by Billy Coffey
“What miracle?”
“What’d you see last night, Owen?”
“Us almost die.”
“That ain’t what I mean. I mean the other part.”
“Weren’t no other part.”
“Don’t tell me that. You seen something. I need to hear it.”
“You answer my question,” I said, “I’ll answer yours.” Her leg stayed over mine. I laid a hand to her kneecap so I could touch her, but mostly because I was afraid she’d run off and try to jump in front of something else. “Clancy knows, by the way. I seen Brutal out on his porch last night when we left. I don’t know if he called the law or if those men on the train did, but Clancy knows and so does my folks. I think Mom’s mostly just worried about you. ’Specially after this morning. Daddy’s mad.”
“I didn’t mean to cause no trouble.”
“Why’d you do that, Micky? Go up there on them rails? I can’t figure it.”
“What did you see up there, Owen?”
“It don’t matter what I seen or didn’t.”
“It’s the only thing matters.” She tilted her face and smiled as the wind played at the fringes of her hair. “Because I seen something. I can’t tell you why I gone. Travis was up there acting like the fool he is, mockin’ everybody. I knew he was drunk. Shoot, by then just about everybody was. But it was the way he stood, I guess, all cocky and sure of hisself, and what got into my head was it weren’t fair Travis Clements could act such a way. Weren’t fair he had a rich daddy and a nice house and good clothes and I didn’t, or Todd Foster, or anybody out in the Pines. That’s why I went up there. So I could feel for a minute like Travis does and think the world’s too small to hold me. You understand?”
I didn’t want to, but I did.
“But then when I got up there, I seen that train bearing down on me. I couldn’t move a muscle. It was like it tranced me. Then you was there. That’s when I seen it. It was like everything stopped right there at that last second and then . . . bloomed. It was so beautiful I can’t put words or feeling to it. All that fear I’d kept locked in me, every bit of sadness, it all runned away. And then I looked at you, Owen.” Tears filled her eyes even as the light in them remained. It was as if Micky saw me not only as I was but as I had been along those tracks. “I seen you. Not just your hair and your face, but you. It was like my eyes weren’t big enough to see it all but I did, because it wasn’t my eyes that were doing the seeing, it was . . .” She shook her head as though she was not unwilling to speak but unable, as if mere speech wouldn’t do. “The men in the train, I seen them too. And everybody standing off down in that field, screaming and hollering. And you were all so beautiful, Owen. So beautiful I really did want to die because I didn’t think I could stand it. Beautiful and precious and needed. Loved.” Her mouth swelled. “That’s the word. Everything was so loved.”
Micky’s head dipped. Her hands grabbed on to mine. It was like she felt embarrassed to say more, or unworthy of it.
“I seen myself too, Owen. And I was so beautiful and loved. I think that was the most terrible thing of all, because I never seen myself that way before. Not onced. ’Cause I’m a Dullahan and that’s all my family is, just dirty skin and sad stories. But what I seen in that light? That said I was more. We’re all more. More than the things we love and hate about ourselves and each other. And I knew then if we could all just see ourselves that way all the time, we’d just about have the perfect world.”
“I love you like that,” I said. “That way. Never thought of you as just a name.”
“It ain’t like that. It was more, Owen. So much more.”
I took my hands from hers and sat there wondering what that meant.
“That’s why I come to church this morning. Why I walked down that aisle, or tried. I was doing pretty good until I got about halfway. It was like a weight pressed down on me, like these big cement blocks made up of all the things I ever worried over and feared, all strapped to my back. And I knew if I turned away and walked right out of there past your daddy, that weight would go away some but it would come back. But if I kept on a little ways more and got to the reverend’s feet, that weight might be gone for good. So that’s what I did. I had to crawl, it was so heavy. Stephanie’s folks was asking me all these questions. I didn’t know a thing to say other’n my name. Dullahan. But my name didn’t sound so bad up there, because I knew I was loved. And I guess I just need to know you seen all that too, last night.”
