Home Run: A Novel

by Travis Thrasher

  Then an unmistakable voice shouted out “Coach” several times.

  Standing there with a big man with bigger cowboy boots was Tyler.

  “Found him looking in the windows,” the cowboy said to Cory.

  “Tyler,” Cory bellowed in a voice that even surprised him. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  For a moment Tyler just stood there, looking frightened and clueless. Cory could feel the wave of shame and fear deep inside.

  “Do you hear me?” he shouted, cursing loudly. “Get out of here.”

  He hadn’t meant to yell so loud. Or to use that kind of language.

  The boy in front of him looked crushed.

  Crushed and scared.

  For a moment Cory turned around, angry that the kid had come out to find him. He cursed and gritted his teeth.

  Of all the times and in all the places …

  He could feel the panic and the loss of balance and his world suddenly crumbling around him. For a moment Cory didn’t know what to do.

  For a moment he could hear his yelling and cursing father, and he was back at the farm with his old man screaming at him.

  Then he realized that the old man screaming wasn’t his father.

  It’s me.

  He turned in horror, realizing what had happened. He was only half there, but the half of him that understood was horrified. Cory turned to say something to Tyler, to apologize to the kid and try to make it up to him …

  But Tyler was already gone.

  You ain’t special, a voice tells him.

  Doesn’t matter how many times he’s been voted an all-star or how many awards he’s earned or how many runs he’s batted in.

  That voice remains the same.

  You’re always gonna be a nobody.

  The voice follows him off his barstool as he runs out of the bar to try to find Tyler.

  It’s the same old scene. Yet it’s different.

  Everything is different now.

  This is Tyler, another voice says. This is your son.

  This is a snapshot of a boy you could have been. A face of hope you could have had.

  And you’re destroying it just like your old man destroyed you.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Rundown

  Tyler was standing next to his bike by the time Cory got to his side.

  “What are you doing here?” Cory wasn’t yelling anymore, but he was talking with the firmness of an adult and a parent.

  An adult and parent who’s just downed about ten shots.

  The boy didn’t say anything. Hurt still filled his face, the kind of hurt that Cory knew about too well, the kind that wouldn’t go away with a simple apology.

  “Look, Tyler, you shouldn’t be out this late. And you definitely shouldn’t be here.”

  They heard the sound of a truck engine racing down the street. Headlights splashed over them, and the truck pulled to a stop.

  A part of him knew what was coming.

  The door opened, and a woman he hardly recognized bolted out of the truck. “Get in,” she screamed at Tyler. “Now!”

  She grabbed his bike and put it in the back of the truck.

  Cory wanted to stop her or at least slow her down and explain, but he knew he wasn’t the most stable at this moment. He carefully thought over his words so he wouldn’t slur them.

  “Emma—what’s going on?”

  She looked at him, and he knew she could tell he was drunk. It wasn’t a big secret.

  I didn’t bring him here, so don’t go crazy over something I didn’t do.

  Emma shouted out Tyler’s name again and tried to get him to go around the truck and get in the passenger side. She grabbed something off the front seat of the vehicle and threw it at him. It was a newspaper. A newspaper she threw in his face.

  “You had no right. No right.”

  Cory had never heard Emma sound like this. Even the time she laid into him at the baseball field, it wasn’t like this. She sounded like she wanted to rip out his heart.

  “Tyler, right now,” she said, pointing to the truck.

  He looked over at the boy and saw tears on his face.

  What happened? Is he in trouble?

  Everything was happening too fast for Cory. What was going on?

  Tyler looked at him, ignoring his mother’s demands. “Are you my dad?”

  The world suddenly trembled, and the dark mouth of the beast opened up. Cory felt paralyzed.

  He glanced down at the paper and realized the truth. Somehow the word had gotten out.

  But I didn’t say anything to anybody. Did I?

  Tyler unzipped his backpack. Emma came to his side, still out of her mind with rage.

  “I can’t believe you’d use us like this,” she said, moving Tyler toward the truck. “Get in the truck, Tyler.”

  “No!” Tyler jerked out of her grip and was fishing for something in his pack.

  Then he turned and presented Cory with a box.

  Tyler was holding the wooden box Cory had made so many years ago for himself and Clay. The one he’d gone out of his mind looking for in the barn.

  “Here’s your cards,” Tyler said. “Your dad gave them to me. He used to cut our lawn. Before he—before he died.”

  As Cory took the cards, not knowing what else to do, the image of Dad cutting Emma’s lawn was almost as crazy as his giving the cards to Tyler.

  The monster who used to berate him daily about baseball and chores and school and life …

  He gave Tyler these because he knew who Tyler was. His grandson.

  “Tyler—” Cory started, his voice weak and lost.

