Last Chance Book Club

by Hope Ramsay

  “Dash. I’m happy to see you’re recovering.”

  “How would you know that? We haven’t seen each other in more than a year.”

  “Since yesterday when Sal Rizzo sent me an e-mail with a link to a YouTube video of you charming snakes.”

  Oh, brother. “Yeah, well, I sure do wish Bubba Lockheart hadn’t posted that video. Or sent it to the local TV station. I had reporters from Columbia all over me for a solid day, asking a lot of embarrassing questions about my so-called career. And there are people who think I put those snakes in that theater just so I could be the hero.”

  “I know. I saw the interviews. You’ve been sober for eighteen months, and your knee looks like it’s okay.”

  “No, Condy, it’s not.”

  “Oh.” Dash could hear the disappointment in Condy’s voice.

  “What is it?” Dash asked, suddenly intrigued more than he wanted to be. His addictions took so many forms.

  “Cincinnati might be looking for an experienced catcher for their single-A farm team.”

  Single-A? Dash had never played single-A ball. He’d been drafted right out of high school, and the Astros had put him directly into their triple-A ball club. He’d only spent a year in the minors. Being told that there might be a spot for him in single-A was almost an insult. Condy was like a drug dealer, trying to gauge Dash’s desperation.

  “I’m not biting, Condy, sorry.”

  “Listen, Dash, I know it’s single-A, but Sal wants someone to bring the kid along.”

  “The kid?”

  “Jeez, Dash, don’t you read the sports pages? Dillon Taylor needs someone to teach him the finer points of the game.”

  “Dillon Taylor has a ninety-nine-mile-an-hour fastball. He doesn’t need much more.”

  “Yes, he does. Cincinnati wants an experienced catcher to work with him. It’s a way back in, Dash. Rizzo thinks highly of you. He knows you can manage a young pitcher, and the organization thinks you could teach a couple of their young catchers, too.”

  “I see. Why don’t they hire me as a coach?”

  Silence greeted him. Dash knew the reasons why. He would need to prove himself first. And from what he’d read, Dillon Taylor was a hothead with a big ego. This was probably the worst job anyone in baseball could offer him.

  And the sad thing was that he wanted it. He wanted it the way he wanted a drink sometimes. “I’m not interested,” he said.

  “Dash, come on, this is a great opportunity. You take on this kid, and you can prove to them that you’ve changed. This is a road map that might get you a coaching job. Sal told me he thought you could be a great teacher if you got your life together. He wants to give you a chance. He told me he’s a great fan of yours.”

  Dash stopped and gazed at Todd. There was another kid who needed him. A kid who needed him more than some single-A ballplayer with a million-dollar arm. And even though Dash was trying hard to stay away from Todd’s mother, he was still coming to feel like God had put Todd in his way for a reason. Dash had something important to give that boy. The truth hit him hard, and something cracked inside his chest.

  “Sorry, Condy, I can’t do it.” He pulled the phone from his ear and hit the disconnect button. And in that moment, a weight lifted off his shoulders.

  Savannah stood in one of the large party tents set up in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church. The Annual Allenberg County Frog Jump was in full swing. Contestants bearing Tupperware containers filled with bullfrogs large and small were gathering and getting their competitor numbers.

  Todd was set to jump his frog in the next group—the twelve-to fifteen-year-olds. Dash was giving him last-minute pointers.

  “All right now, son, there’s a trick to handling a frog.” He picked up the slimy green amphibian in his gigantic hand while Todd watched. “See, you hold him with your thumb and middle finger, and you put your trigger finger right between his eyes. That kind of hypnotizes him or something.”

  Sure enough, the frog hung there in Dash’s hand without wiggling or squirming.

  “Tight,” Todd said, obviously impressed by Dash’s frog-toting knowledge.

  Dash turned the amphibian over and massaged its stomach. The frog closed its eyes. Todd looked up into Dash’s craggy face with utter devotion.

