The Ninth Inning

by A. J. Stewart

  “How’s Ricky?” I asked. I put enough emotion in my voice to suggest I wasn’t gloating.

  “Looks like he ran into a swinging bat,” said Cashman.

  “Do you think he’ll press charges?”

  “I think he’d like to. But Amber calmed him down. She knows bad press when she sees it.”

  Cashman ushered us past the attendant who had held me up on my previous visits, and then as we entered the suite, he clicked his fingers and told an assistant to open some champagne and make sure that we all kept full glasses. As the assistant poured bubbles into real glass champagne flutes for Danielle and Jane, I turned to Cashman.

  “I’m sorry for punching your guy.”

  “It’s okay. He had it coming.”

  We charged our glasses, and Cashman became master of ceremonies and asked everybody to offer Danielle and me a toast on our happy nuptials. I wondered for a moment what unhappy nuptials were and then realized that I already knew. I had seen too many variations of them. I resolved not to go there.

  A server came around with a silver tray of hors d’oeuvres, which we nibbled on as the players took the field and began to warm up. I wondered what going to a wedding before a game might do to a player’s state of mind. I figured it was well beyond the time for me to care.

  We drank some more champagne, and somebody went out and got hot dogs and set up an impromptu condiment station with ketchup and mustard and relish. There was even sauerkraut, which I thought was a step too far, but Jane seemed to think it was inspired.

  I stood between my new wife and her sister, with a hot dog in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other, overlooking a spring training baseball game, and I seriously doubted that life could possibly get any better than this. Then I second-guessed myself. That had been the root of all my problems. The fact was it could get better, and it could get worse. But for right now, this was as good as I ever hoped to be.

  Cashman’s suite was up next to the press box. It was almost more fun watching those guys calling the game than it was watching the players on the field. They were, for want of a better phrase, going ballistic over the performance the Athletics were putting on down on the field. They played like a team possessed, despite having a thin batting roster and the absence of their new recruit slugger, Ricky Spence, and they downed their crosstown rivals in the Bay Area, the Giants, 11 to 1.

  Most people think sports are a physical undertaking. And certainly it’s true that a level of physical performance is required to be at your best in any elite sport. But the difference between winning and losing, or even winning big and losing big, wasn’t a physical thing. The San Francisco Giants hadn’t hobbled out onto the field with broken legs and sprained wrists. They were as fit as the A’s. But on this day, something in the collective mind of the Oakland players was a cut above. Sports psychologists were paid top dollar to search out the answer to achieving that kind of performance on a consistent basis. In baseball, more than most sports, that was hard to do, because the long season was a grind, and being up—really up—was difficult to sustain. The great players didn’t try. They found a way to get up on the days when it was really important, like during the playoffs, and particularly the World Series. I knew from experience that a big win in spring training counted for nothing. But for a bunch of young guys looking to break out, a win like that could show them what they were truly capable of, not just as individuals but as a team.

  I stayed in John Cashman’s suite with my team. Her arm was wrapped around me, her head on my shoulder as the game finished, the crowd drifted away, and the lights were doused. A cleaning crew made their way around the stadium, sprucing up the bleachers for the next day. John Cashman said goodbye to his various guests and hangers on and then came over to us. He handed me another bottle of champagne and said he’d catch me back in Florida. Jane offered us both a kiss and a hug and said Cashman had offered her a ride back to her hotel.

  We stepped out through the glass door into the darkened grandstand and sat in the bleachers, three quarters of the way up. I poured two more glasses and then set the bottle on the concrete. We took turns toasting the great things in life. Arizona and Florida, friends and family, Bellevue and New Haven and all the long and winding roads that we had each taken to reach the moment where we now found ourselves.

  I sipped my French bubbles and watched a team of guys drag mats around the clay diamond on the field, smoothing away the footprints and imperfections in the darkness. Erasing all that once was. When the team arrived for their training tomorrow, the ground would look like it had forgotten their terrific performance on this night. All that would be left was the ink in the newspaper and the bits and bytes and whatever it was that put the scores up on a computer screen. But I hoped they would know, that they would remember. How good it was, and how good it could be again.

