by Billy Coffey
He tossed another and five more, letting those words hang until they seemed to fade against my swinging and his tossing and the crack of the bat and the swoosh of the ball as it came into the net.
“Baseball’s got a rhythm. Like a slipstream. A current in water. Most people don’t know that. It’s hid unless it calls you. But if you find that rhythm, it’s like leaving this world altogether. You sink down in it and it takes you on, and all you can do is take hold of it. You become somebody greater than you are. You don’t see it as a thing you play, you see it as beauty. Like a web that connects everything.”
He sat on that overturned bucket with a ball in his hand, browned by constant use with swollen stitches and a deep gash in one side. Holding it like that ball was an answer to everything. I guess it was back then, for us both.
“Words can’t tell it,” Dad said. “But I don’t need to tell you anything on that, do I? Because you know, Owen. You know that rhythm. You slip into it ever’ time you pick up a bat the way them other players slip into a uniform, and that’s something can’t be taught. You got to be born with it. That’s a gift ain’t but a few have. It’s the Lord’s given it to you, and you dishonor Him when you go against it. Like jumping out front of a train to save some poor broke-hearted girl you barely know. Anything could’ve happened to you the other night, and I ain’t even talking about dying. Could’ve got hurt permanent.”
He touched his right shoulder in a way that made me think he didn’t even know he was doing it, that right shoulder that had once made him a man of promise.
“I know what you think of me, son.” He picked at his blue pants. “Know times you felt shame at seeing me work. But least I work. Lord give me it. But I got to ask forgiveness every morning when I go off to earn a meager wage. I ain’t thankful in my heart having to do what brings neither joy nor purpose. You found that out today, didn’t you? Got yourself a little taste of it. Bubba Clements told me he’s got a job all lined up for you if college don’t work. Said pay’s good. But pay’s nothing if you don’t find no love in it. You won’t find no love selling cars. You were born to play ball. It’s a hole inside you nothing else can fill, same as me. Baseball’s gone from me now but that hole’s still there, and I’ll always be empty for it. I still feel that rhythm, every time you play. It’s like a . . .”
The rails flashed through my mind, the sound of it and the peace, that glimpse of something true and holy.
“Symphony,” I said.
“Yeah.” He watched the next ball he tossed sail into the net and judged its degree off my bat at twenty degrees. Fifteen was Dad’s ideal. Fifteen degrees off the bat was a liner no one could catch. “It’s just like that. Why you play? Shoot. You’re a conductor. George Solis knows it. Why he signed you. Everybody knows it.” Dad shook his head. “That’s why I want you to understand. What you got is a precious thing, Owen. I worked hard to give you a good home and two folks who ain’t split up, but you’re made for more than what I give you. You’re made for greatness. And so long as I draw breath, I won’t never let anything come between you and that. Not your momma. Not Bubba Clements. Not no Shantie girl can’t keep her head on straight long enough to get out the way of some train. Not one single thing.”
My father meant those words as a promise. They sounded like a threat. We hit through a dozen buckets that evening, three hundred swings, leaving the calluses on my hands bloody and my side aching where the bruise still lingered. We walked back through the yard under the shadows of the moths flickering in the porch light’s glow. We were all right. Dad seemed better. And though he said he appreciated me being honest in telling him most of what had happened in Simpson’s field, I knew then I could never be honest with my father again.
-7-
Micky wasn’t waiting at the hill that evening. She’d left no mark. A worry I had not considered settled over me: What if she wasn’t coming? In my mind I saw her perched upon a faded plastic milk crate, the tip of her dirty tennis shoe digging into the corner to keep her upright as she spoke my name, only for me to call her a drunk like Earl.
How much harm had I done us? How much simply to keep my father from an anger he had felt anyway?
Shantytown’s pines lay like a darkened ocean. I stood facing them and would not move. Willing her to appear, even praying for it, until from the line of trees came a small darkened dot and I wiped tears I had not known were falling. She moved in slow confidence along the worn path and up. Head high and unmoving. A hand reached to graze the tops of flowering weeds.
