by E. C. Bell
The replacements were usually easy to pick out. They looked like deer in the headlights. They’d probably been dragged up from Division Three or Four—the beer leagues—with promises of more playing time and the possibility of going to Nationals. But some of them hadn’t played since high school—or earlier—and didn’t have a clue. Those newbies stood out like they were covered in bright pink paint, every one of them.
One of the new women was wearing running shoes and blue jeans. She looked like she was trying to find a place away from the others to puke.
A newbie, for sure. She wasn’t going to last one game, I was certain of that.
A big guy with black hair and an easy smile waltzed up and put his arm around her shoulders. He said something to her, and when she hitched her shoulder, knocking his arm away, and snapped something back at him, his face crumbled. He turned away from her and wandered over to the mostly empty bleachers, where he sat and morosely sipped at the drink he’d brought in a paper cup.
The girl in the jeans and inappropriate footwear watched the good-looking guy leave, and her shoulders sagged. When he didn’t look at her again, she dug around in the old bag she carried. Out came a hat, which she pulled resolutely over her ponytailed hair. Then she grappled out an old glove and pulled it onto her left hand. She stared at it like she’d never seen it before in her life, then pulled it off, tucked it under her arm, and wandered over to the Jolene Transport team.
The rest of the team stopped warming up and stared at her.
“Is she supposed to replace Leslie?” one of them asked. “Does she even look like she can play second base?”
The rest didn’t answer. They didn’t need to. Everybody knew that she wasn’t replacing anyone important. She didn’t have a clue what she was doing there.
Greg Robertson, the coach, leaped out of the dugout with a big smile on his face. “You Marie Jenner?” he asked.
The girl in the jeans nodded, and Greg handed her a uniform top and a couple of sheets of paper.
“Glad you could make it,” he said. “You fill these out, and we’ll get you registered before the game.” He glanced at his watch. “You got fifteen minutes before the office closes, so get on it, please.”
She blinked a few times, like she was trying to comprehend his words, then took the sheets of paper and sat at the bleachers behind the dugout. She dug through her bag, then pushed it aside, and looked around at the rest of the girls, sheepishly.
“Anybody got a pen?” she asked.
They all stared at her for a few moments, silently. Then the pitcher—Lily Roloson, who had played on the team for at least ten years—reached into her bag and retrieved a dusty pen. She handed it to Marie, with a half-smile. “Remember where you got it,” she said. “It’s the only one I have.”
Marie nodded without a smile, barely making eye contact. She sat down and scribbled her information on the sheets of paper, then handed back the pen.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You play much?” Lily asked.
Marie blinked again, several times, rapidly. “You mean softball?” she finally asked.
Lily’s smile tightened. She didn’t do so well in the suffering fools department. “Yeah,” she said. “Softball.”
“Not in a while,” Marie said.
“Ah well,” Lily sighed. “It’s like riding a bike. It’ll come back.”
Marie nodded, but Lily didn’t see her, because she’d turned her back and called to another player walking across the cropped grass to the dugout.
“Jamie!” she cried. “Get your ass over here, girl! Let me give you a squeeze!”
Jamie—Jamie Riverton—was the back catcher. She hoisted her huge bag of equipment more securely on her back and jogged over to Lily. She tapped her arm twice, perfunctorily, and dropped the equipment on the ground at her feet.
“Have a good winter, Lill?”
“Good enough,” Lily said. “Went to Puerto Rico for three weeks.”
“Oh, to be a teacher with all that time off,” Jamie replied, pulling her face mask and glove from the pile of equipment and walking onto the diamond proper. “You ready to warm up?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Lily had been playing softball since she was seven, and had been pitching almost as long. She was one of the lucky few who’d gone to the States to play college ball on a scholarship. When she came back, she took a year off to right her head, and then she’d settled in with Greg’s team, playing twice a week with the occasional tournament for good measure. Secretly, I think she would have loved to go to Nationals, but it wasn’t really that kind of a team even though they played Division One. And she wasn’t that kind of a pitcher. Not anymore.
I didn’t bother listening to their chatter as they warmed up. Lily worked on her curve ball, her signature pitch, trying to get it to actually curve. Then her fast ball. And then her two changeups. It was the usual stuff, and I wasn’t that interested in listening to the living natter on about their lives. I wanted to see how the new girl would handle her own warm up.
She’d finished the paperwork, and Greg’s long-suffering wife dashed out to her car and drove off, to get Marie registered before the game. Luckily, the Ladies League office was just a couple of blocks away.
Greg—who had coached for as long as I’ve been here—called the team over to the dugout, and made the introductions.
“We’ve got a new player,” he said. “To fill one of the spots that opened up over the winter.”
There was a ripple of unease through the rest of the players, and I perked up. Had someone died?
I looked around, like I was expecting to see whoever it was who had passed to my side of things, but could only see the living. Didn’t surprise me, because it usually took the dead a year or two to make their way here. So, I looked back at the team, to see who was missing.
Robin Vickers, who played short stop and centre field. And Leslie Hunter, who played second base.
