TWO
I got ready for school one morning while Mom slept, which wasn’t anything new. I don’t resent her for not being up early, her apron stained from a home-cooked breakfast, buzzing around the kitchen like some caffeine-fueled hummingbird. She worked a lot and needed the rest, and fuck it, I was a big boy perfectly capable of pouring milk over a bowl of Captain Crunch.
She wasn’t a TV mom with kisses and baby talk—she was more like a rumor, a phantom, someone there but never quite there because of her work schedule, but whatever she was, I always had things to eat, the lights stayed on, we got air-conditioning in the summer and I had clothes without holes. All of these amenities made me upper class in Verner, Illinois, population 650.
Not to say our house was worth a shit. The ceiling had brown rings from water damage, discolored bull’s-eyes so you knew where to put the water buckets when clouds started gathering. For some reason I can’t explain, turning on the air conditioner while the water was running would send an electric current through all the water pipes. The paint on the siding was gray and bubbling, the concrete steps were split down the middle, with one side sinking. Ants and mice could not be denied entry. Mom and I often wore shoes in the house and I feared falling asleep on the floor while watching television.
Now that he could drive, Mack picked me up most mornings in his dad’s old Chevy. We nicknamed it “Old Gray.” He carried two gallons of water in the bed in case we overheated, which was roughly once a month, depending on the weather. I was nearing the end of my freshman year of high school, still without a girlfriend despite Mack’s pleas to be more confident and social.
First period was PE, but Mack and I never participated in the regular PE functions. The teacher, Mr. Gunther, was the baseball coach, and he allowed Mack to work out instead of playing dodge ball or floor hockey or whatever weird sport was lined up for the week. Even though I didn’t play on the baseball team, thanks to my Mack affiliation, I had the same permission to skip PE. We would go into the basement near the coach’s office and lift weights.
Well, I wouldn’t technically lift weights—I would spot Mack as he tried to bench press as much as possible. Benching was about the only exercise he ever did in the weight area, which wasn’t so much a weight area as it was a cold room with a concrete floor adorned by spiderwebs and murky, dust-slathered windows.
He’d bench-press a few sets and then we’d head upstairs onto the school stage, set up tees, and hit Wiffle balls into the curtain. He would whack them as hard as he could, pick them up, and hit them again. He never adjusted the tee or worked on hitting specific kinds of pitches.
I hit the Wiffle balls with him. We would hit in the near darkness, the only light a floor lamp behind us, making small talk between the tink-thump of an aluminum bat driving a plastic ball into a heavy curtain.
That morning, we didn’t talk for about ten swings, but I could tell he had something brewing in that devious brain.
“I talked to Jolynn about you last night,” he said. Jolynn was his flavor of the week, a lithe and freckled girl with black hair and an easy smile. Mack was rife with stories of her flexibility and wanton behavior in her parents’ camper.
“Not during the sex, I hope,” I said.
“I mentioned she should try to hook you up or something.”
I stopped hitting. I had no impression of my looks or reputation. I certainly didn’t trust my own perception; I had to rely on the opinions of others, and I never got those opinions, not even from Mack—he mostly talked about himself, but that was just the way he was.
I kept waiting. I didn’t know Jolynn aside from her smile and the sex stories. The comments he was about to share would be the unbiased verdict of my social status. He hit, picked up the ball, and hit again.
“Well?”
“Oh,” he said, stopping for a moment. “No dice, pretty much.” He set up the ball with a steady hand, ignoring me.
“What the hell, man?” I said. “Did she say anything specific?”
“No, dude. I mean, she called you ‘okay.’ That’s a nice way of saying she thinks you’re not ugly, but what does she or any other girl have to work with? You don’t talk to them. You basically hardwire your jaw shut around chicks. Seriously. Speak the fuck up and maybe they’ll know something about you other than your grade point average.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My bat felt like a weapon, lighter than normal, the grip soft in my palms as the barrel rested on my shoulder.
“It means you make good grades so you’re a fuckin’ dork. A nerd. You’re quiet, so that’s the way it’s gonna be until you break that shit up.”
