Steal Away Home

by Billy Coffey

  We did. But what I hadn’t known then and what none of us realized until later was all of that only served as the soft skin of our family, the bones beneath being brittle. We talked, but rarely of anything important. We shared, but only what we each first deemed safe. Our silence at the table that afternoon arose not from a lack of something to share but an abundance, all of it so personal that to speak it would lay us bare one to another, which made our quiet like an arrow to the heart. Micky had confronted us all. We were each too afraid to say anything.

  It was Mom who broke the impasse as she dished dessert, whether because the silence had grown too great or she believed its greatness her own failing. She spoke simply and to the point:

  “I believe something has happened to that girl.”

  Dad’s reply came with equal economy, meant to settle the subject before it could begin. “Something did happen. Girl come into the world a Dullahan.”

  “That isn’t what I mean, Paul.”

  He shook his head.

  Mom wouldn’t back down. “That isn’t what I mean,” she said again. “How many times I seen that child before? Thousands? Knee-high to me, roaming the grocery aisles or standing at the bank or at the post office for stamps, hand in her momma’s, looking lost and dirty and ashamed. Every time looking the very same except for the height and age of her. But that was not Michaela Dullahan in church today. That was someone new.”

  Dad took a bite from his wedge of pie. “That was nothing new, Greta. I’d lay it on Jeffrey Davis’s shoulders for the whole thing. Girl should’ve never been allowed inside those walls, much less Earl Dullahan. It’s disrespect, pure and simple. What they doing down in Shantytown, it ain’t the Lord.”

  I doubted Mom had any idea how to define what had happened in church, and my own idea of it was likely no better formed than her own, but I believed we could at least agree on the fact that it was certainly new.

  “Earl Dullahan come to see me at the school a year ago. June or July, I don’t remember, but it was summertime. Said he’s got to talk to me since I was ‘the one in charge.’ Well, I knew soon as he says that he was up to no good. Had himself an idea on reseeding the football field.” He rolled his eyes my way. “You believe that? Said he’s got ahold of this special seed grass gets used by the Packers—‘genuine Green Bay ones,’ Earl says—and he’ll sell it to me for cheap. Best seed grass there was, guaranteed to make Camden High the envy of the county. And Earl’s gone help me out.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Mom said.

  “’Cause it come to nothing. I took one look at that fancy seed and knew it stole. What fool steals grass seed anyways?” Dad shook his head. “Earl’s so dumb he don’t even know we use sod on the football field. Point I’m trying to make, Greta, is all that girl done today is try to sell us some seed. Been working too. You notice them shiny clothes? Seen that girl at school four years, never knew her to wear such finery. Where you think that money come by? You think Earl’s gone and found himself proper work?”

  I set myself to eating, wanting no part in this.

  “But you must have some sympathy for the child,” Mom told him. “She’s been through such upheaval. First Constance passing and then no longer having school. There’s holes in her life, Paul—”

  Dad snorted. “And she’s fillin’ ’em only way a Dullahan knows. She’s a crook just like her daddy, playing all them poor Shantie souls.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  He wiped his chin with a napkin. “You get a batter stand in and he’s holding his bat low in his stance. Say the knob’s resting at about his hips. What do you call?”

  “Fastball up.”

  “Say pitcher throws a high one in, batter swings and misses. What’s the next pitch?”

  “Same.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because you got to throw that pitch until he stops trying to hit it.”

  “Yes,” Dad said, and here came the first bit of a smile from him all day. “’Cause folk don’t change. They don’t change for nothing.”

  Mom said, “That’s a poor way to look at the world.”

  “I’d rather see the world as it is than what I’d like it to be, Greta. That is our difference.”

  Yet Dad did not know Micky as I did, nor Mom to some point. I had been made privy to a part of her kept hidden from all but her dead mother. The years have proven much of what my father said of people to be true, but he was wrong in that. People could change. If they could not, then what hope was there for anyone? And no matter my father or anyone else inside that church knew it, Micky had changed as well. What confused me was which of her selves had been transformed—the Dullahan part of her, or the part known only to me.

  Mom whispered, “I heard the hint of truth to her words. I will not believe otherwise.”

  “You will.” It was a yell choked down, a fury barely quelled. “I will not have my own wife giving credence to such falsehood. That girl will bring ruin to an already ruined place. Michaela Dullahan asks for trouble she cannot reckon. It’s one thing to try selling what you stole, another to steal in religion’s name. This Shantie church, you think any good’ll come a that? Robbing the poor in God’s name. She’ll get struck down. It’ll be the Lord’s hand or someone else’s.”

  Dad rose. He placed his dishes by the sink and crossed back toward the living room, laying a hand to Mom’s shoulder. “She speaks of loving, but the only loving Michaela Dullahan has ever wanted is the sort that gets pointed straight to herself.”

  -5-

  The Fellowship of the Lost took in near a hundred dollars that day. It had been Earl’s idea to spread out over town once church was done (“Don’t make no scene, just be seen,” Micky said, chuckling over the breeze) and let the good people of First Baptist find them. Those good people had obliged. They snuck Earl cash as he stood in front of Rivera’s and Micky checks as she loitered in front of the 7–11 to catch people coming out with their Sunday papers. The others who had accompanied the Dullahans collected similar. The Harper boys managed a windfall.

