He parked and walked to the barn, noticing the pathetic leaky tin roof that never got fixed. It probably wouldn’t have taken much, but some things in this life were just meant to stay broken.
Cory kicked open a side door and could see piles of furniture and items that belonged to his youth. The old couches and dining room table. The wooden baseball-themed pinball game they’d played to death. Pictures and boxes of mementos all surrounded by old baseballs. He picked up one of the balls and sniffed it. He liked the way it smelled and felt in his hand. It reminded him of all the things the game promised him when he was younger.
It took him a few moments to find the power breakers. Once he turned them on, the interior of the barn was aglow in cold, ghostly light. It took another couple of minutes to open the sliding doors on each side of the barn.
This was like waking up a dead man, or at least one who had been in a coma for over a decade. The smell was the same, and the shadows still hovered around like they always had. The remnants of hay underneath the vaulted roof were moldy by now. Cory could taste the dust in the air as he walked around.
In just a few moments he began to find some comfort in this place. The old bat in his hand connected with the first baseball shot off by the pitching machine. The ball wailed against the side of the barn wall. The machine stood at one side of the open doors, and Cory stood on the opposite side, trying to thread the needle.
He hit every ball the machine whipped toward him.
Being in this place made him feel six again. And ten. And sixteen.
The years were the same because his life was the same.
Every day he had woken with fear and urgency. He never stopped wondering what might happen before breakfast or before they left for school or during those long and awful summer days. He never stopped looking after Clay and never stopped preparing to hit the ball.
Cory smacked a ball straight ahead out of the barn.
Every hit had been an attempt to fight off the Devil.
Every ball had been a round fist of hurt thrown his way.
Every day and month and year spent in this place had been the same. It had felt like one long hangover. It was the party that he had missed. The joy of growing up and being young and playing ball and loving life.
As each ball flew toward him and his face and body became drenched in sweat, Cory hit harder and straighter, hoping each smack would beat down the memories inside of him.
But the memories wouldn’t go away.
On the front porch of the house, Clay stood listening to the crack of the baseballs. Each hit seemed to wound him a little more, yet he couldn’t go over there. He would leave Cory alone. At least for now. It was too early to try to sort out his brother’s problems. The best thing Cory could do was hit those balls.
Karen joined him with a cup of coffee. He smiled in appreciation and took it.
For a long time they stood there, not saying a word, just listening to the sound of baseballs being hit one after another.
They say it’s all heartache and misery, but that’s because they don’t know how great this feels.
Cory doesn’t have a worry in the world. He feels great, and yesterday and tomorrow are nowhere to be found in this bliss of today.
He knows it’s temporary, but this temporary is temporarily glorious. He feels invincible. Yesterday’s heavy grays don’t matter because today’s bright blues blow them away. It’s like the sunrise coming out of a tsunami.
He takes another drink and turns up the stereo and watches the highlights and waits for her to come back into the room.
Nobody should feel this good, and anybody who has a problem with it doesn’t know how good it feels.
The day blurs away, and Cory feels great.
One hundred ninety pounds of potential.
He turns up the music just a little more. The neighbors might complain, but the cops won’t do anything. If they come again—if—they’ll just laugh and maybe even come in and have a drink like last time.
He’s not going anywhere, and he’s not going to sleep anytime soon.
The TV shows the game highlights, and he laughs as he watches his teammates staring out with blank faces. He laughs because they’re all in the same bliss as he is right now. They’re leaving the loss behind; tomorrow they’ll be ready for another day and another chance.
A figure emerges from the darkness of the hallway, and Cory just smiles.
Life has never been better.
Chapter Twenty-four
Steal
I don’t need to hear this.
Cory sat in the small church on another Friday night, listening to the fiftysomething Harley dude in the torn jeans and ripped T-shirt. He knew why the guy was in recovery. From one too many Aerosmith concerts. He needed recovery from the Steven Tyler syndrome, which usually started when guys close to retirement still looked like rockers. Aging rockers.
Here we go with the same old sad story.
“My name is Rick, and I’m a Christian who celebrates recovery from cocaine addiction. Been clean for three years now.”
Cory knew the drill and said “Hello, Rick” with the rest of the crowd.
I guess by “clean” he’s not referring to his beard.
“I came to CR not for recovery from crack, but so my wife and my family would get off my back.”
There was some low-key laughter that Cory couldn’t help joining in.
Sounds familiar.
Rick held the pages in front of him like a man reading his last wish before being sent to the electric chair.
“I started my first step study because I heard that this is where the serious recovery work is done—or that’s what I told everyone.”
Nobody needs homework, especially not crackheads.