“So I should fail classes to—”
“Fuck no, man. Hell no! I’m saying take a chance and speak up. Crack one of those sick-ass jokes you crack around me. You think I’ve been friends with you these last few years for you to help me with my homework? Well, you’re right. Kidding—no, you’re funny as fuck when you let loose, but you never let loose.”
I stood there, bat on shoulder, with nothing else to say. He picked up my ball from the tee and held it in his fingers, held it up to my face.
“You see this thing? I fucking dominate it because I swing hard. If I hit it, it’s gone. Fuckin’ gone.”
He put the ball on my tee. I didn’t like what he was saying, but the slivers of truth prickled me, pissing me off. For once, I swung hard, my teeth and hands cinched tight. I missed, striking the neck of the tee underneath. The tee toppled, rolling into the curtain. A hard vibration rattled through the aluminum bat, stinging my hands, and I flung it into the curtain. The ball landed in front of me, at my feet, going nowhere while Mack laughed his ass off.
“You never miss,” I said.
“I only batted .650 last year, so—”
“No, with girls. You’ve always got your pick of the litter. You never miss.”
He smiled and picked up my bat. “You never swing.”
* * *
After eating lunch, students gathered in the gymnasium. Clusters of like-minded and like-dressed students stood in circles or sat on the bleachers in groups that faced each other, their voices mixing in with the sound of basketballs thumping against the gym floor as pickup games spontaneously erupted.
Mack and I never subjected ourselves to the cliquish dynamics of lunch hour. Basketball was a distraction, according to Mack, so we gave it up to concentrate on baseball. So during lunch, we hit more Wiffle balls. Each thump would cause a wave in the curtain seen by a couple hundred high school kids, since the stage was the visual centerpiece of the gymnasium. For plays and graduations, the janitors just cranked up the basketball hoops and opened the curtain. I’m sure Mack enjoyed a public forum for something as mundane as practice, but no one could make fun of his obsessive hitting habits because they paid off in the form of massive home runs when most guys couldn’t two-hop the fence.
That day, we didn’t hit during lunchtime. Mack complained about sore pecs, so he pulled out a dollar bill and bought us a pair of strawberry Crush sodas, then we wandered into the gym, where he soaked up the female stares trained on his every move.
“I’m thinking I’m done with Jolynn,” he said. “And now I’m thinking about the twins.”
The Carpenters—twin girls, cheerleaders, with blue eyes that could wilt any adolescent boy. Perhaps the dust of memory makes me overstate them, but when I think of those eyes, I think of polished stones in a creek bed, the water cold and clear. Identical twins with no discernible difference, but it seemed to me that one of them, Regina, was more social than the other, always laughing and chatting it up with her girlfriends while Raeanna was always on the bleachers reading a paperback while her purse rested between her feet.
He guzzled his Crush and squeezed the can into an hourglass shape before I was half-done with mine. He belched. “I’m going to let you pick.”
“Pick what?” I asked.
“Whichever one you want.”
“I’ve never talked to either
one of them.” I paused, considering just what he was saying. “Why are you asking me this? You’re the one who should be picking.”
“I heard one of them likes you,” he said. “Just want to see if you can pick the one. See if it’s destiny.”
“I know you’re bullshitting. They don’t even know me.”
“It’s not about knowing you, man, you gotta learn this shit by now. You hang out with me, so you got this mysterious shit going on, don’t you get it? Use it!”
“What did you hear?”
He sat down on the empty bleachers at the end of the gym, shoulders slack, eased back, as if the school could burn down right that second and he’d just brush the ashes off his shoulder and ask who turned up the thermostat.
“One of them said you’re cute. You think they’re cute?”
“They’re beautiful,” I said.
“Fuckin’ pick one!”
“Regina,” I said, not knowing why, sealing my fate. She was the social one, but again, it didn’t matter. They may as well have been unicorns.
“Bingo.”
