Danny stepped over toward the batter’s box, confident, gorgeous, eyes bright and shining.
“Time, blue!” the opposing coach called, walking out from behind the fence and waddling up to the mound like his calves hurt him. He was an older guy with pock marks on his neck, and he was talking to Sullivan and waving back toward his bench, touching his right arm, calling in his closer.
Anthony Tarragna grinned and nodded to no one. Good! You got a flame-thrower you’ve been hiding, send him on in! Let’s get someone my boy can really crush, someone good, someone with a bit of spunk.
He looked back toward the enemy bench and the smile fell from his face. He couldn’t really see from this angle since the high sun was glaring off the chrome of the fence, but he saw enough. The kid was a beast—wide shoulders, huge legs, and he had one of those Mohawk haircuts, at least it was a variation of one, where a few inches above his ears were white-walled, and his long black hair fell behind like some war-crazed Indian. He reached for his hat, then threw his head down, hair coming over his face. Then he hiked his head back up hard, making the mane of black hair flip behind his head, and he grabbed it in a ponytail, shoving it through the hole in his hat.
Then, he stood, slowly, menacingly, and it seemed it took forever as he grew taller and taller, and when he stood at full height, Anthony Tarragna felt himself gulp, because this was the biggest fifteen-year-old he had ever seen, six-foot-five, at least, and built like a train.
The monster came from behind the fence, and he started doing a circus trick with massive hands that looked like slabs of beef, one of them balancing the ball on the back knuckles, and while Anthony Tarragna was marveling at the way the guy flipped the ball up into grip after grip, all eight of them, Becky noticed that he had a birthmark under his jaw, and the German flip that he’d held onto all these years was originally this odd Mohawk, falling behind his neck like some warrior head dress.
He stalked across the infield, and there was a glint in his eye, a bully’s glare, a confidence that couldn’t possibly do anything but make him both feared and hated by most that he knew, and when he took the mound he towered there, standing, arm dangling, waiting.
The umpire was still standing out in front of the plate, and he called out to the new pitcher, “Take a few warm-ups,” and in horror, Becky felt herself saying the next words to herself…
I don’t need any warm-ups. And the guy curled his lip and said, “I don’t need any stinkin’ warm-ups.” Then he pointed his glove at Danny Tarragna and said, “Get in the box.”
Danny was smiling at him, that gorgeous, beautiful smile, and he stayed calmly where he was in the on-deck circle. He took an extra second to take a huge practice swing, right in this evergreen’s face.
“Get in the box!” the pitcher shouted, and it made Anthony jump despite himself. He’d heard of this guy and was surprised that an A.A.U. team would take him—bad sport, always spitting in front of the rubber instead of behind it, taunting players, jawing with parents, and intimidating coaches. He was from somewhere in Lewiston, Brett something, last name the same as a state. He’d also heard the guy threw a million miles an hour, though no one had ever speed-gunned him.
Anthony took a deep breath. This was it. The ultimate test, the ultimate stage, the marquee players going head to head, David against Goliath. This is what you paid the big money for, right?
Danny walked out of the circle and looked down the third baseline. Anthony was about to give the signal to hit away, and suddenly, from the bench, Hanrahan put on a flurry of hand motions, hat to chin to nose back to hat to chest. What? A sacrifice bunt? Are you kidding me?
Anthony Tarragna was furious. You didn’t take the bat out of Danny Tarragna’s hands, not in front of a professional scout. He shook his head ‘no,’ and Coach Hanrahan put the signals on once again.
Hands on the hips, Anthony stewed, looking off into right field. Common sense. Calm down. Hanrahan was moving up to the high school next year, heck, he was doing it because of Danny, because he wanted to be the one who groomed the great one, and that meant, like it or not, they would all be working together for four solid years, including the rest of this one. Grudges weren’t good, and as much as Anthony didn’t want to admit it, Danny did still have a lot of time to put in before walking into Yankee stadium as a visiting Cleveland Indian.
Anthony also didn’t want to make a scene. If Danny was going to be truly considered by professionals, they didn’t need some lunatic father throwing tantrums. He looked at his son and put down the bunt sign.
If Danny was disappointed, he wasn’t showing. He was a good soldier. Always had been.
He stepped into the box and took his ready position.
Brett Michigan stepped into his wind-up, huge arms going up and making shadows, and when he spread his hands, Danny squared into the position to bunt.
“Throw right at his hands!” someone yelled, clearly some parent rooting for the visitors, and Michigan stepped deep, seeming to close half the distance between mound and plate with his stride alone, and he threw a pitch faster than Anthony Tarragna had ever seen in his life.
That’s more than a hundred, Becky thought with absolute dread, wanting to look away but unable to disengage the eyes of this loving father, and the ball was a streak, and Danny was exposed, squared facing front, and the pitch was coming right at him. He had no time to bail.
The ball hit Daniel Tarragna straight in the chest with a dramatic ‘whap,’ and he was hurled backward, legs flying up over his head and somersaulting him to the rear of the backstop. There was a sick hush in the crowd, but immediately Danny jumped up, the good soldier, hit by the pitch, and he was on his way to first base, trying to get back his step.