Cory glanced around the room and noticed the variety of people. There were a couple of businessmen in golf shirts, a grizzly old veteran, a couple of hippies with long hair, some alternative young kids, even a Grandma Sally. Cory was in the back row so nobody would notice him checking the baseball scores while Rick spoke.
“I came every week, did all the lessons, and to my surprise, I began dealing with my past and started to understand why I used.”
As Rick was in midsentence, Cory noticed a Grizzlies score and exclaimed, “No!” He didn’t even realize he’d spoken aloud until people turned to look at him. He just smiled and hid the iPhone back in his hand. He couldn’t believe the double-digit loss the team had suffered the night before.
“When I got to step nine, make direct amends to people you have harmed, I thought: make amends face-to-face? I was like, ‘I don’t think so.’ So I skipped over that step.”
Cory smiled. Yeah, I’d do that too. Too many people to face, not enough amends to go around.
He kept checking the scores.
“After ushering for two years, I became the head usher here at Celebrate Recovery. However, the temptation proved to be more than I could handle, and I started taking money from the offering each week.”
Wait, you did what?
Cory forgot about his phone and looked at Rick, then at the faces looking up at Rick as he spoke. He expected to see looks of condemnation, but the crowd hadn’t changed a bit.
“During this time I was in a second step study, and I wanted to finally make the amends I needed to make in my life. Which meant I had to confess what I had been doing to the ministry leaders.”
Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.
Cory felt bad for the guy. I mean, yeah, he was stealing out of a church plate, so that was bad, but still …
“When I met with them I expected to be relieved of my guilt, but I received much more …”
This guy—this biker dude with long hair and a leather vest and tats on his arms—suddenly broke down and started to cry
. Then he looked at the people in the front row, J. T. being one of them, and he smiled as he wiped his tears away.
So how does this story end? And why’s he smiling?
Rick cleared his throat and wiped more tears away. “I experienced God’s love and forgiveness,” he said in a choked, humbled voice.
Rick wasn’t the only one wiping tears away from his eyes. Cory noticed several other people doing the same. Some wore huge supportive smiles. Some even clapped.
Cory looked back at Rick, who obviously wasn’t finished.
“To complete this step, I need to make amends with you, because it is your ministry too. I stole from you.” Rick stared at all of them with a childlike look on his face, tears swelling up in his eyes. “Will you please forgive me?”
The sanctuary was suddenly full of people on their feet and clapping, many of them saying yes loudly over the sound of the applause.
Rick wept and tried to hide his face with a hand. For a moment, he tried to compose himself in front of everybody.
Cory couldn’t stop watching in fascination.
This is wild.
“The truth is God forgave me long before I came to CR. But I still felt broken, and I didn’t know how to get healed. Then I got here and learned verses like James 5:16 that told me if I confessed my sins to somebody, I could be healed. And yeah—I can vouch for that one.”
The crowd, still standing, chuckled and applauded. Rick continued to read from his notes.
“I still mess up, but I’m not who I was. I’m changing. I’m getting healed. Thank you for letting me share.”
As Rick moved away from the podium and the crowd applauded him again, Cory saw J. T. and another man shake Rick’s hand and then embrace him.
Cory stood up and applauded too.
Guy’s got a lot of guts.
He knew he could never in a million years go up before everybody and openly confess everything. Not like that. No way.
So maybe this whole Celebrate Recovery thing wasn’t completely useless. At least it was helping people like Rick, which was good. It didn’t change a thing about why he was there, but he could admit that the program was working for some. It was impossible to be cynical about that.
He never thought he’d be this surprised at something in the sanctuary of a small church in Okmulgee. But—well—if there was indeed a God above, maybe this was His sense of humor at work.
For a moment, a singular second, the cheers and the rush and the wildness all fade away.
Cory sees himself in the barn. Not hitting at balls and not picking them up, but talking with his brother with fistfuls of baseball cards.
Somewhere out there Clay is watching.
And Cory wants to make it count for his little brother.
It’s just a random, ridiculous thought in this game six. A win, and they’ve made it to the World Series. A loss, and it all means nothing.
Cory swings, knowing he’ll connect, knowing he’s going to win the game.
But that’s as romantic as that image of Clay and Cory playing with those cards.
Cory strikes out and suddenly sees the whole world around him wave a big fat bye-bye.
Chapter Twenty-five
Home Plate
The soft glow of the superhero night-light in Tyler’s room lit up his peaceful face. Emma glanced in on her son and saw him curled up in his bed, a picture frame lying against his arms and chest. She carefully walked into the messy room and slipped the frame from his hands, then made sure his covers were tucked in around him.
Emma knew the photo well, yet she studied it in the muted light. The family picture had been taken before James’s third deployment to Afghanistan. Tyler had been eight at the time, and his father was the biggest hero in his life.
