Steal Away Home Read online

  I heard a knob turn. The door behind them creaked open. She walked out in silence, head down. I would have wept were I not so frightened. Micky seemed no more. Or rather the Micky I had known since that first day up on the hill, the smiling girl who glowed by some great shining star within, was no more. The blond hair and deep-set eyes, the curve of her chin, these were the same. All else of Micky Dullahan looked a stranger to me. She came forward in a pair of black jeans and a faded gray tee (the nearest clothes for mourning I suspect she owned) and settled between Earl and the preacher. Not once did she lift her head. Her eyes remained instead on the box. I felt as alive as the body we had come to restore back to the earth.

  Reverend Sebolt began: “We are gathered to mark the passing of Constance Marie Dullahan, wife to Earl, mother to Michaela . . .” as a heaviness settled over the room. He talked on, glossing over all but the rudimentary facts of one woman’s life, whatever Micky and Earl had shared with him earlier. The hard life Constance endured. The toil and trial. The Dullahans were not churched, which offered Alan Sebolt no true path to speak of rest and glory found. He stuttered and paused and broke to prayer when the words ran out.

  At his amen the reverend paused to ask if anyone would like to speak. Micky’s head lifted. On her face were a million words she could not tell. She looked not to the box nor to the others but to me alone, moving her chin in a silent no.

  Earl was the only one who tried, offering what were perhaps the truest words he ever spoke: “She was a good woman. I did not deserve her.”

  Reverend Sebolt nodded as to the truth of that statement. To the Harpers he said, “Boys.”

  One twin shuffled inside as Earl and the reverend lifted the casket’s front end. The three of them placed the bottom edge at the windowsill. The Harper boy then moved outside to his brother and they maneuvered the body through and onto the porch. Micky followed last. Her hand brushed my arm as she passed, a gentle touch of fingers running from elbow to wrist that stole my breath and melted every bit of that lump.

  The Harpers slid the box into the truck’s bed with a sweet gentleness and added the two shovels with which they would bury her. Micky walked toward the lane with the preacher. I could not hear what the reverend said. Whatever it was, she answered with a shake of her head.

  “Owen,” Mom said. “Come on now. We’ll leave them to bury their own.”

  I stood and watched as Earl got into the truck. The engine wheezed to life as Barry and Gary took up the rest of the seat. Micky climbed into the bed alone to take one last ride with her momma. She sat atop the hump made by the wheel housing and laid a hand to the coffin, steadying it as the truck lurched forward and off to the graveyard with a passel of Shanties trailing behind.

  At the turn onto the road, Micky looked back. There was no hidden wave. No smile. Hers was instead the same dead face that had greeted us from behind darkened windows and withering trees, the look of the lost. It was as if in that brief glance I could see all of Michaela Dullahan’s tomorrows laid out in one long unbroken line, years as hard and empty as any who were cursed by being born into that bruise upon the world. Ridiculed because she was poor, ignored because she was the wrong color poor. Called lazy and backward and trash. Micky kept her hand to the pine box, and I knew hers was a despair not only at her mother being taken away but at the taking of something even greater. Like a part of her, the best part, was about to be laid in the ground as well, never to shine again.

  From our first kiss on the hill I knew I would love that girl forever. But it was on that day at the start of summer in 1990 when I vowed to save her someday too.

  -8-

  Twenty minutes to game time. The raucous clubhouse quiets to a professional calm as the card games end and the music is turned off. Players one by one gather their gloves and bats to make their way up the tunnel. Someone calls, “Hillbilly, you coming or what?”

  I place the chunk of quartz back in my pocket and follow. At the tunnel I hear the growing crowd and the organ music, the clacking of spikes. There is a part of me that questions how it can be that on this, the greatest day of my life, I would be thinking of a girl long passed. There is the greater part of me that doesn’t question it at all. I find my spot at the end of the bench and look out upon a field of gods, but I know now the cabbie was right. There are ghosts here, truly.

  And they rise up.

