The Might-Have-Been

by Joe Schuster

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “With surgery …” She shrugged.

  “He’s a ballplayer,” he said. “A good one.” One to whom someone once gave a two-million-dollar signing bonus, he thought, and who should, if he stopped letting his immaturity get in the way of his talent, make more than fifty times as much in his career.

  “He can live a normal life,” she said. “But baseball …” She shook her head.

  “He can’t …” He didn’t finish the sentence. Be through, he was going to say. He didn’t like Webber. He took his talent for granted, was a jerk to his teammates, shrugged whenever Edward Everett gave him advice, as if to say, You have no idea what it’s like to be able to play the game as I can. Edward Everett felt suddenly angry—at Webber, at Nelson, at the doctor. She was from a country where they didn’t play baseball. There, it was cricket: what could she know about baseball? She flinched and he realized that she could see the anger crossing his face.

  “He’s so young,” he said. “He could heal, couldn’t he?” A page came over the intercom for Dr. Abadeen.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pointing in the direction of the speaker in the ceiling, and she turned, hurrying down the corridor.

  On the television, one of the Cardinals players was digging around third, sweeping wide, dashing down the line toward home plate, colliding with the catcher, who took a throw from the cutoff man, the ball jarring free, bounding away, the Cardinals pouring out of the dugout to greet the runner who brought home the win.

  Edward Everett turned away and went back toward Webber, trying to figure out how to tell him that he wouldn’t ever be one of those players on the television. Not for their club. Nor for Pittsburgh nor St. Louis nor Boston. Nor anyone. He was twenty and his life as he expected it to be was over.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  When Edward Everett got home on Sunday night after a miserable doubleheader—two losses, eight–one and, in a second game to make up for the rainout on the day before, four–zip—he had two voice mail messages. He expected one to be from Marc Johansen, MS, MBA, demanding more information about Webber’s injury. Almost immediately after the taxi had brought him back to the motel from the hospital, he’d taken his laptop to the lobby to email a report about Webber’s injury and prognosis to Johansen. It took him more than half an hour to compose since he wanted to be accurate, but also he kept changing it, first reporting Nelson’s part in it, then deleting him from the account because he had no idea how Marc Johansen, MS, MBA, would react to his allowing Nelson to stay with the team after the organization had released him. Finally, he’d said only, “injured off-field in physical altercation with person not a team member.” It was after all the truth. Since then, he’d obsessively checked his cellphone, expecting he’d find a missed call from Mark Johansen, MS, MBA, but the big club was ominously silent.

  As for Nelson, he had vanished. When the bus left the lot at the Urbana ballpark after the final game, Edward Everett scanned the faces on board: no Nelson. As the bus sat at the exit from the parking lot, waiting for traffic to clear before making its turn, he expected to see Nelson running toward them, but he didn’t show up, leaving him God knew where. Perhaps, Edward Everett thought, Webber—pitiful Webber, still in the hospital, his mind doped with Percodan—had knocked into Nelson the sense he needed, as if one of the punches had shaken loose the last bit of—what, insanity? eccentricity?—whatever had made Nelson keep showing up to a team where he did not belong anymore.

  The first message on his voice mail at home was from Collier. “Gimme a call,” he said. It was almost eleven when he heard the message; Collier was probably still up—he suffered from insomnia; in the past, he had called Edward Everett even later than this for no particular reason except that, Edward Everett could tell, his house was too quiet and there was nothing on television. Collier would not want to hear about Webber, one of only a few players who drew fans to a game—what fans there were.

  The second message was a hang up, just the sound of what seemed like a woman’s voice exclaiming a syllable he couldn’t discern and then a receiver clattering twice before the dial tone came on. When he checked his caller ID, it read, “Blocked.” He replayed the message several times, raising the volume, wondering if it was Renee’s voice, wondering if he could understand something of what she had been trying to say. “Ha” was all he could make out, or “Ah.” It may have been a frustrated exhalation, or the start of a sardonic laugh, but it also could have been the beginning of a word: “Hon,” maybe, he thought. Nonetheless, he clicked “save” and, after seeing that the kitchen light was on at the Duboises’ house, went next door to get the dog.

