by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)
What I want is to go away. But kindness has crept back into her features. She nods, and it’s a plea I can’t reject. She was my only friend. I’ll give her this one last thing.
I make my way to the edge of the walk and look to my right to confirm she hasn’t budged. My plan is to take a quick peek, to say I did, but my gaze lingers on the water. Colorful lights play across its rippling surface. I don’t see myself staring up from the glassy liquid until another light twinkles.
I try to identify its source, but there’s no explanation for it except that it’s coming from below. And there I am, clear as if I’m looking into a mirror. No, not a mirror.
“That’s not—”
“It is,” Nenive interrupts me. “Not who you are now, but who you could be.”
And what I could be is someone who isn’t turned away from doors. Someone at the center of every circle. Someone who has things handed to her, who feels no sense of obligation, who is loved and desired even when she gives nothing back in return. The sword burns bright against this woman’s neck. My neck.
I put my hand around it to lift it off my skin and back away from the vision, shaking my head, unable to stop.
“Don’t you see what I’m offering? You know what I can make of you. You’ve seen it in action.” Nenive hugs herself like a lover. “That was just a taste of what I can do and what people are willing to do for me.”
I blink, and Nenive is in front of me. She reaches out and grasps the pendant where it hangs above my chest.
“Take the sword,” she says.
Mute and filled with foreign certainty, I grasp the sword between my thumb and index finger and easily slide it off the bed of stones. Nenive holds out her hand, and I know what to do. I drag the blade across the lines of her palm, and when she cups it, we watch the dark blood pool.
“Now you,” she says.
I bring up my hand and stare at the pink skin. The brown lines. I think of Mom, saying out of the blue a few years ago that she was sad I didn’t reach for her hand anymore. I was surprised because I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped. It had just sort of happened.
I hesitate, lowering my hand to look up at Nenive. “Let me show you the person you can be,” she whispers.
She’s so beautiful in the predawn light. Her beauty starves me. What must that power taste like? I could know in an instant. I press the blade to my skin. Nenive and the stones shine like stars.
But I find myself looking away, pulled from some deep, dark place by anger.
“How can you?” I say.
Nenive wrinkles her nose like a dog sniffing out trouble. “How can I what?”
“How can you show me who I can be? How can you, when you don’t even know me?”
I open my hand and let the sword clatter to the ground, and then I feel a hard tug and a burning sensation across the back of my neck. The pendant is back in Nenive’s hand. The delicate gold chain my mother gave me for my tenth birthday falls through her fingers, the clasp broken. The chain that once held a heart-shaped charm with the first letter of my name in relief.
“If you want it back, you’ll have to come and get it.” Nenive tries to smile again, but her facade is disintegrating, her skin sagging. She closes her fist around the little sword, bends her knobby white legs, and springs from the ledge. I don’t hear anything. The water accepts her without complaint.
I look around, but the walk has cleared out. Nobody else witnessed the plunge.
When I peer over the ledge, the water is smooth and still, and I’m beginning to think she tricked me and that her hand is going to rear up from some hidden place and wrap around my ankle.
There.
A flash of green light. This time I can’t stop myself from falling to my knees as, in the path of that light, bodies appear, all of them washed pale, arms and long verdigris hair stretching up to receive me.
Come.
I don’t search the faces for Nenive. I snatch my gold chain from the ground and let my racing heart chase me from the quay.
I run a long way, feeling strangers’ eyes on me, but I don’t care. I let my legs guide me, and they keep moving even though they ache. When I recognize the perfume of Hainanese chicken rice, satay, soto ayam puffing from the hawker stalls, the chatter of words I’m beginning to pick up here and there, I forget the pain and run faster toward a sign that reads lau pa sat. These things take me back to my family, to Mom, to an untouched plate of rendang. I can see it now, waiting on the table above the empty seat by her side, as if I’m there. As if I’ve always been.
Black Diamond
Alex Segura
It was all a dream. That’s all it would ever be. But every few nights the dream came anyway.
