Plunking Reggie Jackson

by James Bennett

  Rico spanked the bill of the cap. “No perfect game unless you go the full seven. You’ll always have the asterik on this one.”

  “That’s asterisk to you, dim,” Coley replied. He pulled himself free from the binding cap.

  The next morning he used his free period to browse the newspapers in the library. On page 3 of the sports section the Journal-Star had a three-column action photo of Coley at the instant of his release point. He looked at the picture for several moments. What do people see? he wondered. Other people?

  The caption beneath the picture said, A MAN AMONG BOYS. Coley didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The only time he felt like a man was when he was with Bree, but it never lasted.

  He sensed her before he saw her. Mrs. Alvarez was reading over his shoulder.

  “What’s it like?” she asked him.

  “What’s what like?”

  “What’s it like to be a sports hero?” She took the chair beside him.

  “That’s what I keep tryin’ to figure out,” said Coley honestly. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “I work here,” Mrs. Alvarez replied quietly. “I’m allowed to visit the library.”

  “Funny.” It didn’t allay his sense of alarm. “But you want to see me, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I need to talk to you. But I want you to come to my office. The library isn’t very private.”

  After Coley put the newspaper back, he followed Mrs. Alvarez down the hall, but with a sense of doom.

  She didn’t beat around the bush. As soon as they both got seated, she said, “There’s not an easy way for me to say this, Coley. Mrs. Grissom has turned in another progress report on you.”

  “Not another one. It would mean I’m not eligible.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true. There’s not an easy way to say that, either.”

  “But I turned in an extra book report.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” said Mrs. Alvarez, “but here’s the statement.” She pushed the green form across her desk so Coley could examine it. The “Unsatisfactory Progress” box was checked with a bold X, and at the bottom was Mrs. Grissom’s signature.

  He pushed the form back to her before he murmured, “Oh, Jesus. She’s just nailing me because I don’t get all the symbolism she sees.”

  Mrs. Alvarez said, “I’m really sorry. I know how much the play-offs mean to you.”

  He slumped in his chair and closed his eyes. “Mrs. Alvarez, why were you asking me about being a sports star?”

  “You mean in the library?”

  “That’s what I mean. It seems like a cruel joke, but that wouldn’t be like you.”

  “No, Coley, I would never make a cruel joke with you. It was an honest question. I wonder what big success is like. The kind that gets a person lots of exposure.”

  “But why? Why are you askin’ me a thing like that? At a time like this?”

  “Because I think you’re afraid of it. Success, I mean.”

  Coley thought, What’s that supposed to mean?

  “Success can be scary,” she went on. “Sometimes it can be scarier than failure.”

  “Are you talking about baseball?”

  “Baseball, relationships, academic success. All of it. I think succeeding is scary to you.”

  “Next thing, you’ll be sounding like my old man: Looking for excuses to fail. Becoming a coward.”

  “What if your father is right in some respects?”

  “In some respects?” Coley felt the anger rising along his neck. “In what respects?!”

  She paused before she answered. “Please don’t raise your voice. You don’t need to. I know how hard it must be for you to talk about these issues, particularly at this moment. But maybe this is the best moment. Or the only one.”

  Coley bit his tongue. “In what respects,” he said, tersely but quietly.

  “What if your father wants to do the right thing, but for the wrong reason?”

  “This is about Patrick, isn’t it?”

  “It is about Patrick. Your academic slide coincided with his death. We talked about this once before—about the guilt associated with the death of young people. Your mother deals with it, your father deals with it, and you deal with it. Even when you don’t realize it.”

  “And that’s why I’m afraid to succeed, even in baseball.”

  “Please don’t oversimplify. The things that go on in your family are linked to the tragic death of your older brother, in my opinion. I have to keep stressing that—it’s only my opinion.”

  “The next thing, you’ll be suggesting that all three of us go somewhere for family counseling.”

