by Dana Mentink
He stabbed a finger in Cal’s direction. “You sure as shooting won’t. Your aunt would never speak to either one of us again, not to mention what your mother will say to me when I pass on up to meet her.”
“I can’t go and play baseball and leave you and Sweets to fend for yourselves.”
“We been fending for ourselves just fine.”
“That was before the pneumonia and a broken ankle.”
His face went dark. “We’ll manage.”
“Uncle Oscar… ”
Mitch cleared his throat. “I don’t know if it’s right for me to offer, but I can be the driver and stay at the ranch until she’s better. I can rig up a ramp at the ranch, too. I helped my neighbor do that a couple years ago.”
Cal’s stomach clenched. “No… ” he started, and then he remembered what Gina said.
Not forgetting. Just allowing him to do good.
He took a deep breath. “Uncle Oscar, is it okay with you?”
“If we’re gonna get booted out of our home and have some nurse caring for Sweets, at least it’d be good to have Mitch do the driving.”
Cal looked at his father. “Doesn’t that disrupt your life?”
He shrugged. “It’s just me and Tippy… Well, it’s just me. Got a little place about an hour from here. I’ll ask the neighbor to grab the mail. Not much but bills anyway.”
“I don’t want to ask you to do this,” Cal said.
“You didn’t ask.”
It still grated on him. Mitch Crawford, stepping back into their lives like some sort of a hero, doing what Cal should be doing for his aunt and uncle.
Allow him to do good.
He stayed quiet for a long moment. “All right.”
Mitch nodded. “I’ll go drive over to my place and arrange a few things.”
He looked taller as he left, his tread a little lighter. Though his own gut still twisted with resentment and worry, Cal found his own steps did too, as he walked slowly with Uncle Oscar back toward Sweets’s room.
“There’s nothing fun about this,” Oscar grumbled.
Cal fell in stride next to him. “Yes, sir.”
“Never did imagine I’d be leaning on Mitch Crawford for help.”
“Me neither.”
“Figure God’s shoring up our characters with all this business?”
“I don’t know how much more shoring up I can take,” Cal said.
“You and me both.” He clasped his uncle in another bone-crushing embrace, overwhelmed at how much he loved this man and the woman lying in that hospital bed. All the fame, all the celebrity, could not come close.
A scream from the hospital room made the hair on Cal’s neck stand up. He took Oscar’s arm and they hurried inside.
“What is it?” Oscar demanded. “What’s wrong?”
Sweets clasped one hand to her puff of hair. “Hot dogs!” she moaned.
Nineteen
Gina found the number for a taxi cab, which seemed to be the only taxi cab company anywhere near Six Peaks. It took some forty-five minutes for Gabe, the driver, to arrive with his radio blaring, and another thirty zydeco-filled minutes to get her to the only small grocery shop in town.
“Hot dogs,” she panted as she raced into the store. “I need bushels of hot dogs.”
The older man behind the cash register snapped into action, introducing himself as Doug, the store manager. “Hey, aren’t you Tippy’s gal?”
“Yes,” she said, filling her basket with ten packages of hot dogs.
“Any word on that little critter?”
“No.”
“Now, don’t you get discouraged. I’ll bet someone’s taking real good care of her.”
“I hope so.”
“Cal gonna be able to pitch with that dog on his mind?”
The dog was only one of the heavy items weighing on Cal Crawford’s mind, she thought with a pang. It made her more determined than ever to pull off the hot dog luncheon for the beep ball kids.
“Hey, now,” Doug said with a frown. “I just remembered something. Charlie’s bread truck broke down this morning. We didn’t get our bread today.”
“I don’t need bread. We’re having a hot dog barbecue.”
“But Charlie’s the bun guy, too.”
She stared. “No buns, Doug?”
“Not a one, Miss Gina.”
“How are we going to have hot dogs without buns?”
“Gee, I sure am sorry about that.”
“Never mind. You round up the condiments and I’ll think of something.”
In ten minutes she was out the door again. Gabe helped her pack the groceries into the trunk, and they listened to another round of zydeco music on the way back. She considered trying to boil the hot dogs, like she’d done for her nieces when she’d taken care of them last summer, but eighty dogs was going to be more than she could manage in the one small pot she’d seen in the kitchen. It would take several batches.
The grill. She spotted it as soon as Gabe deposited her at the ranch. It was a massive thing, blackened and dust-covered, but she’d seen a bag of charcoal in the kitchen closet. Quickly she washed the soot-covered grates. It was already after ten. She did an Internet search, landing on some articles entitled, “You and Your Barbecue,” and laid out the coals like it showed in the embedded YouTube video. Fortunately, the charcoal was supposed to be “self-lighting.” She found some matches, set it to the charcoal, and waited while the coals achieved the stipulated gray, ashy appearance.
Throwing a tablecloth over the old picnic table, she put out the condiments and chips, paper plates and cups. At eleven, she was mixing up a batch of instant lemonade, dumping in all the ice she could find from the freezer, and heaving it out to the picnic table before dashing back inside to the stove. Almost twelve. She decided to do a test batch on the barbecue. A package of hot dogs went down perpendicular to the slats so as to achieve the “mouthwatering grill marks.” Smoke billowed, bathing her face in sweat. She figured she would likely never get the smell out of her hair.