  My mind drifted across a multitude of scenes and faces and locations, never properly settling on anyone. I saw Sal Mondavi’s tear-filled face in West Palm and the smiles of Ron and Cassandra over the video feed. I felt the warmth of the Dunbar family—my high school coach who had taken me in when my father had gone downhill—and I saw the face of Lenny Cox, sitting in a palm-tree-covered shirt at a bar overlooking the Banana River and its mangroves. I tried to pull my thoughts into the future and think about what that might hold, but like the past, the visions never formed properly in my head. It seemed all I could focus on, for reasons I didn’t understand, was the now. Sitting with the most important person in my life, now my wife, looking out into the peaceful darkness of an empty ballpark, and I couldn’t help but notice how everything felt the same as it had before, and yet so much better.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When I woke the next morning, Danielle was lying with her head on my chest and her hair splayed across the pillow. I kept my breathing shallow, trying not to wake her, and watched the first light of the day break through the window. It was going to be another monotonously bright blue and glorious one in Arizona.

  When Danielle finally stirred, I said, “Good morning.”

  She looked up at me and smiled. “Good morning, Mr. Jones.”

  We were sitting in the lobby with cups of coffee when Jane came down. She smiled at us like we were teenagers sneaking away for a dirty weekend. She said good morning and told us she’d make herself scarce. I told her to stop with all that and come join us for breakfast.

  Jane and Danielle enjoyed cut fruit while I tried an egg that seemed to resemble a pancake.

  “It was a wonderful day,” said Jane.

  “One for the ages,” I said.

  Danielle put her hand on Jane’s and said, “Do you think so?”

  “I do. Couldn’t have been better.”

  I wasn’t digging the eggs, so I grabbed a cup of coffee instead. Looking like she had something to say, Jane watched me walk back to the table and sit down.

  “Listen,” she said. “Dad had a great day yesterday, the best I’ve seen for some time. But it doesn’t mean he’s better, that by some miracle he’s back. There’s every chance that he doesn’t recognize us this morning.” She looked at each of us. “I don’t want to rain on the parade or anything, but we should just be prepared.”

  Danielle and I looked at each other and then at Jane, and we both nodded. Her words killed any buzz left over from the previous night, but that didn’t make them any less true.

  We showered and got ourselves together and then met downstairs again, then we walked over to the hospice in the sunshine.

  The hospice lobby was quiet, just a few early visitors hoping to share time with their loved ones before midmorning naps. I nodded in the direction of the duty nurse, and she returned my nod and then got about her business on the phone. We paused in the lobby for a moment. Despite having been to the hospice many times, Jane liked to ensure that visiting was appropriate. I assumed it came from her own career as a nurse. I figured sometimes nurses were assisting patients and didn’t need to be disturbed by the family walking
in. Call it professional courtesy. We waited to see if Nurse Gabriela would appear, and I started to wonder if she ever had a day off. Instead of Nurse Gabriela, we saw Dr. Maxwell walk out from the administrative section of the building.

  “Good morning, all,” he said. “Would you like to come back to my room?” He gave us a quick nod and directed us away. As we reached the door to his office, I heard the muffled footsteps of someone in soft shoes and turned to see Nurse Gabriela striding down the hallway. As we got seated in the doctor’s office—he had three seats ready to go—I apologized to both him and Nurse Gabriela for all the fuss the previous day.

  Dr. Maxwell smiled. “Not at all. It was nice for such a thing to happen as it did. The patients enjoyed it so much.”

  “Doctor, why are we here?” asked Danielle. Law enforcement types always liked to cut to the chase.

  The brief moment of joy on the doctor’s face ebbed away. He looked Danielle directly in the eye, the way Danielle would in her job.

  “I’m afraid your father has passed away.”

