by Joseph Lallo
“For three hits?”
“That’s right.”
“I can do that. We play Penn Hills next week.”
“No. Not in the season. In one game.”
Samuel looked at his dad and shook his head back and forth. “Not even Tommy Malone gets three hits in one game.”
“Then you’ll have to be better than Tommy if you want the pocketknife.”
Samuel shrugged. He pushed the ball cap back on his head and whistled. He checked the little league schedule on the fridge, and ran his finger down the list of under-ten league games until it stopped on April 14, 1979.
“Alpine Village. On my birthday. That’s the one.”
His dad raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“Danny Cranston plays for Alpine Village. Word has it the kid has a mean curveball.”
“C’mon, Dad,” Samuel said with a smirk. “He’s a lefty. I’ll see that pitch coming from a mile away. I’m behind on the fastballs, but if he throws that curve, I can pull it to left field. That corner is shallow at Hawkeye Park.”
Samuel’s dad squinted at the schedule.
“Didn’t notice that. Looks like you play those guys at home.”
Samuel nodded and crossed his arms.
“I think you should tell Mom now. I’m getting that knife.”
Samuel kept his eyes closed and his hands wrapped around the pocketknife. He felt the memory lurch ahead.
“Let’s go, batter,” the umpire said, standing behind the catcher.
Samuel winked at Tony, the catcher who was crouched low and raising his mitt into the strike zone.
“You ain’t hittin’ Danny’s curve,” Tony said.
“Watch me,” Samuel said.
The umpire dropped into position. Samuel placed his left foot inside the batter’s box and dug the toes on his right cleat into the dirt. He drew the bat back behind his ear, just like his dad drilled into his head during all of those trips to the batter’s cages. Samuel noted the runners on second and third and heard the moms cheering. He did his best to block it out and stared hard at Danny Cranston perched on the mound.
The first pitch came faster than Samuel expected. It blew past his nose and dropped into Tony’s mitt with a snap, followed by the umpire’s declaration of a strike.
Samuel stepped out of the box and closed his eyes. He thought about his other at-bats. This was his fourth time at the plate and probably his last chance at that third hit of the game. Two singles. Fine. Those were still hits, even if they didn’t count as RBIs. A third single was still a hit, too.
He moved through the circular practice swing that batters individualize over the course of their baseball careers. Samuel drew the back bat again, and again, Danny brought the heat.
“Strike two.”
Tony snickered from behind his catcher’s mask and shook his head at Samuel.
“You’re chasin’ the count now, Sammy. You know he’s coming with his curve. Might as well strike out right now.”
Samuel ignored the comment and moved back into the batter’s box. He had Danny Cranston in the palm of his hand.
He could tell from Danny’s side-arm pitch that the ball was coming from the outside in. Samuel saw the ball rotate in slow motion, the red laces spinning overtop of the white rawhide. As it came closer, Samuel gripped the bat. He brought it a tad higher over his shoulder and then started the swing forward.
The contact felt so good it almost made Samuel cry. The baseball shot from the meat of the bat with a satisfying thud.
Samuel’s eyes drifted up to follow the ball into the summer sky of 1979. He knew he should have been running, but it didn’t matter. This swing was a textbook left-field pull, and he knew the ball was headed to the fence, probably over it. Samuel took a stride toward first and dropped the bat into the dirt. He smiled as the ball became a white dot doing its best to escape the atmosphere. The noise of the moment froze into silence, and Samuel imagined the ball whistling through the air like a space rocket.
But then it started to drop. That space-bound projectile lost its booster fuel and turned back toward the green outfield at Hawkeye Park. Samuel pushed his walk into a slight jog around first base. The coach was screaming at him to run, but Samuel could not hear him. He jogged toward second base, watching as the left fielder ran to the fence underneath the baseball. The outfielder stopped and raised his mitt over his head. Samuel saw the glove eat the ball a split-second before it cracked the leather and snapped him back into real time.
“Out.”
Before he made it to the second-base bag, Samuel was sobbing. He felt the demeaning glare of every player on the field, every kid on the bench, and every parent watching from just beyond the foul lines. When he reached the bench, he could not even look at his dad. Samuel’s chest hitched and heaved as he ended the afternoon going 2-4, and coming up one fly ball shy of a homerun and a third hit in the game.
Samuel shifted again, sweat building in his palm as he held the artifact from his youth. Those feelings from so long ago had returned.
“I know, but it was really close. I think it was the only fly ball that kid caught all season.”
Samuel looked out the window at the suburban world fluttering by at thirty-five miles per hour. He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth with his front teeth.
“So where we goin’, Dad?”
Samuel’s father looked up at his son through the rearview mirror of the 1976 El Camino.
“Ralph’s Army Surplus. I need some things for deer season,” he said with a smirk.
“It’s April.”
His dad pulled the car into the tight space at the side of the red-brick store. When they entered, Samuel’s dad turned right toward the lit glass display case, and Samuel had his hunch confirmed.
“Heya, Billy,” his dad said.