  Savannah didn’t know how to feel about this turn of events. Her boy was falling in love with Dash. And she could understand why. Dash went out of his way to spend time with Todd—whether it was playing Frisbee, or catching frogs, or playing with an iPhone fart app. And Todd behaved, just to please him. More than that, Dash had made himself a model that Todd wanted to emulate. Where on earth had this man come from?

  “Okay, lemme try.” Todd reached into the Tupperware container and pulled out a great big, slimy frog. But he’d used perfect technique because the frog just hung there in his hand.

  “That’s the way,” Dash said. “Now, when it’s your turn to jockey the frog, you have to drop him on the little starting circle and then you slap the ground behind him to make him jump. If you keep your left hand over his eyes until you drop him on the starting circle, the extra light will startle him, and he’s likely to jump further on his first hop.”

  Todd nodded as Dash spoke, as if the man were sending him out to do something truly important. And maybe he was.

  She stood stock-still. In that moment, Dash reminded her of Granddaddy. The way he was teaching Todd was just the way Granddaddy used to go about things. And then the truth registered in her head. Granddaddy had tried to do his best for two fatherless children. It had probably broken his heart to see the way Savannah and Dash had squabbled.

  “Dash.” She said his name very softly.

  He looked over his shoulder again. “What, princess?”

  “I am truly, deeply, honestly sorry for the things I said back when I was ten. I was mean to you, and I think I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life.”

  He cocked his head. “Darlin’, you’ve already apologized, a couple of times. And I believe I have accepted your apology. So why don’t we just move on, okay?”

  She nodded, only because her throat felt too thick to speak. If she could have spoken, she would have told him that this time her apology came from deep inside her heart. In the place where true forgiveness lives.

  But she couldn’t quite say those words without breaking into tears. So she turned and walked away. Todd was in good hands. She’d go check on Miriam, who was hanging with her generation in the spectator tent.

  She should have known that Bill would be hanging with a bunch of church ladies. He stood up from the lawn chair he’d been using when she reached the tent’s shade.

  “Savannah, I was wondering where you were,” he said.

  It was almost eighty degrees today, and Bill looked a little warm in his Roman-collared shirt and gray slacks. He presented a stark contrast to Pastor Mike of the Baptists, who had shown up to the frog jump wearing a green Kermit T-shirt and a pair of shorts. In fact, all the other ministers had shown up in shorts and golf shirts. Bill’s was the only backward collar in sight.

  And there was the problem, right there.

  Bill had been hanging out with the old church ladies, while the real men had been coaching a bunch of kids on the right way to pick up a bullfrog.

  “Bill, have you ever touched a frog?” she asked.

  His eyes widened. “Uh, yes, in biology.”

  “I’m not talking about the dead, formaldehyde-soaked frogs we dissected when we were kids. I’m talking about a live frog. Have you ever participated in the frog jump?”

  His cheeks were already kind of pink from the heat, so she couldn’t tell if her question had caused his blush to deepen. “Um, I can’t say as I have. Why?”

  Savannah thought about the look on Todd’s face as Dash explained things. She thought about the Ultimate Frisbee games in the side yard. She thought about that fart app.

  “I like you, Bill, but—”

  “I like you, too, Savann
ah. In fact—” He reached into his pocket, and a moment later, he had a little black ring box in his hands.

  “Uh, Bill,” Savannah said as her pulse spiked. The man was not going to propose to her here in public, with Lillian Bray looking on. Was he? “Maybe this is not—”

  He popped the top on the box. A diamond ring winked at her from the black velvet lining. “You can hardly doubt that I’ve been working myself up to this,” he said. “You’ve truly captured my heart and my feelings.”

  The idea that he had any deep feelings at all was kind of laughable. He was proposing publicly at a frog jump?

  “And,” he continued, “as you can imagine, I’ve heard what your aunt has said, and I can see that you are truly the one that God has sent to me.”

  Okay, she couldn’t let him go on any longer. As much as she loved Aunt Miriam, anyone in their right mind—especially the pastor of Christ Church—should realize that Miriam was suffering from some kind of dementia.

  “Uh, Bill, you’re going way too fast. I appreciate the offer, but I’m not ready to get married again.”

