Ba has put Rickey and Jimmy in for second base, so I skip over that column. At shortstop, though, I look for Coop’s name, but instead see Yonder for three innings. A little more searching reveals that Coop has been stuck in right field for three innings, and then third for three innings.
“You gotta have Coop at short,” I say. “No one can play short the way he can.”
“No one else will learn to play shortstop if we don’t let them.”
I think about Yonder, standing in left field, barely paying attention. I’m pretty sure that playing ball was not his idea.
“I’ll bet he doesn’t even know what plays to call out in different situations,” I say. “You should at least warn him that he’s going to play short so he’ll pay attention. And he should pay attention to what Coop is doing.”
And so it goes, me and Ba going over his chart, position by position, with me arguing over and over that putting our worst players in the most important positions is not a great idea. It’s like Ba wants us to lose.
And as for me, I need to know we’re going to play decently before I invite Mom to a game. We have to have at least a chance of winning.
Then, in the second to last column, we get to PITCHER.
“Ah,” says Ba triumphantly, sliding the paper to reveal the assignments. “Now, here I have done what you wanted me to. I have only put in players who can actually pitch. It is only what is fair to the other team.”
I look down, and for a second, I cannot even process what my name is doing there.
“You have me pitching? I never said I wanted to pitch. I’ve never even pitched in practice.” My voice crawls upward, desperate.
“We only have a few players who can pitch consistently,” says Ba. “Martin, Aaron, and you. I’m sure as the season progresses, more players will be able to pitch.”
When I think about pitching, I think about Nelson and hydrangea petals that fall like snow. I think about that palmball that Nelson promised to teach me.
I shake my head. “I’ll play any other position.”
I think about my wish, my simple wish that baseball would make everything better. I wonder how this all got so complicated.
Ba pulls his head back and stares at me. “You can pitch. I have seen you.” He says this as if he does not know that happened in the Before, and that we live in the After.
I blink, hard. “I don’t, not now.”
Ba sighs and studies his piece of paper.
I think of an option, one that will keep me safely away from pitching. “Look,” I say. “I’ll catch.”
This makes Ba pause for a moment. Right now, Sean is the only person catching because everyone else has pretty much outright refused. Sean is miserable at catcher, always complaining about his knees and groaning when he has to stand up and chase a ball that’s gone past him into the backstop, which is often.
“You know,” says Ba, “Americans like to put the big boys at catcher. But did you notice the Taiwanese team? They put small, quick players at catcher.”
I nod, not because I knew this, but because I think it will get me what I want. “So, can I catch instead?”
Ba taps his paper a few times, and then begins erasing the column marked CATCHER. He flicks away the crumbs.
“The team could use another catcher,” he says shortly. “Fine. Catch.”
BA AND I GET READY EARLY FOR THE GAME BECAUSE we have to get the field prepped. After I put on my uniform, I take my black band off my shirt from yesterday, and begin to pin it to my shirt for today.
And then I stop.
I turn to the mirror and hold up the black band, first on one side, and then the other. I can’t make it look right. For one, if I put it where I normally wear it, it covers up the writing on the shirt. And two, as bad as the uniform looks, it looks even worse with the black band.
I put the band down, and look at the shirt with no band. It’s like looking at one of Laney’s books that’s cut into sections, where you can mix and match the faces and bodies. Elaine used to crack herself up, putting a ballerina body with a fireman head, or an astronaut head with an ice skater body. The face is my face, but the shirt looks like it belongs to someone else.
But it also looks okay. I mean, it looks like a baseball uniform—a regular uniform like everyone else’s. And that’s the point. We’re supposed to look alike—unified.
There is a small back pocket in the pants. I fold the band once, in half, and then I put it in my pocket.
On my way out of the house, I stop in the living room.
“We have our first game today,” I say to Mom. I open my arms, so she can see the whole uniform. I wonder if she’ll notice what’s missing.
I’ll take anything. A lifted eyebrow. A bright look in her eyes. A Well, look at you.
