“What is this place?” Becky said, wading through and following Danny in toward the backstop.
“Just a place,” he said innocently. Then he stopped where home plate would have been. “But it’s the place where we can push the rules.” He turned. “You ready?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Then say it.”
“Say what?” she said. “Strike one?”
“No, silly. It has to be the magic word.”
“And that is?”
He grinned at her in the semi-darkness.
“Lamp post.”
“Ha ha.”
“Not kidding. Go ahead and try it.”
Becky rolled her eyes, but he wasn’t laughing. And since the last thing she wanted was to come off exasperated, she gave in and muttered,
“Lamp post, all right?”
A sudden brilliant light kicked on from nowhere, and Becky squealed, shielding her eyes and trying not to trip over her own feet as she backpedaled a bit. She blinked a few times and then dropped her hand from her forehead, turning slowly, mouth falling ajar.
There was no more fern, no more vines, no briars or prickers or overgrowth. The baseball field was absolutely pristine now, white chalk lines running down the first and third baselines all the way to a gleaming fence marked 330 in left, 404 in center and 328 in deep right. The scoreboard was old-school but in mint condition, bulb lights blazing, bugs flying into them in swarms, and the infield dirt was a fine golden brown set in perfect contrast to the cropped green grass surrounding the pitcher’s mound.
“How did you do this?” Becky said.
“How does anyone do anything? I mean, it’s still just a ball field. Same as it always was, but better.” He was standing in a chalk circle on the first base side now, and there was a bat in his hands. He was also wearing a red helmet, and Becky thought his face looked exceptionally handsome framed by the visor and ear flaps. She moved toward the pitcher’s mound.
“No,” Danny said. “Not yet. Not that way.”
“What?” she said. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” he said, “but you’ve gotta make your entrance.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean,” he said, “is that I’m in the batter’s box, it’s the bottom of the seventh, my team is down by a run, there’s one out, and a man on first. Your lefty threw every piece of junk that he had just to keep it close, and now you’re called in for one purpose, and one purpose only.”
“To mow you down in three pitches,” she whispered.
His eyes gleamed.
“Right, but there’s a ritual. Go ahead, go over to the bench there behind the fence on the visitor’s side and sit, like you haven’t been called into the game yet.”
She walked around the fence by the third base coach’s box, not surprised in the least to see a ball, glove, and hat waiting there for her on the hard wood. She bent to try on the glove and Danny’s voice stopped her.
“No! Not yet!”
She put her hands up in a surrender posture and held there.
“Sit,” he said.
She pivoted around and sat.
“Now reach for the hat.”
She reached. It was not a Rutledge hat, but a black one with no insignia. She turned it over once, and Danny’s voice rang out across the diamond.
“Now throw your head forward so all that hair comes down over your face, then whip it back up over the top in a cascade.”
A bit embarrassed now, Becky spread her feet, arched them on the toes, and then did the hair flip, down and back up and over, thinking this was an odd time for Danny to be kinky. Would he want her to purse her lips after this? Get all pouty and sexy? The last thing she thought he wanted was some glamour-diva. Her hair settled behind her, and Danny’s voice was anything but sexy. It was choked now, like he was working through some strange sort of emotion there in the on-deck circle.
“That’s right,” he said. “Now gather it and put it through the hole in the hat, bringing the brim forward hard, like you’re ready.” He paused while she did it. “Good, now push up and come around the fence. No, slower! Shoulders back, like you’re a warrior-god, that’s right, and now do the ball trick.”
Becky approached the mound like she had done in the gym, a cold anger in her step, ball resting on the back of her knuckles. Then she began flipping it to the different grips with total intimidation and absolute confidence: four seam, cutter, slider, curve…Vulcan change, sinker, splitter, slurve, and Danny was there in the on-deck circle taking warm up swings, face gleaming wet with strange tears.
“Now take the mound,” he said, “and call it out like you did in the gym. Tell your catcher you don’t need any warm up pitches, go ahead, say it!”
