“Just a game, son. Just a game.”
In the morning, before she left for work and to bring the kids to a day camp, Carla brought him another cup of coffee in his small office, which was a spare bedroom when they had first moved in. He took the cup and sipped from it, and she said, “So. What went on last night?”
Other guys back then, they could spin stories to their wives about being solid waste management consultants, but he could not do that with Carla. She had entered things clear-eyed and agreeable, and not once had he ever tried to pull something over on her.
He put the coffee cup down on his desk. “A trip to California in a couple of months. Another testimony deal. Against Mel Flemmi.”
She made a face. “Good. He sure deserves it. What else?”
“What do you mean, what else?” he asked.
Carla gently whacked him on the side of his shoulder. “There’s always something else with the feds. What was it?”
He tried a casual shrug. “I’ve got to keep my nose clean, as always. That way, any defense lawyer won’t be able to say I don’t have the kind of character to testify truthfully.”
“Keep your nose clean ...” she said simply. “Does that mean not breaking some guy’s headlights over a parking space?”
“It was my parking space, I’d just got here, and it won’t happen again.”
She leaned over, grabbed his ears, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. “Good. ‘Cause it ain’t no game, Richard. I like it here. The kids like it here. We can continue having a good life here. Don’t do anything to screw it up.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Because if you do, I’ll kill you.”
He kissed her back. “I have no doubt.”
~ * ~
For most of the day, he stayed in his office. He played twenty-three games of computer solitaire and another computer game involving shooting lots of fast-moving monsters — not surprisingly, he scored quite high — and he spent a while on the Internet as well, seeing the combined creativity of a number of women who could just barely dress themselves, and got an idea or two for next Valentine’s Day.
Then, at about 3:00 p.m., he popped in the computer disk, called up a file called “Sea Lion,” and printed out all thirty-three pages. He put the pages in an Express Mail envelope, drove to the post office, and sent the envelope to a publisher in New York City. Back home, he made another cup of coffee and waited for Carla and the kids to show up. “Man, writers have it easy,” he said.
The next day was a practice one for the Pine Tree Rotary team, and he enjoyed seeing how enthusiastically all the kids took to the field — Patrick and Jeffrey and Alexander and his own Sam and even little Leo, chugging out there on his tiny legs, and all the others. They did some exercises to loosen up, and then some pitching and hitting, and some base running. He took it upon himself to spend some extra time with Leo, tossing up pop flies, and Leo managed to catch fifteen in a row.
Then he took Ron Bachman, the town auditor and the team’s manager, aside. “Did you see how Leo’s doing?”
“Yep,” Ron said, making a note on a clipboard. “Not a single dropped ball. That’s what happens when his dad’s not around. Plays a lot better.”
“So tell me, what’s the deal with his dad, George? What’s his problem?”
Ron looked up from the clipboard. “What do you mean, ‘what’s his problem?’”
“The way he goes after his kid, that’s what.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “You know, George has got a lot of problems. Drinking and picking fights and being the son of the chairman of the board of selectmen, so he gets a lot of slack cut his way. He’s a mean man who takes his frustrations out on his kid. Typical story. Unfortunately, it has to show itself here.”
“Yeah,” Richard said. “Unfortunately.”
~ * ~
Two days later the team went on a field trip to Fenway Park in Boston, an hours-long drive that took three minivans and a number of other parents to act as chaperones. When putting kids in the vans, Richard made sure that Leo was in his van, and he glanced at the boy some while heading into Boston. He half-expected to see a haunted look in the boy’s eyes, a troubled expression, but no, there was nothing like that there. Just the excitement of being in Boston and seeing the Red Sox play.
Richard took in Fenway Park as they found their seats. It was an old, tiny park, opened up in 1912, the same year the Titanic sunk on its maiden voyage. It had its charms, with the Green Monster out in left field and the intimacy of being close-up to the action, but Richard wasn’t satisfied. It wasn’t Yankee Stadium, it wasn’t the House that Ruth Built, but he kept his opinions to himself.
All part of his new life.
As the game progressed, he enjoyed watching the kids almost as much as the game itself. They followed each pitch intensely and ate popcorn and hotdogs and drank sodas, and cheered when one of the Red Sox players rocketed a home run over the Green Monster, and booed when the opposing pitcher hit a Red Sox player with a fastball, causing both benches to clear. The game wasn’t worth much — an early season bout with the Tigers that the Red Sox managed to lose, 4-3 — but it was still fun. He was glad to be here with his boy and was glad not to be in jail, and it even looked like Leo was enjoying himself, too, watching the game with wide eyes and grins, seemingly thousands of miles away from his father.
On the way back to Vermont, as Sam rode up front next to Richard, and with most of the boys in the rear seats, slumbering, he said, “Dad?”