If she looks the least interested, I tell myself, I’ll invite her to come to the game right now.
Mom turns ever so slightly in my direction. You might have missed it if you weren’t looking carefully. She turns her far shoulder just a little bit, twisting from the waist.
“Okay,” she says. “Bye.”
I’ll wait.
Ba and I get to the field first. Ba finds two rakes, and we work on the infield, making the dirt smooth and taking out the rocks.
When Aaron comes running up, it’s still early. He grins and waves.
“Game day! Yes! Let’s go, Jaguars!” Aaron punches the air. “We’re going to demolish the other team! Look out … look out …” Aaron pauses in the middle of his one-man pep rally. “Um, what’s their name? The other team?”
Ba smiles the tiniest smile. “The Hornets.”
“Oh yeah! The Jaguars are going to swat the Hornets away!” Aaron yanks a bat out of his bag, and takes a big swing with it. “Swat!”
Aaron’s bat is a Louisville Slugger with red tape on the handle.
Aaron sees me staring and stops. “What?”
I reach out to take it, but then stop myself. “Is that yours? Where did you get it?”
Aaron gets a funny look, guarded and suspicious. “I found it.”
“By the fence? Near the latrine?”
“Yeah.” Suddenly, Aaron’s face changes. “Hey—is it yours?” Aaron holds the bat out to me. “I asked around, but no one claimed it.”
I take the bat and automatically turn it around so I can see the notches. I run my thumb over them, feeling them against my skin.
“What are those for?” asks Aaron.
“Home runs.”
“Wow! You hit all those home runs?”
“No, not me.” And then, before I can stop the words, “My brother did.”
“You have a brother that plays, too, huh?” asks Aaron.
Now I feel stuck between a truth and a lie. Because it is Nelson’s, but I’m letting Aaron think that Nelson is alive, maybe about to come watch the game any minute now.
“He died last September,” I add. Then I wait. I wonder what Aaron thinks now.
Aaron’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I saw you were wearing a black band before, but I figured it was for a grandparent or something.”
My hand goes up to the place where the band would have been. I mumble something about the uniform. I reach back and touch the band in my pocket, just to make sure it’s still there.
I wait for Aaron to look away, or say that he is sorry for my loss, but instead he says, “He must have been a really good ballplayer.”
“Nelson,” I say. “Nelson was the best.” I clear my throat. “He was the one who told me about running on a third strike.” I force myself to process this moment. I’m not wearing my black band. I’m talking about Nelson. Everything is still okay.
“Yeah,” says Aaron. “Most of the stuff I know about baseball is from my older brothers. Travis is seventeen, and Larry is fifteen.”
“Nelson was eighteen, almost nineteen,” I tell him. And then I realize that one day, I’ll be older than Nelson. But in my mind, he’ll always be older than me.
> Then we both look down at the ground, looking for something to say.
“Do you want to warm up?” asks Aaron finally.
“Okay,” I say. I start putting on the catcher’s gear.
And it is okay. Actually, being able to talk about Nelson and then do something normal is more than okay.
Aaron’s dad walks up and hands the scoring book and a slip of paper to Aaron. “Put the batting order in for me, will you? I need to get my chair out of the car.”
I watch Aaron fill in the blanks for a few minutes. Something’s not quite right, though.
“You know, something’s different about you.”
“Me? No, not really.” Aaron doesn’t look at me, but grips the pen more tightly.
“Yeah, you.” I watch Aaron for a few moments more. “Oh, I know what it is—you’re left-handed!” Aaron’s hand curls around the words, trying not to smear them.
“Oh, that.” Aaron relaxes and looks at me. “Sheesh, you don’t have to be so dramatic. I thought you were going to say something really awful.”
“But you pitch right-handed. And bat right, too.”
“Don’t remind me.” Aaron leans back and adjusts his cap. “My dad would love for me to be a left-handed pitcher, but for whatever reason, I play baseball right-handed.”
