“It’s all right, Mr. Finn.”
He sighs again and pats me on the shoulder. “We’ll never understand, Matt, but we’ll always be in awe of boys like you and Cole. You survivors. You’ll always have a place here. Even when you leave, you’ll never really be gone.” He nods in agreement with himself, stands silently for another moment, and then nods again and makes his way back to the front of the store.
I bring out the rest of the fruit and then ask Mr. Finn if I can take my break early. I go outside and lean against the back door by the dumpster. I look down at my boots. I got them new for this job, and they’re finally starting to look genuine, the leather stained and nicked. I study them, and then I hear footsteps. I look up.
Officer Lucas pauses to look at my truck and then walks toward me. When he stops, he takes his time in studying me from top to bottom.
“You all right?”
I’ve been leaning against the wall, but I straighten up and wipe a hand across my forehead. It comes away wet. “I’m fine.”
“Simpson, right?”
“Yes.”
“Matthew.”
“Yes.”
He nods. He has very, very blue eyes.
“I’d like to have a word with you.”
“About what?”
“You don’t look good.”
“You want to tell me that I don’t look good?”
“You look sick.”
I feel sick. “I feel fine.”
He shrugs and sighs, as if he’ll never figure something out and doesn’t particularly care. “I’d like to have a few words with you about Sarah Jessup.”
“What about her?”
Lucas shifts his gaze and stares at a spot somewhere up on the wall over my head, searching for words. “Give me a moment. I wasn’t sure I would find you here.”
“Take your time.”
He flashes me a look of annoyance. “Look . . . I would imagine that Greg Jessup was probably a hero to you.”
“Her father? I didn’t know him. He wasn’t anything to me.”
“No? Coming into that school, carrying children out, that didn’t mean anything to you? I believe you were in that class.”
“I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t there . . . that day.”
He studies me. “That boy in the photo with Greg, that’s your friend?”
“Cole.”
“Right. Cole Hewitt.” Lucas inhales and exhales slowly. “Well. In any event, Greg Jessup was a hero to many people, even if he wasn’t to you. But let me tell you something. I didn’t know him well—he was much older than me—but my dad was on the force with him for years. And I can tell you that carrying your friend out of that school was just about the only good thing that man ever did, and it was just his good luck that someone took a picture of it and put it in every newspaper in the world.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to understand something about Sarah.”
“I barely know her.”
“I think otherwise. I hear she’s been spending time with some young guy, and my money is that it’s you.”
I shake my head and start to open my mouth, but he smiles and cuts me off. “Just listen to me,” he says. “Don’t say anything. This is what I’m here to tell you. I know you’re a rich kid, Simpson. I know your daddy’s got money. You’re hanging out here, playing at being a working guy.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Shhh. You’re just to listen. You don’t know what that woman’s been through. Not losing her father suddenly, that’s not what I mean. I mean what came before that. The way he treated her, like she was a piece of his property. I was glad when he had his aneurism. His luck running out was the only lucky thing that ever happened to her. You don’t have any frame of reference for that sort of thing. You understand me?”
“I have to get back to work.”
“You understand me. And you need to understand this: I am not going to see her get hurt again. Sarah Jessup needs the right kind of man to take care of her. You hear me? The right kind of man.”
He pauses, thinking, but I guess he’s said everything he has to say, because he looks me up and down once more and pats me on the shoulder, just the way Finn did, then turns and makes his way back down the driveway without looking back.
I lean back against the wall of the store, and all the air goes out of me. Fuck that guy, I think. Fuck him fuck him fuck him. Fuck him and every single last person in this shit town. I think it again and again and again, but there’s no juice in it, and I realize that, whatever I’m making myself think, my hands are shaking and my armpits are sweating and there’s no way around it: I’m scared. I’m scared, and that makes me madder than anything the cop or Mr. Finn or anybody else could possibly say.
“Matt?” Mr. Finn has come out the back door without my noticing. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Sorry. I know my break’s over.”
“You look—upset.”
“No. I’m not.”
He looks at me doubtfully. “It’s a quiet day. Do you want to take off?”
“It’s all right, Mr. Finn; thanks, though. I have to go somewhere later. I’m doing a Little League clinic, so I can’t go home anyway.”
He nods doubtfully. “All right.”
I make it through the rest of the workday and then grab my duffel from the back of the truck, change in the store bathroom, and head out to the new ball fields. The Principal Steven Schultz Baseball Complex. You can’t get away from it, I think, as I drive onto the freshly paved parking lot. You can’t get away from what happened in this town.
I take another minute to sit in the truck and eat a granola bar because my blood sugar’s only seventy-one. Kids are getting dropped off at the edge of the field, nine- and ten-year-olds running across the outfield, tripping in stiff cleats, struggling with duffel bags almost as big as they are. These fields are nicer than anything I played on when I was a kid. Five diamonds with perfect brown dirt, level fields with fresh chalk lines, bleachers and backstops with no graffiti or rust. There are real dugouts, too. Even nicer than the ones at the high school. They opened this place up four or five years ago, and people said it turned out to be way more expensive than they thought it was going to be, but no one made a big deal. There wasn’t enough the town could do for its kids after the shooting. They probably would have built us a domed stadium if someone had thought of it.
