Plunking Reggie Jackson

by James Bennett

  “How’s your grades?”

  “They’ll be okay too.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yeah, they’ll be okay. I’ve got Ruthie Roth helpin’ me from time to time.”

  “Who’s that?” the coach asked. “Never mind. Anybody that gets a progress report before the end of the month won’t be eligible for the play-offs. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Hell, yes. How could I not know that? Coach, it’s like I get this from my old man all the time, do I have to hear it from you, too?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  This pissed him off. Instead of answering, Coley reached for the walking cast. He hadn’t come to practice so the coach could get on his case.

  It almost blew Coley away when he discovered Bree was upset. She was pissed about the evening he spent with Ruthie Roth brain-storming on the human dynamics project. “Are you kiddin’ me?”

  “You’re not supposed to date other girls,” she said.

  “This was no date. You know who Ruthie Roth is?”

  “I’ve never heard of her.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “That’s not the point anyway. I’ve given myself to you, Coley, all of me.”

  It was the type of Bree remark that tended to knock him out of sync; nevertheless, he said, “If you knew who Ruthie was, you’d see how comical this is.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything funny. You’re not supposed to date other girls.”

  “I told you this wasn’t a date, are you listening to me? She helped me with a homework project. It was homework.”

  “Where did you do the homework?”

  Coley sighed and shook his head. This was nuts. “We went to this place called the Coffee Barn. It’s out in Campustown.”

  “I know where it is,” Bree informed him. Her flashing eyes stared straight into his own. He couldn’t believe how intense she was when she got mad. “That’s a long way out there,” she added.

  “A hell of a long way.” At least they agreed on something.

  “Did you take her in your car?”

  “Well, we sure as hell couldn’t walk. That’s, like, about four miles, at least.”

  “You took her in your car to the Coffee Barn, but it wasn’t a date?”

  “I’m tellin’ you. It was homework. Look, Bree, someday I’ll introduce you to Ruthie and you’ll know how this whole conversation is out of touch.”

  Bree ignored this appeal. “I don’t know why you couldn’t just study at her house, if all it was was homework.”

  “Because she wanted to go to the Coffee Barn, so we did. She likes the college atmosphere. Can we drop this now?”

  “You had a study date.”

  Coley needed another deep breath. “Okay, me ’n Ruthie had a study date. Let’s have it your way. Can we drop it now?”

  “A study date is still a date.”

  He couldn’t take any more of this. “Yeah, we had a date. I gave her a corsage first, then we went to the Coffee Barn. Afterward, we spent the night at the Holiday Inn.”

  “You think it’s funny, but it’s not. You don’t know what it means to hurt.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “You don’t know what it means to hurt. You don’t know what it means to need.” The change in Bree was so sudden, but it wasn’t just in her voice. It was her eyes. They had shifted from the hard, shallow glitter of anger to the opaque liquid of deep pools.

  “What are you sayin’ to me?” Coley was knocked out of rhythm again. Sometimes conversations with Bree were like games of Star Quest; you just never knew which direction to look for the next spaceship attack.

  “You’ve always been popular. You’ve always been a big star. What do you know about needing?”

  The green eyes had been flashing a moment ago; now they were glistening. You could almost fall into them, like down a well. A moment ago he had felt like a prisoner beneath a hot light; now he felt like he needed to become a shelter. He said, “I have to get at least a B in the course. If I don’t, I could lose my baseball scholarship.”

  “Please don’t make me hear about that again, okay?”

  “What else can I say? That’s the reality of the situation, that’s the whole reason behind needin’ her help.”

  “I could help you with homework,” she said. “I’m a good student.”

  “I know, but Ruthie is a straight-A student. She helped me with geometry when we were sophomores.”

  “I could help you,” Bree repeated.

  “Yeah, well, look at it this way. Ruthie’s a senior. She’s, like, in the top two or three in the class. She’s a theater geek, so I can’t get distracted.”