Arturo Reyes could taste the stale, cheese-loaded nachos. Could smell the cheap beer and oversteamed hot dogs. Could hear the pulsing roar of the crowd. The crisp New York cold slapping against his North Face coat. In the dream, his seat would change—from the nosebleed seats to right behind first base. Sometimes, where he was would even change mid-dream. One moment, it was like he was perched on his father Umberto’s shoulder as he sauntered toward the plate, another as if he were resting between the pinstripes of his papi’s uniform. In those seconds, Arturo could see the sheen of sweat on his face. The look of determination as his papi got into position, his bat slung over his right shoulder. His eyes on the pitcher.
In the dream, Arturo knows the details. They’re second nature. Accepted and understood, even if the pitcher’s team changes—sometimes it’s the Braves. Another time, the Marlins. Usually it’s the Phillies. Every time it’s game seven. Bottom of the ninth inning. Bases loaded. Tied game: 3–3. The raucous hometown Bronx crowd hushed to a deathly silence as Umberto Reyes prepares for the at-bat of his life.
Then the dream dissipates. Fading into blackness and shunting Arturo into a deadlier darkness. His waking life.
* * *
—
Like many dreams, Arturo’s recurring moment with his father never happened. Unlike most dreams, though, it could have. The dream feels so real—the sounds, taste, and smells—because in many ways, Umberto Reyes had been just a few hours from experiencing it. The scrappy rising-star Yankees’ shortstop had just left his family—his wife, Inez; his two sons, Rodrigo and Arturo—in their cramped two-bedroom apartment in the Forest Hills section of Queens. He was heading to the airport to board the team’s flight to Atlanta to close out the World Series. It was a big moment. Papi had just finished his best season, stepping into the starting slot after the All-Star Game in place of the injured Jimmy Merlin and not missing a beat. He was a hero—not just to Arturo and Rodrigo but to their friends and to any Latin kid who dreamed of playing for the Bronx Bombers. He was already a legend, Arturo believed. But that was a long time ago. Memories sometimes fizzle into something else—smoky, hard to pin down. Like dreams, in a way. You hold on to what you want to keep, and you let the other stuff slip through your fingers.
Arturo remembered the call, though. In sharp, vivid detail. Remembered the look on his mami’s face—how it went from “Ay, who is calling now?” to “No…no…no…” How even ese cabrón perrito Pepe stopped barking for a minute. How his brother’s backpack hit the wood floor with a thwap as he walked in and noticed his mother’s stricken expression. They didn’t know what it was yet, but whatever had made their mami that upset, that fast, could not be good.
And it was definitely not good. It was worse than that. It was una pesadilla that you couldn’t awaken from. Bad dreams lingered for a long time, Arturo had learned, and they couldn’t be willed away.
* * *
—
According to the police report, the driver of the car that was supposed to get Umberto Reyes to JFK International Airport pulled over his cab on the Van Wyck Expressway, long before his destination. At some point, Reyes exited the car and was shot six tim
es—twice in the head and four times in the chest. Help was summoned shortly thereafter by a fellow motorist who flagged down a police cruiser. But by then it was too late. Umberto was DOA long before his stretcher wheeled into Jamaica Hospital.
The motorist could describe only one of the men who murdered Umberto—the gunman. A tall, pale figure with dark hair and stark, almost feline features. But as quickly as the man saw the killer and his men, they were gone.
The crime was never solved. The police could not pinpoint a single suspect. Details were scant, if there at all.
All that remained from the scene—the only scrap of evidence—was a police sketch, hastily created on the night of the murder, the sole witness straining to describe the haunting expression on the killer’s face.
Every night for as long as Arturo could remember, he’d sit in bed and stare at a copy of the sketch—trying to imprint the image onto his memory, on the off chance that one day, he’d come face-to-face with the man who’d murdered his father.
* * *
—
“You coming, Artie? Ollie wants to see you.”