  Top 1

  -1-

  We gather in a line outside the dugout railing, hats over hearts as a local high school band plays the national anthem through tubas and flutes and saxophones. A sky of reds and deep blues unfurls above the stadium. Rising over center field is a blossoming moon nearly full. Goose bumps break out along my arms and the back of my neck and channel beads of sweat down between my shoulders. I think of how our high school band played the anthem before that championship game back in ’90. Those about to take the field or wait their turn at bat fidget between rolling notes. They rock on their legs or cant their heads heavenward, thinking of all that long road to this place before stating a plea for one more good game. A shout rises at the last notes. Applause and cheers and smiles from teenaged children as their gleaming instruments are carried off. A cry from the umpire: “Play ball.”

  No one in our dugout sits. Some of us place towels upon the hard concrete wall that ends at chest level to the field and rest our elbows there to peer through the railing or sit atop the long padded backrest of the bench. Others walk from one end of the dugout to the other as the Yanks take the field, keeping loose.

  I lean forward when I spot 35 for the Yanks stepping out of the dugout. Mike Mussina takes the mound and rubs down the game ball between his hands. He’s a crafty one, a veteran with four pitches and half a dozen arm angles. On our side of the field, Brady Anderson and Mike Bordick are at the on-deck circle. Both inch closer to gauge Mussina’s stuff as he begins his warm-ups. Peppered between chatter of “Start us off, Brady” and “Show me somethin’, Mikey” is talk of the moon. Many prophesy a big game in the same way my father once spoke of the Lord’s holy judgment. At the end of the dugout, Mike Singleton stands with the bench coach going over the lineup.

  Mussina makes quick work of the first two batters, getting Anderson on a deep fly to center and Bordick on a routine grounder to Jeter at short. But I can tell he’s struggling. His fastball is flat tonight, the curveball—his crutch—not biting. Worse is he’s shaking off Joe Oliver behind the plate. The two meet midway between the plate and mound as Chris Richard, our right fielder, readies to step in. Three pitches and one changeup later, Richard sears a line drive to deep left and holds with a stand-up double. Mussina’s frustrated at the inning going long. I spot him looking over his shoulder, not at the runner on second but at the moon beyond, missing all but a sliver.

  Oliver jogs out toward the mound once more but doesn’t stay long. Mussina doesn’t want to talk and I chuckle to myself, thinking of Travis Clements back home. Travis with his hundred-dollar arm and nickel head. I hear Daddy’s voice in my head—Ain’t a sorrier soul in all the world than a pitcher, Owen, which is why the catcher’s got to take care of him—Paul Cross saying that even though he was a pitcher himself. Jeff Conine walks to the plate but it’s Travis I see, that game I remember, and how we almost lost it all because of a pitcher’s pride.

  -2-

  It was a May afternoon on the cusp of summer in 1990, a few short days until our senior prom and a little over twenty-four hours since Constance Dullahan was laid to rest, but all the town could talk of was the state championship game between us and nearby Mattingly. Classes let out early. Businesses locked their doors and placed At the game signs in the windows. Jeffrey’s dad shut down the grocery for the afternoon and Travis’s daddy the car lot, which apparently hadn’t happened in Camden since Hurricane David back in ’79. As evidence of the rivalry between our two schools, Sheriff Clancy Townsend summoned most of Camden’s police department to attendance. It’s a wonder Mayor Henry didn’t call up Governor Wilder and ask that t
he National Guard be sent down from Stanley too.

  Our field was a large one—325 feet to the poles, 390 to dead center. Two rows of bleachers sat behind the fence at home plate, separated by a concession stand and score box. By the time batting practice began, both sets of bleachers were filled. The Mattingly folks arrived in waves that settled in along the third-base line and spilled all the way to deep left. Mom came. Dad too, taking his accustomed place at the fence to the left of our dugout where the grass had been worn to dust. Paul Cross’s Spot—No Trespassing may as well have been written there for all the games he’d seen from that location.

  He waved me over after I’d finished warming up Travis. Fingers stuck through the metal diamonds in the fence, like a kid begging to play. He leaned in as though trying to squeeze himself through the gaps, pressing those blue pants and that gray shirt into the fence. I smelled floor wax and urinal cakes.

  He nodded toward Travis. “How’s he look?”

  “Fastball’s good. Curve ain’t, but it never is.”