I finish the granola bar, get out, and make my way across the field. I usually feel better as soon as my cleats sink into dirt. Whatever has been on my mind, whatever is going on in my life, just goes away; it takes a back seat, and only the stuff in between the lines is real. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.
Not today, though. Today, all the shit rolling through my head comes right out onto the field with me, and so I’m standing by the mound on field three and Coach is introducing me to these kids as the best player he ever had, and I’m thinking about Lucas. The look in his blue eyes when he told me that I was just to listen.
And I’m thinking about Finn and the gentle way he patted my arm, thinking of me as one of the survivors.
And I’m thinking about Sarah.
Coach gets to the end of his speech, and I realize that I’ve missed what he said, but still I look out at these players in their too-big uniforms and I take their questions about varsity baseball and swinging with power and the most amazing catch I’ve ever seen. Then Coach asks me to say a few words about what I’ve had to overcome, playing with diabetes, and I don’t mind that at all. I have a thing, a little speech, about how diabetes is a problem with energy, about how it makes you realize that you have only so much energy to spend, and you have to think about exactly what you’re going to spend it on, how if you spend it on practice and homework, that will pay off in a way it won’t if you spend it on video games. I hit my points about getting only one body and having to live in it and take care of it no matter what happens, and how if you
do that the right way, you can do anything you want, and how you never, ever abuse your body with drugs.
As I’m rattling this off, I realize something: These kids, most of them listening hard, a few distracted by the buckles on their uniforms or bits of sod at their feet, hadn’t even been born when I was in the first grade, and now they are older than I was then. Some of them probably don’t even know what the shooting was; it’s something their parents whisper about and agree to explain when they’re older.
And they are so small. Little spindly arms sticking out of uniform sleeves, pants sliding down over hips, even with bright red uniform belts pulled as tight as they will go. Eyes looking up at me full of excitement and admiration. And something else: innocence.
How many are there here? I scan the group. It’s a decent-size team, looks to be fourteen or fifteen. Almost as many as had been in our classroom. Someone looked out over a group just a little bit larger and a little bit younger and decided to go ahead and do what he had come to the school to do.
I try to re-grasp the thread of my story, about the way I’d hit a home run in extra innings against Alpine the previous fall. I’ve forgotten where I was and what point I’d been trying to make. I smile, shrug, and suggest to Coach that we try some drills. The kids are out of attention anyway, and they want to get on the field.
I jog to the outfield and take up a position ten or so yards behind the center fielder, running down long-hit balls from the coach and calling out advice to the boys in front of me. There’s such a difference in ability at this age; some kids can see where the ball is going and get there first, running gracefully, pulling it out of the air. Others stumble around, letting the ball fall and then scooping it up and standing still, trying to compute where it should be thrown. I told them about the importance of practice, but in reality I know that it’s something you’re born with. It’s just a question of whether you use it or not.
The kids are looking at me, all the players in the infield twisting around, Coach staring from the sidelines. There, about ten feet off to my right, a baseball is lying still in the grass. I have no idea how it got there. I run over, pick it up, and toss it to the second baseman. My elbow feels like someone slid a hot pin into it. “Sorry!” I shout. “Always keep your head in the game, right?” A few kids laugh, and I jog back to my position and bend over, resting my hands on my knees.
The bat cracks, and a long fly ball arcs out toward left field. I’m not going to miss this one. I’m going to give these kids a show. I’m running away from it, able to see exactly where it’s going to land, able to line up perfectly when I’ll get there and when it will get there, and then I take just enough off my speed and launch myself through the air at the last moment, stretching out horizontal to the ground, snatching the ball out of the sky and then easily tumbling across the turf and springing back to my feet, tossing the ball to the waiting second baseman, ignoring the pain. The kids cheer. So does someone behind me. I turn and see Sarah, sitting by the outfield fence.
She’s wearing cutoff jeans and a white blouse and she has a green bandanna tied in her hair, sunglasses on. She looks gorgeous, sitting there in the empty bleachers. She looks like a picture that I never want to forget. She gives me a big smile and she waves, and I wave my glove back at her and trot toward the infield and wonder why, instead of feeling as happy to see her as I should, I’m feeling nothing but scared and pissed.
Practice goes on, and I focus hard on the field in front of me, calling out tips to all the players now, even the pitcher, not turning back to the fence. Coach finally calls all the boys in for batting drills, and I join them by the backstop, sneaking a glance out and seeing that she is still there, still alone.
I take a bat and demonstrate my swing for the boys. I toss a ball into the air and smash it over the center-field fence. Then another, then one out to right, and even though it burns like hell in my arm every time I swing the bat, it feels so good to make that kind of contact with the ball that I’d do it a thousand more times. The kids cheer and Coach laughs and asks me not to lose any more balls and I toss the bat in the air, spinning it end over end and catching it by the barrel. I go and sit in the dugout and watch the boys work on their hitting for a bit, until practice is over. The kids line up, giving one another high-fives, and I join them, letting them jump to tag my raised right hand.