“Yeah, Sam,” he said, feeling a bit juiced after driving through real city streets for a change. Here was real traffic, intersections, lights, people moving in and out. Where they now lived, in Vermont, there were two traffic lights, and only a few hundred feet of sidewalk in the downtown. He liked driving in the city and rolled down his window as he drove, to hear the noises, smell the scents out there.
But now they were on a featureless stretch of asphalt, making the long drive back to Vermont.
“About the game,” Sam said.
“Go on.”
“When the Red Sox hitter got beaned by the pitcher, I was just surprised at how fast the other players came out of the dugout to go after the pitcher. And then, the other team . . . well, man, Dad, that fight started quick. Why do they fight like that? Couldn’t it have been just an accident?”
“Maybe,” he said, glancing at both sides of the narrow highway as they headed home, keeping an eye open for deer or moose on the side of the road, ready to trot across and wreck several thousand dollars’ worth of vehicle parts. “But players like that, it’s more than just that. It’s a team thing. You stick up for a member of your team, no matter what. And when one of your team members gets hit, or gets in trouble, you help out. That’s what happens.”
“Oh,” Sam said. “Like a family, right? Like you’ve said before, about me and Olivia helping each other out? Like a family? “
“Sure,” he said. “Like a family.”
He drove on a few more miles, and looked over at the drowsy face of his boy, remembered a time when he was much younger, and when they all lived in a neighborhood not unlike some of the streets they had passed through on the way to the ballpark.
“Sam?”
“Yeah, Dad.”
“Besides the game, how did you like it?”
His son moved in his seat, like he was seeking a comfortable position to fall asleep in. “I dunno, what do you mean, how did I like it…”
“I mean the city. Flow did you like being in the city? You know, all those buildings, all those people. What did you think?”
Sam yawned. “It was too noisy, too dirty. I like it better back home.”
“Oh.”
He kept on driving, wondering if he should feel angry or glad that his son — his own boy, raised in New York! — should now hate big cities.
~ * ~
A few days later, the next to the last game of the season. Pine Tree Rotary was playing Greg’s Small Engine Repair,
and Richard was tired and hot and thirsty. The other team had jumped on the boys right away in the first inning, and the score was now 10 to o. Even his boy, Sam, as good as he was, grounded out twice and struck out once. About the only bright spot in the lineup was poor little Leo, who was so small that he confused the opposing team’s pitcher and managed to get on base twice through walks. Even though they were walks, Leo acted like Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose himself— of course, before getting caught up in that gambling fiasco — and raced to first base, just so damn pleased to be there, out on the bases.
Last inning, and here was Leo. Richard checked his watch and was going to call out to the boy when somebody with a louder voice beat him to it.
“Leo!” the man bellowed. “You better get a hit or I’ll be after you! That you can bet on!”
He shaded his eyes from the glare, knew who had shown up, like a shambling bear wandering into someplace he wasn’t welcome. George Winn was at the fence, his fat fingers protruding through the open metal, shouting again. “Leo! You worthless player, you! Get a hit or you’ll get one from me!”
Richard yelled out, “Leo, wait for a good pitch, guy, wait for a good one!”
But Leo, his legs trembling, his face red, swung at the first three pitches that came across the plate, and promptly struck out.
~ * ~
He ignored Olivia. He ignored Sam. He ignored the other coaches and players and strode right out to the parking lot again, where George was hauling his kid to his truck, the clothing of the boy’s shirt clenched up in his fist. Richard called out, “George, you hold on!”
George spun around, moving surprisingly fast for such a large man. He propelled Leo forward with one hand and said, “Wait in the truck! Now!”
Leo ran ahead, and Richard came up to him, saying, “George, you can’t yell at your boy like that. He’s doing the best he can, and yelling like that —”
And George stepped forward and punched him in the chest. Richard staggered back, the force of the blow bringing back hordes of muscle memories from times past, when he had faced down and put down bigger and badder guys than this, and his fists clenched up and he was spotting his move, what he should do to put this bul-lying jerk down, but thinking, now, he was thinking about Carla and the kids and —
The next punch struck his jaw, and then George grabbed him and he fell to the ground, and the kicks began, one after another, and Richard curled up and protected his kidneys and groin and face as much as possible, until there were other voices, other shouts, and the kicking and punching stopped.
~ * ~
Later that night, in bed, Carla was next to him, gingerly wiping down his face again with a wet cloth. Her face was hard and set, and he couldn’t tell from one moment to the next whom she was most angry with, and he just kept his hands still and let her work and talk.
“You think I like having the children see you, their father, in a brawl right in their own school parking lot?”
It hurt to talk, so he kept his words to a minimum. “Wasn’t a brawl. I didn’t touch the guy.”
