by Steve Almond
Jamie was on his hands and knees, making retching noises.
“Calm down,” Eric said. “He’s breathing. He’ll be alright. We just have to wait until the ambulance comes.”
“Fuck,” Jamie said and retched again and continued crying. “It was like he was down before you hit him.”
Eric could see Stevie Hayes and the others crossing the street that led to their homes, darting up front walks. He turned to Bill Bellamy and crouched. “Bellamy,” he said. “The ambulance is coming.” A sharp ammoniac scent rose from the body. Its feet continued to twitch.
Jamie was muttering to himself. “Fuck, the way you hit him. Like his head was, like, fuck, like crack.”
Eric didn’t like the way Jamie was saying this, as if he, Eric, had known Bellamy was there, or had had some control over the situation. “You shouldn’t have thrown a pitch if he wasn’t set.”
“Me?” Jamie reared up on his knees. His face was webbed with snot. “You were the one, Eric. Shit. You were the one who swung.”
This was the difference, Eric realized: Jamie had seen it happen. This was why he was so upset. He had been a witness. “Okay,” Eric said. “He’ll be alright. We just need to wait until the ambulance comes. We have to stay here and explain.” The two of them said nothing. They looked at Bill Bellamy every few seconds; they did not look at one another.
“Maybe we should turn him over,” Jamie said.
“No,” Eric said. “I don’t think we should touch him. It’s serious, a serious thing.”
“I know it’s serious,” Jamie said. “Shit. I know.”
Now the sound of a siren rose and dipped. It was not a familiar sound in Dorset Centre and it made the dogs, labs and shepherds mostly, howl. The ambulance companies had trouble in Dorset, with its cul-de-sacs and speed bumps and winding streets. Eric could hear the siren swell, then recede.
A group of girls left their place at the far end of the park and headed toward the field, squinting into the low sun and pointing. Jamie’s younger sister spotted him. “What happened?” she screamed. “Jamie, are you okay? Is Jamie okay?”
“I’m okay,” Jamie said, but, at the sight of his sister, he began crying again.
“He’s fine, Kelly,” Eric said.
“What happened? Who’s hurt?” The girls collected at the fence along the third-base line.
“Bill Bellamy,” Eric said. “But he’s going to be alright.” Eric heard one of the girls say, “Bill Smellamy,” and the others laughed. “Just go home now,” he said.
The girls were suspicious of being shooed away, but they sagged back once the ambulance appeared, howling with lights. The truck jumped the curve and drove right up to the fence. A trio of men burst out of the back with a gurney and hustled across the field. Eric had expected they would want to know what happened, but they ran right past him and Jamie and hunched over Bill Bellamy and one of them said, “Good God,” and another ran back to the truck for more supplies. A short man with a beard, obviously the one in charge, said, “Is there any way to get our truck onto this field?”
“I don’t think so,” Eric said. “There’s just the gate.”
“Great. Great planning.” He wore latex gloves, the fingers of which were already stained crimson. They eased Bill Bellamy onto his side and wedged a board under his floppy body and raised him up. One of the paramedics started an IV and a second held a compress to his head. The reddish dirt from which he had been lifted was darkened by blood; it looked like chocolate cake batter. The medics carried the gurney gingerly. “Go home,” the man with the beard called out. He slid the body inside, the gurney collapsing.
Eric felt a sense of betrayal at having lost sight of Bill Bellamy. He had somehow assumed he was going with the medics, that they would need him for something. He and Jamie walked home in silence.
Eric turned into his driveway. “See ya.”
“Right.” Jamie had his head down.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Jamie walked on and Eric knew then they would never again speak about what had happened, not to each other.
Eric himself was distressed to discover his most urgent memory of the incident: he had caught sight of Bill Bellamy’s face as they attended to him. It seemed to him the boy had been smiling faintly.
