Beauty and the Brain by Alice Duncan Page A

one had commented on
Colin’s pedantic little lecture. She was afraid the man was going
to be taken in severe dislike if he kept it up. “Indeed, there is.”
She brushed her hands together in a businesslike manner. “Okay, so
it’s now one to nothing, Indians.” She glanced over to the bench.
“You guys ready?”
    Jerry Begay stood up, grabbed a baseball
bat, tugged his hat down, and walked to the plate. He looked mighty
serious about the game. She gave him a smile; he nodded and took
his stance. She gave a mental shrug. Some people took sports too
seriously.
    Gilbert Drew squinted at the plate and the
man beside it, tugged the brim of his own cap like a real baseball
player, gave another comical windup, and let fly. Jerry swung and
missed.
    “Strike one!” Brenda called. She glanced at
the bench to find Colin glowering at her. She glowered back, stuck
out her tongue, and then felt foolish.
    Jerry didn’t flinch. He only repositioned
himself and awaited the next pitch. Gil lobbed it into the dirt a
foot in front of him this time. Both Jerry and Brenda had to jump
back to avoid getting hit on the bounce.
    Brenda threw the ball back to Gil. She had a
good, strong arm and her aim was good, and she was proud of it. No
fainting lily, she. No, siree. She could bat and field with the
best of them. Again she glanced at. Colin Again he glared back, the
rat.
    The third pitch went right smack over the
plate, and Jerry banged a hard line drive to center field. The
center fielder, a set designer named Wilbert Penny, couldn’t handle
it and hurt his hand trying. Then the right and left fielders
collided behind him, since neither was looking out for the other,
and the Indians had another home run.
    After wincing in sympathy, Brenda couldn’t
help but laugh. What a bunch of clods. She applauded Jerry around
the bases and cheered him home. This was fun, in spite of some
sourpuss men she could mention.
    They called the game complete after five
innings. Brenda figured it was a mercy since by that time the
Indians led eight to nothing. Colin had struck out once and homered
once. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or irked by his
relative ease with a bat and ball. She’d been kind of hoping he’d
be clumsy and awkward at the plate. Well, you couldn’t have
everything.
    She was pleasantly tired, unpleasantly
sweaty, and very cheerful when she, Martin, Jerry, and Colin walked
back into the lodge to wash up for lunch. “Will you join us for
evening church services, Jerry?” she asked as they walked.
    He gazed at her blankly, and she realized he
probably wanted nothing whatever to do with the white man’s church
but couldn’t figure out how to say so without being rude. Colin
huffed irritably, a habit he had when in her company, and which she
disliked intensely.
    “You might find it interesting,” she said in
an attempt to cover her gaffe.
    “No, thank you,” he said in that grumbly,
echoey voice of his.
    “You know,” she said, seizing the
opportunity to extricate herself from a socially awkward situation,
“it’s too bad the pictures aren’t able to accommodate sound. You’ve
got a great voice.”
    The look he gave her was almost as blank as
the one she’d received when she’d asked about church. She sighed,
wishing somebody else would step in here and save her from more
fumbling. She wasn’t generally this inept in social situations. She
wasn’t generally talking to Indians, either.
    “It’s an interesting thing about voices,”
Colin said suddenly, surprising Brenda, who hadn’t even considered
the possibility of rescue from that source. “So many things go into
the tonal quality of a person’s voice.”
    “Do they?” She hated that she was
interested, but she was interested in everything and couldn’t help
it. “Like what?”
    “Oh, many things. Forgetting the physical
for a moment—after all, anything from a cleft palate to a bronchial
condition to a sore throat can affect the sounds that issue