Micky lifted her head and stared out over town. A smattering of homes set in silhouette against early evening, pinpricks of porch lights signing their welcome. I wondered if she sat facing that way on purpose—if what she had seen the night before had changed her such that not even the rolling mountains and silent pines held so much beauty to her now as plain people. She had not spoken a word of what she’d seen exactly, only the feel of it and whatever meaning she’d gleaned.
“I didn’t see nothing like that,” I said.
“But it was something. I could tell. You looked . . .” She paused as if searching for the closest term. “Full.”
The dance, that symphony.
“This don’t sound like you,” I said. “Talking this way. Going to church. That ain’t you, Micky. That’s somebody I don’t know.”
“Don’t you say that, Owen.”
But I had, and I meant it.
“You seen my bat? That black one I use? Daddy bought me that when I come up my freshman year. Took him a whole week’s pay. First thing he did to it was change the grip. The tape on it was too thick, he said. So he took it off and put other on to make the handle thinner. First thing I did, though? I cut out a picture of Ted Williams from some old book and taped it where the handle flares to the barrel. They called him the ‘Splendid Splinter.’ You know that?”
Micky said she didn’t.
“Know what he said once? Said that all he wanted from life is to be walking down the street one day past somebody and hear them say, ‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.’ That’s all he craved. Didn’t want no money. Didn’t care if he was famous. Just wanted to be the best ever. I think he was. Daddy too. He thinks it.”
“Owen, I don’t—”
“Every time I go out to the plate I got to rub the dirt off it. I’ll wear the same socks so long as I’m hitting good. We got four batting helmets but I only use one. This one time we had the bases loaded and I was up. That pitcher wasn’t nothing. He couldn’t throw and he seen me coming up and I knew he was scared, but I couldn’t do nothing because I didn’t have that helmet, Travis did and he was on first. So I called time and made him switch me helmets, then I doubled off the fence in left center. Ain’t nothing so superstitious as a ballplayer.”
“Why you telling me this, Owen?”
“Because that’s what we do. What everybody does. My daddy. What you did today. I don’t think puttin’ a Ted Williams picture on my bat’ll make me hit better or rubbin’ off the plate’ll make me catch. Don’t really matter what helmet I wear. But that’s what we do to keep the baseball gods on our side, which ain’t real but which everybody on our team says is legion. But we do it anyway, just so we can have something we think is solid to carry around in all that chaos. Might only be some picture, some old hat, but it’s power there because we give it power. We do it because deep down we know the game’s so big and we’re so small. That’s how it is in life too. That’s why I can tell you I didn’t see nothing at that train. Why you didn’t neither.”
“Reverend Sebolt said the scales fell from my eyes. He said I was blind but now I see.”
“I don’t know nothing about that.”
I felt her watching me. Micky reached and touched my chin with her fingers, tilted my head to hers. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Momma was so happy, seeing you there.”
“And you?”
“Scared. I don’t know why. All these years we been coming up here. Now it feels different.”
&n
bsp; “Because it is. Reverend’s right. The scales done fell from our eyes, Owen. Everything we ever thought turned out to be not so, and I ain’t never been so glad to be wrong. It’s so wonderful. And I got to tell everybody.”
“Tell everybody what?”
Micky kissed me. “The truth.”
-6-
When I come out of the tunnel it’s like time has gone wobbly, because Mussina is back on the mound and it’s Mike Bordick up, our shortstop, and that can’t be because Anderson struck out for the last out in the top of the fourth. Then I look out to the scoreboard and see it’s not the fourth at all, it’s the top of the fifth. I’ve missed an entire half inning. Worse, Mike Singleton turns from his spot and stares at me, arms crossed over a widening gut, his face stoic but accusing. Bordick flies out behind third base as I move past players who do not acknowledge me save for moving their spikes from my path. Aiming for the end of the bench where I belong as Richard lines a single to center, his third hit of the game. I see him pump his fist as he rounds first, then look to find someone else has taken my spot. Sitting there grinning at me with the handle of his bat set against his left thigh. Motioning me over with the curled fingers of his left hand, saying, “Come on over here, son. They call you Hillbilly? They call me Country.”