HE CLOSED THE door lightly, but his mother heard him come in, as she always did, and hung up the phone and rushed toward him. She was smoking, a vice she disdained in public, but practiced with a peculiar vengeance at home. Her words cut through the smoke. “Are you okay, honey? Marcia Hayes called and told me about the accident. That’s what the ambulance was about, wasn’t it? Did you do this? Hit the Bellamy boy with a bat? Marcia says it was an accident, that everybody knows it was an accident. What happened?”
“He was the catcher,” Eric said. “I was at the plate. Jamie pitched the ball. I didn’t see him—”
“Jamie? Jamie Blake?”
“Yeah. I was just watching the pitch and when I swung, the bat hit him. Bellamy.”
Eric’s mother took a sharp drag on her cigarette and Eric found himself worrying, absurdly, that her ash would fall on the rug. “Why did Jamie pitch the ball if Bellamy was in the way?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why was Bill in the way if you were swinging? Isn’t the catcher supposed to be back, out of the way?”
“Yeah.”
“How badly is he hurt?”
“I don’t know. Pretty bad. His head was bleeding. A lot.”
“What did the paramedics say?”
“Nothing. They just took him away.”
Her brow crimped and her lips began forming silent words. This was what she did during awkward social situations. “Nothing,” she said quietly. Then, to him, she said, “Are you okay?”
“I guess.” He wondered if he would start to cry.
“This was just an accident,” she said quickly. “You did nothing wrong.” She moved forward and hugged him, her arms caging him briefly, the smoke from her cigarette ribboning between her fingers. “Please stay inside, Eric. If the phone rings, let the machine pick up. I need to get your brother from soccer. You mustn’t worry. Do you understand?”
The phone did ring several times, the distressed tones of one or another mother on the machine. Eric wanted to speak to someone, his father or Stevie Hayes, or even his little brother. He thought about heading outside, but was suddenly frightened someone would see him, that there would be a commotion. The feeling reminded him of having the chicken pox, a kind of quarantine. He called his father’s office but there was no answer. He checked the fridge; the maid had left a lasagna. He turned the TV on and watched music videos with the volume on high.
His mother took forever getting home. He knew that she had been making the rounds, gathering information. She was berating Mikey over something as she entered, but smiled when she saw him. “We’ll have pizza tonight, okay?”
“Hey Eric,” Mikey said. “What happened? I heard you hit Bill Bellamy in the head with a bat. Crack! Mom said. And Mrs. Middleton. What happened?”
Eric’s mother turned on her younger son and swatted him, hard, on the behind. “What did I just tell you? Leave your brother alone. Do you understand me? Get those muddy shoes off this instant and take a shower.” Mikey’s face flushed. He made for the stairs. Only recently had he advanced past the stage of unashamed crying.
“Maybe we should call the Bellamys,” Eric said. “To find out how Bill is doing. I could call. To apologize.”
His mother didn’t appear to hear this.
“Or we could call Dad,” Eric said.
His mother looked up from the phone book. “Your father is busy. I’ll talk to him when he gets home.”
ERIC SLIPPED INTO Mikey’s room. His brother was still in his soccer uniform, grass stains on his shorts. He could hear his mother downstairs, murmuring into the phone.
“Mom said for me not to bother you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Eric said.
/> Mikey glanced up nervously. “What happened?” he said softly.
Eric told his brother the story, not embellishing, only restating the events from the time he stepped to the plate until the paramedics left. The tip of Mikey’s tongue hung over his bottom lip as he listened. “Mom told Mrs. Middleton that Jamie Blake shouldn’t have thrown the ball,” he said finally. “She said he’s hyperactive.”
“It wasn’t Jamie’s fault,” Eric said.
“Bill Bellamy should have been back more. He’s the catcher. Only a fat retard doesn’t know that.”
Eric knew his brother had heard these names from older kids, maybe from Eric himself. He looked at Mikey for a long time. His brother had their mother’s eyes, dark and pretty and jumpy when faced down. He hoped that Mikey would understand the shame of his words, that he might offer the apology of silence. But Mikey giggled sheepishly. “There’s nothing funny,” Eric said. “Don’t say stuff like that about Bill Bellamy, okay? Bellamy’s hurt. How would you like it if you got hurt and someone teased you?”