  “I didn’t know they were yours,” Tyler said in a scared voice. “I’m sorry.”

  Emma cut off this moving moment by grabbing Tyler’s arm and telling him again to get in the truck. The boy moved away from her grip and then walked to the truck, turning to face her before he got in.

  “You lied to me,” he said to his mother.

  Emma didn’t even bother looking at Cory as she got in, shut the door, and drove off.

  Cory could see the tears in her eyes.

  The truck drove off, leaving Cory standing there on the side of the street.

  Alone with hundreds of mementos from his youth that now meant absolutely nothing.

  He gets in the truck knowing he shouldn’t be behind the wheel. But knowing he shouldn’t do something has never stopped him before.

  He shouldn’t have left Emma behind when she told him the news.

  He shouldn’t have abandoned Tyler before he was even born.

  He shouldn’t have left in fear to follow his dreams while wrecking the dreams of so many others.

  Cory drives to the one place he can hide. The only place in this world that has ever really, truly suited him.

  Chapter Forty

  Foul Line

  On the drive home Emma didn’t say a word. She was angry at the situation, not at her son. She understood his need for answers—she would’ve been the same way. She also knew this wasn’t the place to explain things to him—in the shadows of the truck on the drive back home.

  Yet when she pulled into the driveway, Tyler was already half out the door before she had even finished parking. He bolted inside the front door and disappeared.

  For a moment Emma just sat there in the silence. For so long she had carried this around with her, like the wooden box of baseball cards Tyler had been carrying in his backpack. She didn’t know what it would be like, now that the secret was out and her backpack was empty.

  She prayed for guidance, for God to give her the right words to say, for patience and clarity.

  “God be with us,” she said as she walked into the house.


  She stepped through the open doorway and shut the door behind her.

  James was gone, and Cory had never been and would never be part of the picture. It was just the two of them, and now Tyler was furious with her.

  I was a kid once too, and I didn’t have anywhere to go.

  It had taken everything inside of her to leave Okmulgee and move to Claremore.

  It had taken even more for her to finally open up to the army private who won over her heart.

  Years later, she had to summon up the same courage to do it all over again after James was killed in Afghanistan. She made the decision for Tyler and her to move back to Okmulgee and start again just over a year ago.

  All these decisions she had made on her own.

  She heard something crashing in Tyler’s room. Rage spilling out and not knowing where to go.

  It’s time I started making Tyler a part of those decisions. He’s old enough to know some things. He’s old enough to help make decisions with me.

  Emma started up the stairs, knowing it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. But he deserved to know the truth about his fathers. The one who was wounded and died in a foreign land. And the one who was wounded and went out to live life in another foreign land.

  Both were gone forever.

  That was the only truth Emma knew and believed. The only truth she could share with Tyler.

  Cory sat in the shadows of the barn, one lone, cold light shining a bleak glare his way. He was drunk and couldn’t stop his mind from doing cartwheels in his head.

  Everything that had happened in his life, these awful and broken pieces following him into the woods like bread crumbs tossed by a child, paled in comparison to this moment. All the nightmares with his father. The guilt from leaving Emma and Tyler behind. The booze and the women and the constant grind. The emptiness creeping up on him in full stadiums. The death of his mother. The failure to make amends with his father. His banishment from the game. His booting from the Grizzlies.

  None of those things compared to this. To now. To the kid who had met him and idolized him and befriended him and then discovered the truth.

  Tyler’s real father wasn’t some hero kids looked up to.

  Tyler’s real father was a coward who had left the one kid he needed to be there for.

  The walls and the haunting draft inside the barn reminded Cory of all those times he’d felt confused and angry and in need. All he had ever wanted was a father who was there, who didn’t scare him. A father who acted like a father should and loved him.

  I’m no better than he was. In fact, I’m worse. Dad stayed around. I bailed.

  Everything in him was broken. Everything in him couldn’t ever be fixed.

  This whole world sucked you dry and then some and then tossed you out without a care.

  All people wanted was to take and take and take more. And they had done exactly that, and now there was nothing left to take.

  Nothing at all left to take.

  This feeling—the guilt and sadness and anger—felt like a blanket. Not one you’d put over a child to keep them warm at night, but the kind you’d put over someone’s head to smother them to death. The kind you’d put over a dead body on the side of the road to keep it from being viewed.

  Cory had done everything possible his own way—the good ole Cory Brand way—for thirty-three years.

  Thirty-three lonely, empty years.

  He couldn’t go on like this.

  Every time he closed his eyes he saw Tyler’s eyes staring back at him. Confused. Hurt. Totally disappointed.

  The sound of boots crunching the ground made Cory look up. He could see J. T. standing near the open door.