Top 5
-1-
“Don’t mind none, do you?” Country asks. “Me taking your seat. Way you been clinging to this spot, figured I’d look see if somebody’d done put your name here.” He grins. “They’re apt to do that. Mess with a rookie.”
I take a minute before sitting beside, one seat closer to where I can feel Mike eyeing me from the dugout steps, and am embarrassed to catch myself thinking, Country Kitchen’s right here talking to me. Not like it’s the first time I’ve crossed paths with a major leaguer; plenty come through Bowie for their own cups of coffee either getting healthy from injuries or working their way back to the Show after being traded or getting their outright release, trying to squeeze a little more from their aging bodies and prove they still belong. But this isn’t one of those players, this is Bobby-freaking-Kitchen, and Country’s got an MVP and six All-Star selections in his twenty years of being in the Bigs and an outside shot at Cooperstown. And all of this comes out as, “Nope, don’t mind.”
He doesn’t make room. I sit as close as I dare and make sure not to edge the bat against the inside of his left thigh. It’s a black Louisville Slugger known as Betsy, thirty-four inches and thirty-five ounces, and I know this because it said so on the back of a baseball card long lost to all but memory. They’ve all been Betsy, every black bat Country has ever taken to the plate, and the story is he names them such as a way to honor the person who taught him the game. I idolized this man as a boy and now for one reason alone apart from his prowess: we are both from the Appalachia. Our only difference is it was my daddy who taught me to love baseball, and it was Country’s momma.
“Hum, Conie,” he calls. Looking out toward the field. Conine steps into the box. Mussina looks tired out there. Richard takes his lead off first, takes one more step. “Where’d you run off to?”
“Bathroom,” I say.
“Uh-huh”—still looking out—“what I figured. Ain’t a finer place to hide than the toilet.”
“I ain’t—”
“Atta boy,” he hollers. I look out. Conine’s stroked a liner to left; it skips through the grass and settles into Knoblauch’s glove. Richard stops at second—a little one-out rally. Country waves me off with the hand not holding his bat. “I ain’t busting your chops none. Spent about the first three innings of my first game in the can. That guy up there too.”
He points to Mike, now studying the field. David Segui is next up. He sees Mussina faltering, has that hungry look in his eyes I know well.
“Two kinds a rookies,” Country says. “That’s it. Ain’t never met a third in all my years up here. First kind’s the ones got a burr in their pants. Think they deserve bein’ here. Wearin’ that uni. Come right out and jump right in. You know? Pace up and down the dugout, slap players on the ass when they ain’t even fit to clean their jocks. Then it’s ones like you and me and Mikey up there. Get here and know they don’t deserve nothin’ ’cause it ain’t you who got you here, it’s all the rest. It’s a life unspooled.” He smiles, maybe at the picture in his head. “Yeah, that’s what it is. You get up to your first big league game and got it all planned out in your head what you’re gone do and how it’s gone be and it ain’t never like that. ’Cause it ain’t the game you think about a-tall, it’s all that brung you here. You tell me I’m wrong.”
“You ain’t wrong.”
“Well then, that’s why I’m sittin’ here. Might as well get it all out now, son. Because let me tell you, our boys look pretty good up there at the plate and Mussina pretty bad. It’s that swole moon. This game gets a little more out of reach for the home team, might be me and you both find ourselves out there before the night’s through. Might mean you need to start gettin’ your head in the game a little. So talk, son. Get it all out now, because Mike, he’s watchin’ you.”
-2-
I played my last game of college ball against Cleveland State at the old Cleveland Stadium a few weeks before graduation; 1994, that was. I can’t remember much from it. What I carry from that day is more impressions than memory, seventy-four thousand seats and so much history you could hear the ghosts whicker past you on the field, and how I’d all but accepted that was maybe the closest I’d ever get to the majors.