  “You’d be distracted with me.” It was a question that didn’t sound like one.

  “What do you think?” Coley asked her. “With you and me it’d be about five minutes of homework, then two hours in the sack.”

  Bree smiled for the first time. “Please don’t say ‘in the sack.’”

  “Okay, we’d be having sex. Is that better? Enough study time with you, and I’d lose my scholarship for sure.”

  “If it wasn’t for the grade you need, you wouldn’t see her at all, would you?”

  “Hell, no,” Coley replied quickly.

  “And you really mean that?”

  “You want me to say it again?” The admission brought him an unexpected measure of regret, even if it was mostly the truth. “Like I said, someday I’ll introduce her to you. You’ll see.”

  “I don’t want you to. I don’t want to meet her. Promise me you won’t go out with her again.”

  Coley felt too whipped to quarrel with the going out terminology. “Okay,” he said.

  “But you have to promise, though,” Bree insisted.

  “Okay, I promise.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The trainer was a girl named Shannon who was a senior at the university majoring in sports medicine. She taped his ankle so heavily it felt like an artificial limb. “How’s that feel?” she asked him.

  “Stiff as a board,” Coley replied.

  “Good.”

  He threw batting practice for the first time. It was awkward. He hadn’t worked from the mound since the injury, and the rigid right ankle made his drive and follow-through tentative.

  He didn’t try to get people out. All he wanted from this outing was to throw strikes and to be as comfortable and fluid as possible. His flat pitches were in the strike zone, but without much velocity. His teammates delighted in driving Coley’s pitches clear to the fence, and sometimes even over it. He didn’t care. The only thing is to throw strikes and feel comfortable.

  After twenty minutes or so the sharp pain in his back surprised him. It came, unfamiliar and sudden. He stood up slowly, put his hands on his hips, and told the coach he’d had enough.

  Coach Mason followed him to the bench. “You okay, Coley?”

  “I’m fine, Coach,” he lied. “That’s enough for the first time.” He was slipping into his nylon windbreaker.

  The coach left to press another batting practice pitcher into service, but when Coley started to sit down, the pain stitched him like a knitting needle. Halfway down he was paralyzed for a moment or two, unable to move at all. The sweat broke out on his forehead and along his upper lip. When it passed, he sat on the bench with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. I’ve never had back pain like this before.

  “Are you okay?” asked the female voice.

  He looked up to see it was Shannon, the trainer. “I’m fine,” he told her.

  “Why’d you stop?”

  “I’ve just had enough for the first time, that’s all. Go worry about someone else.”

  “Okay, amigo.”

  Coley knew what the problem was—back spasms. By compensating for the ankle, he was throwing unnaturally and putting strain on the left side of his back, which could lead to shoulder damage. Nothing could undercut the career of a pitcher faster t
han a sore arm.

  His palms were sweating even though it wasn’t hot. The next time he threw, maybe he should try it without the tape. He would have to treat the ankle as if it were whole, instead of babying it so much. It was the only way he would be able to drive off of it with torque and then follow through.

  The next day he played again, for the first time in competition. He felt pretty strong in warm-ups, so he approached the coach. “Put me in left, okay?”

  “You want to play left? You feel up to it?”

  “I’ll be fine in left. Just let me play.”

  “If you tell me the ankle feels good enough, I’ll believe you.” Coach Mason was looking him straight in the eye. “This whole rehab thing is up to you. When you say you’re ready, I’ll trust you.”

  “The ankle doesn’t hurt.” That much was true. He knew, too, that any back pain would vanish in left field. “Just put me in the outfield, I’ll be fine.”

  The team was woefully shorthanded because it was an ACT Saturday; at least three of the juniors were sitting in Champaign for standardized testing, and two other players were injured. Ingram had a broken finger, and Bobby Lovell was out for the rest of the week with a sprained wrist.

  “Did Shannon tape you up?”

