The Yeah. Welcome back everyone to one thousand Classic Short Stories and Tales.

This is your host John Haggadorn, and the last two chapters of Zeng Gray's The Young Picture.

Beginning with Ken's Day, the slow return to the tavern, dressing and going to the station,

the ride home, the arrival at the training house, the close pressing, silent companionship of

Reddy Ray, Worry, and Raymond.

These were the dim details of that day of calamity. Ken Ward's mind was dead, locked on that fatal moment

when he pitched a lowball to McNef. His friends left him in the darkness of

his room, knowing instinctively that it was best for him to be alone.

Ken undressed and crawled wearily into bed and stretched out as if he knew and was glad he would

never move his limbs again. The silence and the darkness seemed

to hide him from himself. His mind was a whirling riot of fire and in it was a lurid

picture of that moment with McNef at Bat.

Over and over and over he lived it in helpless misery.

His ears were muffled with that huge tide of sound.

Again and again and again he pitched the last ball

to feel his heart stopped beating,

to see the big captain lunge at the ball,

to watch it line and rise and soar. But gradually

exhaustion subdued his mental strife and he wandered in mind and drifted into sleep.

When he woke it was with a cold, unhappy shrinking from the day.

His clock told the noon hour he had slept long. Outside, the June sunlight turned the maple leaves to gold.

Was it possible?

...