  “Must’ve been a whole pile of dandelions for the reverend to gawk at. All that money’s gonna come in handy, Owen.”

  I studied the ground beneath us.

  “What’s the matter with you? You mad we come to church?”

  “Seems like I shouldn’t be surprised anything you do now. You made some folk upset today, Micky. Don’t think Reverend Sebolt appreciated it. I know my dad didn’t. Him and Mom got in a fight.”

  A worried look fell over her. “Your mom?”

  “It wasn’t bad. Bad enough. People don’t know how to take you. They’re saying stuff.”

  “Don’t matter what people talk on.” And after a bit, “What they saying?”

  “That you and Earl got yourselves your own little kingdom down in the Pines. Got money stacked up everywhere. They see Earl coming to town to put some in the bank and take more out. Him strutting around like he’s somebody. They see you wearing all these nice clothes.”

  “That money’s for church. It’s to help people. We’re taking care of our own.”

  “No, they’re taking care of you. And in return you rile them all up about how special they are and how loved, how they’re getting mistreated by folk who pay them wages and give them a livelihood so long as they ain’t too lazy to go looking for anything but some government draw, which I guess now they just cash and hand over to you and Earl. So don’t you sit here talking about that stupid train and a hole people can’t crawl out of. I won’t listen to you say how you want to make things better. You ain’t on no street corner here. You ain’t standing in some barn. It’s just me.”

  “You ever know how little us Shanties get? They’re worked to death in town. Want to talk about how those people at the library treat their cleaning folk, or how Bubba is so awful to the hill folk who depend on him? Think it’s right he cheats his mechanics out of pay they earned so he can line him and Travis’s own pockets? People i
n this town get what they have off our backs. My people are hurting, Owen. They been hurting a long time now. There’s always poor folk. But people like ones in town do more than keep money out of Shantytown, they keep dignity away too. I can’t say how all we are is Camden’s fault. It’s ours too, for giving in to everything gets said and done to us. I hope you at least understand that. You didn’t come up here. You got to be born somewheres else. Not us. You only had four years to see how some a those people down at the school treat your daddy because of the job he’s got. You live in Shantytown, that’s every day of your whole life.”

  “So that’s what all this is then? This preaching you’re doing and all this church talk? All to get even?”

  “No. It’s to change things.” Micky tugged at the collar of her new shirt. Ran a hand along the folds of her new skirt. She did those things and yet said, “I’m trying to make things better. That’s my only aim. And I thought you’d be helping me.”

  “Whatever made you think I would help you in this?”

  “Because you were at that train. Because you seen something.”

  “How many times I got to tell you about that? Why won’t you let that go?”

  “You think I can let something like that go, Owen? Do you really?”

  “You think I should let baseball go.”

  I yelled it, couldn’t say the words otherwise. Micky took her hand away from mine. She backed away from the oak to where the limbs reached down, drowning herself in moonlight.

  “That’s what you said, ain’t it? That I should quit and stay in Camden? Why would you say such a thing to me, knowing all you do? Knowing what we spent so much time up here talking about? And now . . .”

  She whispered, “And now what?”

  I searched out her face, wanting my next words not to be true, but they were.

  “Now I don’t even know who you are anymore. It’s like you’re not even you, Mick. I can’t understand what you’re doing or why. It don’t make sense. I come up here every night thinking maybe this is the time you’ll just stop all this, just stop it so we can go back to the way things used to be. But it never happens. All you want to talk about is some church or that night at the train, and I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to hear any of it. What I want to hear is that everything’s going to be okay with us and that nothing’s changed, but it has. It has, and I hate it.”

  Micky kept where she was. The space between us may as well have been worlds. I wanted to go to her. Hold her in my arms. Make her understand. But that was not Micky sitting there. It was a stranger with me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  “It’s like you don’t even have room for me no more. Or that you don’t want me. Is that it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well then, what is it?”

  “I’m trying to help—”

  “Stop. Don’t say that. You want to help somebody, help me. You say you love me, then show it. Ain’t nothing been done in the Pines or any place that you can’t turn away from, Micky. If you want to help the Shanties, that’s fine. Help them all you want. But when it comes time for summer to be over and I got to leave for Ohio, I want you to come with me. I want it to be what we always said it would. You made me choose, now I’m making you. I love baseball. I always have. There’s sometimes I think all people do is go from place to place trying to figure out where they belong, but I know every time I step on a field. I was made for it, that’s all. And I was made for you. So please. Tell me we’re still good. Tell me all of this we have ain’t done, because I don’t think I can bear it.”

  She stood, smoothed her skirt. Said, “What do you love, Owen?”

  “You. I love you.”