  My heart sank. I reached for Danielle’s hand and looked across at the two sisters. Neither of them burst into tears. They weren’t those types of girls. They were both stoic and silent, and they held their grief close to their chests. They were, in many ways, peas in a pod. I figured that Ryan’s passing was a long time in coming and they had in some way gotten used to the idea. Then I thought again. My own mother’s death had been a long time in coming and I had never gotten used to it. Not then, not now. I looked at them both again and wondered if their stoicism was a result of what they did for a living, one in law enforcement, the other in healthcare. Dealing with life and death on a daily basis.

  I looked at Dr. Maxwell, and he glanced up behind me as Nurse Gabriela stepped around his desk so we could see her.

  “It was peaceful,” she said. “I found him this morning with an open book lying across his chest. As if he’d just been reading and had fallen asleep.” Nurse Gabriela looked at me. “For a man of words, I think that’s how he would’ve wanted it.”

  I nodded softly, but Danielle and Jane just continued to stare into middle distance.

  Dr. Maxwell offered his condolences again and asked if Danielle or Jane wanted to see him. When they both declined, he told us that there was no rush, but as soon as we were ready, we should come and see him to make final arrangements.

  I wasn’t completely listening to him anymore, and I had a hard time believing that Jane and Danielle were. It was then that I realized that I needed to snap out of it. I was the one who needed to listen. I wasn’t the one who had just lost my father. It was my turn to be the rock.

  Danielle and Jane stepped out of the doctor’s office in silence, and I told Dr. Maxwell I would give him a call later that day. He nodded and said of course, and then he told me that if either Jane or Danielle needed to speak to anyone, a therapist, a priest, whoever, to come and let him know. He knew all the relevant people. I imagined he would.

  As I stepped out of his office, I turned back to look at Nurse Gabriela. Her easy smile was gone. I hoped she had plenty more in reserve. She deserved them.

  “When you found him this morning, what book was he reading?” I asked her.

  “Walt Whitman,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The next couple of days were a blur of quiet conversations, phone call after phone call, and more meetings to make arrangements than I could have imagined. I started off by taking the bull by the horns, being the go-between, the rock, and allowing Danielle and Jane to just be together while I worked with the hospice to keep the wheels of bureaucracy turning.

  Ryan Castle had known what was coming, and as a learned man, a man of words, he had prepared well. His instructions were clear, both on his interment and the disposition of his will. But Jane and Danielle were not wilting flowers, not by anyone’s definition, so there was only so much silent contemplation and moping around they could do. Before long they were back in the fray, taking charge, making sure that the father who had always provided for them financially but who had consistently failed to provide emotionally left this mortal coil on his terms.

  Besides which, it gave them something to do. They were women of action. They were the kind of people who threw themselves into their work to suppress their grief, and without any work to do, they both found themselves at a loose end.

  I’d never been one for moping around, either. I’d experienced my own fair share of sadness and tragedy. Not many boys lose their mother during middle school, and whatever that number is, it’s too many. But I remember diving headfirst into sports. I played anything and everything, worked myself into the ground at every training session and then backed up for seconds. Partly to get my mind off it, partly to ground myself, and partly to create a way forward.

  Perhaps it was because I couldn’t afford to be lost. My father had taken that task on wholeheartedly. One of us had to keep the fridge stocked, even if he subsisted on a diet of toast and Scotch whiskey.

  But with Danielle and Jane keeping busy and taking charge, I was now the one with little to do. Except I had one more thing to finish, one rough edge to smooth.

  When I walked into the dive bar, it felt like déjà vu all over again. Same bartender. Same two solo guys at the bar. I could have sworn the people at the table were the same as well. It was like they were extras in a bad movie.

  I ambled in and sat down next to Zed Graham and put my phone on the bar. I nodded to the bartender for a beer, and despite his initial shock at seeing me there, Graham regathered quickly and finished his own beer fast to imply I should make it a round. I did.

