The Father Contract

By Xlibris US

My story is about a boy, a rather remarkable boy, who
worships a veteran Red Sox baseball player. At times,
this player may remind you of the Babe. At times, he
may seem like someone capable of removing the Babes
so-called curse. The story, though, is more about the
boy than it is about the player. This youngster is like no
one youve ever come in contact with, though youd be
fortunate if you did. You see, he possesses quite unusual
powers of his own. Sometimes those powers may even
approach what we might all too casually dismiss as
magic.
In any event, he is, to quote the name of a popular TV
show, a person of interest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493170814

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by A.J. Arrington.

ISBN:     eBook     978-1-4931-7081-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 02/05/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

586916

CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Conclusion Of Installment One

For Joe, Casey, John, and the Gang,

who always wanted this story,

And for Paul, the editor who made it all possible.

FOREWORD

History is what we say it is.

~Lenin, Napoleon, Voltaire, and others.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

~Mark Twain.

People tend to forget that the word history contains the word story.

~Ken Burns.

Mr. Burns, of course, was talking about personal story within the context of a larger truth. But let’s take this one step further and consider the merger of truth and fiction. For example, Homer’s account of the Trojan War in The Iliad. A real war. A fictionalized rendering. Or closer to our time and on a far less grand scale, the Babe Ruth story.

Early in the last century, the mighty Boston Red Sox were the feared power of the new American League. Five World Championship banners flew in newly-constructed Fenway Park: 1910, 1913, 1915, 1916, 1918. Then the Red Sox traded their young pitching star, a player nicknamed Bambino, to a team called the New York Highlanders, soon to become the New York Yankees. After that, for more than eighty years, the Boston Red Sox didn’t win a World Series. Fenway Park, aging gracefully, became venerable Fenway Park. Five World Championship banners still flew over its grandstands, but eighty years without a Championship is a long time. Fans and sportswriters began referring to the Curse of the Bambino. And that’s where truth and myth merged.

That particular story happens to form a backdrop to my own—which is, admittedly, a work of fiction. Unless, however, we can admit to universal truths of human nature, which means that what unfolds here is indeed the way things could’ve happened…

My story is about a boy, a rather remarkable boy, who worships a veteran Red Sox baseball player. At times, this player