Parents are making their way over from the parking lot, and Sarah is walking toward me down the third base line. “Anyone want to run a few infield drills?” I ask, even though I hadn’t been planning on doing any more, and I’m relieved when three of the boys do. She walks up to me as I’m directing them to their positions.
“So, you’re pretty good.”
“Thanks.”
“I heard about you, but I never saw you play.”
I make myself smile. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“I got off work early and didn’t have anything better to do.”
We stand for a moment after that, suddenly awkward.
“Does it bother you that I came?”
“No—I just thought, you know, it’s a little strange to see you here.”
“I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.”
“It’s not.”
“I’m not grabbing you and giving you a kiss or anything.”
“I know.”
“I’m not suggesting we go screw in the dugout.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
She looks at me silently for a moment, then smiles and leans in. “You want to meet up later in the dugout?”
“Stop it. There are kids all around.” People are looking at us, and I’m squirming and hating myself for it. I feel like Cole.
“I’m not talking loud, Matt.”
“I know, it’s just . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t want to be seen with me?”
“It’s fine.” It comes out way harsher than I mean it to.
“Whatever. Fine.” She spins and walks away, cutting across the field toward the parking lot. I watch her go, watch the sun catch her hair where it spills out of her bandanna and down her back, watch the way her thighs are perfectly round where they disappear into her cutoffs, and I think that I’m probably the biggest pussy the world has ever seen. One visit from Mr. Police Officer and I’m a quivering bowl of jelly. I kick the dirt hard, spit in the grass, and turn to the kids who are waiting for me.
Forty-five minutes later, I’m done directing double plays, I’ve said goodbye to the kids, I’ve shaken Coach’s hand and promised to stay in touch, and I’m back in the Explorer and pulling out of the parking lot, heading toward town, thinking I’ll find Sarah and apologize for being a dick. I pass a pair of strip malls facing each other in a standoff across the four-lane road, each with a nail salon and a Chinese restaurant and some office space I’m pretty sure no one ever goes to. Traffic is light, and I’m lost in my own thoughts as I drive through a patch of marshland with trees hemming the road in on either side, and a second later I’m startled by the whoop of a siren. I look in the rearview mirror and see a cruiser with lights flashing. I glance at the speedometer. I don’t think I was speeding and I figure the cop must be trying to get by me, so I slow down and ease over onto the shoulder. The cruiser stays with me and gets closer, and a voice comes over the loudspeaker: “Stop your vehicle immediately.”
I roll to a stop and put the truck into park. I know what this is now. I reach over my shoulder and fasten my seat belt, roll down my window, and watch as the officer’s door opens and he climbs out, adjusting his belt, settling his gun on his hip and straightening his hat, staring into the trees across the road. Finally, he turns and slowly makes his way up the shoulder of the empty road, coming to a stop by my open window.
My heart is pounding in my chest. My palms, resting on top of the wheel, are slick with sweat.
“Evening.”
“Hello again, Officer.” I manage to keep my voice steady by dropping it low.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?”
“Do you need my license and registration?”
“Do you know why I pulled you over?”
My mouth is dry, and I feel a surge of anger. “Was I speeding? Was I going a whole thirty-seven miles an hour?”
Officer Lucas straightens from the window and peers down the road as though searching his memory. He turns back to me in pretend surprise. “This is a forty-mile-per-hour road.”
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?”
White kids don’t get shot by cops in New Jersey, I tell myself, and I hate myself for thinking it, and I hate myself even more for feeling comforted by it. Charlie Simpson’s son doesn’t get shot by a cop. I don’t say anything. Lucas leans closer, his head in the window, eyes searching the passenger-side foot well and the back seat.
“Turn off your engine.”
I reach down and turn off my engine.
“Wait here.”
Lucas walks back to his cruiser. I sit and watch in the mirror as he gets in and starts tapping on the computer next to the dash. He turns his attention back to the road in front of him. There’s nothing this guy can really do, I think. He’ll just give me a ticket.
Minutes pass. It’s hot without the air conditioning or any wind. An occasional car goes by, the driver slowing and looking before speeding on. More time. I’m hot and tired and hungry. I need a shower, and I need to go to sleep. I look in the mirror again, and now Lucas is just sitting there, watching me through his windshield, not even pretending to do anything. I want to get out and walk back to him, but I know that is a very bad idea. I realize that my hands are still on the wheel and that my knuckles are white.
Lucas finally comes out of his cruiser, again goes through his routine of adjusting his gear and his hat, and walks back to my window. He stoops, looks in, and pauses for a moment before speaking.
“Do you know why I stopped you?”
“I know why you stopped me.”
“Good. I’m letting you off with a warning.” Without another word, he returns to his car, climbs in, and has pulled off the shoulder and around me before I’ve had the chance to restart my engine. I watch the cruiser disappear around the bend at the end of the road before I continue on, driving exactly thirty-five. I round the bend myself and have driven about two hundred yards when I hear the siren again. I step on the brake and look in the mirror. The cruiser is cutting out from behind some brush on the side of the road, speeding onto the asphalt and closing the space between us quickly.
Every Moment After Page 17