I hoped it was Robin who had passed on. My team could have used a utility player like her. For sure, they didn’t need a second baseman. Second base was my position, and I had it all locked up. Everybody knew that.
“How was the funeral?” somebody asked. “Anybody go?”
“I did,” Greg said. “It was nice. Robin got a real good send off.”
So it was Robin, then. Good. Like I said, my team could use a good utility player.
The new chick—the one wearing the jeans—gasped. “Did someone die here?”
Greg frowned at her like she’d suddenly grown another head. “Robin Vickers. Cancer got her. But she’s in a better place.”
“I hope so,” the new girl said. Kind of a strange thing for her to say. And then, she looked around like she was expecting to see Robin pop up right in front of her.
“Don’t worry, new girl,” I called from my spot by second base. “She won’t be here for a year, at least.”
Sometimes, I talked to the living, even though it never did any good. Usually I called out useless advice when someone booted the ball, just like everybody else did. And when someone hit the ball out of the park—it happened. Not often, but it did happen—I’d join the rest in congratulating the player. That kind of thing. And they never, ever responded.
But the new girl—Marie, her name was Marie—looked right at me and blinked rapidly, like she was thinking about fainting right there on the field.
“Oh no,” she said, her voice a weak whisper. She dropped her glove to the ground, and turned to Greg. “I quit,” she said. And then she walked off the field.
I knew she wouldn’t last.
Marie:
But She’s looking at Me!
DAMMIT! IT NEVER ceased to amaze me how the dead could wreck things without even trying.
I walked over to the fence separating the bleachers from the diamond on legs that felt frozen. “Take me home,” I said to James, who was sitting with his coffee halfway to his mouth.
“What happened
?” he spluttered, setting the cup aside and scrambling out of the bleachers. He pushed his fingers through the diamond shaped fencing that kept us apart. “The game hasn’t even started yet.”
“I just want to go,” I whispered. I clung to his fingers like they were a lifeline and glanced over my shoulder at the dead girl. She was gaping at me just like, I imagined, my team was. “There’s—a dead girl here. Please take me home.”
My throat tightened up at that point—stupid throat—and I couldn’t speak anymore.
I hadn’t had to work with a ghost since my mother died, and I didn’t know if I had the guts to take another one. Not without Mom.
James, who had recently learned that I could see the dead, and generally handled that fact a bunch better than I ever had, looked out at the diamond like he thought he’d actually be able to see the ghost which, of course, he couldn’t. Then he sighed and dropped his head so he could look right into my eyes, through the fence.
“Any chance you can ignore her?”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Didn’t he understand? There was a dead girl on the diamond. How the hell was I supposed to play a stupid game with a stupid dead girl on the stupid diamond?
“Try to ignore her,” he said. “Just for this game. Please.”
He looked around, even though there was no one near enough to hear us, then turned back to me. He clutched my fingers, hard, through the fence. “You have to do this, Marie. Remember what Dr. Parkerson said.”
“But she talked to me, James.” I felt my mouth work and was afraid I was going to burst into tears. “I don’t think I can do this.”
I heard crunching in the shale behind me, and James glanced past my left shoulder. “It’s your coach,” James whispered. “Please give it a try, Marie. Please. He’s counting on you.”
That was the real kick to the head about team sports. All those people behind me needed me to stay—and play—or they wouldn’t have enough people to field a team. I’d wreck the whole game, and not just for my team, but for the other team, too.
All those people counting on me, so that we could all get a little sunshine and exercise. Just like the doctor ordered.
“Fine,” I said, though it wasn’t fine at all. Not even a little bit. “I’ll stay.”
I turned and looked into the coach’s weary blue eyes and tried to smile.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I thought I heard you say you quit.”
“No.” I thought as fast as I could, under the circumstances. “I didn’t say that. I said I’d be back in a second. I just forgot to give James my watch.”
“Oh.” The coach’s eyes brightened, and he huffed out relieved laughter. “Good. I was worried that we’d have to forfeit the first game. And that would be bad, now wouldn’t it?”
“That’s not happening,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”
I worked at the leather strap holding my mother’s old Timex on my wrist, and wished the coach would leave so I could spend a few more seconds letting James convince me that this would all work out just wonderfully. That I’d somehow imagined I’d seen a dead girl when I hadn’t. That everything was sunshine and roses behind me, and all I had to do was turn around and see.
But the coach didn’t leave. Just stood, staring at me with his confused, earnest eyes as I scrabbled the watch from my wrist and pushed it through the mesh to James.
“Don’t lose it,” I said.
“Back at ya,” he replied, half smiling.
Hilarious.
“I’m ready,” I said to Greg.
“Good,” he said and took me by the arm. He was going to make absolutely certain that I wasn’t going anywhere but back on that field. “It’ll be fine, you know. Playing ball is just like riding a bike. It’ll—”
“All come back to me,” I said. I glanced out at second base, and there was the dead girl, still staring in shocked silence at me. “Yeah, I heard.”