  “I’m taped,” Coley replied. It was a warm day, but not warm enough to account for the sweat beading on his face.

  “Okay,” the coach said, “go for it.”

  Coley’s service in the outfield was uneventful. Running gingerly, but with minimal pain, he tracked down two fly balls in the fourth and cut off a single down the line in the fifth.

  Swimming in the pool seemed to be the best way to give the ankle range-of-motion expression. In the water he could rotate the ankle freely, without pain. It made him optimistic to discover he could walk on the floor of the pool or kick slowly from the side. Or even, although he wasn’t a very good swimmer, plow through the water in his thrashing freestyle with unrestrained flipper kicks with both legs.

  He went to the deep end and scuttled along the bottom, feeling the definition of the tiny tiles with his fingers. He didn’t know what intrusion of gravity it might have been that kept him down there. He might have been at the bottom of the sea, like the huge fish that took it to the limit against Santiago, the old fisherman. And then he wondered what it was that caused him to think of books at a time like this.

  Bree joined him once while wearing her skimpy new fuchsia bikini. She was a strong and efficient swimmer—she seemed to slice through the water like a sea nymph. Coley swam after her with all the speed he could muster, but he couldn’t catch her. She giggled like bells at his futile efforts to swim her down.

  They frolicked until they were breathless, then rested against the side of the pool in the shallow end. “This is the best part of my rehab,” he tried to say to her, speaking between bouts of gasping for air.

  “You mean it?”

  “Yeah. It keeps me in shape. It’s fun.”

  “You mean it’s fun when I’m here.”

  “That’s what I mean. And there’s no pain in the ankle.”

  “Maybe I should come more often.”

  “Maybe.” He had enough breath now to kiss her, so he did. She brought her tongue with the usual fervor. Coley peeled back the shoulder strap of her top to take a look at the dramatic ribbon of white her tan line made. He was aroused immediately. He couldn’t remember ever getting a woodie in the swimming pool but realized it was about to happen. It couldn’t be modest, either—not with the blue nylon Speedo suit he was wearing. He knew that other people might enter the pool area at any moment.

  This dilemma, though—if it even was one—faded when he saw the bruise. It was blue green, about the size of his little finger. It reached from her collarbone upward toward the flare of her shoulder.

  “What’s this?”

  “What does it look like?” she said.

  “It looks like a bruise.”

  “Then I suppose it is one.” She darkened suddenly, like a stormy sky. She turned her head away.

  “So how’d you get it?”

  “I don’t know, how do people get bruises? How do you get yours?”

  “Usually playing sports,” Coley replied.

  “That’s how I got mine,” she declared. “I got it in PE when we were playing field hockey.”

  “On your shoulder?” He supposed it was possible to get a shoulder bruise playing field hockey, but not likely. “How did it really happen?”

  “I told you how it happened, weren’t you listening?”

  “Yeah, I was.” He was using the back of his hand to wipe some of the water from his eyes. “But I think you’re hiding something.”

  “I don’t know why you have to ask so many questions.” With that, Bree hoisted herself onto the edge of the pool, then walked briskly to the first row of bleachers. She picked up her towel and began to fluff her hair.

  Coley waited a few moments before he followed after her. “We’re supposed to be in love. That means we aren’t afraid to talk about private stuff.”

  “Is that what it means?” Her head was down, and the towel draped around her shoulders. “Okay, then, if you think you have to know. He beats me.”

  Before he replied, Coley leaned back, his shoulder blades against the second row of bleachers and his hands locked behind his neck. “You mean your father, don’t you?”

  “I mean my stepfather. I mean Burns.”

  “Okay, stepfather.” Coley felt a surge of sympathy for her, joined with the urge to be protective. “How does he hit you?”

  “He hits me. What are you asking?”

  “I mean, does he, like, hit you with his fist, or does he slap you?”