At the stroke of noon three cars pulled up almost simultaneously. Kids piled out along with their parents. The little blond boy she remembered walked up, holding his father’s hand.
“Hey, Mark,” she said. “It’s Gina. I’m happy to see you again.”
“Hiya.” He listened for a moment. “Where’s Tippy?”
His father must have heard the news. Bending down, he patted the boy’s shoulder. “Remember how I told you Tippy got lost?” He looked at her. “He heard the reporter talking on TV. I told him Tippy wandered off.”
“But the TV guy said she got snatched. Like a bad person took her. Did you get her back yet?”
Gina swallowed. “Um, no. Not yet. But I know she’ll come back soon, Mark.”
“I’ve got the bases in my car,” Mark’s dad said. “Let’s get ’em set up so we can have the game right after lunch, okay?”
Mark nodded and followed his dad to the car.
Rachel was next, with her mom and dad, followed by three more kids. Without fail, every single one asked about Tippy when Gina said hello. Her heart sank a little bit lower every time she had to tell the kids that Tippy had not been found. She braced herself as the next car arrived—only this one looked familiar. It was her own, and Cal got out, Mitch pulling up behind in his vehicle.
Cal took in the scene. “How in the world did you manage this?”
“Well… I… ” She felt puffed up with pride until his eyes rounded. The smell of burning meat wafted to her nostrils.
The hot dogs!
It was too late. Cal raced for the barbecue, which was now shooting up billows of yellow flames. He grabbed the tongs, yanked off the blackened cylinders, and shut the lid to smother the fire.
The hot dogs smoldered in the dirt, shrunken and black.
“Oh man. I forgot about them.” She stared at the smoking mess. “I wonder if they got any good grill marks before they went up in flames.”
He smiled.
“I think I saw some grill marks on there. They’re just hard to see through the burned stuff.”
She kissed his cheek. “That was sweet. How is your aunt?”
Cal took in the milling parents and kids. “Hanging in there. She suddenly remembered she’d committed to the beep ball barbecue and told us if we didn’t get over here pronto she would call the police and have us tossed out of the hospital.”
“I had it all handled,” Gina said, “except for the flaming dogs.”
“No problem. You did a great job.” She could see the smudges of fatigue on his face. She clasped him around the arm. “I wish Tippy was here to go visit Sweets. Deep down, she loves that dog.”
He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “Bringing her to the ranch. My dad is going to stay here.”
He could hardly choke out the word dad.
“That was hard to accept, huh?”
“Like swallowing glass.”
“How can I help you, Cal?”
He offered another exhausted smile. “You’ve already helped way more than we could have asked.”
She did not like the defeat in his tone. “Well, now that you’re here,” she said, pulling the kitchen towel from her back pocket and tucking it into his, “you’re the new grill master.”
She brought out the rest of the hot dog supply while Mitch began to help the kids pour lemonade into paper cups. Cal grilled up the hot dogs, handing platters of them to Gina. Avoiding Cal’s gaze, with as much dignity as she could muster, she plopped each hot dog on top of a pancake and handed them out to the puzzled children and parents.
“There was a small situation with the bread supply,” she announced. “So we’re serving hot dogs in blankets. Who wants one?”
All the children squealed with glee.
Cal stood, tongs suspended in midair. “Only you could come up with that idea, Gina.”
“You’re right, Mr. Crawford. I am nothing if not a creative problem solver.”
He sighed. “Could have used you at the hospital. I’ve got plenty of problems that need solving.”
While the kids munched their dogs in blankets, he told her more details about Sweets coming to live at the ranch and Mitch’s offer to drive.
She reached out to him. “That sounds like the best solution.”
“But I should be taking care of her, not Mitch.”
“You are taking care of her, by helping her move in here with Oscar and arranging a nurse and… ” She squeezed his shoulder, hardly making a dent against the rock hard muscles of his pitching arm. “And by allowing Mitch to come. That’s taking care of your aunt, Cal.”
“I guess,” he said. “So, um, can you stay for a while longer? Keep me company here for a few days until I go back to spring training? Sweets would love it.”
“And I would too, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I got a job offer.”
He stared. “Yeah? Where?”
“It’s not what I was hoping for. It’s a long-term sub job in Florida.”
“Florida?”
She nodded. “I grew up there. I emailed one of my high school teachers and she asked for me when she goes out on maternity leave.”
“But that’s high school. You want to work with little kids, don’t you?”
“It’s like the minors, Cal. You have to put in the time and prove yourself.”
“Florida, though. I thought you would stay in California.”
“This coming from the guy who travels seven months of the year. Your home is where the mound is, right? I guess my home is where the classroom is. I can stay with my parents for a while. They’ll love it.”
He looked into her face with eyes so grave she felt as if she had betrayed him somehow. She trailed a finger along his forearm. “We’ll still be friends, Cal, no matter where I am or where you are.”
“When do you leave?”
“At the end of the month. I’ll help Mrs. Filipski as much as I can, then I’ll hop a Greyhound and get going.”
