One of the best players on the team, Kendricks, was a lanky eleven-year-old with a wicked submarine slider. This kid’s biggest problem was the one being demonstrated this very moment—complaining about having to run. Kendricks hated practicing but liked playing the game.
And yeah, Kendricks was a girl. The only girl on the team and definitely the only player with french braids.
Clay and Emma had made a good team of coaches, though their styles differed greatly. Clay was all about technical head knowledge—educating the kids on how to hit and slide and catch and throw. Sometimes he forgot that baseball had to be played from the heart.
Cory knows this better than anybody.
It surprised her when she heard his voice calling out behind her.
“You ready to get started, Coach?”
Emma turned and forced her tough game face on again, giving him a nod and leading him toward the infield. She knew she’d have to be honest with Cory. Brutally honest. Hurting his feelings wasn’t something she needed to worry about.
I doubt I could hurt his feelings if I really tried.
“Look, these kids will like you, and you will leave them. So keep your distance.” She looked ahead of them. “Third base is yours. That’s your only responsibility.”
Suddenly a brown-haired, blue-eyed bundle of energy burst between the two of them.
“Mom? It’s so hot. Can we do something else?”
This was the moment she had been fearing, an inevitable moment that had taken only ten years to happen.
Coach Straubel looks at him with grim eyes and an expression even more serious than usual. The door is shut, and Cory sits there knowing why he’s been summoned but wondering what’s going to happen.
“Look, I’m not going to make this long. I’ve made this speech before. Some listen to me and some don’t; that’s life. But the difference is that I’ve never had this sort of talk with someone like you, Cory. Never. So don’t smile or play the victim or any of that. Just listen.”
Cory nods.
“You got a gift. I know you know it too. Everybody knows it. But you have to realize—you only have a certain amount of time. I know—I know.”
“It was a stupid bar fight involving some idiotic—”
“I’m not talking about the brawl. I’m talking about you. A guy who’s wasting his talent away.”
Cory listens. This is not his father berating him, telling him to stop dreaming. This is Coach Straubel telling him to wise up.
“Listen, Cory. God gives some people certain abilities, and He sure gave you one. To hit home runs. So remember that, okay? Wake up thinking about it, and go to bed thinking about it. Because that talent can take you places if you let it. If you don’t waste it away being a typical college student.”
The coach doesn’t say any more.
For Cory, he’s already said enough.
Chapter Fifteen
ChangeUp
You can try to outrun and outmaneuver your past, but eventually it’s going to catch up to you and tag you out.
Cory was learning this the hard way.
He stood there looking at a kid who was still just a baby in his mind. The ten-year-old was tall and strong and looked like a nice kid. A real nice kid.
Nothing like his father.
“Tyler,” Emma began, lost for words in the face of Tyler’s sudden appearance. “You can’t just walk over here. You’re interrupting.”
“It’s just so hot.”
As the boy glanced his way, Cory found himself at a loss for words too. It wasn’t that Tyler was a surprise. He’d been a surprise ten years ago, a big one. But since that time, the surprise had lessened with each fading sunset.
Now the sun had just risen right in front of his face, and it was standing there burning his eyes.
The boy stuck his hand out. “Hi. I’m Tyler.”
Yes, you are.
Cory shook the hand, noting the firm grip. Tyler didn’t just look cute but appeared well trained.
Look at his mommy.
He glanced at Emma, who was watching the scene with an expression he didn’t want to read.
“Hey, man,” Cory said, ignoring her. “Cory Brand.”
“Tyler,” Emma yelled. “Get back out with the rest of the team.”
Tyler smiled and ran off to the outfield. As he ran, Cory felt a strange sense of déjà vu. He knew he hadn’t played this field before, but somehow it still reminded him of being that age and playing Little League.
He looks just like you. That’s why, you idiot. He smiles and runs and breathes just like his father.
The reality was a lot to take in.
For a moment it seemed that it was too much for Emma to take in as well. So many days and months and years, and now the two of them stood in matching red Bulldogs shirts and caps, looking like an ordinary American couple ready to coach an ordinary American Little League team.
But nothing about this was ordinary.
Cory’s head felt a strange buzz that had nothing to do with liquor. He turned to face her. “Hey, Em—”
Her eyes grew thin, and her voice was barely audible but forceful nonetheless. “I’m begging you, Cory. Please. Please keep your distance.”
She stared him down, and Cory knew that the Emma he remembered was still there. Not the Emma who fell in love with him, but the Emma he fell in love with. The intense and strong and careful and safe Emma Johnson who now was staking her ground.
She waited for him to say something, anything, but Cory couldn’t speak.
He still wasn’t sure what to say.
“Third base,” she said, speaking to him in the same tone she had used with Tyler.
