Steal Away Home Read online

  He shook me off.

  I slapped a fist into my mitt and looked at Coach Stevens, whose chin had settled at his chest in one final prayer to the baseball gods. Dad merely shook his head in shock. I looked out toward Micky, then Travis, and put down two fingers for the curveball I knew he wanted. Travis nodded. Before anyone could blink, Mattingly had the tying run on first after a clean single up the middle.

  As proof that pitchers possess the emptiest minds of any known form of life, Travis shook me off again with the next batter. And again. I let him serve another curveball that resulted in Mattingly having the tying run at third, the go-ahead on second, and three-quarters of the crowd descending into a weeping and gnashing of teeth.

  I called time and walked to the mound, taking my mask off so Travis could understand me plain. “You think maybe it’s time you start throwing what I tell you? Or you want these two runs to score so we can all go home?”

  Travis scuffed the mound with a cleat. A low murmur of doubt washed over the crowd.

  “Curve feels good,” he said. “Daddy says I need to be throwing that more often.”

  “You serious right now?” I asked him. “Biggest game a your life, and you’re standing out here thinking of what your daddy wants you to throw?”

  “They already seen my heat. Need to show’m the slow stuff.”

  “They seen your heat,” I said. “They can’t hit it.”

  Jeffrey jogged in from third, popping his gum like he was above it all. “Hey, what y’all doin’ later? I need a ride to pick up my tux for prom. And my cap and gown. Sheesh, I forgot all about that. Y’all get yours?”

  I tell you this: should you ever have need of empty conversation and have no pitcher close by, go find yourself a third baseman.

  Travis said, “Got my tux,” and needled me with his elbow. “Got yours yet?”

  To him, Jeffrey said, “What you doin’ after the dance?”

  “Goin’ to the party. And it ain’t what I’m doin’,” he said, “it’s who. As in Jen Hamrick.”

  Jeffrey chuckled. I punched Travis in the chest with my mitt. “Get your head in the game ’fore you blow it.”

  “You got your tux, Owen?” Jeffrey asked. “I got to get mine. Stephanie keeps on me. Why ain’t you taking nobody?”

  Travis smirked, said, “Owen’s gone take his mitt.”

  The ump came forward, barking at us to get on with things.

  “I’m throwing curve,” Travis said.

  “I’m the catcher,” I told him. “It’s my call.”

  “Think it all you want, I don’t care.” Travis leaned down and spat into the dirt. “Why’n’t you go on back to the plate, Owen, tell your daddy come clean that up.”

  I showed Travis my back and walked off. Not looking at Micky or the crowd or either coach, new or old. Certainly not my father, who would have given up his ghost right then and there if he’d known what I was about to do. Mattingly’s next hitter was their best, a kid named Barnett. I put on my mask as I reached the plate and spoke a single word:

  “Deuce.”

  He looked at me, shook his head a little, and stepped in. I didn’t even give Travis a sign. Travis, idiot that he was, nodded. The only thing that moved faster than his arm was his head as it spun to watch the ball arcing out toward the alley in left center, where it smacked the top of the fence. The Barnett kid ended up with a triple. Mattingly led 2–1.

  It took a mere three pitches to strike out the next batter, all of them fastballs.

  Travis never shook me off again.

  By the bottom of the seventh it was mostly silence, the crowd hollering for so long that everyone had worn themselves out. Momentum had shifted from one team to the other so many times that no one quite knew what would happen next and so stood or sat in nervous twitching. We batted 9–1–2, which meant someone would have to get on base for me to have a last chance against Hewitt.

  Our nine-batter struck out, bringing Junior Hewitt’s total that day to fourteen—a state title game record. Jeffrey then managed to set aside his need for a tuxedo and walk on six pitches. Travis stepped up to the plate. I came out on deck and loosened up with my bat, watching Micky.

  Travis hit a weak pop fly that the first baseman caught just outside the foul line.

  Two outs.

