.”
“They gotta win,” said a boy.
“Nomar will go yard again,” said another. “Heck, they’re back in Fenway.”
“Nomar is awesome,” remarked a third.
Carlton agreed with all of them, and they sat around nodding like Old Testament judges.
“Yeah, but Saberhagen has gotta keep them close,” said a girl’s voice.
They looked up, surprised, and Carlton saw that Meredith had come up and was standing over them. “You like baseball?”
She just smiled, and his heart jumped into his mouth. After the bell rang but before they all went back inside, she said quietly into his ear, “Do you want to come over to my house tomorrow to watch Game Four?”
September 2012 ©
I really enjoyed the first chapter. I am a sucker for a burgeoning love story. Also, I play and enjoy baseball. My wife is quite fond of the author and his wife, so it makes sense to buy this novel. However, my wife informs me that it may not end the way I like romantic novels to end, boy gets girl. Anyway, I hope Carlton and Meredith fall in love and the sox win the World Series that year even though I know my latter request would be untrue.