Curveball Baby

by J. M. Maurer

  I grapple with what will transpire if she doesn’t feel the same way about me as I do about her. Mixed emotions come off her like a third base coach’s hand movements when he’s trying to keep the opposing coach from stealing his signs. She keeps telling me I don’t have to stick around, that I don’t have to take care of her. Then she goes and looks at me the way she does, or takes me in her arms and holds me as if she thinks I’m going away for good. Why can’t she see I’m here because I care? That I have no intentions of leaving her—ever?

  At least over the last couple of weeks, she’s let me tackle a few of the issues inside her apartment. As much as I enjoy spending the extra time with her, the smile that lights up her face each time I finish a project lets me know she appreciates what all I’ve accomplished.

  I don’t let her touch a thing. Except maybe to hand me a screwdriver every once in a while. And me. Of course she can touch me, pull me into her warm body, wrap me up in her arms for a hug, and utter the most beautiful “thank you” I’ve ever heard.

  As far as she’s concerned, her kitchen looks as good as new. She’s told me this at least a half-dozen times. Although a safer, more functional kitchen is far from why I fixed it up.

  I’ve got a plan. Any good plan needs a thorough job of research. I wouldn’t step onto the mound and pitch to a batter without thoughts of how I was going to approach him swirling in my head.

  And Addison is my grand slam; I’m not giving up.

  Question is, will she swing at the curve I’m about to throw her or will my pitch sit her down?

  There’s only one way to find out. With clear blue skies and the forecast set for an unseasonably warm Saturday for November, I tap out a text and promptly hit Send.

  BEN: Up for a cruise on the lake?

  I lean back against the lounge chair on the back porch and listen to the stillness of the morning, hearing nothing but the rustle of wind moving over leaves. Waiting for Addison’s reply, I bask under the rays of the rising sun, caught in awe by the way the leafless branches of trees flanking the perimeter of the lake filter warmth toward my body. It’s strange how my hiatus to the lake has turned months of anger and frustration into a full-on bout of exuberant optimism.

  But it has. And I suspect Addison Hunt has just as much to do with my recovery as this lake does. If not everything.

  My phone gives off a buzz, the vibration triggering a burst of adrenaline, which rushes through my veins like rip-roaring whitewater rapids moving along a riverbed after a storm. I sit up, placing my full attention on Addison’s text.

  ADDISON: My new car is all kinds of amazing. But I’m not sure it’s waterproof.

  I laugh. She adds a winky face, and I watch the dots move on my screen while she taps out another reply.

  ADDISON: I’d love to. When?

  BEN: Well, the sunrise is also all kinds of amazing. But it’s missing one thing

  ADDISON: Oh, yeah. What?

  BEN: You

  She sends back a smiley face, then fills me in on how she’s finishing a little paperwork at the office and will head over after checking in on Mr. Jenkins. My shoulders drop and then crash against the chair as I fall back, absorbing a pang of disappointment that’s churning away in my gut. Hopefully what she’s got left to do at work, and her time spent with the town cuckoo, don’t end up taking too long.

  As much time as Addison spends with the old man, I have a feeling I’m going to need to meet this Mr. Jenkins.

  The change of plans happens faster than a suicide squeeze, where a runner at third base breaks like he’s stealing home, and hopes like hell the batter in the box will get the bunt down on the ground. If the batter doesn’t, the runner’s pretty much dead at home.

  Hell if I’m going to let Jenkins steal my time with my girl while I sit here all alone.

  I stomp across the yard and rap my knuckles against Mrs. Tinley’s door. Do it again when she’s pokey in answering. I know she’s home. Her green machine is parked in the driveway.

  Just as I lift my fist, prepared to pound a hole into the wood with it, the door flies open.

  “Bender.” Mrs. Tinley scans up one side of my body then down the other. “Nice to see you with clothes on, son. What can I do for you?”

  “Jenkins. Where’s he live and how do I get there?”

  “For God’s sake, what for?”