“But what about when they find Tippy? We’re starting the season soon.”
“She’s going back to your father, Cal, remember? You don’t need a dog sitter anymore.”
“Yeah,” he said, pulling away. “I guess I don’t.”
“But I’ll text and phone and come to see you whenever I can,” she said, trying to put the smile back on his face and ease the pain that had suddenly formed in her heart.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Looks like it’s time to play some ball.”
Cal thought long and hard, staring at the dimming light reflected on the surface of the pond. It was after sunset and the kids had played to their hearts’ content, gobbled up the hot dogs in blankets, and taken turns petting Potato Chip. It was good to hear the squeal of kids on the ranch, infusing the place with an energy that had been long absent. Mitch had left the beep ball activities midday and gone to the hardware store, returning with boards to begin construction on the ramp for Sweets.
The splashes indicated the fish were searching for their fill of mosquitos, including the one fish Gina had tossed back in after her triumph over the slippery monster. Her fishing skills were just one in the long line of Gina surprises. The biggest surprise of all was the way he could not get her out of his mind. It made no sense.
His pitching was the best it had been in his whole career. He was starting in the season opener. Sweets would recover and he’d keep the ranch, at least for a while. So why, then, did it feel like he’d taken a fastball to the gut?
It was the worry about Tippy, he told himself. But Gina and Tippy were inexplicably mixed in his heart for some reason, and he was losing her too, in spite of her reassurances. She’d move on to a new life, new friends. He tossed a branch into the pond. A new love.
If only she’d stay close, find a job that she loved. She could stay in California and they’d be connected when he was home in the offseason. And Tippy would be back, he felt it. She’d be returned and Gina would come to visit. He remembered her there on his ridiculous front lawn in San Francisco, hair flying, cheeks pink with joy, tossing the ball to Tippy, who would probably never in this lifetime learn to fetch it. The smile drifted across his face. If she could stay… if he could only keep her from leaving.
The idea jolted him as he hiked back to the guesthouse. It took only a few minutes of Internet research to find the contact info. A few more minutes and the task was done. Gina would have the job she loved, she’d stay in California, and he’d be able to see her during the offseason. Triple play.
Finally, he was able to stretch out on the bed and sleep.
Twenty
Cal rose before sunup and ran for a couple of miles along the trail that paralleled the river. He planned to go visit Sweets and return to help Mitch get the ramp in place, contact some homecare nurses recommended by the hospital, and try to hire one that could both stand up to Sweets and deal with Oscar.
Gina was in the kitchen, holding a cup of coffee, frowning at her phone. “I was checking for news of Tippy. Nothing.” She sighed. “Then I got this weird message from Mt. Olive School. It sounds like they want to make me a job offer.”
He poured coffee for himself, hiding his smile. “That’s great.”
“It’s so strange, though. I told Bill in no uncertain terms that I didn’t appreciate being used by him to get to you and he should find another celebrity for his auction.”
“I don’t mind doing the auction thing. It’ll be fun.”
“But… ” she broke off, eyes round. “Wait a minute. Did you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Did you call Mt. Olive and tell them you’d do the auction if they’d hire me?”
“Not exactly.”
“What did you do?” Each word fell like a cutting fastball. “Tell me, Cal Crawford, right now.”
He began to get an inkling in his gut that this wasn’t going the way he’d anticipated. “I knew you wanted to work there. I called the principal an
d told him what an amazing woman you are and sent him clips of you helping the kids at spring training.”
Her face went rosy. “You didn’t.”
“I did, and I told him I’d be happy to do the auction thing too, but that was just a side note.”
She pressed her lips together in a tight line. “I cannot believe you did that.”
“But it’s good, right? It’s what you wanted? To work at Mt. Olive?”
“I wanted,” she said, sounding like she was speaking through clenched teeth, “to get a job on my own merits, rather than having it bought for me.”
“I didn’t buy it for you.”
“Yes, you did. You used your fame to get me a position.” Angry tears sparkled in her eyes. “That’s humiliating. Why did you do it, Cal?”
“I thought I was doing something nice for you.”
“Was it for me? Was it really for me, that you did this?”
He held up his palms. “What do you mean? Of course it’s for you.”
“I mean,” she said, voice breaking, “you were doing something nice for you.”
He fisted his hands on his hips. “How was this for me, exactly? I don’t want to teach there.”
“Be honest, let go of the macho thing for a minute. You wanted me to stay close, to you, to the ranch, to be here when you come back to visit, didn’t you? That’s the real reason you arranged all this.”
He could not deny it.
“You were being selfish, just as selfish as Bill was. He used Matthew to get to me, and you’re using my job. Well, you know what? Friends don’t do that.”
“I… ”
“Friends believe in each other and support each other, and they stay together because they want to, not because it’s engineered. A real friend would believe that I could do it by myself, Cal.” She sat ramrod straight in the chair.
“Gina… ” he said as she shoved her chair back from the table and stood. “I was trying to help out a friend.”
Her anger changed to puzzlement. “Is that really what we are? Friends? Or is there something more than that?”
He felt paralyzed. What should he say? How could he answer? The way she looked at him, the kiss…