by Billy Coffey
I called her every morning from the first of March, including the morning she died. She’d felt good that day. Said she had some errands to run. I told her to be careful and call me later. The Charlottesville police department did instead, five hours later. Mom was pulling out from a stoplight when a teenager more intent on updating his social media status than watching the road slammed into her. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
In all my mourning I believed my mother had been snatched from the world as well, no less than Micky. And just as it had been with Micky, it was a mercy.
-5-
Jay Gibbons strikes out. Two down, and Fordyce is up. Our catcher has gone oh-for-four tonight, has struck out three times and let a passed ball get by him behind the plate, but Mike leaves him in. He’d give Fordyce one more bat rather than give that bat to me, knowing I’m bound back to Double-A in the morning. Even Country won’t sit with me. He’s joking with Caldwell and some others. There is a wide space between me and the nearest player. It’s like I’m dead now, a ghost myself. Just another busher on his way back to the minors.
-6-
You never know what to do when a parent dies. Doesn’t matter how old you are, you feel four years old again and lost inside some huge department store where bright lights shine in your eyes and everywhere are strangers that look like they’re one bad choice away from grabbing you. I never felt that way with Dad because Mom was still there, but her passing left me feeling utterly alone in the world. There were arrangements to be made and things to clean out and more papers to sign than I could imagine. Family night (a misnomer if I’d ever heard one, given it was only me standing by her casket) passed in a fog. I shook hands and spoke with faceless people, nodded my thanks to strangers. It was Mom’s wish to leave the coffin shut. You don’t got to be showing people my bones, Owen. That ain’t me there. What’s me is gone to glory, the rest is old rags I won’t have need of no more.
Greta Cross saw to me even in death. Though in heaven, she was yet Momma.
I buried her beside Dad overlooking the Rivanna. Reverend Sebolt officiated. With him came dozens from Camden and Shantytown to pay their respects. I threw a fistful of dirt atop her casket after it was lowered and left a rose, then lingered as the crowd drifted back to their quiet lives on the other side of the mountain. Away in the distance, three men stood around a rusting yellow backhoe and smoked.
I did not mean to keep them long. It was just some old rags lying under there, right? A pile of bones and wasting flesh. And yet I could not turn away until I spoke what should have been spoken long before.
“Sorry,” I whispered. I did not know where to direct that apology, sky or earth, and so settled for a place in the middle. “You were right, Momma. About everything.”
Even then I struggled in my telling. No doubt I should have admitted the lies I’d told and the things I’d done, burning a church that had brought my mother such peace and helping to erase the girl who had brought her purpose and direction. I do not listen to those who say there is no world beyond ours, only a black quiet that goes on and on forever. I know better. Have seen better. The only question still left to me is whether those who have gone on before us keep an interest in the ones they’ve left behind, or whether all those things they died not knowing fall away once in the presence of a love that beckons us all in life. I wanted to think the former true. I still want it.
-7-
It has taken me this long to understand it, but I believe now that my return to Bowie three months back served as the beginning of an end. My hope was that after I laid Mom to rest, baseball would serve as my escape once more, this time from grief rather than guilt. But I went hitless my first three games back, ten times at the plate and ten walks back to the dugout. Skip said nothing beyond, “Don’t press, your swing’ll come.” It never did. Every throw I made to nab a base stealer sailed into the outfield. A snap throw to first to catch a sleeping runner ended up along the stands. Players began to ignore me, the unspoken belief being I had contracted something that could catch and spread until it infected everyone.
By May, my average had dipped below .200. In desperation I called everyone I could, Frank Solis at Youngstown and even Coach Stevens back in Camden. I took extra batting practice and watched more tape than I could’ve imagined. Nothing helped. No one’s advice worked. I suffered under the weight of all those empty words, knowing I no longer had a direct line to the only person who could pull me through.
Then came yesterday. Skip found me in the cage and watched my swings, grunted a few times. I couldn’t tell if those noises were of encouragement or exasperation.