  “Addison texted, saying she’s stuck over there. I’d hoped to take her out in the boat today. Talk to her about—”

  “Don’t tell me you ain’t talked to her about that yet. There’s gonna be shit on the shingles and a baby comin’ in way too early if you don’t set her down and have that talk. What’re you waitin’ for? You still ain’t got your head on straight, do ya, Bender. Well you best be twistin’, and I reckon right quick.”

  I lift my hat, fish my fingers through my hair, and adjust the cap back down while Mrs. Tinley stares. “I know. Please just tell me where Jenkins lives.”

  “Better yet.” She plows past me, taking off toward her Gator. For today, it appears her knees are behaving. “Hop in. I’ll take you.”

  “Wait. You’re not going to tell Addison, are you? Seriously, you can’t say anything. Please, I don’t think she’s ready.” I follow at her heels and hop on in. A sinking feeling washes through me, setting me straight on the fact that Mrs. Tinley is a woman who does whatever the heck she pleases. I kick into rare form, finding a side of me that isn’t too macho to beg for understanding. “Please, you gotta promise me you aren’t going to tell her.”

  “I ain’t tellin’ her a thing. That’s your job. But it’s hard tellin’ what you’re gonna find at Old Man Jenkins’ place. Ought not be goin’ there by yourself.”

  Anxious, I jump at the sound of clicking from the engine and begin an interesting conversation I keep to myself. Mrs. Tinley doesn’t need to hear what I’m thinking. My mind’s going all out. What’s Addison caught up in? What did Mrs. Tinley mean by hard tellin’ what I’m going to find at the old man’s house?

  “Stop rocking in your seat, Bender. You got ants in your pants or somethin’?”

  Or something. I toss her a false smile and mentally kick myself for hopping into the vehicle.

  “This thing go any faster than five miles an hour? Are you even going five miles an hour? At this rate, assuming she’s somewhere within a two-mile radius, it’s going to take us almost half an hour to get to Addison.”

  An unnecessary thirty-minute jaunt in Mrs. Tinley’s Gator is not acceptable to me. It’s too much time. I contemplate jumping out and running back to the house. After all, we’ve only made it to the other side of Mrs. Tinley’s property. I can go back. Drive a heck of a lot faster. Get to Addison sooner.

  But there’s one problem. Mrs. Tinley’s hoarding the address I need to know. And I can tell she’s not going to give it up; she’s ticked I haven’t come clean with Addison yet, and she’s holding it against me.

  We roll up and down several hills, slowly meandering our way around the lake. Not too far into our drive, I spy an empty field off to our right. “How about we take this thing off-roading?” I nod, hoping she’ll veer off toward the field.

  “Not in this baby,” she says matter-of-factly.

  Of course not, because driving five miles per hour around town is so…cool.

  My phone vibrates in my pants pocket. I yank it out and see a message on the screen. It’s from Eli, my good friend who lives in Cleveland. I’ve known him since he talked me into doing a year-long project for some broadcasting class he took at Ohio State. He needed a jock. I needed nothing to do with a camera, but did it anyway. We’ve been best buds since. He’s probably just checking in since he knows I got Addison pregnant.

  As slow as we’re moving, I could hop a flight from Cincy to Cleveland, shoot the shit with Eli, and high-tail it back to Willow Run all before Mrs. Tinley even makes her way around the town square, much less gets me to Old Man Jenkins’s house where I hope to find Addison. From a slew of previous texts, I know
Eli’s got a girl problem. He’s crazy about some redheaded meteorologist who works with him at the TV station. A conversation about her is going to take some patience on my part, and I don’t have a morsel of self-restraint flowing in my blood right now. I decide to call him back later. Right now, getting to Addison is the only thing on my mind.

  Twenty-one minutes into the ride of a lifetime, Mrs. Tinley pulls up to a big pole barn at the back of a white two-story farmhouse. I see Addison’s SUV, and I sprint off faster than the leadoff batter trying to stretch an easy single into a double. She’s on her knees in the barn with Old Man Jenkins to her left and a boy about ten or twelve to her right. The boy’s eyes are wide open, and I can tell he’s memorizing every word Addison is saying. I’m not sure what she’s doing, but Jenkins appears to be doing a whole lot of nothing except watching from the side.