“You’re lying,” I said, not looking at him but looking at Regina. She was in an animated conversation among that huddled circle of gossiping girls that has always existed, from the playground to high school and then into the adult world somewhere, a lunch table or water cooler or beauty salon.
I could see those damn eyes from across the gym. She had rosy cheeks without the bumps and crags of teenage skin, chestnut hair that was shoulder length, teased up, curving into her ears and neck. She wore a wide-collared sweater, revealing naked handles of collarbone. Sometimes during lunch hour, she would practice with her cheerleading friends. She could jump and backflip, handstand and toss, her legs and calves hard with corded muscle. She was beautiful in that perfect way a girl is beautiful when you can’t ever imagine talking to her.
“So if you want to make this happen, first, you let me—” Mack began, but I walked away from him midsentence and headed for Regina. Let me, he said, as usual, but something like this, I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t stop him either. I had one chance to take this one for myself, before he railroaded me into something embarrassing. I was still suspicious that the girl even knew who the hell I was. Mack could have picked a name from a hat at random, manufacturing a story to get me into the mix, a grand experiment to see if his machismo would turn me into a desirable commodity, like some testosterone-laced pixie dust.
Mack grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t get all macho and blow this, you gotta be a surgeon to get her away from those other girls. It’s like she’s a tumor and you’re a doctor, and she’s surrounded by all this delicate tissue that fuckin’ hates that you’re trying to talk to her. I don’t even screw with the girl herds, man, so think about this. If you want to swing for the fences, at least wait for a fat pitch.”
“I have to say something,” I said. “Otherwise, today’s just another day of hitting Wiffle balls and making good grades.”
He looked at me for a moment and I gave him a sly smile. He nodded and took his hand off my shoulder. “Make a joke, man,” he said. “Give her some of that funny Sampsonite shit.”
I walked up to the girls and saw that they had eager smiles on their faces. They didn’t look at me—instead, they giggled or looked down at their feet or pretended to dig in their purses. All except Raeanna. I didn’t notice her until then. She sat on the highest bleacher, behind all of them. No girls were next to her. She looked at me with the same startling eyes as her sister, peering over her romance novel, A Rose at Sunset, complete with a sun-bronzed cowboy, shirtless, on a horse. I couldn’t hold her gaze, tucking my hands in my pockets, glancing down and saying, “Regina,” as if to start a sentence. I don’t remember what I meant to say, but the minute I said her name, every other face deflated. Maybe she really did think I was cute. Maybe they all did.
That misconception was warm while it lasted, but it didn’t last long.
“I hope this is good news,” she said.
“I guess it depends,” I said, stalling, not knowing what she was talking about.
“Well? Did he send you over?” she said, stressing the he in such a way that meant Mack. Hence the busted smiles from the rest of them. But screw it, I was all in.
“No, but we were talking about you because I think you’re absolutely beautiful, and even though I don’t say much to many girls around here, it’s not because I’m shy or nerdy or anything like that, it’s just that you’re the first girl I’ve ever thought was really worth saying something to.”
The rest of the girls giggled at this, and I couldn’t stop the red from flooding my face, the hot pinpricks of embarrassment swelling in my cheeks, but I kept looking at her and only her because I knew she liked what I said. But Mack was right. Her friends were there.
“Sorry, but you’re wasting your time.”
I stood there and took the full brunt of it. The other girls kept laughing—except Raeanna. She bent a sympathetic wince into a half smile and I almost cried. I just shrugged and told Regina, “Well, I still mean it. It would just be nice to talk to you more, but I understand what you all must think of me.”
With that, I walked away, enduring the catcalls of “Crash and burn!” and “Return to sender!” but I kept my head up, battling the urge to sob that built in the upper parts of my lungs, rising up through me and knocking at my eyes. I saw the curtain ripple as a ball struck it from behind the stage, and knew where Mack was, but instead of going to join him, I slipped into the empty boys’ locker room. I cranked the plastic lever on the towel dispenser, plucking two fistfuls of rough, brown paper, then sat in a stall and cried them wet.