  “I can think of worse ideas,” the counselor replied quietly. “But for right now I’d just like you to think about it. Not today, not tomorrow, when you’re so terribly disappointed. But sometime.”

  Coley didn’t reply. He felt numb. “I can’t talk about this now.”

  “I know.”

  For several moments he simply stared at the green form on the desk. “There’s no way I can make this up, is there?” It wasn’t really a question, though.

  “Not this semester.”

  “This semester? Mrs. Alvarez, this semester is all there is. I’m a senior.” The sense of desperation that was sinking in was overwhelming. God, wait till the old man hears about this.

  “I wish there were something I could do,” the counselor said, her sincerity plain. Then she repeated herself by saying, “I really am sorry.”

  He dragged himself to his locker, for no reason other than to avoid people who might want to talk. On the shelf at the top was his copy of The Old Man and the Sea, in plain view. The Old Man and Me would be more like it. He slammed the door shut so hard he rattled all the lockers in the vicinity. Wait till the old man hears about this.

  He sat by himself in his car at lunchtime and munched on a few Fritos; he didn’t have much appetite. If he went to the cafeteria, he would see Rico and his other teammates. What could he say to them?

  He walked like a zombie from class to class after lunch, choosing passing routes in the hallways that would allow him to avoid any friends or teammates. And he sure as hell didn’t want to make any contact with Bree.

  After school he went quickly to his car. He could see his teammates on the baseball field beyond the parking lot, warming up and goofing off. He stood staring. He didn’t—couldn’t—move. There was no reason to join them now, not if he wasn’t eligible. He wondered if he should tell the coach. But not now, no way.

  He wouldn’t be part of the fun. He wouldn’t be part of the push to the play-offs. It humbled him to think how he was letting them all down.

  Still dazed, he got behind the wheel. Snippets of his conversation with Mrs. Alvarez echoed in his head. Grissom’s progress report was the last straw, but only the last one. He felt like he didn’t know himself at all anymore. But he also felt like he wanted to.

  On some level he was choosing. Ankle injuries, back spasms, a pregnant girlfriend, academic failure, confrontations at home, and whatever. He wanted to see himself as a victim, but it was getting harder all the time.

  Could it be so simple as his father’s claim that he lacked a killer instinct, which amounted to the same thing as needing a reason to fail? Was he opting for means to fail because he was afraid that success would be a dishonor to his dead brother? Were these notions as preposterous as they seemed?

  He stared into the low sun for perhaps a full minute or more, still numb, until the players on the field were just silhouettes and his head ached.

  He wondered where Bree was. Now he wanted to see her. She usually waited for him near the practice field or by his car. Not today. He went back inside the school, but she wasn’t in the library or the cafeteria. He decided to cruise the streets that might track her direction home, in case she might be walking.

  He drove along Jefferson Street and then Eleventh without seeing her, but on Monroe he spotted her walking by herself while hugging some books t
o her chest. She was moving so slowly it was more of a stroll than actual walking. He rolled down the passenger’s window to call to her. “Get in the car, I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Not now, Coley, I need to be alone.”

  “Will you get in the car, Bree?”

  “Why aren’t you at practice?” she wanted to know. But when she spoke, she didn’t look in his direction.

  “That’s a story. If you get in, I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said I need to be alone.”

  Coley was getting annoyed, crawling the car along the curb while trying to talk to her through the other window. “I can’t do this forever, Bree. Come get in.”

  She moved into the passenger’s seat demurely, while looking straight ahead. Her hair was loose, so it covered most of her face. She was wearing her sunglasses. “Okay, so I’m here. But just don’t start asking me lots of questions.”

  He headed the car toward Washington Park. “I got another progress report from Grissom,” he told her quietly. “I’m ineligible.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Believe it. That’s why I’m not at practice. I’m not eligible.”

  “But why?”

  “How do I know? You’d have to ask Grissom. I don’t know what the bitch wants from me, anyway. Could you at least look at me? Would that be too much to ask?”