  On the team’s way out of Urbana, Edward Everett had asked the bus driver to stop at a Czech bakery they passed. Once, Renee had joined him on a road trip there and, exploring the town while Edward Everett was at the ballpark, had discovered the bakery. She took him there for coffee and kolache, Renee trying out the little Czech she knew, greeting the tiny, white-haired woman behind the glassed counter of bread and sweets, “Dobry den.” The woman had brightened and begun speaking rapidly before Renee blushed and said, apologetically, that “hello” was the extent of what she remembered from the lessons her maternal grandmother had given her when she was a small girl. Nonetheless, the baker had not accepted any payment for the pastries they ordered and had also made them take a box of them for the road. “Grandma used to make these at Easter,” Renee said on their drive back to Perabo City, opening the white box, filling the car with the scent of flour, sugar and raspberry.

  On this trip, he’d bought a box of the kolache, and now he took them over to the Duboises’ house. He crossed through the two yards, up the back steps to the deck off the kitchen, since he didn’t want to ring the front doorbell. Rhonda often had the six a.m. shift at Lowe’s, meaning she had to leave at five to get there on time. When he peered through the window beside the door, he could see that Ron sat at the table, a sheaf of papers spread across it. Edward Everett tapped on the glass and Ron gave a start, staring out at him, coming cautiously to the back door, squinting as if that would help him see into the darkness.

  “It’s me,” Edward Everett said.

  Ron opened the back door cautiously. “You about gave me another heart attack.”

  “I brought these,” Edward Everett said, holding out the box of pastries to Ron. “They’re from this bakery in Urbana that Renee once found and I thought—”

  Ron’s face softened. “Ah, jeez,” he said, taking the box, but reluctantly, in a manner that Edward Everett imagined resembled someone accepting the cremains of a loved one. “Renee …” he said, his eyes not meeting Edward Everett’s.

  “What?” Edward Everett asked.

  “You know I like you, Ed,” Ron said, hefting the box as if he were weighing it. “But this is just not a good idea.”

  “Is someone there, honey?” Rhonda called from another room. When she came into the kitchen and saw Edward Everett, however, she stopped at the doorway, her posture stiffening. “Oh,” she said.

  “It’s a thank-you for watching Grizzly,” Edward Everett said, nodding toward the box. “I know he’s an imposition.”

  “Did you tell him?” Rhonda asked her husband.

  “Tell me what?” Edward Everett said to her.

  “Ron, you said you were going to.” When Ron didn’t respond immediately, she said, “I’ll get the dog.”

  Ron held out the box of kolache and Edward Everett took it from him. “I don’t think it’d be good for us to watch Grizzly anymore,” he said. “It’s not personal. It’s just that—”

  Then Rhonda was back, carrying the dog. She set him on the floor, her eyes not meeting Edward Everett’s. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice all but inaudible, and left the room.

  “Renee just asked us not to do anything that might …” Ron said, shrugging.

  “Might?” Edward Everett asked.

  “Encourage you,” Ron said quietly. �
�I really hate this.”

  “I don’t even know what the problem was,” Edward Everett said.

  Ron regarded him in a manner that Edward Everett took to mean he was considering giving him information someone—Renee?—had asked him not to.

  “Ron,” Rhonda called from another room. “It’s pretty late.”

  Ron shook his head sadly. “I wish things were different. But they’re not. That’s all.”

  After he and Grizzly were outside, on the deck, Grizzly dashing ahead of him for their own yard, Edward Everett watched his neighbor through the window. Ron sat down heavily at the table, idly flipping the edges of the papers lying there for a moment. He seemed old and tired and Edward Everett knew that his visit had made him that way. They had been friends but now they weren’t: the Sunday chicken dinners, Ron’s awkward, drunken embrace at his and Renee’s wedding, Ron chuckling as he called him “my new son”—none of it mattered, and now, after a decade, they were just people connected by an accident of adjacent addresses, another part of his life closed off to him.