  I strolled to the plate easy-like and flicked at the air with the barrel of my bat, an old thirty-three-inch Easton Black Magic with a picture of Ted Williams taped near the handle. The crowd wasn’t so much cheering now as shouting. Hundreds of voices calling out my name, calling, “O-wen.” Mom yelling for me to wait on my pitch and Coach Stevens standing still, too afraid to hope. Dad standing at the fence with a quiet grin. Frank Solis looking out from beneath his Youngstown State cap. I saw him mouth four words: Come on now, son.

  My last look was out toward right. Micky leaned into the fence.

  Stepping into the box that final time was like entering a three-sided room of silence, the only opening pointed straight to where Junior Hewitt stood. I breathed deep the smells of earth and sweat. Felt the breeze at the side of my face, carrying out.

  And I knew then, beyond all doubt. That game was over.

  Perhaps it had simply taken that long for me to shake the sadness of all I had seen in Shantytown. Maybe I simply wanted to impress my girl. But I don’t think so. I think what locked me into that moment was Micky’s mere presence. I found peace in knowing she was okay, at least for now. And for now was good enough.

  Jeffrey took his lead off first base and gained an extra step, though that step meant nothing. I knew what was coming. Everyone believed Junior Hewitt’s best pitch was his fastball, but it was in fact his curve. His curveball had movement, had bite, and while his fastball could carry in the mid-90s at least, it came at you as straight as a clothesline. And when it flew out of that tiny square I had drawn in my mind, Micky’s face had no need of being there. I saw that ball alone.

  There is a moment as a hitter when all the leavings of the world fall away. You are drawn into a bubble of absolute stillness and perfect simplicity that exists beyond all time and space, where pressure and fear cannot reach you and conscious thought is rendered meaningless. I felt no pain of the hit I’d taken at the start of the game. I heard no sound. To hit is to forget yourself entirely, it is a great letting go, and that is why it is an art. It is poetry set to action and music strummed by the soul, but it is also more, for those endeavors are fated to forever fall short of perfection. Yet a swing can be just that. It can be perfection, and perhaps the only perfect thing you will ever do. I always thought that if I could somehow live in that bubble stretched out to the half beat of a heart, I could live forever. If that was heaven, I would do anything to get there.

  I never felt the ball meet the barrel. My bat met Junior Hewitt’s fastball so clean and square that it felt like I’d swung through air. My eyes lifted up and out in my follow-through, leaving me to stand for an instant to watch it go. The ball shot high and far toward right, where Micky stood watching. It soared like a seed carried on wind.

  The ground shook beneath me. I kept my head low and rounded the bases quick as I could. But I heard each cheer and every scream, every yell of my name. Sheriff Townsend moved his men into position to make sure no fights broke out in the parking lot. The team mobbed me as I touched home plate. In between high fives and slaps to the butt, I glanced back toward right, wanting to see her and needing to know she’d seen me. But that spot was bare except for the sight of Barry and Gary Harper racing a gaggle of elementary school kids to where they believed the ball had landed.

  -5-

  David Segui’s our five-hitter. Big guy, good stick, handles himself pretty well with the glove around first base. He needs to let Mussina pitch here. Wait for that one mistake he can send out to an alley somewhere. Another run is what we need. Put the Yanks down two before they even get a chance to hit. Make them feel the pressure. Conine’s got his lead off first. Mussina checks him. You think there’s not m
uch action in a ball game until the late innings. That’s not true. There are battles, sure, but the little skirmishes through the early innings often carry as much tension. Our bench knows this is one. Segui comes up empty, though. He manages a grounder that Jeter snags and tosses to second for the force play. The inning’s done. I glance over at Jason Johnson two places down from me. He stands and shrugs away the jacket that has kept his arm warm and looks out toward the moon—hoping is my guess, wanting that near full globe to be working only one way this night.

  Bottom 1

  -1-

  Coach Solis took us out to eat after the game. I couldn’t refuse the invitation even though I knew Micky would be waiting on our hill. Mom sensed hesitation on my part and pulled me aside to say it wouldn’t be long, this man had driven all the way from Ohio and deserved a little of our time.