He still is.
Emma felt that familiar wave of sadness and regret, the kind that usually came at moments like this, when Tyler was asleep and the house was silent. She put the photo back on the small table next to his bed, then closed her eyes for a moment as she faced Tyler’s way.
“Watch over this child, Lord. Continue to give him peace. Continue to give us peace. Help us to know that James is in a better place, that he’s watching over us. Help us—help Tyler—to be able to let him go. Somehow, Lord. In some way.”
She slipped out of the bedroom and walked back down to the empty family room. Thoughts of James followed her.
James had been God’s unexpected gift to Emma and Tyler. A gift she didn’t even know she was looking for or needed. For her, there had always been the great Cory Brand. He was always in the picture, and she couldn’t imagine life without him. But two monumental things changed that.
First, Tyler came into the picture.
Timing in life is everything, a friend once told her. Emma knew this was true.
Once Cory made his decision, Emma made her own. She disappeared. In some ways, her journey wasn’t much different from his. They both left Okmulgee behind.
Cory found his perfect match in professional baseball, while Emma ended up meeting a tall, dark, and handsome army private named James Hargrove. The last thing Emma had wanted was another alpha male in her life, especially considering she was pregnant and alone and wasn’t sure what she was going to do.
James didn’t come along on a white horse and rescue her. No. In James she found someone who was willing to walk alongside her for a while, and as he did she fell in love with him.
Emma wasn’t in the mood for television tonight. It would either bore or depress her. She looked at the magazines on the table and then stared at the latest Vivian Brown novel she was halfway through. The book was beginning to depress her too, since it was a love story.
She and Tyler were doing fine; they were making it. But every single day she thought of James, and she knew Tyler did too.
So why, God? Why now? Why now of all times did Cory have to come back into the picture?
If this were a Hallmark movie, the two of them would keep running into each other—at the store or the supermarket—and slowly but surely they’d get back together. This, however, was definitely not a Hallmark movie. Not when the male lead was off getting hammered and embarrassing himself by knocking over batboys and cops who coached Little League.
Plus, she wasn’t about to let that happen. She wasn’t worried about falling for Cory Brand. That train had left the station years ago. She had lost him once, and in his place had come this amazing man who ended up loving both Emma and Tyler unconditionally.
Sure, she would have loved to find a man who worked a regular nine-to-five job and coached Little League and went to all his son’s games and was a deacon in the church. But life wasn’t about filling out a questionnaire and submitting it with all the little boxes checked. She wasn’t exactly the picture of the perfect catch either.
Emma wondered what Cory was doing now. If she had to be honest, she was a little worried about him.
Yet that didn’t change the fact that she was more worried about Tyler realizing the truth about him.
It was just a label, a label that didn’t mean anything. It was like calling Cory a coach. He wasn’t a real coach any more than he was Tyler’s “real” father.
She hoped he would realize this soon and end the charade and leave them alone. It would be easier that way. Easier for everybody.
Not far away, in the holding cell of a motel room with a baseball game on in the background, Cory stared at a picture of a family he could have had. It was a recent picture of Emma and Tyler that he’d gotten from Clay. They were smiling and happy and content.
You could’ve been a part of this picture, buddy.
He still didn’t know if he even wanted to be a part of that picture. He didn’t know what he wanted, to be honest.
The mini-fridge caught his attention.
But I’m not stealing from a church. I’m just biding my time in this little town before I go my merry way.
Emma was sweet and she had a sweet life with Tyler and that was all terribly sweet. Cory didn’t have any place in that sweet snapshot. He would just make everything sour and bitter like he always had.
He put the picture on the table next to him and then sat up on the edge of the bed.
That itching urge filled him again. He needed something to make it go away. Not a deep heartache of not being with Emma and Tyler. That didn’t exist. Nor did he need something to take away some deep sadness or longing or regret inside of him. But the spiraling thoughts that left an empty hole in the middle were there and had always been there. This pressure to do something and get rid of those thoughts. To make those tornadoes inside of his heart and mind simmer down.
He was bored and restless and wanted to get drunk.
Cory wasn’t some guy stealing in order to sniff coke. He was just … bored and feeling useless and wanting to get rid of the blah feeling inside. Emma and Tyler couldn’t make that go away. But the magical little mini-fridge—that was a different story.
You don’t have to do this.
He heard the voice inside and wasn’t sure if it belonged to J. T. or Rick or his guardian angel Pajersky.
You can be strong.
Cory sat still and stared at the fridge.
If somebody could see him now …
But they couldn’t, and that was the point. Nobody was watching him. The lights and the cameras and the applause weren’t there.
It was a very lonely place to be.
Home Run: A Novel Page 14