“I didn’t get hurt,” Mikey said.
ERIC HAD SLEPT over at Bill Bellamy’s once, a year ago. A birthday slumber party. Bellamy’s parents had made elaborate preparations, sending out fancy invitations, phoning a list of mothers. They had wanted to make sure enough kids would show up.
Mrs. Bellamy, a birdlike woman who hummed to herself, handed each child a bag of goodies at the door. Mr. Bellamy fetched sodas. The boys sat around in Bill’s room, playing an old computer video game. Bill’s little sister, Tracy, kept sticking her head in the door and running away laughing. Like her mother, she was slightly walleyed. Mr. Bellamy announced that chow was on and served up pizza he had made himself. Rather than pepperoni, the pie had little sliced up hot dogs on it.
The Bellamys lived on the outskirts of Dorset Centre, in a portion of the development known as the Annex. It had been built after the initial developer sold his interests to independent contractors. The lots were smaller, the homes crammed together, and none of them had pools. The Bellamy house seemed to slant.
The boys managed to escape the house for a midnight game of tackle the pill, and a few whispered of heading home. Bill remained oblivious, lost in the happy enthusiasms of the birthday boy. Cake was served upon their return. The boys who had spoken of leaving settled instead for the distractions of torturing Bill in his sleep. They soaked his fingers in warm water and put toothpaste in his ear. If he minded these pranks, he said nothing. When the boys woke the next morning, Mr. Bellamy was in the kitchen, his loamy body wrapped in an apron, a spatula in one hand. “Who wants griddle cakes?” he called out.
“I do,” Bill said. He pulled the dog, a mangy terrier, onto his lap. Eric was horrified to see fleas squirming on the dog’s belly.
Tracy burst out laughing. “Billy has fleas,” she squealed. “Billy has fleas.”
ERIC’S FATHER DIDN’T get home until after nine. He looked rumpled, as he usually did, like a slightly deflated version of the crisp, well-dressed man who left in the morning. Eric had been hanging around the foyer. But his mother headed him off. “Don’t jump on your father. Let me talk to him.”
Eric began to protest, but her face was smooth with the promise of an outburst. “Go to your room, Eric. He’ll come up.”
In a few minutes, he heard his father’s car start and he moved to the window and watched it depart. His mother came into his room. She had a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other.
“Where’s dad going?”
“Honey, sit down for a minute. Your father is going to the Bellamys. He wants to find out what’s going on.”
“Why can’t I go with him?”
“No, honey. This is something serious. I know it was an accident, honey. We know that. But we don’t know how people are going to react. Your father is a smart man. He works all day helping people solve arguments. So let’s let him speak with the Bellamys.”
“But I was the one who was there. It was my fault.”
Eric’s mother tensed her jaw. “It was not your fault, honey. Don’t say that. Do not say that.”
“But I was there. And I know Mr. Bellamy.”
“After your father returns and we know the situation, you can write a card to them. A get-well card.” Eric wanted to tell her that he was scared, that he needed to say he was sorry, but he was afraid she would try to embrace him again.
His father returned a half hour later. Downstairs, his mother launched her interrogation. His father said: “Enough, Jeanie. Let me see him.” There was a knock on the door. His father’s long body angled into the room. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Rough day, huh?”
“Yeah.”
His father sat on the bed. “Bill Bellamy is in the hospital. He’ll be there for a while. The doctors say he’s had a hemorrhage of some kind. That’s like a problem inside his head. They need to wait for the swelling to go down.” His father rubbed his eyes. Eric thought about the moment of impact, that spongy feeling. “They won’t know anything until the swelling goes down. There’s a chance, if he hemorrhages again … but he probably won’t. The doctors will know more when the swelling goes down.”
“How are the Bellamys?”
“Well, I mean, they’re upset. Upset. But they know it wasn’t your fault, kiddo. They know it was an accident. Are you okay?”
Eric nodded.