“It’d be better the other way around. You know, a righty who plays left?”
Aaron shrugs. “Have you noticed that most of life isn’t straightforward? You know? There are always complications.”
I know. I know that people see me and see a regular kid, but I don’t feel like one, not anymore. But telling Aaron about Nelson and knowing that Aaron is okay with that feels good. Not complicated.
WE DON’T GET OFF TO THE BEST START. AS THE HOME team, we pitch first. After the first batter gets a single on the second pitch, Ba calls time-out and waves his arm at me and Aaron.
“Peter, don’t you see me signaling you?”
“What?”
“Signals, Peter. You should look to me for a signal.” Ba quickly goes over the signals with me: four-seam, two-seam, curveball. Inside, outside. High, low. He taps his nose for pitches and points to different places on his face for location.
I go back to home plate, embarrassed at being called over one minute into the game. But Aaron and I do what Ba tells us to do, and the signals seem to work. Aaron throws six strikeouts in four innings.
One thing I notice about Aaron is that he loves going to full count. It doesn’t make him nervous at all. Once the umpire calls three and two, Aaron gets this crazy little smile on his face and goes into his windup. A lot of times he comes out on top, too, maybe because the batters are getting weirded out about his smile.
“I like the battle,” he tells me when I ask him about it. “From either side, as pitcher or batter. I like getting into tight spots, and fighting my way out. This is how you find out what you’re made of.”
Everyone on our team gets on base. Everyone. Not just Aaron, who works a triple out of a deep center field hit after getting drilled in the first inning, and Martin, who brings in two runs, but even Sean, who ekes out a base on balls. I get a double and two singles, no strikeouts. And Doug, Doug, taps a ball that drops softly between the shortstop and the outfield to give us the go-ahead run. His dad is waiting for him when he comes off the field.
“Are you kidding me, Dougie boy? A hit? An RBI?” Mr. Levinger picks Doug up in a big bear hug and then releases him. “Where’d you learn to hit like that?”
Doug points at Ba. “Coach. He made us do all these drills.”
“When that ball went up, I asked my wife, ‘What happened to Dougie’s at bat?’ And she said, ‘No, Dougie hit that ball. Dougie hit that ball.’ ” Dougie. You had to feel for the guy.
“Da-ad,” grumbles Doug. He drops his head and sits on the bench. “Quit it.”
“You,” says Mr. Levinger, grabbing Ba’s hand and shaking it. “Are one heck of a coach.”
Ba accepts the handshake awkwardly. “Douglas is a very hard worker,” he says.
Mr. Levinger walks away, still shaking his head in amazement. “Great coach.”
When we get home from the game, Laney comes running out of the living room, yelling, “Did you win? Did you win?”
I change my voice to sound like a sportscaster’s. “At this point in the season, the Jaguars have a 100-percent winning record!”
Laney jumps around and cheers for us. Ba cocks his head at me. “It’s 100 percent because the team has only played one game.”
“I know that,” I say. “But going one for one is still 100 percent!”
Ba shakes his head, but I think he is happy to win. He even stops by the living room and murmurs, “We won,” to my mother before going upstairs to change.
Then it’s my turn.
I take a deep breath, sit down next to Mom, and tell her all about the game. I tell her about Aaron throwing out the runner at first, and Doug’s big hit. And she looks at me the whole time. In the eyes. And once, she says, “I bet that was exciting.”
And then it’s worth it, and the win feels real. The long, boring practices, the twenty swings every day. The forty fly balls and the forty grounders. I would have done a hundred, a thousand, just to get to this moment.
OF COURSE I HAD TOLD BA THAT I WOULD KEEP UP with my schoolwork when I started baseball. And at the time, I meant it. But the truth is, I let things get behind. I don’t usually have that much homework, but sometimes, after practice, homework doesn’t seem as important.