  Bill smiled, apparently undeterred. “I understand, perfectly. I know how it can be with someone who is divorced. But I am sure that eventually you will come around.”

  Oh, boy. He was denser than lead, wasn’t he? “Bill, really, I’m absolutely sure that I’m not going to come around on this.”

  There was a collective in-drawing of breath from the peanut gallery. Savannah suddenly felt like she was in one of those horrible dreams where you’re standing completely naked on a stage and everyone you know is in the audience judging you. A dozen blue-haired church ladies in lawn chairs had their mouths hanging open. Aunt Miriam, however, seemed to be looking off in the distance with a frown on her face.

  “Uh-oh,” Miriam said.

  The line of blue-haired ladies turned in Miriam’s direction. “Uh-oh?” Lillian Bray said. “Your niece declines our minister’s marriage proposal and all you can say is uh-oh?”

  Miriam stood up. “Good Lord, Savannah, who let Champ out?”

  At just that moment, screams came from the tent where the kids (mostly girls) who didn’t want to jockey frogs were decorating Easter eggs. Everyone turned in time to see a smallish dog jump up on the table, upsetting various pots of paint and dye. He barked happily as children screamed and bolted.

  The dog apparently thought this was a wonderful game. So he hopped down from the table, upsetting it in the process and splashing dye and eggs in all directions. He raced after one cute little girl with her hair all in cornrows who led him right to the frog jump tent where her daddy was coaching her older brother.

  Champ, it turned out, was going to grow up into a champion frog catcher. He made a beeline to the five-gallon buckets where the community frogs were staying cool. His tail wagged with joy as he nosed into each of the buckets. He barked happily and then upset three of them.

  The suddenly freed frogs set about making a quick escape. They were real good jumpers.

  The humans ran after them. They were not such good jumpers, and it has to be said that some of the adults in the crowd started cursing and swearing in a way that had the old ladies tittering like hens.

  And Champion was having a heck of a time until Todd screamed at him and told him he was a big screwup. Suddenly aware that he’d misbehaved, Champ took off down Palmetto Avenue with his tail between his legs.

  It looked like the excitement had exited along with the dog until one of the frog jockeys—a kid bigger than Todd—turned toward Savannah’s darling son and asked in a bellicose tone, “Was that your no-account dog?”

  “Yeah. You wanna make something of it?”

  The big kid apparently did because he hauled off and socked Todd square in the face. But Savannah’s boy didn’t go down. Much to Savannah’s surprise, Todd absorbed the blow, then tackled the larger kid and drove him right to the ground. Todd landed a pretty good punch to the kid’s face, and his assailant cried uncle.

  Todd didn’t hang around after that. He stood up and took off down Palmetto Avenue in the same general direction as his dog. The bigger boy didn’t give chase; he was too busy nursing a bloody nose and crying.

  That left Dash to do the job. And despite his knee injury, the man could still run pretty good.

  “Savannah, I think this episode confirms that your son needs discipline,” Bill said.

  Savannah’s hands formed into fists, and she might have coldcocked the minister if it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of Claire White, dressed, as always, in a designer suit and a pair of pointy-toed pumps. She was accompanied by Mom, who wasn’t dressed nearly so well, but that hardly mattered, given the look on Katie Lynne Brooks’s face. Savannah’s mother and ex-mother-in-law had apparently joined forces.

  “The reverend is correct,” Claire said in that imperious tone of hers. “Your son is out of control. And who’s to blame for that?” Claire didn’t stamp her foot. She didn’t have to. The little temper tantrum in her voice was sufficient.

  Mom would have done well to keep her mouth closed. But she didn’t, as usual. “Good Lord, Savannah, didn’t I tell you it was a mistake to let Todd spend time with that man?”

  “What are you two doing here?” Savannah said.

  “We’ve come to take you back to Baltimore,” Claire said. “It’s clear we’ve arrived just in the nick of time.”

  “I can’t let you do that,” Bill said, moving to Savannah’s side as if he were her knight in shining armor, ready to do battle with out-of-line grandmothers at a moment’s notice.