“Your mother says you’ve been very brave.”
“It feels weird, Dad.”
“I know it does. I know.”
Eric looked at his father’s profile, lined by the light in the hallway. The patches of flesh under his eyes were swollen and colored with sleeplessness. It didn’t seem fair that his father should have to suffer this, that either of them—it wasn’t fair. He felt sorry for his father, and he felt that it would be unfair to add his own tears to his father’s burdens. Still, he wanted his father to stay. Not to comfort him, just to sit beside him until he could fall asleep. He heard his mother’s footsteps and then her voice at the door and then his father’s body rising up and being led away.
ERIC STOOD IN the doorway of his room, listening to the conversation floating up the stairs. He was supposed to be asleep.
“The man’s only son,” his father said.
“Yes, I know. You’ve already said that. Now listen to what I’m saying: we don’t know these people.”
“He’s a teacher. He teaches math to eighth graders.”
“What do you think teachers get paid, Stan? Honestly.” Eric heard her drop ice cubes in a glass. “You’re too damn trusting. These people, I mean, look where they live. And you know as well as anyone how victims are. They want to make somebody pay.”
“Do we have to talk about this now, Jeanie?” His father sounded tired.
“And that Blake boy—”
“It’s not really appropriate—”
“They give him that drug, Stan, for hyperactive children. He has an attention disorder. Barbara brought it up at PTA, made a big fuss. She wanted the district to hold some kind of sensitivity workshop or something. What’s that drug called?”
“Ritalin.”
“Yes, Ritalin. He takes Ritalin. And the Bellamy boy himself had asthma. Dr. Springer told him not to play organized sports, warned him not to. Cheryl told me herself. That’s why they keep him out of soccer. But of course they can’t stop him from playing in that damn park.” Eric heard in his mother’s voice a familiar enthusiasm for tragedy. She spoke the same way to the morning newspaper. “He should have been wearing some protection,” she said. “The catcher is supposed to have a mask and a helmet.”
“Not in a pickup game.”
“In any kind of game.”
“That’s not how it works,” his father said.
“That’s how it should work, Stan. Look what’s happened.”
“These things happen, honey.”
“Not to people who are careful.”
“Yes they do, Jeanie. They just h
appen.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s just stop this. We’re going in circles. Don’t get up. Sit.” He heard his mother pad across to where they kept the liquor. “All I’m saying is that we should be prepared for anything that might happen. I’ve made a few calls, just to see what the other kids are saying. You know how kids are, Stan. They make up stories. Blood makes them crazy.”
There was a pause.
“I never liked that field,” his father said.
“Yes, all that traffic. It’s a death trap.”
His father sighed and clinked his ice cubes. “That’s not it, Jeanie. That’s not what I mean. You can’t plan everything out. That’s what I mean. They should have just left it a big patch of grass.”
“Or the par course,” his mother said. “I liked the par course.”
PUBLIC DISCUSSION OF the matter closed at home. But it remained very much alive at school. Eric’s friends all wanted to reenact the event, its mysterious violent glamour. After a few days, Eric began eating his lunch inside. He could hear the other boys who had been there at the Prison Lot, Jamie Blake and Stevie Hayes and the rest, discussing the particulars, the angle of impact, the body’s prone position.
Miss Weeks, the fifth-grade teacher, announced that Bill Bellamy was “doing fine” and had the class send a card signed by all of them. Eric sent a card of his own, carrying the envelope to the village post office and mailing it himself. The item in the Dorset Register mentioned only that William Bellamy, age ten, had been injured in a baseball accident. He was in critical condition.
At home, Eric could hear his mother worrying the incident on the phone, her voice low and raspy. She was smoking more than ever, hiding the smell from company with air freshener that hung about in clouds. His father treated him kindly, laying a hand on his shoulder, telling him to keep his chin up. But he appeared helpless before the larger duties of concern, worn out by his days at the office. He rarely arrived home in time for dinner.
On Sunday morning, his mother walked into the TV room and announced that the family would be attending church.