“Well, he sure as hell touched you,” she said. “Poor Olivia and Sam were crying so much, I thought they’d never stop.”
“They’re okay.”
“Yeah, but you’re not. And remember what those feds told you, about keeping your nose clean? Is this how you’re doing that?”
“Didn’t file a complaint,” he said. “No cops.”
She wiped him down again, and he winced. Even with the painkillers, it was going to be a long night.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Word gets out. And poor Sam ... he thinks the whole team should get together and go on over and burn down George Winn’s house. He thinks they should stick up for you. Is that right?”
“Nope.”
“You’re damn right,” she said, getting up from the bed, walking into the bathroom and back out again with a fresh washcloth. “But our family . . . that’s something else. I don’t like what happened, not one bit. Are you going to do something about it?”
He thought for a moment. “Yeah.”
She wrung out the cloth over a small metal bowl. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Not yet.”
“When?” she asked.
“Soon,” he said.
~ * ~
The next day, in his office, playing computer solitaire and wincing in pain as he moved the fingers on his right hand, the phone rang.
“Is this Richard?” came the vaguely familiar voice.
“It is,” he said. “Who’s this?”
There came a slight chuckle. “Let’s just say it’s one of the two gentlemen you spoke with the other night.”
He sat up straighter in his chair. “You shouldn’t be calling. It’s not part of the agreement. It’s not part —”
“Look, pal, here’s the only agreement I care about, and that’s that you testify in August, and that you stay out of trouble. Right now, you’re batting five hundred, and I don’t like it.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Richard said.
“Wasn’t there a fight yesterday? In the parking lot of a school? Right after a baseball game with your kid?”
He winced again as his hand clenched the phone tighter. “It wasn’t my fault. He picked the fight, not me. There was no complaint filed with the cops.”
Another chuckle. “Yeah, I heard you didn’t even put up a fight. Man, you must really like that place to put up with crap like that. So here’s the facts, one more time. You’re right on the edge, my friend. Right on the edge. One more little problem, and I don’t care whose fault it was, who threw the first punch, you’re still coming out to testify. But you’ll come back to that pig farm in Nebraska.”
Richard didn’t even bother replying, because the caller had already hung up.
He sat back in his chair, looked at the little computer mouse next to the computer, and in one flurry of motion, tore it from his desk and threw it across the room.
~ * ~
Two days after the phone call, he was in the kitchen when Sam came tearing through. He wanted to call out to Sam, to tell him to slow down, but instead he said, “Hey, bud. What do you have going on today?”
Sam went to the refrigerator, opened up the door, and started chugging down a couple of swallows of orange juice. His mother would never let him get away with doing anything like that, but he knew his father would. What a kid. Sam put the juice away and said, “Not much. Some fishing later with Greg over at the river.”
“Want to catch a late-afternoon matinee?” he asked.
Sam smiled. “Just the two of us? What would Mom and Olivia think?”
“Mom’s at work,” he said, “and Olivia’s over with some friends, staying through till dinner. I’ll leave a note for your mom. It’ll be fine. Come on, you’ve got a big day tomorrow. Last game of the season.”
Sam slammed the door of the refrigerator. “When?”
“Right now. “
“Cool, Dad,” he said.
~ * ~
The movie theater was on the outskirts of town, in a little shopping mall, and the cool interior felt comfortable. He let Sam pick the movie, and it was a live-action film based on a popular comic book series Richard had never heard of. Most of the audience were kids about Sam’s age, with a scattering of parents like himself, there to chaperone and make sure the little ones didn’t walk out and sneak into an R-rated film. He sat in a row next to a guy he knew, some clerk at the hardware store named Paul, who was there with a boy of about eight or nine.
He checked his watch as the movie droned on with punches and gunshots and buildings blowing up. He looked at the smiling faces of the young boys, illuminated some from what was up on the screen. Smiling and young and full of energy and life. He wondered how Leo was doing, if he was dreading tomorrow’s game, the last game of the year, the last chance to win one before the season was over, one more time out there in the field with his father watching and sh
outing at him.
One more time with his watch. Time. He leaned over to Sam and whispered, “I’m going to get some more popcorn. You want another drink?”
“Uh-huh,” Sam whispered back, attention still focused on the screen.
Richard got up, stepped on Paul’s foot — “Jeez, excuse me” — and walked out of the dark theater.
~ * ~
Later that night, he was in the living room, trying to judge which one of Olivia’s drawn horses was the best one — “for a contest the library’s holding, Dad, and the deadline is tomorrow!” — when the doorbell rang. Olivia looked up at him and then Carla appeared in the entranceway to the kitchen, slowly wiping a salad bowl from dinner. He looked down at Olivia and said, “Right away, squirt. Go see your mom.”
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