  We talked about his blackmail. I asked him to walk me through it once more, the kernel of his plan, the cunning in its delivery. He was happy to talk. Most people liked to talk about themselves, but some people more than others. In my experience it was usually the stupid ones who liked to tell everyone how smart they were. Zed Graham was as dumb as they came. He outlined the story he had gleaned from Lily Barkin and repeated again that he always knew there was something suspicious about her kid. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get that phrase out of my head for a long time. Her kid. I knew from the source that Travis Barkin had been fathered by Zed Graham, but I wasn’t going to update him on that.

  I had him lay out his story and then reiterate the terms. He reminded me how sharp he was and how I better not screw him over. He told me he knew people if that should happen. Hard people. I just shrugged. I knew people too. I was confident my people were harder than his people, given that I was fairly certain his people were imaginary. But I kept all that to myself.

  When he was done with the story and finished with his beer, he held up the glass to suggest I should spring for another one. I didn’t. I just shook my head.

  I told him the con was over. I told him he would be getting nothing from Ricky Spence or anybody else. I explained that I had definitive proof that what he claimed to have happened did not happen. I watched his face gradually drop as, bit by bit, his plan fell to pieces. By the end I could see he wasn’t completely convinced, but he wasn’t far off it. He still had that glimmer of hope in his eyes. I knew where the glimmer was coming from. It was coming from his plan B. Travis Barkin, and Lily’s uncle, and the money that sat in a trust for when Travis reached twenty-one. I could tell that Zed’s limited but devious mind was reverting back toward Las Vegas.

  I told him that he would be leaving the kid alone, and that if he made any attempt to change the trust or the terms of the uncle’s will, or if he tried to strong-arm Lily Barkin in any way, that I would go to the police.

  He laughed. “Go to the police with what?”

  I picked my phone up off the bar, hit an icon on the screen, and then another. Then Zed Graham’s voice came out of my phone. He was detailing, for anyone who cared to listen, the particulars of his blackmail plan.

  Once I’d given him a sense of his own words, I hit the icon again to stop listening to his monotonous drone
.

  “You just tried to sell your kid to the highest bidder,” I said. “I don’t know who his father is, whether it’s you or somebody else, but you will abide by Lily’s rules and the kid’s needs. If she says it’s okay to see him, then it’s okay. But you do it as a father, nothing more, and sure as hell nothing less. Otherwise you stay the hell away. You try to get a penny from that kid,” I said, holding up my phone, “then it’s prison for you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  People came. Hundreds of them. Professors and students and writers. A guy who had been on the Pulitzer shortlist, and another I’d seen on the back cover of a novel popular among beachgoers in Florida.

  I didn’t know why I expected Dr. Ryan Castle’s funeral to be smaller, perhaps because of the so few visitors he received in his last days, but I suspected no man could hope for more than what I saw.

  It seemed like there were a lot of orators in the gathering because every man and his dog wanted to say a few words during the service. Many spoke of Ryan—they all referred to him as Dr. Castle—as someone who shaped them, or as the reason they fell in love with English literature, or why they became writers or were just better people, because of his love of intellect and debate.

  I assumed everyone in the congregation watched the speakers during the service. I watched Danielle. There was moisture in her eyes most of the day, but a tear never escaped. I suspected she and Jane had done that in private and I never saw it. But what I could see was how amazed she was at how many people her father had touched. After the service, the congregation made its way out of the church and into the bright Phoenix sunshine. Well-wishers, most of whom they didn’t know, offered their condolences to Danielle and Jane. The gathering wandered away in small groups, people who had been spread far and wide but came together for the funeral. It struck me as strange that it took someone’s death to bring old friends together like that. We seemed to spend so much time away and apart from those people who have been most important in our lives, and I couldn’t fathom why it was that it took an event like this to draw us back in together. But when it did, old friends were like comfortable shoes. It didn’t matter if you didn’t wear them for years, because when you did, they fit perfectly, just like they always had. The groups of people moved away to wait for the wake, which was being held in a reception hall on the campus of Arizona State University.