Steal Away Home Read online

  -6-

  The crowd’s groan shakes me. I blink to see the Yankee catcher turn and walk back to the dugout and Fordyce rolling the ball back out toward the mound. Johnson has struck out another. End of the inning, that’s the way to do it. Score some runs on one end and shut them down on the other, that-a baby. That’s the way to pitch a game.

  Ethan stirs beside me, says, “Gotta get back to work.”

  “You go show me something.”

  “I will.”

  He grins again and doffs his cap as he walks down toward the bat rack, showing me a shock of Todd’s auburn hair. The air hums around me, claps and atta-boys and let’s-get-’ems, but it’s only buzzing in my head, a hazy wall of electricity between my now and my then. A cricket sings out . . .

  -7-

  . . . from a tangle of brush somewhere down the slope, turning Micky’s head. Calling out into all that silent dark for the promise of summer and company, though the night would bring neither. I wondered how many in the world were like that. Calling out in our darkness for some relief that told us we were not alone. Grabbing hold of anything near to convince us of that, no matter its cost.

  “All we got to do’s hold out the summer,” I said. “Then we’re off to Youngstown. You’ll never have to see this place again. I promise you that. Rest of it, all that stuff you think about you and Todd, it’s all lies.”

  And Micky grinned a little, no more than a thinning of her painted lips. “Why, Owen Cross, don’t you know all we got’s the lies we tell ourselves? Like your daddy thinking his life may come to something so long as yours does, or my daddy thinking his girl is but a misshapen boy. But there comes a time when those lies become known for what they are, and all we’ve left is to buckle under them. Five whole years we been coming up here,” she said. “You realize that? Don’t seem more than a week sometimes, and now it’s almost over. ’Nother month we’ll walk across the stage for graduation.”

  “And be gone,” I said again.

  “It’s times I’m afraid to believe that. Don’t many ever get a chance to leave Camden and never come back. Nobody from the Pines. Most us? All we do is stay right here because there’s no choice, live and work inside our own coffins. But not you,” she said. “You are destined.”

  I snorted a little, wanting it to be so but afraid of it just the same.

  “Don’t you laugh. I always believed it no less than that the sun will rise. You’ve a gift like I never saw in anybody. The way you play ball? It’s like . . . well, I don’t know what it’s like. A poem, I guess. Like everybody else out there is just flailing about while you glide along without a care. Your daddy says you were born for the game. I never thought that was right. I always thought it the other way—the game was made for you. I can’t imagine what it’s like being able to do a thing so well. To be you. It would be about the greatest thing there is.”

  I said, “Might let you sit here all night telling me that if I believed a word of it.”

  “It’s true or I wouldn’t waste the breath to say it. You’re too humble is all. Or maybe it’s you’re too scared to know. But I ain’t. You’re gonna make a name for yourself. You realize how precious of a thing that is? That you’re special? That your heart’s built such that it can love something so completely?” She looked off then, down toward where the grasses swayed as the night critters moved through them and then farther, past Shantytown to where the mountains rose like masses of departed souls. “That’s all I ever wanted, I think. To lay my mark however I can.”

  “You can do that.”

  Micky shook her head. “I’m a Dullahan. That’s all I’ll ever be. Just an echo of all the Dullahans come before with the same blood running through me and the same bent nature. You can’t change an echo. Don’t matter what anybody thinks or feels, we never can be more’n we are. Even if you do take me away from here.”

  “I am taking you away from here,” I said.

  “You promise me?”

  I took her hand . . .

  -8-

  . . . “Promise,” I say across the years.

  “What’d you say?” Ethan asks.

  “Nothing. Go get ’em.”