  Barry and Gary Harper walked past, sporting their empty grins. The Harper boys never missed a game. Nothing made them happier than wrestling kids twenty years younger and two hundred pounds lighter for foul balls. There came our mayor and a crowd of others, a gaggle of Shanties arriving en masse with Earl Dullahan leading them, a whiskey bottle peeking up from behind the pocket over his vanished butt. Micky wasn’t with him, nor had she been to school that day.

  Our denizens of the Pines forsook the bleachers. They sequestered themselves along the foul line in right instead and stood there unblinking, their smell of sweat and dirt drifting to us on the breeze. Not a single member of Shantytown played for Camden. None could afford the twenty dollars for uniforms and warm-up jackets, though I always got the feeling money didn’t matter. Plenty of kids in town couldn’t pay, and Coach Stevens always found the money.

  “This is your game, Owen. You call your pitches and bend that idiot’s will to your’n, and then you take your swings. Watched that kid warming up for Mattingly. Name’s Hewitt. Got signed to a minor league deal. He’s good, so you pay attention. People’s watchin’.” He cocked his head leftward. “First row, aside your momma.”

  I leaned around him and gathered in the man sitting next to Mom. “That Frank Solis?”

  Dad nodded. “Come all the way from Ohio.”

  “For what?”

  “For you. State championship’s a big game, even if it ain’t his state.” He stuck a finger through the fence. “You’re his player, though. So you show him something. Might make the difference between starting your freshman year and riding the pine.”

  -3-

  Conine’s up, and he’s a pro. He doesn’t bite when Mussina tries to paint the corners, and instead works the count his own way in a duel of mind rather than muscle. When his pitch comes, he’s ready. The bench erupts when a fastball that’s gotten too much of the plate is sent to left on a line. Richard scores, Conine stands at first. He points in acknowledgment when his teammates yell, and I hear the first smattering of boos (Bronx cheers—Dad speaking to me again) roll like a wave onto the field. Mussina keeps his cool but he’s rattled, giving up a run with two down in the first. I know because he looks like Travis out there, and here comes Oliver again to settle him down.

  -4-

  The pep band played the anthem. I stood at home plate with my catcher’s mask covering my heart and my eyes pointed at the flag past center field, trying to concentrate on the game. Only once did I avert my gaze long enough to glance out toward the parking lot in front of the school, hoping I’d see Micky. Reverend Sebolt delivered a prayer that came out shades more confident than the one he’d delivered in the Dullahans’ living room.

  Travis took the mound in the top of the first and promptly walked the first two batters. I settled him down long enough to end the inning with a strikeout and a double play, bringing a roar from the gathered.

  Junior Hewitt strolled from Mattingly’s dugout with all the care of a preacher out for a Sunday walk along the river. I’d never seen a boy so big. He looked like he belonged on the offensive line of some college football team instead of a high school pitching mound.

  Jeffrey led off and struck out on three pitches. He passed me on the way back to the dugout, the color gone out of his face. “You’ll hear it,” he said, “but you won’t see nothin’. Swear to God.”

  Travis hit second and fared little better, though he did manage to see five pitches rather than three before the ump punched him out. He walked slump-shouldered back to the bench and put on his jacket to keep his arm warm.

  The crowd cheered as I stepped into the box, Mom and Solis too, though Dad offered nothing. I dug my back foot into the dirt when Mattingly’s catcher started in: “You the big dog, huh? College boy.”

  I gave him silence.

  “That’s our big dog out there. Think he’s scared a you? Let’s see.”

  The first pitch confirmed everything Jeffrey told me. Junior Hewitt coiled his giant’s body and threw out not a baseball but a blur, a white dot the size of a pea that I barely saw but heard fine as a sizzle, ending with a shotgun blast when it smacked the mitt.

  Strike one.