“I don’t need any warm-up pitches,” she said.
“Louder! Like you mean it!”
“I don’t need any stinkin’ warm ups!” she shouted, face hot, hands itching. “Now get in the box!”
Danny strode to the batter’s box, breath hitching in his chest a bit, eyes wide and red with emotion. Whatever he’d been going through, however, blew off like smoke, and his expression became one of fierce concentration. He set up, and behind him there was a black dot, like a catcher’s mitt for a reference point, and Becky thought four seam and went into her wind-up.
While she was spreading and stepping, she saw Danny rocking back in rhythm with her, locked in and loaded, and when the ball exploded out of her hand she knew somehow that she’d broken a hundred miles per hour.
The ball knifed through the air, and Danny swung, and there was contact, a smash, a high line drive straight to center field that banged off the scoreboard, sending up a dramatic burst of sparks and bulb glass.
“Gosh,” Becky muttered. Her shoulders slumped a bit, and she turned back.
Danny was smiling like the five-year-old under the lamp light.
“You really think you’d get ahead of me first-ball-fast-ball right down the middle? That the best you got, Michigan?”
She bit her lip, half laughing, half miffed. She set then, knowing somehow that he was expecting slider away, then quickly deciding to go fastball right in the same place. She’d blow it right by him.
She wound up, bent her back, snapped her hips and fired. Danny adjusted immediately and whacked a low line drive over the fence in right center.
She tried her cutter high and in, and he roped it down the left field line. She dropped her splitter nice and heavy, and he golfed it over the fence in deep right. Her Vulcan change was executed with perfection, slow as molasses out of a fastball motion, then exploding down and in at the plate, but like a hero in a trench, Danny followed it, timed it, and smacked it sky-high, bouncing it off the left field foul pole.
Becky’s forehead and neck were slick with her effort, and she ground her back teeth with determination. Each time the ball was hit out of the park, a new one appeared at the top of the mound, and she turned this one in her glove, forming equations, doing the math. Every pitch, he was one step ahead of her, out-guessing what was to come, seemingly predicting what she predicted he wouldn’t expect like he had some universal cheat-sheet.
She put the ball in her sinker grip and sold out, totally. It was the last place she would go in any guessing game, especially since he was so good at hitting the low stuff.
The ball spun heavy out of her hand, and he swung, fouling it back. His mouth came open and he shut it quick. He looked at Becky and made a motion like he was tipping his cap.
“Okay,” he said. “Now let’s see you do that again.”
Becky reared back and threw a fastball. Danny swung and hit the ball so hard it echoed. It was one of those long flies that went so high and so far it nearly broke your heart, and it went fifty feet over the scoreboard and at least twenty feet over the trees. A few seconds later, Becky could have sworn she heard breaking glass, but couldn’t imagine what he could have hit that far into the forest.
She turned and saw Danny run
ning the bases, jogging out his home run, living his dream as if there were thunderous cheers in his head.
When he crossed home plate, she jogged down the mound to embrace him, to hold him, to show how proud she was of him, and how much she loved being a part of his moment.
But he kept on running straight past her to the center field fence, and he called over his shoulder that she had to follow him now.
“Where?” she said, falling in step, pushing hard to catch up.
“To find that ball!” he said. “I think it might be a record!”
They had to climb a scraggly hill that actually had root clusters they needed to use as foot holds like an unrolled flap of Marine Corps rope netting. There was a short rock face to scale, a path between an odd cluster of birches that went for about fifty feet, and next, a piece of ancient wooden fencing to climb through. Then the foliage opened out to a glen of sorts, and Becky gasped.
There, in the semi-dark of the wood, was a dilapidated farm house with moss and ivy spreading up from its base, the barn doors warped and splintered. There were shingles missing from the thatched roof, and weeds surrounding the hitching post to the side. It was Becky’s doodle to a tee, the window with the broken shutter busted with a small circular hole in the bottom left pane, cracks spidered around it.