  Top 3

  -1-

  It is a crowded place, a baseball dugout. Could be you’re stuck inside that cinder-block hotbox we had in Camden or the one in Bowie (my spot there reserved next to the bat rack where Skip stands, rather than all the way at the other end alone). Can even be Yankee Stadium, it don’t matter. You hear everything. And while you may be led to believe much of the talk is centered around the game, that isn’t so often the case. For as many guys as there are talking of Mussina’s stuff (which doesn’t look so good to any of us tonight) or how the wind is moving the fly balls or how the ump isn’t giving the batters the outside corner, there are more simply looking to vent and gripe.

  Somebody’s getting a divorce.

  Somebody’s being audited.

  One guy is in the middle of a contract negotiation and the guys upstairs are playing hardball.

  There are players who are hurt and ones who don’t care anymore, those traded here months ago and still can’t sell their houses back where they used to play, and hearing them makes me feel this is a sorry bunch of people who think they have problems but don’t, at least compared to most of the people sitting in those stands. And lest I forget, I count myself right along with those living the major league dream. Doesn’t matter I’m a twenty-nine-year-old catcher still stuck in Double-A, I’m still getting paid to play. I’m still a ballplayer, and between Johnson’s warm-ups out there on the mound I hear the cabbie’s voice fresh in my mind:

  I coulda made it. You know? Could be you.

  You get a bunch of guys all bunched in together, there’s bound to be accidents. Get hit with a rocket of brown tobacco spit or walk right through someone’s wad of bubble gum. Get sunflower seeds thrown on you. Catch a whiff of stink off someone just in from the long run way out in left. It’s as much of the game as anything else and something I’ve always enjoyed as I could. Makes you family, being in such close quarters. That’s what all the good teams are, family.

  So I don’t mind a bit when Gabe Caldwell comes walking by and jukes out of Ripken’s way, cleating my foot. Caldwell’s a good kid. I saw him come through Double-A a few years back (cup of coffee for him, he wasn’t in Bowie more than a few months) and from there he climbed the ladder straight through Triple-A to the majors. Baltimore has been his home this entire season. Already he’s had more than twenty at-bats and seen some action out in left.

  No, I don’t mind. Don’t even flinch when one of his spikes sinks through my shoe and clips the edge of my big toe. But then Caldwell’s hand shoots out as his legs jump back. His eyes bulge as he says to me, “Sorry, sir.”

  Sir. Like I’m some kind of senior citizen, Caldwell’s daddy. I wave him off with a “Don’t worry none” and he nods his head quick-like before moving off down the dugout to where the starters are talking about Mussina’s stuff. Head bobbing like all the world’s a song playing for him alone.

  Twenty years old, already in the majors. Already seeing some playing time with the big team. Kid was still in grade school when I left Camden for Ohio, and Lord, I suddenly feel ancient.

  -2-

  Youngstown State University occupies one hundred and forty acres just north of the town proper, a stone’s throw from the Pennsylvania border. That’s where I ran in mid-August of 1990. My aim was double in nature and had nothing to do with schooling: to become the Penguins’ starting catcher by spring, and to put away everything that had happened back home. I managed only the one.

  Dad insisted on driving me up. Mom came along. The ride was six hours of small talk with a good measure of silence thrown in. Dad looked like he had aged years since the start of the summer. Much of the light was gone from him by then, though its passing had softened a few of those hard edges Mom and I had spent years scraping against. He kept his blue pants but had added a white shirt and red
tie for the occasion.

  Mom spent much of that ride watching the miles pass through her window. Whole seasons crossed over her reflection through the glass: a wintry look of despair that yielded to a springtime softening of the creases around her mouth; a weariness that spoke of long July days; an autumn bursting in rosy cheeks and bright eyes. I looked away rather than suffer the punishment of seeing her in such a way. Too much had happened in too short a time. Nothing of the world looked as it once had.

  The ensuing months are lost to me now, tangled and frayed at the edges. My scholarship came with a housing allowance healthy enough that I kept my own apartment near campus. I settled in and made friends where I was able, which was no easy task given the culture shock of university life. A walk across campus was like taking a shortcut through strange places I could only imagine seeing. I shared space with people from China and India and Africa, from lands so far-flung I struggled to pronounce them in ways that would not offend. Protests everywhere—abortion and the death penalty and equal pay and rights, the war just begun to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. It felt good to be small and forgotten.