  Mattingly’s contingent cheered and mocked. I stepped from the box and back in, tapping the end of my bat at the inside corner of home plate. Finding my balance. Relaxing. Hewitt nodded at the sign. I raised the bat off my shoulder and leaned backward, ready, ready. My eyes locked in on an imaginary square that my mind had drawn two feet to the left of the mound where Hewitt’s hand released the pitch, that square representing everything and nothing, and I saw Micky there, her face staring out from that spot and her blond hair spilling down along its edges, those eyes staring at me just as they had at that pinewood box, helpless and de—

  The pitch was upon me before I could move. It crashed into my right kidney with all the force of a truck, releasing a bark as much pain as surprise, sending me to the ground. Mom screamed. Dad cussed and shook the fence. The crowd near came unhinged with all the yelling, half of them demanding Hewitt be tossed from the game and the other half planning a parade in the boy’s honor once Mattingly claimed the state title.

  Above me loomed the catcher’s shadow. A voice like God’s spoke: “Hurts, don’t it?”

  I picked myself up and tried jogging without looking like I was stumbling toward my own death rather than first base. Cussing Junior Hewitt and his minor league arm, cussing myself. I’d let my focus wander from what was important, only I didn’t know which thing that was, the game or Michaela Dullahan.

  Anger replaced agony. I stole second and third on the next two pitches, chasing a bit of Junior Hewitt’s stupid grin, then rattled him enough that he sent a curveball into the dirt on pitch number four. It skittered under the catcher’s glove and rolled toward the backstop. I broke for home. Hewitt’s tag came too late. I’d pee blood the rest of that night but knew it was worth the pain. We were up 1–0.

  There the score remained for the next five innings. Travis kept up his end, delivering every pitch I called without hesitation and keeping the Mattingly hitters off balance enough that they never really threatened. Hewitt matched him. Micky was still there. I felt the brush of her fingers each time I flashed Travis a sign. Glimpsed her in the crowd before every at-bat, mistaking a stranger’s face for her own. Hers was the sole voice rising from the crowd chanting my name. Camden managed three hits through the sixth inning, none of them mine.

  Dad motioned me over after my third at-bat resulted in a weak ground ball down the third baseline. Coach Solis stood with him. They asked if I was good—if I was hurt—and then Frank said, “That’s college pitching out there, Owen. That’s what you’ll be facing.”

  The look in Dad’s eyes was almost a plea.

  We played only seven innings in high school ball. By the top of the last our lead still held, and you could see the dawning realization of loss on Mattingly’s faces. They had a final chance at bat but were already beat
en. Three outs to the only state title Camden had ever won. The crowd stood jittery and yelling, ready to fight should the situation warrant it. Even Shantytown cheered Travis’s warm-ups.

  The umpire called for a batter. Travis grooved one last fastball that I would then throw down to second base, which would then be tossed to the shortstop and finally to Jeffrey at third. A throw I’d made at the start of each inning I’d ever played, repeated so much as to be mechanical. And yet as I yelled “Comin’” down to second and stood to release the ball, I saw her. Standing alone past the right field fence with that same corn-silk hair, now teased and hardened with a can of Aqua Net hair spray. She had changed out of her mourning clothes and into a pair of cutoff shorts and a black Def Leppard T-shirt. Aside from the cigarette raised and lowered to her mouth, Micky never moved.

  All of this registered in the time it took for me to release the ball, which sailed over second base and rolled meekly into center field.

  Hoots from Mattingly’s dugout, calls of “Candy arm” and “College boy.” I took my eyes from Micky long enough to fully appreciate my awful throw and to see Youngstown’s coach—the man who would hold my future for the next four years—dip his head. Dad looked as though gripped by the pains of labor.

  Micky watched.

  The first batter grounded out to Jeffrey at third, the next hit a lazy fly to center. Two outs, the Camden crowd frothing and wild, stomping their feet on the bleachers. Coach Stevens leaned in close to the fence, ignoring whatever it was my father shouted at him. Coach always did agonize over the last outs of a close game. The Witching Hour is what he called it, when anything bad that could happen most often did. It was a sentiment once more proven right that day, because that’s when Travis’s pride got the better of him and everything went to hell.

  Mattingly’s left fielder, a scrawny nine-hole hitter who hadn’t touched Travis’s heater all day, stepped in as their final hope. I put down a single finger for a fastball. Travis shook me off. I laid down a finger again. Wiggled it, saying, This is the pitch.