  The next morning, he called Collier, who said, “Hike on up to the estate.”

  Collier’s house was once again swarming with workpeople, this time a carpet cleaning service—three men in olive green coveralls unloading a machine from a van, wheeling it through the front door. Edward Everett stood in the open doorway. “Hello?” he called into the house. “We’re in here,” Collier replied. When Edward Everett stepped into the foyer, he found Collier and Ginger in the living room, sitting with a woman in a tailored suit, a large book of drapery samples open on Ginger’s lap.

  “My hero,” Collier said, jovially. “You saved me from hours of looking at fabric.”

  “Coll,” Ginger said in a tone that was half-scolding.

  “Honey, you know the deal. Your taste, my checkbook.” He got up from the sofa, gave Ginger a quick kiss on the top of her head and came out to greet Edward Everett.

  “Nick of time.” He slung his arm around Edward Everett’s shoulder and guided him past the dining room, where the carpet cleaners were plugging in their machine and switching it on, the cleaner lurching as the worker lost control of it for a moment, then hissing as he began steaming the carpet. He and Collier headed out to the sunroom.

  “I won’t dillydally,” Collier said even before they had settled into the recliners that looked out on the town. Below—far below—pockets of people were sandbagging, along the edge of the parking lot for the elementary school, near one of the Baptist churches. Until that moment, Edward Everett hadn’t realized that the town was flooded: was it possible he had been so caught up in his own turmoil that he’d missed the news? At the high school football field, just the tips of the goalposts rose above the water, a soccer goal bobbing in it. Beyond that, an entire neighborhood was submerged, water lapping against front doors and bay windows, a police johnboat puttering among the houses.

  “It’s a good-news, bad-news thing,” Collier said. “What do you want first?”

  Edward Everett saw no point in delaying. “Bad news, I guess.”

  Collier laughed. “Attaboy. Get to the problem first. Bad: the ballpark is for shit. Turns out the asshole who snaked the drains called the health department. I won’t go into details but it’s some big fucking list of reasons the ballpark is the A-number-one killer in P. City. Drains, asbestos. All kinds of crap. When they got into it, they kept digging. It’s cheaper to knock it down than fix it up. Short answer: no more games at Francis P. Collier Field.”

  “We’ve got another thirty—”

  “Yeah, I know. Home games. I got Mavis working on that. We got a contractual obligation to finish out the season, and as I said, we’re not going to pull a Piedmont.”

  Mavis has to work fast, Edward Everett thought.

  As if Collier knew what he was thinking, he said, “Got a lead on a place. It’s … well, a sweet country spot, and it’s regulation. We talked to the league. Beyond that …” He shrugged.

  Edward Everett imagined a meadow somewhere, baselines marked by an umpire pacing off distances, paper plates tacked down in place of the bags.

  “Two,” Collier said, holding up his index finger and thumb. “The good: found a buyer. Contacted me almost right away, soon as the broker got the news out.”

  There are brokers for sports teams? Edward Everett thought.

  “Three,” Collier said, holding up his thumb, index and middle fingers. “Bad is, he wants to move the team to Corn Row, Indiana.”

  “Corn Row?”

  “That’s not what it’s called but it’s some town he comes from. It’s a sad day for P. City; baseball’s been here since Ike was president.”

  “Who is this guy?” Edward Everett asked, thinking simultaneously, Get the house ready for the market; find an agent in Whatever Town, Indiana. Then the idea struck him: I have no idea whether I’ll be with the club next year.

  “He does something in TV. I haven’t met him; just on the phone and a couple emails. Lawyers doing most of the talking. But …” Collier hesitated.

  “What?” Edward Everett asked.

  “What are your bosses saying?”

  “About …?”

  Collier regarded him a moment; had they called him about Webber’s accident?

  “What have you heard?” Edward Everett asked, his neck prickling.

  “We’re changing affiliation,” Collier said. “That’s good for me, since I couldn’t’ve sold her without an affiliation. Cincinnati.” He shrugged. “You sure your outfit never said anything to you about what they’re doing to replace P. City in the organization?”