Three paces down the line he collapsed.
Anthony Tarragna and Becky ran to him, stood over him, hand reaching for his shoulder.
He looked up at them and mouthed ‘Dad…Daddy, please!’ He gulped twice, a frightened smile up high in his cheeks, and then his eyes fluttered their whites.
He was dead before the back of his head hit the dirt.
Becky came out of the vision, and she was crying, hand on her forehead, stumbling in circles there in the darkness on the second floor of the old barn. Then she saw him standing there by the broken window. She saw him in prisms, the tears still heavy on her lashes, and she wanted to hold him, feel his heart beating against her own. But she didn’t want any more visions as long as she lived, and she was deathly afraid now that, if she tried to embrace the ghost of Danny Tarragna, her arms would pass through him like mist.
“I’m so sorry, Danny,” she said, voice thick. “My dad…my dad…”
“Was a prodigy too.”
“I hate him. Believe it.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Danny took a step toward her, and moonlight feathered across his angelic face.
“Because he was the best at what he did. Because he was a fifteen-year-old boy with no family life to speak of, no father figure, and a nuclear missile where his arm should have been. The kids at school stayed away from him, so he taught himself to dislike them, to become a bully, like Cody Hatcher. Becky…didn’t you ever wonder what happened to guys like that after growing up and realizing what they missed? Brett Michigan was the loneliest guy in Lewiston, and then he killed a kid on a baseball field, the one place he felt he belonged. And he’s spent all of his adult life regretting everything, idolizing you, dying for a chance to make it up to the weaker kids he used to push around, like Joey Chen.”
“He’s an alcoholic loser.”
Danny smiled sadly.
“An alcoholic, yes, a loser, no. He loves you more than you could ever imagine, but every time he tries to be firm and become the dad he’s supposed to be, he gets scared. Look where being tough landed him in the first place. He’s caught in a loop now, Becky, in his mind reliving the event on the field over and over again and wondering about what he could have done different, repl
aying all the little stuff, like who shouted out that he should throw at my hands. I mean, I know it seems trivial and all, but that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do when a guy goes to sacrifice bunt, you’re just not supposed to throw it so flippin’ hard. And it turns out that it isn’t so trivial, because he always thought it was his drunk Uncle Morgan. That’s why, even after the old lush died, he followed him down to the bottom of a thousand bottles. He thought it was best to destroy himself, just like his blood brother.”
“And it wasn’t his uncle?”
Danny laughed ruefully.
“No. It was his assistant coach. The guy had gone to get his own speed gun from the truck and was coming back through the parking lot. He yelled it out, saw the result, and ducked back another way. It ate him up the rest of his life, and he took the secret to his grave.”
Becky was drained. Wilted. Exhausted. She sort of crumbled and made to take a seat right there on the floor, but she misjudged the distance and sat down too hard.
“Ouch!” she said. Then she looked off to the side and whispered “Dag,” reflectively.
“It’s just a blunder,” Danny said, parking himself next to her.
“Yeah, right.”
“Ever wonder why you have so many of them all the time?”
Becky gave him a sharp look.
“What are you saying?”
He shrugged and glanced down, playing with one of his sneaker laces.
“I’m not saying that I have all the answers to the questions of the universe or anything like that, don’t get me wrong.” He raised his eyes. “But I’ve been wandering along the edge of things for a long time, Becky, and I learned a thing or two out there in the gray. Maybe your dad was never meant to kill anybody, and maybe I was never meant to die, either. Maybe that day was a big mistake that affected all the other days after it, and you came out a little klutzy because you were inserted into the world just slightly off kilter, the puzzle piece cut just a hair wrong. Maybe I was supposed to do what I’d been practicing my whole life for, what I was meant to do, pitted against the best pitcher, then taking him deep and breaking this farmhouse window five-hundred-and-sixty feet from the plate. It would have been two unofficial records at once, don’t you see? A pair of miracles: the distance of my hit and the speed of his pitch at a hundred-and-ten miles per hour—Marty Frick gunned him, believe it.”
“So then my dad wouldn’t have a boy’s death on his conscience,” Becky added carefully, “and that would have changed everything, me included.”
“Maybe,” Danny said cryptically.
“And I could have been pitching all my life like I did this week?”
“Exactly. From day one, your dad would have been practicing with you in the back yard like my dad practiced with me.”
“But if I haven’t had all this life-long practice, how did I get the talent all of a sudden to…”
“It’s in your blood, Becky. You were meant to throw like your father. It’s your birthright. I just helped it along a little.”
“Like magic.”
“Right.”
“And that brings us to this point.”
“Yes.”
“And that point is what, exactly?”
Danny pushed up and walked slowly back to the window, measuring his words, speaking to the fragmented glass.
“The breaking point, Becky. I don’t think I was supposed to die in that batter’s box, see? I mean, people die all the time, and fair’s got nothing to do with it, we all know that. But like I told you, I’ve been drifting along the rim of the beyond for thirty-five years now, and you opened up this seam in the universe, this crazy seam where I had a chance to sneak through and change things.”