“I…” Becky said. “I’ve been drawing this since I was little.” Danny went to the doors and pulled one of them open with a rusty squawk.
“I know,” he said. “I’ve been dreaming of hitting one through that window for as long as I can remember. Com’on.”
She followed him into the dark space, the smell of wet hay and old sawdust heavy in the air. She felt in front of her, despite Danny’s faint image a few feet ahead, and she shuffled her feet, wary of stepping on the business end of some pitchfork or hoe. At the back corner of the space, she followed him up a rickety ladder, and then lost him there on the second floor for a second. But Danny was to the far right by the window, picking up the ball, blowing off the glass shards.
“Five-sixty,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Five-hundred-and-sixty feet. A record.”
“Congratulations,” Becky said. She creaked across the floor, placed her palms on his shoulders, turned him, and slid her arms along his collar bones. She tilted her face, bent in, and kissed him.
It was electric and hot, and he dropped the ball. His arms were around her then, and they pressed themselves together, making shapes in the dark. It was long and deep and involved, and when they broke the embrace, they both stepped back and looked at each other, stunned. Their breathing sounded heavy in the enclosed space.
“That was my first kiss,” Becky said.
“Mine too.”
“I liked it, Danny. I liked it a lot.”
“Same. But Becky, there’s more here. That kiss just brought us to the second phase of this thing.”
She laughed.
“Strike two, you mean?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
Becky was still feeling giddy, but something in his voice made her smile wither. The mood had changed, she could feel it.
“What?” she said.
He put his hands in his pockets and turned half away from her. His head was titled down, and he spoke at the floor.
“Strike two is where we bend the rules we just pushed. And sometimes, when you bend something too far, it snaps back like whiplash, leaving a mark.”
“Like a welt or a bruise on your arm?”
“On your soul.”
“You’re scaring me.”
He looked up.
“Wrong emotion, Becky Michigan. Get ready for another vision, one that ain’t gonna come from a lamp post.”
She carefully moved her hair behind one ear, then the other, and tried not to let her voice tremble.
“What am I going to see, Danny?”
He glanced up at her, eyes filled.
“You’re going back to the field we just played on, Becky. You’re going back in time to see how I died.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Becky Michigan was indeed projected inside a human host this time, and he was Danny’s father, Anthony Tarragna, thirty-three years old, and he was coaching third base. He’d gotten out of work early, and the gang had cheered as he walked through the phone tank: salesman, managers, and receptionists, everyone on the floor putting their receivers on their shoulders and applauding, because this was the day, the big day he’d been waiting for, and even though it was just a fall ball scrimmage, they knew it was today or bust, and that opportunities like this didn’t come around all too often.
And Becky didn’t just know things about Anthony Tarragna, but she knew things as Anthony Tarragna, like the fact that he had lower back pain that he refused to medicate because he just didn’t believe in that stuff, and that the back left tire on the Mazda looked low this morning. Becky knew he was late on a mortgage payment, that he wanted to quit smoking, and that deep in the back of his mind, he wanted to buy Donna something just for the heck of it, but most of all, Becky knew that he was annoyed with the scoreboard.
New-fangled technology. Why couldn’t they use the slot cards like they were supposed to? Bulb lights? What would they think of next? Couldn’t they see that it was in the batter’s sightline? What about glare and after-image?
Becky registered the score through Anthony Tarragna’s critical, squinting eyes, and saw that it was the seventh inning, last ups, Home two, Visitors three with one out, and then everything came to her in a horrible rush, Tarragna’s consciousness and her awareness inside it merging in a cold acknowledgement of time and of place. This was the “magic” field overrun by the advance of the forest, and it was pristine and anything but magic, because it had just been built, and the scoreboard was ‘new-fangled’ because it was 1978, and this game was a showcase, set-up by hundreds of phone calls and letters, newspaper clippings and score sheets, all filled with numbers and statistics sent out by Anthony Tarragna to countless organizations connected with major league baseball, claiming that not only was his fifteen-year-old son, Danny Tarragna, the best hitter in Southeastern Pennsylvania, but a prodigy that was going to change the game. And even though his boy was in ninth grade, he was worth seeing now, and Anthony Tarragna had built up the hype, slowly and methodically, finally catching the interest of some bigwigs out of state, and this was his one chance to prove things.