  She didn’t, though. She kept her eyes straight ahead. “I tried to tell you I’m not good company.”

  “I can’t pitch again. I’m not eligible.” He lifted her chin so he could look at her face.

  “You better stop the car,” she told him.

  He stopped the car. When he removed her sunglasses, he could see that the left side of her face was swollen. Not grotesque or disfigured, but smoothed out so that there was no definition on that side, as if lacking a cheekbone. A blue green bruise was at the corner of the eye.

  Bree wrenched her face away and replaced the sunglasses. “Are you satisfied now?” she asked. Her gaze was fixed out the windshield once again.

  “Why did he do this?” Coley asked. “Why did he hit you?”

  “We were late from prom.”

  “We were fifteen minutes late. He hit you for that?”

  “It doesn’t matter how long. We were late.”

  The intensity of his frustration was suddenly accelerated to a level he couldn’t tolerate. He pounded the steering wheel with the heel of his hand before he said, “Jesus Christ!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Flight 106 left O’Hare International Airport at 6:00 P.M. and landed in Orlando just after 9:30, Eastern time. Bree slept soundly on board, but Coley tossed and turned. He had taken some Dramamine just before takeoff, which made him drowsy, but not enough to put him under. He twisted uncomfortably in his cramped aisle 9 seat while the leading players in the dreams that troubled him came forward like the accusatory ghosts that tormented Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve. His mother. Mrs. Alvarez. Bree’s mother. Mrs. Grissom. There may have been others, but in his disturbed awake-and-asleep condition he struggled to get rid of these tormentors. “Go away,” he groaned at one point. “Leave me alone.”

  At Orlando International he stood dumbly in line at the Hertz rental counter. Bree was bouncy. “This is real close to Disney World,” she said. “We could stay all night and spend the day there tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “It would be fun.”

  “It might be fun, but it wouldn’t get us where we need to go.”

  “Oh, poop. Is this the way you’re going to be?”

  “Probably.” When it was Coley’s turn, he used his Visa card to pay for the Ford Escort. He said, “Miami,” when the counter clerk asked for the drop-off point, and he rented the car for a full week. He’d also used the credit card to pay for the airline tickets and to get some cash. He had twelve hundred dollars in his pocket.

  When they were putting their luggage, what there was of it, into the trunk of the car, Bree asked him why he’d said Miami. “We’re going to the other coast, right?”

  Coley sighed before he answered. “The same reason we flew to Orlando instead of directly to Fort Myers. Since I used the credit card, we’ll be easy to track.”

  “Oh.”

  “The rest of the time we use cash. Anyone who wants to follow us will go to Orlando and then Miami.”

  “You really are smart, Coley. You really are.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s why I’m here with you and not going to graduate and trying to arrange a tryout for myself plus an abortion for you.”

  He was behind the wheel, and she was clinging to his arm with both hands. “Now, we’re not going to have that kind of talk, okay? You’ll just ruin everything if you only see the bad parts. We’re free now.”

  “Yeah, that’s sure how it feels.”

  They spent the night in a cheap motel near Lake Buena Vista called the Seaview. It was an ironic name for the place, since there wasn’t any ocean for at least a hundred miles. What there was instead was a lot of truck traffic all through the night along Highway 4, which made sleeping difficult.

  But not for Bree. She awoke early the next morning rested and refreshed. As soon as she got out of the shower, she was ready for action. She crawled on top of him so they could make love. But even as she was astride and he was thrusting, he couldn’t help visualizing Bree in this position a few years earlier as a pleasure machine for a pathetic middle-aged groper.

  The mental picture passed when he reached his climax, followed by the first moments of serenity he’d known in the past forty-eight hours. She curled up beside him and started to tweak his few chest hairs (as she often did) to annoy him. “You feel better now, don’t you?” she purred.

  “You know what, Bree, sex isn’t the answer to everything.”