Arturo turned toward the voice—it was Charlie, one of the team’s trainers, motioning for him to step out of the empty dugout and into the locker room. Arturo Reyes was—if you were being generous—a middling, aging minor-league first baseman. In a pinch, he could take a slot in the outfield, too. But that versatility didn’t help him much.
He was twenty-eight and hadn’t been close to a major league call-up in years. The nearest thing was a brief stint with the Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate three years prior. It’d actually been a clerical error, but Arturo tried to count it. He’d made the flight only to get turned around and sent back down. Arturo’s current stop was with the Double-A Hollow Falls Hawks in Virginia—part of the Colorado Rockies farm system. He couldn’t even sense the Majors from here.
Arturo felt like he’d done well enough to merit another look, but the stats didn’t lie. He was batting slightly over .250, and his on-base percentage was laughable. Yet it wasn’t really about the numbers. If he was being honest with himself, his heart just wasn’t in it. His name—his legacy—raised eyebrows in baseball. After his father’s murder, Umberto Reyes’s reputation went from rising star to urban legend—a sad story of what could have been. Many hard-core Yankees fans would ponder and speculate about the arc of Reyes’s career—where he could have gone, what he could have done. In death, Umberto Reyes had become akin to a Hall of Famer to some in-the-trenches Yankees fans. So when people saw Arturo—they saw a flicker of hope. A chance to capture a slice of that Umberto Reyes magic. The speed. The leadership. The bat. The charisma. Like Roberto Clemente in overdrive, Arturo had thought.
But what they got when they signed Arturo was a pale imitation. Mediocre baseball brain. Sluggish performance. Passive attitude. One major-league general manager, in a memo to his Double-A skipper, described Arturo as “a kid who looks like he’s lost before the game’s even started.”
Even worse? They were right. Arturo knew it.
And yet he couldn’t let the game go. It was in his DNA. The years of playing catch with his father, of Little League, high school ball, it all had to translate into something. A career. Arturo had no idea how to do anything else. Even after his father was murdered, he had no inkling he could do something else.
The tap on the shoulder shook Arturo from his reverie.
Charlie again.
“Artie, c’mon, man.” There was a hint of exasperation in his voice. “Skip wants to see you. Now.”
* * *
—
It’d played out as he’d expected. As he’d experienced a half dozen times before.
The realization didn’t make Arturo feel any better as he took another swig of lukewarm coffee. He was at a grimy, fading diner called the Round Table a few miles from the stadium. He figured he deserved a last meal before he hopped into his beat-up Toyota Celica and started the trek back to Queens. A decent burger couldn’t cure all his ills, but it’d help. For now, at least.
And he’d get to see Gwen again, too. Say goodbye.
“I’m sorry, Art, you know I am,” the manager, a burly, no-nonsense man named Ollie Barton had said, a somber look on his face. The skipper, like Arturo, had been raised in the game—had even made it up to the majors for a few seasons. He knew the struggle. The highs and lows. But he also had a team to run. And if Arturo wasn’t moving up, he was holding down the team—and that would be tolerated for only so long. “But I got the word and this time, well, they wouldn’t listen, okay? They want your spot for someone who can—how do I put this…uh, someone who has more upside.”
Arturo understood. He liked Barton. Wanted to make it easy on him. So he’d nodded, thanked him and the team, shook his hand, and left the manager’s cramped, mildew-stinking office to go clean out his locker.
Sitting at the Round Table’s counter now, Arturo waited for Gwen—the quick-witted, bespectacled waitress he’d come to befriend over his frequent visits to the diner—to bring him his food. It hadn’t really hit him until now that this might be the end. His career might be over.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Arturo mumbled to himself as he wheeled around and scanned the nearly empty restaurant. What would his father say, he wondered, if he’d seen him play tonight?
Not enough hustle, mijo, his father might note.
He could hear him: ¿Y qué te pasó, Arturo? ¿Estuviste dormido?