  I fidgeted in my seat. My side hurt from where the Hewitt boy had hit me. Changing in the locker room after the game, I had inched up my shirt to find a purple-and-green bruise the size of a grapefruit sprouting beneath my jersey. Black spider webs reached from my side outward, skimming my stomach and back like some dark hand laid hold of me. In the center of the blotch rested the gentle curve of a baseball’s seams as two dappled red lines sank into the skin.

  Dad dwelt more on my poor performance prior to the seventh inning than anything else. To his credit, Coach Solis refused to view my game as anything but exemplary.

  “I got big plans for you,” he said. “You and me, Owen, we’re gonna have some fun.”

  But it wasn’t the next year at college that filled my head, it was getting home to Micky. Dad said nothing when I told him and Mom I was going to take a walk around the woods to stretch out and catch my breath. Mom winked while he wasn’t looking and said to be back before too late. I pushed open the back door and made for the other side of our pines and the meadow. By the time I reached the slope of our hill, I could barely walk for the pain at my kidney. I climbed slow and favored my right side as much as I could. Pulled forward neither by duty nor by expectation, but by a simple desire to be with the girl I saw waiting beneath an oak so tall and wide it had no business being in this world or any other.

  “There he comes,” I heard. “Camden’s crown prince. All hail.”

  Micky grinned out those last two words as much as she could, flashing an unbearable sense of pain and loss beneath them so the All hail stretched to sound more like Aww, hell. Her slight smile disappeared when she saw me limping.

  Her hand at my arm, the scent of cheap perfume mixed with pollen and forming dew. “What’s a matter with you? Is it where you got hit? Barry and Gary told me.”

  “Ain’t bad. Just help me down here is all.”

  She eased me to the oak’s trunk and inched up the bottom of my shirt. Micky’s quiet cursing was all I heard. Enough moonlight reached through the branches that I could see the two red welts laid in curving rows across a great purple sun.

  “Have mercy, Owen, you been branded.”

  I don’t know why that made me smile, but it did. It was the way Micky stared at the bruise like the wound hurt her as much as me, or how her fingers settled at my hip bone. Her eyes glistened. It was a wonder she possessed tears at all after burying her momma, yet it looked as though more would spill at the prodding of a single breath.

  “You need to get a doctor,” she said. “Your folks seen this?”

  “It ain’t bad. I’ve had worse.” Which was true. Broken fingers and busted knees and bruises left by foul tips to my shoulders and arms. Catchers grow old before their time. I held my faint smile, wanting it to show, because I knew Micky was upset over more than some bruise. She had kept from our hill the night before, laying only a pile of river stones as a marker along with a note that said Shantie folk were coming to offer scraps of supper to her and Earl.

  Micky needed me. The Rapture wouldn’t be enough to bring me down from that hill.

  Her protests ended there. She sat against me and her mouth said, “You’re an idiot,” but her eyes, those two watering sapphire globes, offered thanks alone. For a while we only stared down upon that vast sea of trees and the waves of mountains cresting behind. Mosquitoes whined in my ears. Micky nudged me as a star shot across the crown of the sky’s bell, streaking white and orange and red. I knew her wish and mourned the star’s refusal to grant it. The dead rose only in movies.

  She said, “I knew you’d hit that ball. They scored them runs and I could hear everybody moaning. But I said, ‘Not yet. Only one guy gets on next inning, Owen’s coming up. We’ll all go home smiling.’” Her gaze lingered on my face. “I ain’t never seen a thing like that in all my life. That ball kept so high and far I almost spent a wish on it.”

  “Wouldn’t’ve had to do that if Travis had thrown what I wanted.”

  “I seen him shake you off.” Micky shrugged like that was backstory and so inconsequential. “He’s an idiot.”

  “I’m just glad you came. I seen your daddy there but not you. Got worried.”

  “You know I wouldn’t miss that game.”

  “Couldn’t do anything,” I said. “Played like some freshman. I needed to know you were okay. Soon as I did, it’s like everything came together. Guess you won that game as much as me. It wasn’t hard. I knew what was coming. I was laying fastball.”