“Yo. Wutch yins lookin’ for?” Billy asked.
“A pocketknife. Something that’ll fit a boy, something he can use to protect himself.”
Samuel’s dad looked down at his son with a wink.
“We’s got exactly what you need right over here.”
Billy the clerk waved toward the left end of the glass case, and before he could even begin the sales pitch, Samuel saw it. The knife had both blades extended, fanned out like fingers on a hand. The mother-of-pearl on the handle met the polished silver tips. It was not more than three inches in length, but it was the perfect size for a young man.
“Can I see that one, Dad?” Samuel asked.
Billy stooped and pulled a ring of keys from his belt. Several clicks and pops later, the back of the display case slid to the right. His disembodied hand reached in and took the knife off the red velour covering the shelf. He stood and closed both blades, then handed it to Samuel’s dad.
“That model is called ‘the Scout,’ and it’s the last one left. Heard they ain’t got no more left in all of Western PA, they been sellin’ so good.”
“How much, Billy?”
The clerk looked to the ceiling and rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin, producing a rat-like scratch.
“Listed for fifteen ninety-nine, but I can prolly get it to you for eleven.”
Samuel’s dad reached into his back pocket and removed his wallet. The cracked, brown leather was wrapped around a bulging mass of scrap paper and business cards. He opened it with both hands and used his forefinger to separate the tops of several bills.
“Son?”
Samuel had not stopped staring at the knife since the moment he saw it on display. All of the kids at St. Bernadette’s school had one, except him. They would circle up at recess and pull them out, far away from the eagle-eye vision of the nuns. Sometimes, a boy would unravel a lint-covered, wilting photograph cut from his father’s issue of Playboy, and sometimes another would reveal the crumbled remains of a cigarette filched from his mom’s soft pack of Marlboro Reds. But most of the time, it was knives.
St. Bernadette’s
and the surrounding public school districts all closed the Monday after Thanksgiving for the first day of deer season. They kept the façade, the idea that most of the male students would go hunting with their fathers that day. But everyone knew the teachers went, too. The pocketknife was the first indication of readiness. Even though Samuel and his chums would not be ready to take the hunter’s safety course for another few years, the pocketknife served as public notice that they would.
“Samuel,” his father said, this time with more force.
“Yeah, Dad. That would be awesome. Really cool.”
His father nodded at the clerk.
“Lemme box that for ya.”
“Can I just put it in my pocket, Dad?”
Samuel felt his father’s hand ruffle his hair and then move to the middle of his back, where it guided him out of the store. Samuel did not even notice the transaction, the receipt or the small talk between Billy and his father. He gripped the knife in his palm and for the first time, he felt like a man.
Photographs rolled through Samuel’s head – a slideshow of his life. Each one brought a remembrance of the Scout pocketknife and how it had become part of him. Samuel always kept it in his front right pocket, where it clattered together with loose change. Through his early teen years, Samuel kept the knife clean and polished. He maintained the blade and would buff the mother-of-pearl inlay. He remembered losing the knife several times, the last time in college after a night of heavy drinking. He had to scour the basement of a frat house the morning after, in a haze of hangover, stale beer and the occasional used condom. He found it next to the toilet. He rinsed it off in the sink and placed the Scout back in his pocket, where it belonged. The images shot across his mind, some lingering longer than others, until the procession slowed and finally stopped on one. A picture of Samuel in the funeral home, kneeling in front of his father’s coffin.
Samuel looked down at his father’s still face.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see his mother. She held a tissue in both hands, having given up trying to keep her makeup in check. She opened her mouth, but no words came. She shook her head instead and gave Samuel a quick rub on the shoulder before turning to greet another distant relative in town for the funeral.
Samuel blocked out the quiet sobbing and muffled laughter of those gathered in the room. He looked again at his dad’s face, forever asleep amidst the fragrant, arranged flowers, complete with ribbons strung across the front.
“I know you loved John more. It’s okay. You didn’t know what to do with a son like me. I’m not really sure how you managed. You and Mom struggled to understand what went on in my head, what the hell I wanted from life.”
He felt himself chuckle and turned to make sure his outburst did not garner attention from the rest of the family.
“I mean, even now, with you lying here dead, I don’t fit in. Nobody will approach me. But that’s fine. I’m not here to mend fences with Uncle Frank. I think you loved me. I mean, you did as any man loves his son, but I think there was a time when it was unconditional. You bought me the Scout. I didn’t deserve it. The deal was three hits, and I went 2-4. But you bought it anyway, and you bought it with your poker winnings. Mom wouldn’t have allowed that purchase to come from the family budget. Don’t think I don’t know that.”
He looked over his shoulder to confirm the chasm of space still existed. None of the relatives would come near the coffin until he finished. None would risk a possible conversation with him.
“I wish we could have had this conversation before cancer got you, but I guess I’ll have to settle for it this way. I mean, I need to thank you. If I hadn’t been so different than you and Mom, my siblings, I would still be stuck living in the same shit-hole suburb, wasting my life away.”
He paused.
