Summer Swing

by Delia Delaney

  Around eleven-thirty I got a call from the reception desk.

  “Ellie,” Beth said in a low voice. “There’s a guy out here that’s kinda rough looking, but super hot at the same time. You sure you want me to trade the keys, or can I tie him up in the closet?”

  With a smile I said, “Actually, tell him I’m on my way out.”

  I hung up the phone without waiting for a response and made my way down the halls. Tyse was standing near the door, almost like he was going to run from Beth at any second.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey. Uh, is there a problem?”

  “Problem?”

  “Yeah, why’d she have to call you?”

  “Because I asked her to. I wanted to know when you got here so I could pay you.”

  He shook his head, but I was retrieving his keys from Beth as she stared at us at the same time. I was sure she had already undressed him with her eyes, but before she could do anymore damage, I led Tyse outside and we traded keys.

  “It hardly took any time at all, so don’t worry about it,” he said when I asked him how much.

  “Where’d you take it? Because the last time I took my car in for ‘standard maintenance,’ it ended up costing me a lot more than I was expecting. I mean I’ll pay you whatever it cost—”

  “I did it myself, Ellie. It’s no big deal.”

  “Wh- what? You put in a new, uh, what was it again?”

  “Fuel pump,” he partially smiled.

  “Oh. I didn’t realize you were so…mechanically, uh, gifted.”

  He chuckled. “Gifted. I like it.”

  “Well jeez, Tyse. I feel very indebted to you. How much was the, uh, pump thing, and how long did it take you? I want to pay you for your time—”

  “No worries. The pump wasn’t a big deal, and I enjoyed listening to your music while I did it. It was a fair trade.”

  “My music?” I tried to think of what I had playing in my car at the time, but I couldn’t remember. “A fair trade? Well just tell me how much a fuel thingy is.”

  He sighed. “A dollar.”

  I snorted. “Right.” I pushed open the door to the building and asked, “Beth, will you look up how much a fuel pump costs for my car?”

  “Sure thing,” she smiled, already typing away at the computer.

  “Why does it matter?” Tyse asked me.

  “Because I told you I’d pay you for it.”

  “No, you agreed to ‘paying me later,’ but we never established what exactly that payment was going to be. I don’t really want your twenty bucks.”

  “Around twenty bucks,” Beth said from the desk.

  I let the door close again and faced Tyse. I began walking across the parking lot and motioned for him to go with me. “Payment, huh? What exactly does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t want anything from you, but I know the type of person you are, and you’re going to pay me back somehow anyway. I’m sure I’d love anything coming from you, but I actually have something else in mind.”

  “Oh?”

  He smiled. “You seem a little worried. Surely you don’t think I’d request anything inappropriate from you.”

  “No, I just… I don’t know. What is it that you want?”

  “I’d just like you to come to another game. One I’m pitching in.”

  “Your suspension is over?” I was really happy to hear that news.

  “Yeah, but I won’t admit the reason why.”

  I sighed. “Because Gage isn’t around. Yeah, I understand.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked, looking up and down the street we were about to cross.

  “I’m starving. I can’t go very long without food, so I hope you’re hungry too because I’m buying. And no objections.”

  He held his hands out. “Okay, okay. So that takes care of the fuel pump because I eat a lot.”

  With a smile I said, “That’s fine by me.”

  “So since that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the rest of it.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “The rest of it?”

  “Mm-hmm. I gave you a couple hours of my time, so I’d like a couple hours of your time in return. One of my games?”

  “Oh. Seriously? You only want me to watch you pitch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well… Sure. I’d love to.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  He shrugged. “Just thought baseball might not be in your interest anymore.”

  “Because of Gage? Well yeah, it might be weird to be there when he isn’t, but I would go. When are you scheduled to pitch again?”

  “Saturday. Tomorrow. We have a double header, but I’m pitching the first game at noon.”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, I can’t make that one. Today I’m headed down to see Gage after work. I’ll be gone until Sunday.”

  We were just entering one of my favorite café’s when he said, “Oh. Sure, that’s fine.”

  “When will your next pitching game be?”

  “Uh, Wednesday, I think. But…we’re out of town, so I don’t expect you to go to that one.”

  “Okay, but I will make one. I promise.”

  He barely nodded. “All right.”

  I studied him just slightly as we sat down in a booth. He was wearing a pair of really worn jeans and a gray t-shirt. When he sat down he put his forearms on the table and I could see just the bottom edge of the tattoo on his upper left arm.

  “So I didn’t realize you had such an exciting first date with Gage,” he said as he looked over a menu. He glanced at me raising my eyebrows at him. “Yeah, I listened to your show this morning. It was pretty entertaining.”

  “The show in general, or the fact that Gage was doped up for most of our date?”

  He laughed. “Nah, that wasn’t it. The funny part was listening to you talk. The way you story tell is kind of…amusing. You’re really good at it.”

  With a smile I replied, “Well thank you.”

  “I think you’re a lot more interesting than that one lady… What’s her name?”

  “Uh, Amy?”

  “Yeah. She’s boring.”