“Need you in my office when you’re done,” he said.
I bet I went through another hundred swings before I finally acknowledged the knot in my gut and made the long walk back through the clubhouse. I knocked at the door, which garnered me a “Yeah, come on in.” A pep talk, that’s what I told myself this was. Skip telling me to keep on what I’m doing, everybody goes through a dry spell and all you can do is fight your way through it.
I stepped inside. Skip had poured himself into a chair behind a chipped wooden desk. I couldn’t read the look on his face.
“Go on and shut that door,” he said.
Shut the door. My throat closed. Sweat broke out behind my neck. Couldn’t breathe. I wondered if this was what Dad would have felt if he’d been awake just before he died.
My hand lingered at the knob. I pushed it shut.
“Won’t be playing you tonight, Owen.”
“Listen, Skip, I know I been in a funk—”
“Son, you ain’t got no funk, you got a problem. Have a seat.”
He motioned to the crumbling chair in front of his desk, a sad old castoff of scraped armrests and a stained seat that had taken on the imprint of the thousand guys who had sat there before, told they were being sent down or let go, and as I sat all feeling left my legs and Skip’s face became a blotchy white smudge against the wall and, God oh God, please don’t let this happen, please, Micky, tell God not to let this happen I don’t want to die.
“Skip, I swear I’m trying hard as I can.”
His voice was soft and grandfatherly and full of gravel. “Know you are, Owen. Why you’re here.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out an envelope. Slid it across the desk. “That’s for you.”
“What is it?”
“Plane ticket.”
I looked at that envelope like it was a poisoned thing. My heart felt to jump through my chest, clouding my vision. It was as though Skip’s face stood outside a rainy window. “Don’t send me home,” I said. “Please, Skip. I ain’t got nothing else.”
“Ain’t sending you home, son.” He tapped the envelope. “Ticket here says LaGuardia.”
I blinked. Breathed. “What’s in LaGuardia?”
He grinned. “The big team. O’s are in the Bronx for a four-game set. Their backup catcher had to go home for a sick momma. Or daddy, I don’t know. Need a body there tomorrow case Fordyce gets hurt or the game gets long. I put in a word.”
I didn’t want to say it fast, fearing I’d say it wrong: “A word for. Me?”
“You the one sitting here. Slumps don’t mean nothing, Owen. They’re just a valley with a peak on each side. You probably won’t get one at-bat and you’ll be told to pack your bags once the game’s over. They’ll send you back down to make room for some pitcher to see them down the stretch. But it’s a day in the majors, and it just might be what you need to get your head straight.” He winked at me. “Enjoy it, son. See it as a taste of what might come once you remember how to hit again.”
My body felt like I’d gotten off one of those carnival rides put up for a week each spring in Camden. Krazy Kups or Monster Gulch, the kind that scare you not with loops and speed but with the rotting wood and rusting nails that hold them all together. I’d gone into Skip’s office thinking I was done, only to leave needing to pack my bag for the majors. I was so out of sorts I left the plane ticket on the d
esk and had to go back for it.
Skip chuckled and shook his head. “You act like you don’t even want to go.”
And that was the thing. I see that now, here and tonight.
God help me, Skip was more right than he knew.
-8-
I’ve always had the habit of making sure I leave no trace of myself behind when a ball game is over. Most guys will walk back to the clubhouse with bottles lying everywhere (energy drinks and water and even coffee—you’d be surprised how much coffee is gone through during a night game), half-eaten bags of sunflower seeds and wads of chewing gum, they don’t care. Someone, Roy Campanella I think, once said you got to be a man to play baseball, but you got to have a lot of little boy in you too. Take a look inside a baseball dugout once a game is over, you’ll know how true that statement rings.