Though it was such a simple thing, I still cannot give an account worthy of how Micky came to me that night with such beauty and presence. All those times before it was as though she owned the land. Now she seemed a part of it, no less than flower and wind.
I yelled down, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.”
She expressed no measure of hurt or sadness. There was only a slight upturn of her head as she navigated the narrow path to our hilltop. Can it be said that a single look can pierce you in such a way that you are made bare yet still pleased to be seen? That was how Micky saw me.
I took her hand as she sat and said it again: “I’m sorry.”
The way she spoke was like water over rocks. “You didn’t know any of what I was going to do. I didn’t either, I guess. Until it happened. I woke up this morning feeling about like I’d explode if I didn’t tell nobody. Earl said there was maybe some work out Mattingly way at somebody’s farm, but I knew it wasn’t no work, he was just gone off drinkin’, and I didn’t even think of goin’ to school. School seemed a small thing before the train. It’s smaller now. I took a walk. People say Shantytown’s the ugliest place there is, but it ain’t always. The way the light comes through the pine trees, all them woods and the mountains nearby. Anyway, that’s when I come upon Todd.”
“And what? You two decide to come to town preaching?”
It was the most ridiculous thing I could say—my small attempt at bringing levity to what was not funny at all.
She said, “Fosters live way around to the end of Shantytown, off by themselves. His momma works evening shift for Rupert at the grocery. Don’t think Todd’s dad does much of anything except take the walk out to the mailbox every afternoon looking for his draw check. But when I walked by there, it wasn’t his daddy comin’ for the mail, it was Todd. I tell him hey and we get to talking, and then I say, ‘What’s the one thing you love most, and where’s that got you?’” She held out her hands like it was some magic trick and a rabbit was about to appear. “Todd asked me about what happened up in Brutal’s field and it all come out, I couldn’t stop once I got started, and Todd drank it like it was water and he the thirstiest boy in the world. Then before I knowed it we’d come to town and I’d gotten a crate from the back of the grocery and there was about thirty people standing around, horns honking and people yelling. I didn’t even know what I was saying. It was like I’d been asleep and then got scared awake, and the first face I saw was yours.”
“Travis and Jeffrey thought you’d gone nuts.”
She let out a high, hard cackle that made me wonder if they’d been right. “All them is the ones crazy.” She shook her head slow but in an understanding way, like how Dad did when he helped me with algebra. “I had it all wrong, though. I figured all I had to do was go to town and start talking. Never occurred to me nobody’d want to listen.”
“Listen to what?”
“To the truth of what we seen at that train.”
“We didn’t see anything at that train.”
It wasn’t a laugh this time, only a frown.
“You can say so, Owen. I get why. I didn’t when you wouldn’t help me this morning. Only thing I thought when Clancy shoved me and Todd in back of his car was I couldn’t believe you’d ever hurt me that way. All these years of telling me none of what we got should be secret, then the first chance you get to tell folk even a hint about us, you pass off. But then Clancy took me back there”—poin
ting down off toward the Pines—“where he said I belonged. Then I understood. He’s right.”
“That ain’t true.”
“It is. Always has been. Shantytown’s my home. I learned that today. Came clear as a bell while I was standin’ on one a Rupert’s old milk crates and lookin’ down on everybody. Seeing y’all for what you are.”
“And what are we?”
“Lost. It’s what everybody is. Me too, though I guess me less now. I’m the one who seen.”
“You didn’t see anything.”
Micky said nothing to that. “Clancy dropped me off home, I just went on talking. Todd come with me. Wasn’t no street corner I could go on, but there’s porches. There’s living rooms and windows wide open and people milling about. I spent all day talking and half the night, and now here I sit talking still. Telling everybody what they need to hear. Asking them that question’s most important of all. And now I’ll ask you.”