  I laughed. “That’s just the balance of their show. Ken and Jack are the voices of the show; Amy’s kind of the extra hand. You know, the female that has to keep everyone on task? She’s also there to kind of cater to the listeners that have things in common with her—spouses and kids.”

  “Yeah, but the other guys have kids, too. I don’t know, I just don’t think she ever says anything worth listening to.”

  “Ever? You mean you’ve listened to the show more than once?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been listening. But it kind of sucks that I have to listen for a while just to find out if you’re going to be on or not. It’d be easier if you just told me.”

  I smiled, feeling pleased that he was interested in my job. “I know, it varies. Next week is Monday and Thursday, I think.”

  “Monday and Thursday,” he murmured, logging it into his head.

  The waitress took our order, and when she left, I asked Tyse, “So what were you up to all night? You roll in at five-thirty on a Friday morning? You must have had a fun night,” I added, taking a sip of my water.

  He didn’t respond at first. Maybe it wasn’t in his interest to share his partying stories with me. “I wasn’t out all night,” he finally said. “We do have a midnight curfew, you know.”

  “Ah, yes, which kind of made me wonder if I’m supposed to tell on you. Isn’t Wyatt in charge of keeping you guys in line?”

  He slightly smiled. “Wyatt doesn’t really give a crap what we do. I mean he’s what, twenty-four? He’s just one of the guys.”

  I nodded. “True. So I guess you guys basically get to do what you want, huh?”

  He eyed me carefully. “I don’t break the rules, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “I’m not implying anything. This morning you said you just got home. I kind of assumed t
hat meant you’d been, you know, gone.”

  Again he took his time, and while he stared out the window to the street, I wondered if he was ever going to answer me.

  “I have a job,” he finally said. “I usually go to bed as early as I can because I get up at three and go to work for a few hours. I got done early this morning, so I was home at five-thirty instead of seven.”

  Now that was a shocker. With morning practices, afternoon and evening games, how could any of the guys work a job, too?

  “Where do you work?” I asked.

  “Fenley’s Nursery. It’s mainly just manual labor—unloading trucks, or loading them for delivery. It’s pretty much the only thing I can do around all the baseball hours, and it’s a good way to fit in a small workout.”

  “Do you work with lavender?” I asked.

  “Lavender? Uh, yeah this morning we shipped off a load. Why?”

  “Your truck smelled like lavender.”

  “Oh,” he smiled. “Yeah, I think it smelled like junipers last week. Not my favorite smell.”

  I studied him for a few seconds while he looked out the window again. If he had to land a job while he was up here playing summer baseball, then I had to assume he struggled financially. It made me feel bad about not paying him for working on my car. I wanted to ask him about it, maybe to see if he could use some help with money, but I knew I just didn’t have the courage.

  “So don’t you guys have to be enrolled in a college to play in this league for the summer?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “So what college do you go to?”

  “Uh, right now I’m at San Diego Mesa.”

  “Right now? Do you have plans to transfer somewhere?”

  “Uh no, not really. I’m just going into my second year.” He decided to add, “Yeah, I’m twenty-two and just finally getting some college in.”

  I knew why, but I said, “Better late than never. I wasn’t even going to go to college at first because I started working at the radio station when I was a senior in high school. I thought, ‘Hey, I’m already here, I can just work my way up.’ In a way I think I might have, but I was basically stuck working just on the weekends, and it wasn’t really anything that even excited me. So I got back on track and registered for college. Of course that’s when I started getting more hours at the station,” I smiled. “So I ended up going to school for half the day, and working the other half of the day. It was kind of tiring. I’m glad to be done with swinging both.”

  “You’re not going to continue on with school?”

  “I was going to transfer to Portland State, but now I don’t really see the need to. I might keep taking credits, and maybe eventually I’ll get a Bachelor’s degree, but for now I like working.”

  He barely nodded. “And you’ve got Gage, so that takes up some time.”

  I smiled, but the truth was that I couldn’t spend any time with Gage right now. He was almost five hours away. I still thought about him constantly, and talked to him on the phone when I could, but so far “long-distance relationship” was an unpleasant phrase to me.

  “What about you?” I asked. “What are your plans? You know for school or a career or whatever.”

  He was quiet for a few seconds before he replied, “Well, for me it’s just kind of a wait-and-see process. As long as I can pay for college I guess I’ll go, but as for my future, I don’t really know.”

  “Uh, you don’t have, uh, parents that can help with college or…?” I wasn’t sure how to ask it, but that was the best I could do.

  He paused. “Mmm, that’s not really an option. My parents are…unable to support me right now.”

  I nodded, feeling bad that my suspicions about his financial situation were correct. “Well isn’t it more expensive to live in California?” I asked. “What if you went to school somewhere else that was more affordable? Maybe you should just stay up here,” I smiled.

  “Hm, it’s probably not an option, either,” he barely smiled back. “Although it has been cheaper to live up here this summer.”

  “What are you studying in school? If you were to get a degree, what would it be in?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.”

  “Well what are you shooting for? What would you like to do with your education?”