Cory went toward the base, thankful to have somewhere to go and something to do.
Thank goodness Emma didn’t expect anything more from him, because he wasn’t capable of much coaching this afternoon. Not after that.
The rest of the afternoon and evening played out in slow motion like some sad country song. Eventually the practice was over, and Emma finished up with the kids without saying another word to him. Cory found himself locked into conversations with more parents, including a big-haired blonde who might have proposed to him if he hadn’t excused himself. He saw the kids shuffling out and piling into cars to go home with their parents.
Before getting into his rented pickup, Cory glanced out to the field where Tyler was walking with Emma.
It was a beautiful picture, the mother and son walking like that after baseball practice.
Both of them were so beautiful.
And you left them and didn’t think twice.
Driving home under one of those endless ceilings of streaked blue brilliance, the sun finally drifting off, Cory tried to get rid of the whirlwind going on in his head by playing the radio. Unfortunately, the two stations that came through didn’t provide any relief.
When he got back to his motel, the emptiness of his room depressed him. He felt like a prisoner.
You made your choice ten years ago, and it wasn’t to walk off into the sunset with those two people.
His choice had led him to this unfortunate place.
The bed squeaked as he sat on it, the bedbugs surely waking up and wondering who was visiting them tonight.
His mouth was dry. He stood back up and tossed his cap onto the table across the room, then opened the mini-fridge. It was fully stocked and ready to rock.
He opened the bottle of vodka and took a wallop of a shot, the kind more suitable for a beer, then filled a glass and found some ice cubes. It didn’t take long to drain the glass again.
Cory breathed in. Took another drink. Began to calm down.
Then it dawned on him that in another hour or so he’d have to show up at one of those Praise
Jesus for Sobriety meetings or whatever they were called.
He needed a lot more to drink before he could endure one of those things.
She tells him the news as they sit in darkness by the side of the barn, underneath a sky full of brilliant speckles. Cory holds her hand but looks up and away, lost for a moment.
“I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, looking back at Emma and then squeezing her hands. “It’s going to be fine.”
He doesn’t know what else to say or how to react.
Of all the things she could have told him, this wasn’t something he could have imagined.
“Have you told anybody else?” he asks.
“No.”
He looks out and sees the hulking outline of the barn behind him. He suddenly sees himself never leaving this place, stuck living in a hollowed-out shell of crushed dreams and empty promises like someone else he knows too well.
“Cory—I don’t want—I know what you’re thinking, and this—it doesn’t have to change things—”
“I know,” he says, still holding her hands, now looking at her again. “We’ll figure it out, okay? It’s gonna be fine.”
As he hugs her, Emma starts to cry.
They’re twenty-two years old, and up until this night the future looked a lot like the heavens above. Now it looks and feels a little more like the old structure next to them.
Cory holds Emma. He can’t picture himself as a father, or picture the two of them as parents. Ten years from now, sure, maybe. But not now, not when everything is happening, not when life is working out exactly the way he wanted it to.
For the first time in a long time, he feels fear sinking back into his soul.
Chapter Sixteen
Sinker
“Everything looked fine on the outside. But the inside was a definite mess.”
The average-looking guy stood in front of them in the average-sized church. He’d said his name was Phil. He wore dress pants and a dress shirt, as if he’d just come from work at some job requiring a tie, which he’d taken off before speaking. He read in a solemn tone from a sheet he’d brought with him to the podium. Along with Cory, there were thirty other people sitting in the pews.
“What started as a private curiosity became something I couldn’t stop. Eventually I was looking at porn at work, with my office door shut.”
Did he just say porn?
Cory glanced around to see if there was a reaction from anybody else, but nobody seemed to be surprised. All the faces of the people around him listened attentively to Phil.
“And even with the door open, when I thought I could get away with it. The sad thing was I actually thought I was getting away with it. Until the day two security officers confiscated my computer and escorted me out of the building in front of my coworkers and subordinates. They had every website and every minute I spent looking at ’em logged right there in black and white. I’ve never felt such shame and embarrassment.”
You’re not the only one feeling embarrassed.
Since he was sitting near the back, it was easy for Cory to slip out and leave the sanctuary behind. He figured he was in the right place but the wrong meeting.
“My porn addiction and unwillingness to face it led to the loss of my family, my job, and my self-worth,” the speaker continued.
The door provided relief from poor old Phil and his sad story. In the lobby, Cory looked around to try to find where he was supposed to be. That meeting inside was indeed a Celebrate Recovery gathering. Except they’d neglected to tell him it was for porn addicts.
Maybe the crackheads were down the hall and glue sniffers were in Sunday school rooms.
Don’t put them there—there’s glue!