She looked off down the slope and back up it, following where the greening grass rolled in waves brought by a sweet wind to where our legs lay and our clasped hands atop them. “What do you love?”
“Micky, I don’t—”
“Understand? I know. I don’t expect you to, Owen. Not anymore.”
I wasn’t sure how she thought I was to take that, whether she’d meant those words as a sign that we should move on to another topic or that she didn’t want me asking more questions. I only knew it made me feel stupid.
“Don’t do that, sit here and say I’m the one don’t understand. You got up there in front of a train, Micky. And now you’re what? Some street-corner preacher? That make sense to you? It’s like you lost your grip on things. You’re not even you no more—”
“—I’m not—”
“—and I don’t even know what to do to help. You’re shaking me off. I’m calling pitches but you’re throwing what you want.”
She grinned again.
“What it always comes down to for you, isn’t it? A glove and a ball can explain all the mysteries of the world. Maybe they could before, Owen, but not no more. You want me to forget what I seen? You want me to set all that aside and keep going on with the awful life I had? I can’t do that. What I seen was so big it made me think everything I always thought was real weren’t. You can say you didn’t see nothing, I’ll believe you, because I know you’d never lie to me.”
I pulled my legs toward my stomach.
“But you can’t tell me what I didn’t see,” she said, “and you can’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do about it. This old world is just a big hole filled with ignorance, and all we spend our lives doing is digging it deeper. But sometimes there’s folk decide they’re gone climb out, and what they see is a thing so wonderful it changes them forever because it’s truth. That’s what I seen at that train. I am loved by something that will never not love me. And not just me; that love touches everybody. How could I run off knowing something so wonderful as that? I got a look at what’s beyond. Not so I could go there yet, but so I could jump back down in the hole and tell everybody I can.” She looked off beyond the mountains. “It’s everybody in the whole world. They all lost, Owen. Looking for the wrong thing.”
“And what you think everybody’s looking for?”
Her hand tightened around mine. The other settled on my arm. She asked me again: “What you love most, Owen? More than anything else in the world?”
“You.”
“Be for real.”
“I am.”
But Micky kept her gaze. It was like she gave my answer back to me so I could study it hard and know that wasn’t right, not really.
I said, “Had this picture in my mind ever since I-don’t-know. You in the stands of some stadium in some big city. Your chin’s up all raised and proud, listening as fifty thousand people holler my name. That’s what I dream. That’s what I love.”
“And you think if you get that, you have that single moment, it’ll make all your life worth something?”
“I know it will.”
“It won’t. Won’t nothing make you happy really. It’s a hole in us all we keep pourin’ stuff into but never gets filled. That’s all I wanted to say at the grocery. Nobody listened, and I didn’t know why until Clancy dropped us off. You townfolk got too much is all. Got jobs and nice houses, money or at least a little of it. And all y’all go chasing off for some dream or other, whether it’s a big one like yours or just a little one like Travis taking over the car lot someday. Even me, Owen. I chase too. Chase something to love and love us back. But we don’t ever find it, and ain’t that sad? My momma never found it, and it killed her. And what none of us know is we don’t ever have to chase it at all, not that real love. That real love’s right there always.”
“You talkin’ like the reverend.”
“I’m just telling you what I seen. Townfolk cain’t see it. They’re too lost. But us Shanties?” She shook her head down over those pines. “We’re more apt to believe, Owen. And do you know why? Because we’re poor. We ain’t got nothing to lose.”
I plucked a blade of grass and split it down the middle, let it carry to the wind. “You need to set all this aside, Micky. It was just one night. Shoot, everybody’ll forget about it in a couple weeks. Clancy’ll ask some questions, but won’t nobody tell him anything. We almost died on those tracks. I couldn’t even move. Thing like that happens, bound to mess with your brain or something. Like people seeing tunnels of light or dead relatives.”
“You really think that’s all it was?”
Her eyes met mine. I looked away.