  “Tommy,” Addison says, unaware I’m quietly inching up behind her. “When we have a warm day like today, it’s best to field dress this thing right away. So pay attention to what I do and, from now on, make sure you carry a Buck knife with you when you go hunting.”

  Hunting. The word sends me back to the day Addison took me out and taught me how to shoot a rifle. Thinking she’s doing something a whole lot “cooler” than a five mile per hour cruise through town, I sidle up a little closer, just out of her vision. Standing there, I watch as she runs her thumb across both of Tommy’s cheeks. She’s spreading blood across his skin. It’s much the same way a baseball player would do when applying the black glob of grease that cuts down on glare from the sun. I’m not sure why she’s doing it and chalk it up to some sort of initiation, or perhaps it’s a rite of passage all hunters go through.

  Addison makes one more pass, her thumb leaving a thin layer of blood across Tommy’s forehead. “Congrats on your first kill, Thomas. May Saint Hubert be at your side in all the days you enter the woods. May he help you learn right from wrong, may he keep you safe, and may he welcome you into the huntsman’s club.”

  Tommy grins from ear to ear and sets his sight back on Addison. She’s already cut a long incision, and her left hand’s vanished somewhere up inside the deer’s chest. She’s got a knife in her right hand, and it’s disconnecting everything on the inside of the deer as Addison commands it to do. A sloshing sound happens each time she moves. I’m not sure it’s a noise I care for; it sort of grosses me out. On top of that, a distinct but not unpleasant odor mixes in with the stale barn smell that’s already in the air.

  “The sooner you do this the better, Tommy,” she continues, both talking and cutting. “Plus, you’ll do yourself a favor by reducing the weight. Trust me, you gain no points for having to drag the full weight of a buck up and out of a ravine. Think of the circle of life. Other animals will take care of what’s left.”

  She puts down the knife and damn if she doesn’t use both hands to pull out what appears to be at least a hundred pounds of guts. That might be an exaggeration. But it’s a lot. And she’s still talking to Tommy as if there’s nothing strange about the job.

  A non-hunter, I’m frozen in my spot, caught between being shocked at what I’ve just seen and amazed at Addison. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of Tommy. He’s pulling against a rope, hoisting the deer upside down and into the air. I must have missed when they tied it up.

  I only see red. And innards. It’s everywhere on the ground.

  I’m no rookie to witnessing a fight, or an injury or two. But this is something else. It’s an amount of blood I don’t ever want to see again. In fact, my brain, and everything else connected to my body, seems to say, Somebody tell me again why I was in such a hurry to get here.

  Because now my knees feel like jelly. My skin burns. My own insides feel excessively hot. I recognize these symptoms a little too late, at about the same time I feel arms crash in around my body.

  There’s nothing I can do except let all the red turn into the darkest shade of black.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Addison

  “You got him, Mrs. Tinley?” I ask a bit too late. She’s already on the ground with Ben’s large, limp frame on top of her. “Tommy, go help Mrs. Tinley.”

  As Tommy does as he’s told, Mr. Jenkins tells me he’ll clean up the mess. This isn’t the first time someone’s gone down in Mr. Jenkins’s barn after seeing a sight like this. Thankfully, Mrs. Tinley assures me Ben didn’t hit his head. I can tell she took the brunt of the fall, but her additional words assure me she, too, is okay. Even so, she’s an elderly woman with a couple hundred pounds of dead weight in her lap, so I worry more about her than I do Ben. She’s country strong. But Ben’s down for the count.

  From where I’m standing, I can see his chest rising like he’s enjoying a peaceful night’s sleep and his lips have quickly switched from ghost-white back to pink. Seeing it, I toss a wink to Mrs. Tinley and tell Tommy to run and grab a cold cloth. By the time he’s back with a rag, which is dripping water down both his hands, I’ve ditched my bloodstained apron and switched places with Mrs. Tinley.

  After I wrap the wet towel around the back of Ben’s neck and over his shoulders, he stirs and starts mumbling. “Don’t tell me I’m back. I hate this place. Get me the heck out of here.”