  Edward Everett shook his head; he had the sensation of growing physically smaller. Why wouldn’t Marc Johansen, MS, MBA, have said anything about this? Maybe that was why he hadn’t contacted him about Webber’s injury: it didn’t matter; Edward Everett was obviously persona non grata with the big club. He saw himself getting his mail a few months down the road, maybe the day after Christmas again, another thin envelope: Your services are no longer required.

  “Those fucking bastards,” Collier said. “How many years you been with them?”

  “I don’t know,” Edward Everett said. He couldn’t think clearly: how long had he been with the organization? Before Perabo City, he’d been with another single-A team for a year, in Lexington. Eleven years and out, a man with no savings to speak of; a man with no 401(k), no IRA, an old man but still someone too young to collect Social Security.

  “You all right?” Collier was saying.

  He stared out of the bank of windows, the glass so clear it might not even have been there. Three years ago, the organization had wanted him to move to Danville, double-A, be a hitting coach, but that was when Ron had had his heart attack, and Renee hadn’t wanted to leave her father, and the organization had agreed to let him stay for another year. Then another. Then another. And now, end of the line.

  Down on the water, the police drew the boat alongside a house where a woman leaned out of a window. She was large, her bulk filling the window, and when the officers helped her into the boat, it settled significantly in the water before it puttered off toward dry land, the woman clearly leaving behind everything she had.

  Get over yourself, he heard his mother saying. There are people with worse problems. Yes, he thought. A little water in the basement was as bad as the storms had made it for him. Still, he felt his chest tightening and realized he was shaking. He saw himself the next year as one of the pathetic old men he’d known when he was a kid in the game: a codger who kept his house only by renting rooms to players, someone willing to clip money off the rent if they listened to his stories: There was this time in Montreal …

  “I know this leaves you in something of a lurch,” Collier said. “I don’t know if it will do any good, but I put in a word with this guy.” He shrugged.

  “That’s great,” Edward Everett said. Nothing would come from it; the Reds would have their own people. He thought: he would have to sell the house, hope
there was enough equity in it to let him live until he could find work. But his house was in no condition to sell. He hadn’t painted anything since Renee and he gave it a polish before she moved in. The leak in the basement. The kitchen looked like something from 1975.

  “We been friends a long time,” Collier said, his voice soft. “Ain’t many people in this town I can talk to, you know, mano to mano. The folks here …” He swept his arm to the side. “Doctors, lawyers. They got education. All I got come from the College of Bust Your Ass Till You Get Blisters.” He reached into his pants pocket, jiggling his body in the recliner, the braces creaking, and came out with a folded piece of paper. A check. Collier opened it, read the amount as if he had no idea what was written on its face, folded it but continued to hold it. “I know I ain’t obligated, you know?”

  “I know,” Edward Everett said.

  “It’s just a small token, you know. Appreciation and blah blah blah. But you’re gonna have expenses.” He held it out to Edward Everett, who reached for it, but Collier pulled it back slightly. “You can’t breathe a word of this. Not a word to nobody. Especially not the wife. God, especially not her.” He laughed.

  “I won’t.”

  Collier extended the check once more and Edward Everett took it, thinking: three thousand, five thousand, enough to reface the cabinets, enough to hire the college kid painters who tack their flyers to the bulletin board at the supermarket. He started to slip it into his shirt pocket but Collier said, “Go ahead,” winking. Edward Everett unfolded it. Three hundred dollars. He was not certain whether to laugh. How could Collier be enough of a businessman to run a meatpacking business and have no idea how small an amount three hundred dollars was, even to someone like Edward Everett? “Now, I’m sure you gotta scoot,” Collier said. “And I gotta get on Mavis’s buttocks to nail down that place for you guys to play out the string here.”

  Edward Everett stood to leave but Collier grabbed hold of his sleeve, keeping him back. “You know I wouldn’t of sold if I had a choice,” he said. “If the town fuckers would of anted up for a new ballpark … but that’s as likely as Mrs. Collier saying her days at Macy’s are over.”