“Something pushed us out of the way, Owen. I told them people you saved me and I believe it, but not ’cause you the one shoved us both from those tracks. We was supposed to die up there, but we was given something instead. Like another chance. It ain’t much time left for me. I got to make it count.”
“We’ll both make it count,” I said. “Won’t be long, we’ll be out of this place.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t leave here now.”
“What?”
Micky’s hand tightened in mine. “I can’t go with you. It ain’t what’s supposed to be. Maybe it was once, but things is changed now. I got to stay here and help people.”
“Help them what?”
“Know. Understand.”
“Well, Micky, I don’t understand.” My voice cracked with its rising, making it echo off the hill. Our hill. “You saying you don’t want to go away with me now? That all we talked on since we was sophomores is all of a sudden over just because you think you seen something in some stupid train lights?”
“What’d you see, Owen?”
“Nothing.”
“What’d you see?”
“Nothing,” I screamed, lips trembling as I let go Micky’s hand. My face hot, wet from the tears that fell there. “You ain’t coming to Youngstown with me?”
She leaned with her arms outstretched and took hold of me. “I want to more than anything, Owen, but I can’t. There’s something more I got to do while there’s time left. And I want you to keep here with me.”
“Keep here? You mean don’t go off to college?”
Micky leaned back, measuring her words. She brushed a bit of golden hair behind her left ear. “I seen it. What comes of you if you keep to the road you’re on. It was in that light along with everything else. It’s your love. Your love’s all wrapped up in a thing that can’t love you back, and you’ll only come to harm because of it.”
“So I got to choose now? Baseball or you? Why? So I can turn out like my daddy? That what you seen? Me and you gettin’ married and having us a few kids? Maybe I’ll get me a son, how about that? I’ll shove a bat in his hands as soon as he slides out of you, start him out right. Raise him up saying, ‘Let’s go out back so I can throw balls and you can take a hundred swings, because your granddaddy’s a failure and so’s your old man, but I’ll be damned if I let you be one.’”
Micky did not flinch, did not ba
ck away. She only looked upon me as she had earlier that day at the corner of Main and Pine, with a measure of pity and love.
“I’m only trying to save you, Owen.”
“You lie,” I say.
-8-
Country looks at me. “Ain’t lyin’, look at ’em out there. Johnson’s still on. Little homer ain’t gone ruffle him.”
I blink, trying to place what Country said and where I am and how it is that Brosius is jogging behind the mound on the way back from his groundout to first while I’ve remembered most of an entire day ten years gone.
“We got this game,” he says. “Don’t mind calling it. Been in this old barn of a stadium twenty years, ain’t never once seen a ghost. Not once.”
Top 6
-1-
There comes a time during a ball game such as this, say in these long middle innings of the fourth through the sixth, when one team settles for grinding things out. That’s where Mike is now. We’re up five and to the sixth inning. The Yanks only have four more innings at the plate, twelve outs to score six runs. Time to play things safe. Put the outfielders a little deeper so a ball won’t reach the fences. Get Johnson to throw strikes. Keep the ball low. Don’t walk anybody. Make sure the players are loose and focused. Grind it out. That’s so much of what baseball is.
Down by five, Mussina’s night is finished. Brandon Knight has taken over on the mound for the Yanks. I don’t know much about him. Country fills me in on Knight’s pitches. He keeps his spot but he’s looking at Mike more than me as Hairston starts off our inning at the plate. Country waits to catch our manager’s eye, give a little nod. As if wanting Mike to think, Might as well give ol’ Country a couple innings in the field, maybe an at-bat. Keep him fresh for when we maybe really need him next game or next week. It is a sorry thing to know. A man like this—a true baller maybe bound for the Hall of Fame—riding the pine and waiting for what scraps are thrown to him.
“You should be up there,” I say. “Getting ready to hit or out there in center. Ain’t never seen a guy hit like you. I remember sitting with Dad in the living room once watching you and the Dodgers play the Mets. You hit one off Gooden . . .” I shake my head. “Anything goes that fast should come with four wheels and an engine.”