  “I’ll hurt you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yes, you do, because you love what can’t love you back the way you want. The way you need. Not even I can love you like that. It’s the same way baseball will hurt you. You can’t sit there and tell me otherwise. Things fade, Owen. Nothing in this world lasts. Not some game, not me. Maybe once it was supposed to be the way you want it. That’s all changed now. Maybe things would’ve gone wrong anyway, or maybe it was because I went up on those tracks. Maybe it was because you wanted to save me. If it’s that, then I’m so sorry. But there’s no going back now. I don’t have much time. That’s the only reason I want you to stay. I don’t have much time, and I want you to be with me through it all. Every second of it. Because I love you.”

  “But not enough. That right? You don’t love me enough. You’d rather stay here and wear nice clothes. Rather tell people how much they’re loved when you don’t love at all.”

  A tear gathered at the corner of her eye and went tumbling. “That ain’t true.”

  “True enough for me.”

  I turned, making for my side of the slope. She called to me but I ignored her. Called again, and I turned.

  “I can’t be here no more,” I said. “Go on home, Michaela Dullahan. You go take care a yours.”

  Bottom 7

  -1-

  Country meets Caldwell coming up the dugout, and the two eye each other grinning, one saying, “’Scuse me, Gramps,” and the other, “Outta my way, you snot-nosed kid,” the veteran seeming to slap the rookie upside the head with a bat more famous than any of us will ever be, and now they clap as our guys take the field to start the last innings.

  “Caldwell, man,” he says as he sits. “Keeps us all loose. He didn’t talk your ear off, did he?”

  “Wasn’t bad. Seems to think he knows everything.”

  “That age, they all do.” He shakes his head. “Was I ever that young and cocky? Don’t answer that. I tell that boy to calm hisself down, he never will. Game’ll do that to him enough. Game takes us all down a few notches.”

  Johnson still looks strong on the mound, though with the score 8–1 I get to wondering how long Mike will keep him in. Best to save those starting pitchers’ arms when you can, especially this early in the season. As if to signal a tired that isn’t yet showing, Bernie Williams leads off for the Yanks with a double off the left-center wall. What crowd remains in the stadium erupts to cheers. It is a muted roar, though, as if most here believe not even the ghosts that linger in these rafters are enough to score seven in three innings. Tonight those spirits may remain quiet.

  “You talk Mike into letting you in?”

  “Didn’t take much twisting.” Country grins and turns his head to spit a rocket of tobacco juice into the drain set along the floor. “Mikey’ll give me my at-bats this season. He’ll get me out there in the field a few times a week. Going out next inning.”

  “Think you’ll get a bat?”

  He grips his black Betsy. “Nawp. Not tonight. He offered. Said that ball’s flying with that moon. I told ’im give you a shot.”

  I scrunch my shoulders like some schoolkid who’s just learned his secret crush likes him back. Tino Martinez is at the plate. Johnson pitching from the stretch as Williams takes a few steps off second. I care about none of this. “You did what?”

  Country shrugs. He’s got that grin still, the one that sells all the cars and deodorant on TV, the one that’s gotten him on covers of Sports Illustrated and a pretty little country woman waiting on a farm in Kentucky.

  “Ain’t a ballplayer alive don’t deserve a bat in Yankee Stadium. You gotta take somethin’ from here, am I right? Anyway, Mikey’s saying Fordyce is in for good. Might be some other spot for you to hit, though. Just you get your chance, make sure you show’m something. Mikey’s watchin’. Always a need for a good backstopper in the Show.”

  Martinez flies out to left, stranding Williams at second. Even with the big lead, it’s good pitching by Johnson. Outside, outside, outside. Don’t let that ball go to right and get a runner at third with nobody out.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

  “We was all rookies once, bud. Don’t matter anyways. I’ll play the field tonight, ain’t no problem. Mikey sa
ys I’m starting tomorrow at DH. That’s the game I want. You think them balls is carrying now? Shoot, you wait till then.”

  “That’s right,” I remember. “Full moon.”

  “Ain’t just any full moon. Tomorrow’s is strawberry.”

  It is as though Country’s words are spoken through a tunnel of wind, like he himself is the ghost of this place. His lips move in the slow ease of that long-ago train as it approached Micky and me. Like time itself has caught in a bubble. I cannot feel my own reaction. Only the look on Country’s face tells me something of my secret self is showing. He allows that look to pass.

  “It’s the strawberry moon tomorrow?”

  “One and only.” His eyes bore into me, wanting to know more. “You know this game’s such a beautiful thing words can’t say it? Hell, feelings can’t say it. They try to say it with numbers. I heard onced that numbers is the language of God, which I hope ain’t the case since I got trouble enough puttin’ two an’ two together to make four. But it makes sense, don’t it, that there’s so much numbers to baseball? Shoot, they got a number for everything. Half of it don’t even make sense to me. But I had some front office guy tell me onced that in all my years a playing pro ball, I hit more dingers on the full moon in June than any other time. I’m tellin’ you, them balls fly.”

  Paul O’Neill is up. I look out long enough to see Johnson watching Williams back at second. They look like spirits out there, as unreal as the crowd and the lights. O’Neill grounds out to Segui at first, who waves off Johnson and touches the bag himself. Williams advances a base to third. Two down.

  I say it again, slower this time: “Strawberry moon.”

  Country leans my way. He takes his left hand from the bat he cradles and nudges me.