  She sighed. Her head was still down. With the corners of the towel she was wiping at her eyes. Coley wondered if she was crying or if it was just water from the pool. “Usually he slaps me.”

  “Usually? For what?”

  “If I break a rule or talk to him with a smart mouth. How many questions are you going to ask?”

  “I don’t know how else to find out. It’s like pullin’ teeth with you, Bree. If you loved me like you say you do, you wouldn’t make it so hard to find out.”

  “I do love you, you know I do. It just scares me to talk about it.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder where the bruise was. “He didn’t give you this one by hittin’ you.”

  “He grabbed me and threw me on the couch when I smarted off to him.”

  “What did you say that was like smarting off?”

  “I told him I was going to see you as often as I wanted and there was nothing he could do to stop me.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Coley leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I oughta come over to your house and pin his gut against his backbone.”

  Bree lifted her face to look at him. In her eyes was authentic terror. “You can never do that, Coley. You can never. You have no idea how strong he is.”

  “That’s rich. I’m supposed to be afraid of a chickenshit who slaps girls around?”

  “But you just can’t. You just had to know, so I told you. But you can’t ever try to do anything about it, or you’ll just make it worse.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She’s afraid of him as much as I am.”

  “But I mean, does he hit her, too?”

  “Sometimes he does.”

  Coley’s frustration was roiling in his stomach like nasty indigestion. “Why the hell don’t you just leave? You and your mother, I mean. Let him find somebody else to slap around.”

  “Oh, God, I don’t know. My mother loves him.”

  “How can you love somebody if you’re afraid of them?”

  Bree got to her feet. Now there were tears rolling down her face. “I don’t know. Now do you see why I don’t want you asking so many questions?”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “Because there’s no end to it. The questions get harder and harder, and I don’t know
the answers. Then you ask me why I don’t know the answers.”

  “It’s only because I care about you.”

  “If you really care about me, you’ll drop the whole thing, because it can’t go anywhere except more trouble. More trouble for me, I mean.” Now Bree was crying harder; she turned to leave. Coley rose to follow her, but when she entered the girls’ locker room, he was stopped in his tracks.

  He pitched two innings against Danville, but he wasn’t effective. Even worse, he wasn’t effective because he couldn’t throw with comfort or confidence. At times, when he tried to drive off the right ankle with real thrust or leverage, he felt pain that shot clear up to his knee. The fear that the ankle was damaged beyond even Dr. Nugent’s assessment—or might be if he didn’t protect it—caused him to try to throw with his upper body.

  He couldn’t abandon his fear of reinjuring the ankle. The pain along the left side of his back surfaced after the fifth or sixth hitter. He was afraid of developing a sore left shoulder.

  Coley walked two of the Danville hitters, and then two more got base hits. Not the scratchy kind of dribbler or chopper, but bona fide ropes into the outfield. Giving up line drives wasn’t something he was accustomed to. It wasn’t a hot day, but with sweat beading on his face, he paced around the mound tentatively and played with the resin bag. He scanned the sparse crowd for faces of men he didn’t know, men who might be professional scouts.

  When he was done with the two innings Coach Mason wanted him to finish, he sat on the bench with his head down. The coach couldn’t know Coley’s level of discouragement and apprehensive-ness, but he had to have some clue at least. He said, “Not bad for the first time out, Coley.”

  It was a lie, of course, but such a lie that seemed to join them at the hip.

  The following Monday was the senior class trip. Coley didn’t expect megafun from it, but at least it got him away from the old man’s nagging, Grissom’s class, and any sense of apprehension about the ankle.

  There were three water slides. About the third time down the highest slide they started tossing girls into the receiving pond at the bottom. Higher and higher.

  There were plenty of squeals of delight and big-time yuks, but the lifeguards were blowing the whistle on it. Nobody paid any attention. Once, Coley launched Gloria so hard into the waiting basin that she nearly lost the top of her suit. When she came up for air, she flipped him off.