The draft had come and gone. A few teams showed interest but my phone never rang. I’m not sure who was more upset over it, me or Dad, but I know Mom was the only unworried one among us. In her mind it was as if I’d been spared some great misfortune.
Cleveland Stadium had been home to the Indians from the Great Depression until around ’93. It was a relic when the team walked in there, but still a thing of beauty. The groundskeepers warned us the field was the sorriest in the majors, and we all nodded from the dugout and looked out on that grand vista with the same thought—If this is the worst, none of us is worthy of better. We all ran toward the outfield and sank into grass as thick and smooth as carpet. Rolled around in it, then lay there looking up at the sky. You would have thought we were at play in the Elysian Fields.
The crowd wasn’t big that night, but there were scouts in the stands. The clearest memory I have is my last time at the plate. Punching the weighted donut off my bat and walking toward the box for what could have been the last time in my life. Taking my time, knocking the dirt off my spikes. I looked off toward the mound where the pitcher waited but couldn’t step in until I took one last look at the stands and the fences and felt the wind off Lake Erie. Soaking as much of it in as I could. Taking what baseball gives you, because it never gives you enough.
-3-
Segui lines one up the middle, scoring Richard and getting Conine around to third, and between yells I hear Country say, “Cleveland Stadium? Hell, son, that guy was right. Sorriest place in all a baseball.”
But I smile, oh yes I do. Because it wasn’t. Not even a little.
-4-
Mom and Dad made the trip to watch me walk across another stage and help clean out my apartment. Everywhere buzzed with efforts to prepare for graduation. That whole last week of college felt like life, or like life should always feel—as if you’re about to be lifted up and carried off on a wave of anticipation. I felt little of it. My sights were more set on the next scouting bureau tryout than on being handed a diploma that meant not a thing to me. A degree in physical education made me a glorified gym teacher and nothing more. Someone like Coach Stevens back home, driving around some godforsaken little backwater town.
It was Thursday the nineteenth of May, and the only thing left in the apartment was a sofa I didn’t want, a half gallon of milk in the fridge, and a telephone plugged into the wall. Dad said he wanted to patch a small hole in the living room wall I didn’t remember putting there. I took a last look at ev
erything and found Mom at my bedroom window. The bare glass acted as a filter for the afternoon sun, making her look almost ethereal. The shine hid her thinning figure and graying hair. I didn’t think it possible anyone could have suffered more than me in the wake of what had happened back home. Standing there proved me wrong. She looked a shell of the woman she had once been, stoop-shouldered and weary in spite of the soft smile she bore. My parents had not argued once during their visit; their tone was cordial, even something close to loving. But apart I could tell something in each of them had shifted, and why wouldn’t it? Some wounds lie fresh long after they are inflicted. Sometimes healing never comes. More than anything, that was why I’d kept far from Camden. It wasn’t only the fear I believed going home would kindle, but the guilt.
“Taking one last look?” I asked.
“Can’t say I’ll miss it. Have to get used to a thing before you can miss it, right? I never got up here to see you enough, Owen. I’m sorry for that.”
“Don’t be. Doubt I’ll miss it much either, to be honest.”
Her arms were crossed when she turned, like a chill had run through the room. Dry riverbeds formed across her forehead and down her cheeks. Sometimes I wonder if the first cells inside my mother’s body had already begun to shiver and groan against the cancer that would eventually kill her. Or maybe those thick lines were a product of the doubt that killed her first.
She said, “I scrubbed your toilet.”
“You didn’t have to do that, Ma.”
“’Course I did. Found this by the sink. Didn’t know if it was worth holding on to.”
She reached out a fist too wrinkled for a forty-two-year-old woman and unfurled her fingers. The phone rang. I heard Dad give a quick “Hello?” that barely registered. Resting against Mom’s palm was the piece of white quartz gifted to me on a hilltop when I was twelve.