  There were calls from home. Coach Stevens and Travis and Jeffrey, Mom each night after supper. Her questions were the sort any kid fresh from home would expect—if I was eating and studying, and whatever Dad shouted at her from the recliner across the living room. My questions back were equally vague and designed so they offered the lowest odds of treading anywhere close to the subject of Michaela Dullahan.

  Baseball was what saved me. Conditioning began in my first week of school, followed by untold hours of working on my swing with Coach Solis and the rest of the staff. Going over pitchers and spray charts, learning the conference. I hounded them, picked their brains, made myself a better player. The game became my education, the prism through which I viewed not only the world but my place in it. My crutch. It’s not only pitchers who have those. We all do, every single one of us.

  By the time the season began, I was a starting freshman positioning the infield and calling pitches for juniors and seniors. Proving myself not to them but to my father, and not to my father but to myself. I hit seventh those first few weeks of the season. Mom and Dad made the trip up for an opening day that felt more like winter than spring. I went two-for-four with a double that glanced off the fence in right center. By the month’s end I was hitting .377 with two homers and batting fifth.

  But the past is a living thing, and I could not outrun what chased me. There were days I never thought of Camden at all, or of Micky. Weeks I floated from class to class and one corner of campus to the other thinking it would all be okay—that it was over.

  Those lies I told myself about things being over and okay caught up with me eventually.

  Lies always do.

  -3-

  It’s the five-six-seven hitters up for us in the top of the third. Every light in the stadium burns to beat back an encroaching dark. It’s dreamlike out there between those solid white lines. Green grass and dirt near the color of coal. A few more runs, that’s what I’m thinking. We break this game wide open and who knows, maybe Mike will call me up. Put me in as a pinch hitter or maybe even let me spell Fordyce behind the plate for the last couple of innings. Give me my shot. Throw a bone to the old man at the end of the bench. He bends my way, looking through the bodies of the players walking back and forth through the narrow way between the bench and railing.

  One shot is all I need. One chance to prove this is where I belong. Could be the past will go away then, finally and for good.

  -4-

  We were at a home game against Valparaiso in early April of ’91 when I spotted him along the first base side, peeling an apple with his Buck knife. He watched me the entire nine innings. I struck out twice that afternoon and took the collar, going oh-for-four. It was my first bad game as a college player.

  The baseball field was away from campus, which meant we took buses before and after games. I lingered in the dugout as long as I could and ducked out in a crowd of teammates, hoping to get away unseen. Cap pulled low, shoulders hunched. Wanting to look small. I never looked up until I was in my seat and had a tinted window between me and the world. An hour later I was coming up the walk to my apartment and saw him leaning against the iron railing, grinning like I was a prodigal returned.

  In a place as diverse as any, no one appeared so out of place as Sheriff Clancy Townsend. His eyes were narrowed beneath a scruff of pale hair and thick brows that always looked furrowed, like he was looking for something gone lost. A red flannel shirt helped ward off the spring chill.

  He shook my hand and pulled me in for a bear hug. “Let’s eat,” he said. “I’m starving.”

  There was an Arby’s at the corner of the next block. The sheriff ordered enough food to see him through supper and the ride back to Virginia both. We sat in a booth near the back of the restaurant. He tore into his sandwich and chased it with two slurps of soda, winking at me.

  “Greta give me your address,” he said. “Said it’d be nice for you to see somebody from back home, ’specially since her and your daddy can’t get up here all the time. Still took me near all afternoon to find it. Found somebody told me you had a game and I thought that sounded just fine. Ain’t seen you play since the championship last year.” Clancy shook his head. “Didn’t think I’d ever find that dad-gummed baseball park. Go on an’ eat. Don’t let me keep you.”