  “You was what?”

  “Knew he’d throw a fastball. That’s the Hewitt kid’s crutch—his heater. Every pitcher’s got a crutch. One pitch he’ll always fall back on when he needs to wiggle out of a jam. He mixed up his pitches good all game, but when he got in trouble he always went fastball. You knew I’d hit it out. So did I.”

  Micky blinked—no tears, though they gathered—and tilted her head. Often I would catch Mom looking at me in such a way, like in awe, which I either shrank beneath or brushed aside. But that same expression from Micky made me want to freeze that moment forever and store it away for all those times I felt small and alone.

  “Sometimes I forget how smart you are,” she said.

  “Missed seein’ you at school.”

  She flinched a little and drew her hand down to pluck a blade of grass, which she tore into small strips and left to the breeze. “I was trying to right the house all day,” she said. “Earl went off to wherever and left me with all Mom’s stuff. Whole house smells like her. Only thing got me through’s knowing you’d be up here tonight, that we could sit and talk and look down on everything. I think that’s why I always liked this place. Nothing looks big from here.”

  A tear dripped. Micky wiped it before it fell. She’d never cried in front of me, refusing to be anything but the strong woman she pretended to be, the Shantie who could be stepped on by life yet still stand. I was not fooled. There were cracks in Micky’s steely armor.

  “She was the best woman I ever knew, Owen. She kept in marriage because a me and said a million times a child needs her daddy. I told her once I never did have no daddy to need, all I had’s an Earl, and she’d say nothing to that because she knew it’s true. But she did always love him. Especially at the beginning. Earl was handsome once, and he was always a fine talker. Then it all got too hard is all. Toward the end I guess she loved Earl still, but only that part a him Momma thought could yet be saved. Some shred of light she could claim.”

  “She was always kind to me. Little things like smiling when I saw her about in town. Wanted to say something like that at your house.”

  A hoot owl called from somewhere along the dark bruise that was Shantytown. Not far, a mockingbird answered from loneliness.

  “You think there’s a heaven?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Sometimes I think there is. I walk around down there in the Pines and see what goes on, all them people suffering through this life, and I think there’s got to be a heaven if only to balance things. I want to believe it’s so. That Momma’s up there right now looking down on me. Loving me. She never did hate me for what I was to her.”

  “What you we
re?”

  Micky nodded. “Ruination. Momma never told me she got pregnant before Earl put a ring on her finger. He speaks of it like it was a proud thing to do. Like he’d been the one out of every man in Camden to claim the prettiest rose there was, only then to tear that flower petal by petal. I was the one kept Momma from living what life she was meant. But she never showed it. Not one time. Momma was good to me.”

  “You ain’t no ruination. Don’t you say that.”

  “It’s true. All Momma ever wanted was for me to be good. She died hoping.”

  “I think you’re good,” and at those words I realized I remained the only person left who believed as much, me and my momma. Micky was a Shantie, after all. Nothing good ever came from those pines.

  Her hand graced my arm. “I’m glad you’re here, Owen. If nothing else than because I love you, and the count of the ones I love in this world has now been halved.”

  “Summer’ll be here soon, then it’ll be time to go. Coach Solis was at the game. He’s gonna take care of me at college. Means I’ll take care a you. All we got to do is hang on, and I’ll get you out of that place down there. I swear it.”

  She laid her head to my shoulder and we remained that way, talking some but taking in all that silence, looking down on all the small things. Micky never cried. And just as those tears had welled upon seeing the bruise on my side, I wanted to think I had a help in keeping them away that night as well.

  -2-

  Brook Fordyce has bounced around the majors since the midnineties, playing for five teams in both leagues. His bat doesn’t have much pop but he’s solid behind the plate, and he’s shown me nothing but kindness. There are veterans who won’t turn their heads to somebody up from the minors. Others are downright nasty. This speaks little to their personality and more to the reality of the game itself. There is always some younger kid behind you, some hotshot player waiting to take your spot the moment you hit a slump or do a long stint on the disabled list.