The joking in his head didn’t ease his nerves. As he was about to wander down a hallway leading away from the main entry, a figure approached him.
“John Townsend. Folks call me J. T.” The man had a warm and welcoming face.
“Hey,” Cory said with relief as he shook the man’s hand. “Yes. My agent told me to look for you. You’ll be signing my paperwork, right? Listen, I think I landed in the wrong room. I’m looking for, uh … your basic twelve-step program. I think I connected with the sexaholics instead. Not that I’m judging.”
“You were in the right room. Just takes a while to know it. Come over here.”
Cory followed him across the foyer to a bulletin board, the ache in his knee acting up since it was getting later in the evening.
“There are three different group meetings in Celebrate Recovery. The large group is the one meeting right now in the sanctuary. That’s held every Friday night for our group here in Okmulgee. Anybody can come—and there’s no obligation to share.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Following that, we gather into smaller groups called Open Share. There’s one for eating disorders, one for victims of childhood abuse, and so on.”
Cory glanced at the board with the various room assignments. Besides the ones J. T. had named, he saw Sexual Addictions, Chemical Dependency, and Codependency.
“So what if you have ’em all?” Cory asked, trying to be funny.
J. T. smiled. “You take it one day at a time. I’m the ministry leader, so if you have any questions, concerns, or jokes worth telling, I’m here for you.”
“And what about the other meeting? You said three?”
“Step studies. Those are held here on Tuesday nights with a small group of men.”
“And those are mandatory?”
J. T. nodded.
“So all together, how long do I get to celebrate being in recovery?”
“Hopefully the rest of your life. But for official purposes, you’re supposed to attend eight weeks. The program is designed around studying eight recovery principles.”
Well, I guess there’s a case to be made for not having to go twelve weeks for a twelve-step program.
“Guess I should head back in there then. Though I still can’t believe people are talking about things like that. In a church.”
“Surprise,” J. T. said.
“Well, it’s good TV.”
J. T. held the door for him and followed Cory back into the sanctuary. Phil was still up there, still talking.
“Depression followed, and prescription drugs made me feel better. But I was never able to reveal the true reason for my depression and addiction. But God changed everything. He changed me. Long story short—my wife and I renewed our marriage vows last August. Our three children and their spouses stood up with us as we recommitted our marriage to God and each other.”
His wife came back? Is she meeting with the Bad Decision Makers?
“Because of my time in Celebrate Recovery, I know how to run to God—and His people—when I need help. And He does help me, every time. Thank you for letting me share.”
Phil smiled and went to sit back down. Cory still felt like he was at the wrong place. The wrong building and the wrong room and the wrong celebration.
I’m so going to kill Helene for this.
A short while later, in a smaller room in the church, a group of nine men sat in a circle just like at any AA meeting. Cory had been to a few of those due to some of his run-ins with the law, so he wasn’t sure what made this Celebrate Recovery any different. Until J. T. started to talk.
“We always read these small-group guidelines,” J. T. said, more to Cory than to anybody else. “They help keep this group safe.”
Cory glanced around and then nodded at the group leader.
“Number one: keep your sharing focused on your own thoughts and feelings. And limit your sharing to only a few minutes.”
I bet I can limit mine to a few seconds.
“Number two: there is no cross-talk. That’s when two peopl
e engage in conversation that excludes others. Everybody is free to express their feelings without interruptions.”
J. T. had a sheet in front of him, but it was clear he was reciting these from memory.
“Number three: we are here to support one another, not fix one another.”
A couple of the men around Cory gave knowing nods.
“Number four: what’s shared in the group stays in the group. Unless someone threatens to injure themselves or others.”
Cory liked number four. He didn’t want to hear anything he might say showing up on ESPN later that night.
“Finally, offensive language has no place in a Christ-centered recovery group.”
For a brief second Cory thought of blurting out a profanity as a joke, but the guys around him looked pretty serious.
With those “rules” now read, everybody started to go around and introduce themselves, starting with the leader.
“I’m J. T. I’m a grateful believer in Jesus, and I currently struggle with alcoholism.”
As everybody greeted J. T. and told them they were glad he was there, Cory wondered if any of them were ungrateful believers. Surely a few of them weren’t that grateful, right?
A fiftysomething biker dude next to J. T. went next. “My name is Rick, and I’m a Christian who struggles with cocaine addiction.”
This would certainly be a strange Sunday school class to be a part of.
J. T. gave Cory a relaxed and friendly nod to go next.
“Oh, uh … hey, I’m Cory. I’m currently struggling with—my agent.”
The group laughed as they welcomed him there. J. T. gave another nod, which was nice. Cory didn’t want to have to go overboard and suddenly become someone he was not. He was here anyway, sitting in this room, doing as he was told.
Home Run: A Novel Page 10