  “Got your message.”

  Cory just sat there, looking up at J. T. without knowing what to say.

  This man had been there the last two months, helping and guiding Cory, unasked. Cory had never been willing to let his pride go down and ask J. T. for his help.

  J. T. walked over and sat down next to Cory. He didn’t say a word, just looked ahead, patient as ever.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” The words leaked out of Cory. “I can’t stop. I can’t make myself stop.”

  Instead of a solution, or a quick fix, or a Bible verse, or a told-you-so, J. T. simply said, “I know.”

  Cory felt the tears hovering like grenades in his eyes. He fought crying like a baby but didn’t know what else to do. All this time, and all he’d seen and done …

  J. T. just sat next to him. Not giving him a brotherly pat on the back. Not sharing an anecdote.

  The guy was there at his side and let Cory take everything in.

  I need your help, God. ’Cause nobody’s gonna be able to do it if You can’t.

  He thought of his mother, could see her walking on this property and smiling at Clay and Cory playing or doing something stupid.

  Does she still see me? Is she still watching over me?

  Maybe she could put in a good word for him up there or wherever it was she was at.

  Cory needed help.

  Cory wanted help.

  The man next to him was silent, but in his head Cory could hear J. T. talking. He was remembering something J. T. had quoted when he gave his testimony to the crowd.

  “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

  Cory closed his eyes and let out a sigh.

  Help me to believe this. Help me to confess this.

  Help me, Lord.

  Baby steps. That’s the cliché of taking it easy or taking it slow or taking it one day at a time.

  Cory takes that first step and finally starts. He finally really, truly starts, even though he’s gone through all of this before.

  Lesson 1. Principle 1. Step 1.

  The words heard so many times now wrap themselves around him like a blanket. But this time it’s a baby’s blanket.

  He reads the verse from Romans in the worn-out booklet that has his messy handwriting all over its pages.

  “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

  He keeps reading and finally gets to the questions.

  He’s done faking it, just going through the motions.

  It’s time. It’s finally time.

  Cory answers the questions without being funny and without shading the truth.

  This is where it starts.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Grand Slam

  The sanctuary of the old church surely held a wealth of history and stories. The afternoon sun streamed through the tinted windows as the CR meeting began. J. T. stood in the front, holding a basket of blue chips. Cory sat in a pew close to the front. Next to him sat Clay and Karen.

  “The first chip is the most important, reminding us to surrender to Christ only,” J. T. said. “If you’ve identified a new area you’d like to surrender to Christ, or if you’ve relapsed and are coming back, we hope you’ll come forward and take a blue chip to remember this surrender date.”

  For Cory, it wasn’t about a new area.

  For Cory Brand, it was about the whole ship and every single area inside it. Every corner and crack and shadowy space.

  He felt more nervous standing now than he ever had standing at the plate, awaiting the pitch. This was more important and held far more implications.

  In light of the rest of time and eternity—yeah, this was pretty important.

  Cory stepped out and began walking toward his friend and sponsor. As he pulled out a blue chip from the basket, J. T. gave him a big hug.

  The kind a father might give his son.

  “
I’m proud of you,” J. T. whispered.

  Cory clutched the chip and sat back down next to Clay and Karen.

  He wasn’t alone anymore. And it wasn’t because of these people surrounding him, either.

  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change …

  Cory stood with the rest of the people at the CR meeting, reading the serenity prayer from his pamphlet. There were a hundred things he needed to do—no, make that a thousand—yet he knew he needed to take it easy.

  There were a lot of things in his life he couldn’t change.

  Emma and Tyler. The Grizzlies and Helene. Tomorrow and next month and next year.

  All I have is now.

  He knew he had to take it slow. And keep this prayer in the back of his mind.

  … courage to change the things I can …

  With his bags packed and ready to go, Cory had one more thing to do in this motel room. He couldn’t say he was going to miss this deathtrap inn or his holding cell in it, but he was going to miss the simple nature of living here without much. Wealth and belongings and busyness could keep your mind off the important things. This room had been the perfect place for Cory to remember and to find himself again.

  For God to find me and meet me halfway.

  He glanced at the Bulldogs roster he had taped to the wall, then pulled it down carefully and placed it in a bag.

  He was never going to forget the names on that roster.

  Never.

  … and the wisdom to know the difference.

  Cory had given Chad his loner truck back along with enough money to trade it in for a nicer one. Now he drove a car he’d purchased from J. T. The guy had practically given it away, but Cory had still insisted on giving him some money. He owed J. T. that much.

  As he drove out of Okmulgee with the sun just up, he passed the small bar where he’d tried to escape, the one where Tyler had found him. It was a reminder of all the unspoken words and undone things he was leaving behind.