  I did. Nibbled at my roast beef and a few curly fries, wanting to show Clancy I wasn’t worried. Every bite I swallowed tried to push itself back up.

  “Ast your momma not to let you know I’s on the way. Wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Guess it is. How’s Louise?”

  “Right as the mail.” And after some thought, “Better. Getting there, leastways.” Clancy chewed, marveling at how it was he could be so far from home and yet be eating food that tasted the same in the land of rust as it did a block from the sheriff’s office in the heart of Appalachia. “Speaks to a certain equality of things, don’t it?” He swallowed and shook his head a little. “We ain’t found him yet, Owen,” he said.

  “Don’t guess so. Thing like that, I’d’ve heard.”

  “Mayor Henry’s all in a twaddle. Says it don’t matter it was Shantie folk, they should be as much a part a Camden as anybody other. Sad thing, ain’t it? Takes something like what happened to get some sense in folks’ heads. I tell Mayor keep his head, wait awhile. Men like Earl Dullahan don’t stay hid long. Ain’t their nature. Sooner or later he’ll get an itch to take more’n he’s got already, or he’ll run through what he’s got and have to come up out whatever hole he’s in. I don’t expect it to be close to Camden. Earl’s ignorant, but he ain’t dumb. Somebody’ll let me know when he does. I got word out to about every law enforcement agency there is.”

  “You believe that?”

  Clancy said, “I do.”

  “Could of just called with news of Earl, Sheriff. Though what all you told me couldn’t even be named news at all. And I don’t see how you’d think I’d be interested in it either way. I’m gone from Camden now.”

  “Ain’t nobody ever gone from Camden. Truth is I had to get away. Even if it’s only for a mornin’ and evenin’. It’s a wound running through town. I reckon you care as much for Earl Dullahan’s welfare as much as anybody else does, my own self included. But he ain’t the only one I’m lookin’ for. You gone eat them fries?”

  I pushed the cardboard container toward him. Clancy took a handful and bit down. His eyes bored into me.

  “Can’t find Michaela neither. It’s like she up and vanished from this world with nary a trace. And that’s the thing matters. Only thing far as I’m concerned, because it all began and ended with that girl. I been talking to Shanties and townies both. Don’t nobody know. Then I remembered.” He cut his eyes in a way that reminded me this was the sheriff beside me, not some friend from back home. “We had us a deal.”

  I stared at my hands. “Thought I knew whe
re he was. I’ll swear it. But I got there, Earl’s gone.”

  “Remembered you tellin’ me that too, once it was over. Like I said, comin’ here’s mostly an excuse to get away a while. Most in town are of a mind once Earl turns up, Michaela’ll come right along with him.”

  “I don’t think you’re gonna find her, Sheriff.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I spoke the lie I’d told myself over and over since leaving Camden. Mixed with a kernel of truth, as all good lies are. “She run off is all.”

  “Wish I’s as sure as you. They both gone, ain’t no argument there. But Earl up an’ snuck off before Michaela did. You ever think on that? He left day before that barn burned, but I talked to Shanties who seen Michaela the next morning. Why’d they do something like that if they was planning on running off together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because they didn’t. That’s my idea. I think that girl went and got herself killed. Once that place burned and folk found out all that money’s gone?” He shook his head. “People’s apt to turn to violence. Shantytown folk ’specially. Ain’t a long road to hurtin’ folk when you been hurt yourself.”

  Clancy rubbed the salt from his hands and the ketchup from his mouth. He leaned back in the seat and fished a pack of smokes from his shirt pocket. Staring at me. His every movement seemed designed to be as slow as possible so he could judge my reaction—the cigarette going into his mouth, the flick of his lighter, how he drew in deep and let the fumes out slow.

  I said, “Them people loved her for what she did.”

  “Don’t got to tell me that. Some believed, some didn’t. Ones who believed held Michaela Dullahan up to be some kinda savior. Ones didn’t . . . well.”

  “What you gonna do, then?”