  “But you do feel better, so admit it.” Saying this, she gave a firmer yank on one of the hairs.

  “Ow! Knock it off!”

  She pulled another one, stinging him sharply. “Not until you admit you feel a lot better.”

  “I feel a lot better.” He found himself giggling.

  “We’re on our own, Coley. It’s just the two of us now, with nobody to tell us what to do. We’re in love and we’re on our own.”

  He repeated her words, somewhat mellowed in spite of himself: “We’re in love and we’re on our own.” Coley stared up at the four-bladed fan suspended from the ceiling, turning slowly and making a click-click-clicking noise as it wobbled on its uneven axis. It was hypnotic. Numb is a lot better than stressed, he couldn’t help thinking. “I feel a lot better,” he said in a monotone.

  They stopped for breakfast at a McDonald’s on the outskirts of a town named, appropriately enough, Baseball City. Bree was as buoyed and effervescent as she might have been winning the lottery or being chosen prom queen. Her appetite reflected her mood. She ate pancakes and sausage and hash browns, then ordered a cheese danish to top it off. She weighed only about 110 pounds, so Coley had to wonder where she was putting it all.

  While she went to the bathroom, Coley took the opportunity to visit the pay phone next to the parking lot. He made it a point to have plenty of coins on hand, so he had enough to make the call home. While he heard the phone ringing, he could feel the knot swelling in his chest. Finally there was an answer: “You’ve reached the Burkes, but no one is able to answer the phone at this time. When you hear the tone, please leave your message.” Coley heard the tone. Actually, he felt a measure of relief in speaking to the machine.

  “Okay, Mother, this is Coley,” he started out. After pausing, he continued, “We’re okay, so you don’t need to worry. Nobody’s hurt or anything. I can’t tell you where we are right now, but I will real soon.… I wish I could explain exactly what’s going on, but I don’t think I can.…” He paused to moisten his lips and swallow. He knew that the machine would not record a message longer than sixty seconds. “This all has to do with Bree and the fact her stepfather beats her. I had to get h
er away to a safer place.… It also has to do with me goin’ ineligible for the play-offs, but I’m sure you know all about that by now. We’ll get this all figured out sometime soon, and I’m sorry to put you through this. But I don’t want you to worry.”

  Then he hung up. Leaving the message made him feel a little better, but he could only hope it would have the same effect on his mother.

  Bree was waiting in the car when he slid behind the wheel. “Were you calling one of the Gulf Coast League teams?”

  “No. I called my mother.”

  Bree sat up very straight in her seat at the same time she seemed to go pale. “What did she say?”

  He started the car. “Nothing. She wasn’t home. I left a message on the answering machine.”

  “You didn’t tell her where we are?”

  “No. I just told her not to worry. We can drop the subject now.”

  It took almost four hours to drive down to Fort Myers, owing in part to the fact that Coley took Highway 17. This was a road that meant passing through lots of towns and traffic signals, but he figured there would be fewer state patrol cars this way. He was right, but he still tensed up each time he spotted one.

  They didn’t get back on the interstate until just past the town of Cleveland. And even when they entered Fort Myers proper, Coley continued on to the south by way of Highway 865 all the way to Fort Myers Beach on Estero Island. The afternoon sun sparkled on the blue gulf waters just beyond the cocoa palms that flanked the roadway.

  “It’s so beautiful,” said Bree.

  Even though he was tired, Coley had to agree. It looked like paradise.

  “So, so beautiful,” she continued, “but why’d we go all the way through the city? I thought Fort Myers was where you’ll get your tryout.”

  “I’ll ask for a tryout,” he corrected her. “Nothing’s for certain. I just thought if we were out of town, we’d be harder to trace.”

  “You think of everything, Coley. Sometimes I’m amazed how smart you are.”

  “Oh, absolutely. I flunked English, I knocked you up, I’m not going to graduate high school—”