Tarragna turned toward the wooden fan bleachers behind the player’s benches and gave a tight grin. It was a circus back there: three hundred people at least, crammed into the sitting area and spilling into the dirt lot where folks had driven in and set up shop, a number of them sitting in lawn chairs propped in the back beds of their pickup trucks. There were kids riding bikes with cards in the spokes and girls in groups playing patty-cake. The air was sharp and crisp, and there was the smoky tang of barbecue in the breeze, as the Rutledge P.T.A. had firewood burning in three fifty-gallon drums cut down the middle and laid down sideways to cook burgers and dogs and brats and ribs. Oh, this was a carnival, but Anthony Tarragna didn’t really care so much about the kids or the cars or the bikes or the burgers. Mostly, he was aware of the guy sitting behind home plate, up on the second row of the bleachers, with his cigar and his speed gun.
His name was Marty Frick, and he was a scout for the Cleveland Indians. He was new with the organization but a visionary, firmly believing in farming talent early, and his interest in Danny had been promising.
Still, it hadn’t turned out to be the best platform for showing Danny’s talents. Of course, the kid had gone three for three, hitting better than any of his team mates with two line doubles and a homer, but the pitching on the other side had been rather average.
Anthony and Danny’s junior high school coach Eddie Hanrahan—back in the ’70’s you didn’t hit high school until the tenth grade—had scraped this game together at the last minute when they’d found out Frick was flying in to the Philadelphia area on other busines
s, and the best they could put up against their ninth grade varsity squad was this A.A.U. team based out of Delaware, supposedly good, but newly assembled.
And the opposing pitcher, a little lefty named Sullivan, was no more than adequate really, all junk, sloping curves, and basic change-ups, fast balls that didn’t really move, the usual. Danny had hit him pretty good, but the competition just hadn’t been anything to write home about.
Luckily, the rest of the Tigers were pretty lame for all intents and purposes, striking out left and right, making this ‘pick-up’ team look like rock stars, and the game was a nail-biter, at least in terms of the score. And here, it was all coming down to a final at bat where Danny had a chance to win it with a walk-off home run. It would be a nice way to show that his boy could come through under pressure, and the day was going to be a success. Tarragna only hoped it was enough to make Frick take them seriously.
Tarragna looked over to first base. Laraby had just worked a walk, and was already taking too much of a lead. Don’t be a hero, Tarragna thought. Just let Danny hit you in.
Danny Tarragna came out from behind the fence and stood for a moment in the batter’s box, wearing his favorite t-shirt since this wasn’t an official game. It was a yellow jersey with green lettering in a cursive slant that said ‘Newtown Edgemont Bic…’ and, like Becky had seen in the empty classroom when she’d sat in beet juice, some of the letters were rubbed off, but now, she knew that it was his favorite shirt, his lucky shirt, and when it was new it had said clearly, ‘Newtown Edgemont Bicentennial Tournament - 1976’ when he’d helped his travel team win the whole thing two and a half years ago.
He took a warm-up swing, and Becky’s feelings welled up inside her. But that was nothing compared to the way Danny’s father saw him. The love he had for this boy was so fierce it was almost crippling. It was different than the way a girl felt affection, for there was a competitiveness in it, all wrapped up in a masculine coil ready to explode, to lash out in pride and a kind of loving anger that would scratch, carve, and forge their name into the face of the world, all through harsh rites of passage proving again and again that they both stood worthy of each other.
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