“I opened things up?”
“Yeah, without even knowing it. Your birthday, the one tomorrow that you think everyone forgot about, falls on the same weekday that I got hit by your father’s pitch, and at the same time you become the age I was when I died. It never happens this way. The blood-ties and timelines never match up, it’s like one in fifty million.”
She got to her feet, all fresh hope and energy.
“So what do we do, Danny? Talk to me, please!”
He shook his head.
“This ain’t gonna be easy.”
“Try me.”
“You aren’t gonna like it much.”
“Like’s got nothing to do with it.”
He smiled at that one, but his expression was troubled.
“It has all to do with the numeral three, Becky. It’s a universal number, all around us, like a key-code defining everything. Think about it. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Man, woman, child. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.”
“Young, middle aged, and elderly,” she continued. “Red light, yellow light, green light. Earth, moon, and sun, yeah I get it.”
“Yeah, but now it’s inverted,” Danny said. “Of course, being a baseball nut like me, you know the best example is three strikes and you’re out, but considering that the hem of the world’s been cut open, it’s three strikes and you’re in, just like your dream. And here we stand on the edge, ready to launch the biggest ‘three’ of them all. First, we pushed the rules, going to the magic field so I’d have a chance to finally hit a Michigan, strike one. Second, we bent the rules, and I showed you the replay of my death, strike two. And now, coming third, it’s strike three backward, letting us break the rules, giving us a chance to reinvent history, change everything.”
“By turning back time.”
“That was the idea.”
“So you could have another at-bat against my dad.”
“Yes.”
“And no bunting this time.”
“I’d have been swinging away.”
She paused and let her gaze fall to the floor of the loft.
“Why are we talking in past tense about it, Danny?”
He didn’t answer for a second, and when she looked up she saw he was crying, moonlight shimmering in the tear that had cut a path down his cheek.
“Because…” he said finally, “it still wouldn’t be right. If I were to crack that home run in 1978, I’d finish high school, probably go right to the big leagues, break all kinds of records. But me and you would never meet, don’t you see? By the time you’re born in 1997, I’m a thirty-four year old grown-up, most probably signing my last contract to finish out a hall of fame career. And by now, I’m almost fifty. Retired. Living in Florida or something.”
She came up close.
“And you think I’m selfish enough not to give you that chance? After what I just saw my own father take away from you?”
He stared into her eyes.
“I don’t know if I could do it now, Becky. I didn’t plan for feeling this way about you. I mean, my life had always been baseball, and then what happened here in the barn…our kiss, it was magic, maybe the finest kind. I’ve been wandering a long time, but I’m still fifteen. My feelings…” He wiped his face with his palm. “I love you, is what I’m saying. All those years roaming the stratosphere, I dreamed of you, loving the idea of what you could do for me when all the stars aligned, but now it’s become the real deal, like real love, like the type that wallops you and makes you dizzy.”
“For real, for real,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“And one more kiss would be our last, sending you back to take your best shot, right?”
“Strike three and I’m in. Up against Brett Michigan with a fresh count and a bat in my hands. But now that we’ve fallen in love, I’d remember you, Becky. It’s not worth it. It’s not…”
“It’s not up for discussion,” she said. “Remember me well.”
She thrust herself forward and kissed Danny Tarragna.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Becky was in the bleachers on the visitor’s side, no host required, and Danny Tarragna approached the plate, score three to two, one out, bottom of the seventh, in the fall of 1978. Her father looked even taller from this angle, a thick,
dark presence on the mound, and he’d just yelled for Danny to get in the box.
On his way to the plate, Danny turned and looked right at her. She waved to him, trying to be brave about it all, trying not to cry her eyes out, lucky to be granted this viewing and knowing it would be the last time she’d ever see him again. He gave a nod, an odd little smile at the edge of his face.
He looked down the baseline at his father then, who was clearly miffed about the bunt sign he’d just been given by Hanrahan, and he put down the signals in disgust.
“Time!” Danny called.
“Time!” the umpire echoed, coming out again from behind the plate and taking off his mask. Brett Michigan was complaining, but Becky didn’t hear him. She heard Danny, his breath, his heartbeat, like she was wired to his bosom, and he jogged up to his father and hugged him. It was a bit awkward with the bat, but Anthony hugged him back fiercely.
“I love ya, Dad,” Danny whispered. “For all those times that you brought me to the field, pitched to me, helped me learn to hit the long ones.”
He jogged back to the box to the roar of the crowd, and no one was screaming for him louder than Becky Michigan. She didn’t know what was to become of her, she had no idea what she would do without this boy now, and she hadn’t a clue as to what life would be like when his moment changed everything. She only knew that this was baseball, the greatest game ever invented, where a boy on a hill was armed with a hard sphere and his foe stood across from him with a polished hunk of cold steel or wood in his hands, nothing but sixty feet of clean air and tension between them, both ready to execute their mechanics in exploding bursts of precision straight back at each other. Face to face. Mano a mano. There was nothing more thrilling in the entire world.
Danny entered the batter’s box and set up. Brett Michigan went into his wind-up, tall and threatening.
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