“Sorry. Even now, it’s hard for me not to take shots.”
Several relatives gathered near the table with the photographic collage and other remembrances.
“I’ll miss you, Dad. Even after everything we’ve been through, I’ll miss you.”
Samuel stood and shoved both hands into his front pockets. His right hand struck his phone and then the Scout. He wrapped his fingers around the pocketknife and held it in his palm. The tears created a wavering last image of his father in the casket.
“I want you to take it with you. You never know when you might need to open a package or cut a string in the afterlife.”
Samuel slid his hand into the casket and tucked the Scout underneath the edge of the satin pillow, where the head of his dead father rested.
***
Samuel shook his head as if to dislodge the cobwebs gathering inside and licked his lips, which felt dry as petrified wood. He glanced down at his palm and opened it. The knife remained, as real as the fingers grasping it.
Samuel did the only thing he could think of. He placed it in his right pocket, where it sunk into the familiar space. He felt the coolness of the object through thin fabric as it rested against his leg. He stood and used his hand to clear the surface of the window, revealing the original, grey landscape of this place. The snowstorm and all its fury were gone. The ground was dry and he began to wonder if it had happened at all.
He looked around the cabin and noticed it was almost identical to the first cabin. The stove, the food, the coffee, the clothing, the photographs hanging on the wall had all disappeared. Nothing remained but the chair, the table, the hard bunk and a faint smell of burnt coffee beans.
Samuel opened the door and stood on the threshold of the cabin, which faced the western horizon. The advancing cloud loomed overhead, and the landscape sat in soundless solitude. He turned to face the east and recognized the path he hoped would lead to the Barren. He was determined to reach it and survive, unsure if meeting Major there would really matter.
This cabin is clearly done with me, he thought.
With his rucksack full of a handful of meager belongings, Samuel set back off upon the path toward the Barren. He hiked for hours around the base of the mountain, putting the second cabin and its memories behind. Every so often, Samuel would thrust his hand into his front pocket and feel the pocketknife nuzzled there. Then he’d shake his head, as though more surprised it remained there than that it appeared in the first place.
***
The pale yellow flame caught his eye as it danced silently in the distance. Samuel sensed movement, but could not see anything around it. He hiked the path and realized it was close to night, based on the aches that come after hours of hiking.
The fire grew in size as he got closer. After another hour of hiking, Samuel could discern the hot ash floating upward into the still trees. He saw a campfire and a pack sitting beside a fallen tree. A thin line of rope stretched from one sapling to another, weighted down in the middle by a shirt flipped over the top and dripping water to the ground.
“Anyone here?” he asked as the pack slid from his shoulder. He stretched his arms and looked around the camp. Before he could ask again, a figure pushed through the trees.
“You made it. So glad you didn’t veer from the path,” Major said.
Samuel cast his eyes down into the fire, avoiding Major’s.
“That fire. It makes things worse here.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Major said.
Samuel sighed.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“Duty.” Major shrugged. “The visitor I expected did not make it.”
“What happened to him?” Samuel asked. Major ignored the question and stared into the fire. “I’ve been hiking all day. Can I rest?” Samuel said.
Major swept his arm across his body and dipped with an exaggerated bow.
“Mi casa, su casa,” he said.
Samuel knew what he meant, even if he didn’t know how he knew it.
“I’m sure you’ll wake me when I need to get up,” he said to Major.
“I don’t think we have a l
ot of time to mess around. The cloud is coming east at a good clip. I was worried it might have pulled you under. It can do that, like those huge waves on the Atlantic seaboard. I remember standing in the surf as a kid thinking they weren’t so scary, until the current tugged at my ankles on its way back out.”
“A few hours?” Samuel asked.
“One or two, if I can keep track. Then we’ve got to jump back on the path and get to the Barren.”
Samuel nodded and rubbed his eyes.
Major watched Samuel fall asleep. He tossed several twigs onto the fire before looking over his shoulder at the massive cloud inching closer.
***
Samuel felt a hand shake his shoulder. His leg hurt and he couldn’t feel his right foot. He opened his eyes and saw that Major was kicking dirt onto the remaining coals of the fire. It was still dark, as it had been since the sky swallowed the last of the light over the eastern horizon.
“How long?”
Major shrugged. “How long what?”
“How long was I asleep?”
“I’m not really sure. The fire is burning differently now, too. If the reversion is moving at the same pace at the Barren, we may already be too late.”
Samuel pulled himself upright and rubbed the pins and needles from his foot. “Too late for what?”
“Too late to slip.”
Samuel waited for an explanation. When Major remained silent, he pushed. “What’s a slip?” he asked.
“I think we should wait until—”
Samuel slammed his fist into the soft dirt and dry leaves. “I think you need to start filling me in right now. I don’t know where the hell I am. I don’t know who you are. I don’t remember shit. Some things disappear and other things come back.”
“What did you say?” Major asked.
“I said you need to start—”
“No,” Major said. “What did you say about things coming back?”
Samuel paused, disappointed his tirade had no effect on Major. “A pocketknife.”