The easiest class to let things go in is history, Ms. Rowe. After I wrote two different reports about the election of 1912, it was like she felt guilty for giving me extra work. I get As on most of my work now, no matter how crummy it is. I got an A on my essay on the major outcomes of World War I, even though one of my points was that there was a decrease in the number of Austrian archdukes.
From there, it wasn’t such a big leap to not turning in all of my work. But now, as Ms. Rowe is calling me up to her desk, I’m wondering if I’ve taken things too far.
“I’m missing your rough draft on an aspect of FDR’s presidency,” she says. “Did you turn it in?”
I am very tempted to lie. Ms. Rowe is known for losing papers, and it’s only a rough draft, for Pete’s sake. It’s not a quiz or a test. She’ll believe me.
But I don’t. I don’t want to lie to Ms. Rowe. I just want her to treat me like a regular kid.
“No,” I say. “I did not.”
“I see.” She makes a note in her grade book, and her hair wavers a little bit as she does it. “Try to have it in by tomorrow, okay?” I nod and turn to go back to my seat when she calls me back.
“I also wanted to ask about a letter I sent to your parents,” she says. “Did they have any questions?”
I look around the room for help. I’d put the letter far out of my mind. Chris glances up at that moment, and we look at each other for a split second before Chris looks away.
“My dad’s kind of busy,” I say. “He’s coaching my baseball team.”
“Your dad is coaching your baseball team?” Ms. Rowe’s voice is loud enough for the whole class.
“Yes.” I pitch my voice lower, hoping Ms. Rowe will follow.
“Hmm, well, I suppose that’s good,” says Ms. Rowe cautiously. “But you could still come to the group and rap with us.”
“I’m busy, too,” I tell her, backing away from her desk. Being around Ms. Rowe makes me feel twitchy.
On the way home, someone nudges my shoulder.
It’s Chris.
He nudges me again. “Hey.”
Chris and I used to walk home together all the time, from the time we were in kindergarten. Our moms used to wait at school and walk with us, and then, at some point, we were allowed to walk alone. I bet if you added it all up, it would be in the thousands, the number of times we’ve walked home. First days of school, last days, and rainy days. A couple of times, we walked back to school because one of us forgot
something. Twice, we were sent home early from school because of snow.
None of those days, not a single one, does anything to make this moment less strange. We used to talk about a lot of stuff, but I can’t think of any of those things right now. Because of the strike, we can’t even talk about the Pirates. We used to spend hours talking about the games, players, opponents.
“Hi.”
Chris draws a quick breath. “I heard your dad was coaching baseball.”
“I think the whole class heard that.”
Chris hiccups a quick laugh, a bit too loud. “Well, yeah. But that’s something.”
Chris knows, of course, how completely strange it is that Ba is coaching a baseball team. He has watched Ba say no to baseball over and over, usually after Chris asked if I could come out to play some ball. No, Peter has homework. No, it’s too late. No, Peter has chores. Chris once told me that Ba was the only father he knew who seemed to actually hate baseball.
But still, I don’t know what Chris means by something.
“Maybe you could come out tonight, play some ball with us,” continues Chris. Hearing Chris say us startles me a bit. I was always on the other side of us.
“I have a game,” I say.
“Then some other time,” says Chris. “Anytime.”
We’re at my house now, at the walkway that leads to the front door, and beyond that, my mother is in a darkened room, with the light from the television flickering over her face. Chris, who my mother used to call her third son, knows nothing of this, I bet.
There was a time when I would not have dreamed of playing this game without Chris, but now he doesn’t know why I’m playing, and I don’t know how to tell him.
“Maybe,” I tell him. But what I’m thinking is, probably not.
MARTIN PITCHES THE SECOND GAME.
“You might want to put some extra padding in your glove,” he cracks. “You’ve got a real pitcher today.” Martin only throws fastballs, four seam and two seam, but he throws with a lot of power and control. I barely have to move my glove. If I didn’t want to win this game, I swear I’d drop his pitches and move my glove out of the strike zone just to take him down a peg.
The Way Home Looks Now Page 9