Yes, Papi, he’d been asleep for a long time. Maybe it was past time he woke up—and went home.
“Ketchup packet for your thoughts, Artie?”
Arturo looked up and met Gwen’s eyes. They exuded kindness, always, but this time they expressed something more. Concern. Worry. She was smart. She’d seen many ballplayers cycle through. Did Arturo Reyes mean any more to her than the rest of the people who sat at this counter? He hoped so, he realized. The food at the diner was mediocre at best. Why did he keep coming back? Maybe it wasn’t what brought him to the diner but who.
“Got the call,” Arturo said, leaning back into a stretch as if trying to shrug off what, they both knew, could be the end of his professional career. “Looks like I’m heading back home.”
Gwen frowned. A genuine pained expression.
“It happens,” she said, almost to herself as much as to him. “Food’s on the house, okay? You’ve tipped well enough—”
Arturo shook his head.
“No way, lady,” he said. “I got this. Don’t worry about me.”
“Bet you say that to a lot of people,” she said. The words, if read on paper, would seem flippant. But her tone was dead serious. “What happened?”
“They needed the slot,” Arturo said. “For someone better, I guess.”
“I’ve seen you play,” she said, leaning into him, a tinge of pity in her smile. She placed her hand on his. “You’re good, Artie. You’re real good when you want to be. Don’t let this tear you down, all right? I know you have that in you.”
“What’s in me?” Arturo asked, feeling defensive. He hadn’t come here to swan dive into self-pity. Not yet. That’s what the upcoming drive was for. And the encouragement, oddly, felt even sharper coming from Gwen, one of his few friends in this small town. “Just because my dad was good…was going to be great…that doesn’t mean anything. It isn’t genetic, you know. It’s not like I’m some kind of baseball royalty.”
She started to respond, but then her eyes drifted to the diner’s front entrance.
“You know that guy?”
Arturo caught Gwen looking past him, a strange expression on her face.
“Because he sure looks like he knows you,” she said.
Arturo followed Gwen’s gaze and saw a tall, fifty-something man walking toward him, arms outstretched. It took Arturo a minute to recognize him out of his baseball uniform.
&
nbsp; “Artie, Artie,” the man said as he pulled Arturo into a tight hug. “Man, you bailed so fast—was hoping to catch you.”
“Jimmy,” Arturo said, pulling back from the man’s embrace. Arturo couldn’t believe it: it was James Merlin—a lifelong minor-league manager and the leader of tonight’s opponent, the Charlotte Knights. But before he was a manager, he was “Uncle Jimmy,” an infielder on the Yankees squad with his father and a frequent guest at their apartment in Queens. He’d seen Arturo and Rodrigo grow up. A widower who never remarried, he had no family of his own but was as close to an uncle as Arturo would ever know, a presence in their life before and after Umberto was killed. But they’d fallen out of touch, and Artie hadn’t seen Jimmy in a few years, at least.
“You eating alone?” Jimmy asked in a careful tone. Arturo realized that he already knew. He shrugged, then motioned for Jimmy to take a seat to his left. He noticed Gwen hadn’t taken away his burger, but he ignored it.
“What’re you doing here, Jimmy?” Arturo asked. “Don’t you have a bus to catch?”
“Tomorrow morning we head to Pawtucket,” Jimmy said with a shrug. “Gonna be brutal. Commercial flight, long bus ride—but hey, that’s the minors, huh?”
Arturo nodded. There was a wide canyon between the life of a major leaguer and the life players lived in the minors. Five-star hotels. Private jets. Gourmet meals. You saw none of that in the minors. You were lucky if you didn’t have to bunk with a teammate or have microwaved hot dogs for dinner three nights in a row. Arturo had never seen the other side. He hadn’t made it to the majors. He never would, he thought.
“So you’re done, then?”
Arturo turned to Jimmy and nodded slowly. He was done. He would come to accept it, he decided.
Jimmy shook his head.