  My heart sinks into the small area my stomach’s sharing with the baby, and I immediately stop skimming my fingers through the soft strands of Ben’s hair. Above me, I vaguely hear Mr. Jenkins tell Tommy to fetch some juice while Mrs. Tinley works at doing something beside me.

  “On second thought, Thomas, grab two,” Jenkins says, most likely because he’s seen the uncontrollable shaking in my hands.

  Mrs. Tinley places her palm on my shoulder and, for the first time ever, gives me a reassuring squeeze. “He’s dreaming, Addison. Never mind what you heard him say. I’m sure it ain’t what you think.”

  Despite her kind gesture, my hormones kick in, and I fight the wetness welling in my eyes. I feel it ready and waiting to spill over the brim. Could it be true? Does he really hate it here? Is he counting the days until he can go back to Cincinnati?

  Hoping it isn’t the case, I peer down at his handsome face and watch as a tear splashes against a patch of skin on his cheek. My chin begins to tremble. My breathing seems incomplete. And this time I’m sure the color is now draining from my face.

  While I do my best to fight my reaction to what I heard Ben say, Tommy ducks back into the barn, sets one juice on the ground, and kneels next to me with the other glass held tightly in his hands.

  He passes it over, then slips in a caring nod, watching me carefully as I wipe my face with one hand and wrap my fingers around the cold glass with the other.

  “Umm, I think the baby’s hungry.” It’s all Tommy says.

  Strange how a twelve-year-old knows when a woman’s in distress. I guess the vibes I must be sending off now are a pretty stark contrast from how I looked gutting the deer.

  “Thank you, Tommy,” I manage to say, then, for the baby’s sake, down the juice in one swallow.

  I don’t need them worrying about me. And they certainly don’t need to know my reaction wasn’t about the baby but rather the shock to my system from what I’d heard Ben say.

  Trying to deflect, I hand the glass back to Tommy. My other hand hasn’t moved. It’s still cupped over the left side of Ben’s head, where I hope he never feels pain again.

  “I’m proud of you, Tommy. You did really well today. I bet you can’t wait to go out and do it all over again.”

  Tommy nods with a grin just as Ben starts to move. He lifts his head up and out of my lap. A chorus of “whoas” sound from all three of us, but our verbal concerns don’t seem to be heard. Slowly but surely, Ben sits up and immediately reaches for the side of his head.

  He seems confused. And rightfully so. After all, he’s been down for a good two to three minutes.

  His eyes seem to know exactly where I am because I’m the first person his focus locks in on. Almost instantly upon seeing me, he pulls my body into
his arms and darn near knocks over his glass of juice.

  “Addy.” His strained whisper blows past my ear. The tone sends chills racing up and down my spine. “There you are. Baby, what the hell just happened?”

  Holding him back, I cling to his damp shirt, feeling a flutter kicking away in my belly. He called me “baby,” and it wasn’t like he was speaking to his offspring growing inside my abdomen. The word exited his lips with abandon, the tone as meaningful as the tight squeeze he’s maintaining around my waist.

  I don’t really want to answer him. I just want to feel the softness of his short beard as he nestles his face into the crook of my neck.

  Suddenly he scoots back, does a quick scan around, and then places both his hands over my belly. His brows scrunch together. He moves his hands frantically, checking me out. His appearance and actions tell me he’s overly concerned.

  Lifting his chin, he meets my gaze. “Babe, I didn’t hurt you, did I? Please tell me you’re okay. I felt the baby move, but you haven’t said a word. God, Addy, tell me everything’s okay.”

  “Bender,” Mrs. Tinley cuts in, her tone one pitch shy of irate. “It’d do you some good to keep your mouth shut when you’re out cold and your words flowin’ when you’re awake.”

  Ben seems to understand exactly what she’s saying. He tosses her an evil eye as I move the glass into his view, silently suggesting he take the juice and drink it.

  While watching him through a few sips, I’m not sure why I haven’t spoken. I suppose I’m stuck in a rut, caught between knowing what I want versus what I can’t have.

  I want Ben Peterson. But clearly, the country life just isn’t for him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ben

  I don’t have to steal a glance to my left. There’s no need. In awe of her, I can’t take my eyes off the woman sitting next to me.