  “I beg to differ,” Claire said.

  “She’s going to be my wife, and I say she’s not moving to Baltimore.”

  The church ladies erupted into applause with a few soulful “amens” supplied by the AME church matrons. Lillian said, “Atta boy, Bill. You tell her the way it’s going to be.”

  Mom straightened her shoulders, her gaze shifting from Bill to Savannah and back again. “Is this true?”

  There was no good answer to this question that wouldn’t leave Savannah torn and bloody. So she did the only sensible thing she could think of.

  She took off at a run, heading down Palmetto Avenue in the same direction as Champion, Todd, and Dash. She hoped like hell that Todd’s grannies couldn’t run very far in their high heels. Bill, she figured, she could handle.

  Maybe.

  CHAPTER 13

  Todd had tears running down his cheeks, blood oozing out of his nose, and the beginnings of a shiner. By the time Dash caught up with him, the kid had made it to the corner of Palmetto and Baruch, and Dash’s knee was throbbing to beat the band.

  “Where’d you learn to tackle like that? Corey Simms is a guard on the Davis High freshman football team, and you took him down without even a running start. He probably outweighs you by thirty pounds. I’m truly impressed.”

  “Great. Mom’s going to ground me.” Todd wiped the blood from his nose. “And no one in town is ever going to be friends with me.”

  Dash understood. He’d been there and done that. He put his arm around the kid.

  Todd let him. Hell, the kid kind of leaned into him. Dash remembered doing the same thing with Uncle Earnest. “Well, I doubt that everyone in town is going to hate you. After they catch the frogs and pick up the eggs, all anyone is going to remember is the way you tackled Corey.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, yes it is. Do not underestimate the importance of football to this town.” He gave the kid’s shoulder a squeeze. “And besides, it was damn funny to see those bullfrogs making their escape. Folks will be laughing about this for many years to come. And not at your expense.”

  “Honest, Dash, I took Champ out for a walk, and I left him in the kitchen. I don’t know how he got out.”

  “I do,” Savannah said as she jogged up to them, her cute breasts bouncing and her ponytail swishing. She was a sight. A mighty good one.

  “You do?” Todd asked, sounding pitiful.
r />   “Oh, God, your nose is broken.”

  “Probably not,” Dash said, “just bloodied. I’m not sure you could say the same for Corey.”

  “Don’t encourage him.” Savannah glared at Dash. It was the cutest glare ever. It made his insides go all hot and bothered.

  “Mom, you said you knew how the dog got out?”

  “I have a theory that your grandmother let him out. Not intentionally, but nevertheless.”

  Todd frowned. “Which grandmother?”

  “Both of them are here, but Grandmother Katie Lynne probably has a key to the house.”

  “Aunt Katie Lynne is here?” Dash asked.

  “Yes, and she’s brought my former mother-in-law. They’ve come to take me back to Baltimore, but, don’t worry, Bill Ellis has sworn not to let them do that.”

  “Is Dad here?” The expectation in the kid’s voice slayed Dash.

  “No, hon, he’s not.”

  The boy’s mouth trembled, and he turned and jogged away from them. “I’m going to look for Champ,” he announced.

  Savannah was about to say something when Dash interrupted her. “Let him go. He’s okay. He’s more okay than you think.”

  “I’m not so sure. I think—”

  He pulled her back. “Give him space. One day he’ll figure out that his daddy’s not worth the tears he’s shed over him. But he’ll never figure that out if you make false promises. Sometimes a kid just has to work through the pain.”

  She stared at him. “I guess that’s right.”

  His heart kicked. “Did your momma make false promises?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I guess she didn’t. Did yours?”

  “My momma left when I was nine months old. My granny used to make promises, but she died when I was six. Gramps was never sober enough to talk much.”

  Dash didn’t know why he said these things. He never spoke about his past. But then Savannah already knew almost everything there was to know.

  “I wanted more for Todd,” she said.

  “I’m sure you did. Sometimes life sucks, but things are looking up. We’re going to sign your boy up for football, and before you know it, he’ll feel a whole lot better.”