  He didn’t answer at first, but while the waitress brought our lunch, I continued to wait for his reply. Finally he said, “I’m not really sure if it would work out, so I’m not even gonna think about it.”

  “Think about what? If there’s a goal you have in mind then you probably shouldn’t put off working towards it. Thinking about it is half the battle.”

  He looked at me with a smile and then chuckled. “Maybe your morning show should guest you as an inspirational speaker.”

  “Maybe so. Would you take my advice if I gave it?”

  “Maybe.”

  We spent a minute eating our lunch, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Tyse’s background and what it meant for his future. Despite his tough appearance, I felt a very peaceful feeling whenever I was with him. He seemed to put me at ease because there were no pretenses, no awkward vibes between us. He was just a guy with a different personal history than me, and I felt the need to help him out because we had become friends.

  “So tell me about your career goal,” I said after a while. “What is it that Tyse Morgan would like to do with his life?”

  He slightly shook his head with a smile, implying that he didn’t want to share.

  “Is it baseball?” I asked. “Do you want to play in the majors? It kind of seems to be a goal for a lot of guys, so it’s not that surprising. And a business degree or something would probably be a great thing to have for it.”

  “Uh, probably not an option for me.”

  “How come?”

  He shrugged. “I just don’t have the odds in my favor.”

  “What kind of odds? Because I think you’re good enough to work your way there, Tyse.”

  He took a drink of water and then sat back a little in his seat. He crossed his arms over his chest and sighed, and at first I thought he was annoyed with me. But he turned his attention to the window again, maybe to avoid looking at me.

  “I have a criminal background, Ellie. Scouts don’t seem to be too thrilled with the fact that I’ve served time.” He finally looked at me again and leaned onto the table. “I’ve spent fourteen months behind bars, which is why I’m kind of behind on the whole college thing.”

  I wasn’t surprised with the news because I already knew, but I was surprised that he’d actually shared it with me. I took a drink of water to gather my thoughts, but I didn’t really know what else to say except, “Why?”

  “Why did I serve time? Well I guess I could pad the story for a while, but I’ll just get to the bottom line: I killed someone.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  My heart almost stopped, and just hearing him say that made me lose my appetite. I put down my fork and took a silent breath of air.

  “I’m sure there’s more to it than just, ‘I killed someone,’ ” I said a bit haughtily. I guess it was just the fact that I couldn’t believe he was actually capable of such a thing.

  He shrugged. “Of course there’s more to it. There’s the version that the courts came up with, and then there’s the truth. But the bottom line is that it really did happen, I got convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and got slapped with an eighteen-month sentence.”

  “Involuntary manslaughter is not the same as just going out and killing someone, Tyse. It means that someone got killed unintentionally because of something you did.”

  “Well it started out that way, but eventually it became intentional.”

  I wasn’t sure how long he was going to be so vague, but I figured that since we were on the subject, and he had brought it up, I wanted him to tell me more.

  “So tell me the story.”

  He sighed. “Don’t you have to get back to work? See, this is why I didn’t want to brin
g up the whole ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ deal. My case is a little different, so I can’t just answer the simple questions. I suppose I could just lie, and that would probably be easier, but…” He sighed again and looked me in the eyes. “I can’t lie to you, Ellie. I just… I am who I am, and there’s no getting around that. I wouldn’t even know who else to be.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just sat there for almost a minute. I glanced out the window when he did, and when he looked at me again, I returned the attention.

  “You know Nate, right?” he began. “The guy that brought me up here?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll spare you the details of how I became friends with Nate because that’s a story in and of itself, but he took me in when I was really struggling, and he helped me out a lot. But Nate has a little sister. Lindsey. She’s pretty much the only family Nate has, so they’ve always been really close. Anyway, one night Nate and I and a couple of other guys are just hanging out at someone’s house, playing pool and stuff. Nate gets a call from his sister and she’s in near hysterics, crying about some guy. Nate finally gets her to calm down and finds out she’d been raped by a guy at a party. Of course that’s all it took to set Nate off, so he takes off to go get his little sister. But I decided that I should probably go with him, to keep him under control. It was just one bad choice after another, and my initial response of letting the cops handle it was shot down pretty quickly because Nate wanted to handle it himself. Lindsey didn’t want the police involved, either.

  “So we get to this house— And you’ve seen Nate, right? Imagine that barreling into your house full of fury. Most of the people scattered, but Nate only had one person on his mind to find, so when he does, all hell breaks loose. Lindsey had been sitting on the curb when we got there, so I just sat there with her at first. But after hearing this massive brawl going on inside the house—yelling and things breaking—I was afraid it was gonna get out of control so I wanted to get Nate out of there. I didn’t know what had happened to Nate at the time, but this guy that he went there for, Dallas Flynn, comes busting out the front door, yelling and swearing at Lindsey, and calling her all kinds of names. I had to stop him from even getting close to her, so we ended up fighting out on the front lawn. He pulled a knife on me and…” He slightly shrugged. “I ended up killing him. And that’s when the police showed up.”