THREE
As a freshman, Mack was by far the best player on the team and the upperclassmen hated him for it, at least at first. He could crack eighty miles an hour with his fastball and he also had a wicked slider and knuckleball that I’d seen in my backyard hundreds of times. I always hit him rather well, figuring he was taking it easy on me, but for everyone else in the conference, the task was about as impossible as it was to keep him off base. The first game of his career was against the conference champions, a powerhouse team, the Brownstown Bombers. They had a senior-stacked lineup that was poised to repeat their domination. Then Mack happened. He allowed one hit, struck out a dozen, and went five-for-five with two jacks in a blowout win.
Once it was clear that Mack was the key to getting that elusive trophy, the hazing and jealousy started to soften. He was the only freshman invited to parties I didn’t want to attend in the first place, and I regularly turned them down even though he tried like hell to get me to go. The one time I did tag along, it was me, Mack, Guy Cain, and Kevin Braddy piled into the back of Clint Phillips’s truck. I had no idea what we were headed out to do that night. We sailed along black country roads. We drank beers on an abandoned bridge. Guy and Kevin were seniors, and I could tell that they were cool with Mack, and suffered his alpha-male bravado with the same casual distance I’d achieved over the years. Clint though, was something else. He was a cold, leering hombre, and while the others had come to terms with the talent gap between Mack and themselves, Clint was conceding nothing. He only chimed in to minimize Mack’s accomplishments—if Mack recounted how he approached an at-bat that resulted in a homer, Clint would quickly counter with “Wind was blowing out, though.” I didn’t think Mack had it in him to brush it off, but he always did—probably because fighting meant missing baseball games.
When we were done with the beers, I was told that the loose baseball bats in the back of the truck were for that grand backwoods tradition of bashing mailboxes. I’d like to say that I was mature enough to not enjoy the fuck out of it, but it was fun as hell. I found something therapeutic and hilarious about watching a mailbox crinkle and dent in the floodlights of Clint’s pickup.
Mack, of course, took it a step too far. He urged us all to “watch this shit.” He took the gas can out of Clint’s trunk and doused a sturdy-looking Rubbermaid mailbox w
ith a few splashes. Then, he lit it on fire. He had a lighter on him but didn’t smoke—I guess he’d planned this ahead of time to impress the seniors. He started whaling on the mailbox, but not with the full brunt of his strength. I could tell he was waiting for something—and that thing turned out to be the owner of the house. L. Lewis, according to the letters on the box.
The screen door opened and the laughter stopped. A deep voice hollered, “What the fuck you sons of bitches doing out there!”
“Your mailbox is on fire!” Mack screamed. “I’m trying to put the motherfucker out!”
With his obviously rehearsed line out of the way, he jumped into the bed of the truck. Clint didn’t hit the gas. “Come on, man!” Kevin yelled, smashing his palm into the rear-window glass. L. Lewis got closer. He had a shotgun in his hands. Everyone was pleading with Clint to drive. The dome light was ticked on, and I saw him in the rearview mirror. I saw the glee in his face, letting the situation unravel to the point of desperation. Lewis fired the shotgun, and I’m still not sure if it was rock salt or the pellets from a shell that hit the side of the truck, but the sound was thunderous and everyone sank into the gritty bed of the truck, the swill of beer and rainwater flowing in the little channels of the plastic bed liner. I was down there with everyone. I heard Kevin crying. Guy screamed until his voice was hoarse. Mack grabbed me by the arm. “We gotta run for it,” he said, and we both scrambled to jump out of the truck when Clint mercifully slammed the accelerator. The tires sprayed gravel and the back of the truck fishtailed, but once the tread bit down on the street, we blasted off, the engine screaming.
We stopped in the grain-elevator parking lot where we originally met. Clint got out, his eyes watering from wicked, ugly laughter. He could barely seem to catch his breath. Mack pinned him by the neck against the side of the truck, his right fist coiled, his knuckles trembling.
“Let him go,” I said. I knew what the price was if he hit him.
The Heart Does Not Grow Back Page 2