THE FUNNY THING was, James’s advice worked. All I had to do was ignore the dead girl, and everything went just fine.
All right, not fine. Not actually. That “it’ll all come back to you,” crap everybody kept flinging at me was just that—crap. I flailed around out in right field and tried to remember everything I’d learned about softball those three summers I’d played.
Right field was where the incompetent were hidden, for the most part. That was because most batters were right-handed. When they came up to bat, a left field hit was naturally more powerful for them. Which meant, hitting to right field should have been a little harder for them, and an easier out for us.
With me there, not so much.
I spent most of the first inning trying to remember where to stand. There’s a sweet spot out in the field where you can track a ball that’s going to fall in front of you—or behind you—and actually get to a ball before it hits grass. But I didn’t quite have the spot yet, which meant I had to run like a fool with every crack of the bat. On top of that, I was trying to ignore the dead girl. That part actually was quite easy, because she was ignoring the heck out of me too. She didn’t even track the ball when it was hit out to my field. Just stood with her back to me, waiting for the ball to come infield.
The pitcher—I think her name was Lily—figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing out there, so she altered her pitching so that more balls were hit on the ground and to the left than to the right. Thank God. The left fielder made two quick outs, and then second base—the living girl, not the dead one—played the final ball of the inning for the third out.
The other team scored two on hits that I’d missed. I didn’t want to go to the dugout and face my team, but I couldn’t exactly stand out in right field with the other team either, so I trudged in and tried to act all light and airy about my errors.
“Thanks for saving my ass,” I said to the pitcher. Lily looked surprised that I’d noticed, and then shrugged.
“No problem,” she said. “Let’s get ’em back.”
Luckily, I didn’t have to bat that inning, or the next. Three up three down both innings. But inning three, it was finally my turn to attempt to hit the ball.
I stared at the bats lining the fence in front of the dugout, trying to decide which one to use. I picked the purple one, mainly because no one else had used it.
I heard twittering behind me when I grabbed that bat. The rest of the women on my team definitely had something to say about my choice. Oh whatever. I figured that the three up three down pattern was going to continue now that we were down to our final batter—me.
As I strode up to home plate, I could feel all eyes on me, including the eyes of the three people in the bleachers who’d come to watch the first game of the season. One of them—of course—was James. He’d found some guy to talk to, but smiled and waved as I walked past him. I tried to smile back, but my lips and teeth were so dry, I couldn’t manage anything past a sneer. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice.
“Hit it out of the park!” he yelled. I thought I heard snickers from my dugout but decided to ignore the noise and just give it my best shot.
I glanced down the third base line at the coach. He gestured, touching his hat, and then his right arm. Then he made a slashing motion across his chest and clapped his hands together three times.
Oh God, he was giving signals. Trying to tell me where to hit the ball, for maximum effect. He’d told me his signals before the game started, but I couldn’t remember one of them. I stepped out of the batter’s box.
“I need to talk to my coach,” I said to the umpire.
“That’s your one,” he replied, and pointed down the third base line. I skittered over to Greg.
“I can’t remember the signals,” I whispered. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
He blinked, and then chuckled. “Try to get on base.”
“Oh, all right.” I half smiled at him and he smiled back.<
br />
“You’ll do fine,” he said.
I didn’t answer. Just walked resolutely back to home plate, and stepped into the batter’s box.
I stared at the pitcher, trying to focus on her and not look past to the dead girl, who was, I could see, actively avoiding my gaze. I wondered who she was and how she’d ended up in the middle of a ball diamond.
“Strike one,” the ump called.
Focus, I thought, and licked my dry lips with my equally dry tongue. Watched the pitcher, and heard the back catcher slide her feet in the shale behind me. She was setting up to have the pitcher throw an inside pitch on me, and for a second I thought what a waste it was. All the pitcher had to do was keep throwing hard, right down the middle, and I’d never catch up.
The second ball flew past me, inside, but not by much. Obviously, the pitcher thought the same way I did about my chances of touching her fastball with that purple bat.
“Strike two,” the umpire called.
The pitcher looked bored, and I could hear my teammates gathering their equipment, readying themselves for the inevitable third strike. That pissed me off.
I narrowed my focus until all I could see was the pitcher’s hand and the ball. I waited for the release. It came. She’d thrown me a drop ball and it was slow. A changeup. She’d thrown me a changeup.
I sucked in breath, waited a microsecond longer, and then I swung.
And, holy crap, I actually hit the ball! A line drive, right over second base. Right through the dead girl, who looked as shocked as everybody else out in the field.
“Run!” somebody—might have been James—yelled. So I ran. And I beat the throw to first base by a full pace.
“Safe!” the ump cried. He sounded kind of surprised.
I stood on first base listening to the cheers from my dugout, from my team, and through the disbelief, felt a thrill of pure joy. It had been so long since I’d felt anything even close to that emotion, I barely understood what I was feeling. But as I settled my foot beside first base and faced second, I saw the dead girl standing there, waiting for me even as she ignored me. The joy abruptly drained away, leaving the oh so familiar feeling of dread.