So with two out in the top of the ninth and even Country abandoning me, I start tidying up my spot on the bench. There isn’t much: one catcher’s mitt; one shiny rock, which goes back into my pocket; a mostly empty bottle of water I think is Caldwell’s and not mine. I do all of this because I think the game is over. Little more to be played, nothing much to change the final outcome. You play baseball for so long it’s easy to fool yourself into believing the game can no longer surprise you. Every facet of it is analyzed and set to numbers and trends and charts, the goal being to eliminate any surprise, but of course you can’t. The heart of baseball—its very magic—rests in the undeniable fact that anything can happen at any time. And something happens now.
It begins with Brook Fordyce, our catcher with the oh-for-the-night slump who steps up in his last time at the plate and laces a clean single to right. Hairston follows with a single of his own, scoring Segui and moving Fordyce to second. Now Brady Anderson with his own base hit pulled through the right side of the infield. Fordyce scores, and now we have runners at the corners. All of this with two out in the inning and Knight looking in command on the mound. The score is ten to three, a deficit even the ghosts of Yankee Stadium would struggle to overcome.
And with Bordick coming up to bat and my mitt and a bottle of water in my hand, Mike turns my way and says, “Cross, bat for Richard. You’re on deck.”
My mind scrambles to decipher those words any other way. Country leans into the dugout path. His jaw is set, but he looks ready to burst. Mike waits.
“C’mon, Cross. I said you’re on deck.”
I toss the water bottle to the bench and reach into my other back pocket for my batting gloves. My head hurts. Bordick is already stepping in and I’m not even out there yet, not warm. Ethan hands me a helmet. He’s beaming like it’s him going out there and not me and I hear him ask, “What bat you want?” and I don’t know, all my lumber is back in Bowie.
“You pick me one.”
He slides a smooth and rounded stick of ash from the pile and promises it’s good for a hit. I take it and climb the dugout steps as Bordick takes strike one. In the circle I find the pine tar and a weighted donut I slip over the barrel. Wide circles with the bat, letting it tug at the muscles in my arms and side. Keep loose.
Bordick lets a curveball go by for a ball—one and one.
Looking out onto the field. No longer overcome by all that beauty and history. The game shrinks. Runners at the corners. Two down. Infield shaded to the right, outfield a hair the other way, but they’ll likely play me straight away because they don’t know who I am, where I hit. That’s good. Play me straight away, that means the alley in right center will be wide open. That’s my power spot, where I’ll take the pitch. Hit it on a line. Let the moon carry it, let it fly.
Another ball. Two-and-one, hitter’s count. By now the Yankee dugout has seen me, surely Oliver has behind the plate. Bordick has had two hits in five trips tonight, and I think they might put him on. Walk him. It’ll load the bases, but that might not matter to Knight on the mound because Bordick is a pro and I’m on my last sips of a single cup of coffee. The next pitch is a cutter that doesn’t break but keeps to the outside corner for ball three. One more and I’ll have my shot. One more ball or a little dribbler down the line, a ground ball with eyes, and the voice I hear will be the voice of God coming over the speakers announcing, Now batting, number nineteen, Owen Cross, number nineteen, and I will get my first at-bat in the majors inside Yankee Stadium. I can hit this guy. I’ve seen Knight throw four pitches. I’ve watched his fastball and his off speed, and I can hit this guy.
Bordick steps out, takes a practice swing. My body feels loose. I tap the butt end of the bat into the grass to free the donut. Look over the crowd. There are maybe twenty thousand left, small for a big league game but more than twice the population of Camden, Virginia. Faces of strangers, tired women and drunk men and kids who can barely hold their eyes open. I smile, not being able to help myself, then feel my lips grow cold at the girl sitting alone four rows behind home plate. Hatless, one bare leg curled over the top of the seat in front of her, a deep line where the cutoff denim shorts bite into her thigh. Her T-shirt is black. It might say AC/DC on front, or Poison or Guns N’ Roses. Might even say Def Leppard, like the shirt she wore for a state championship game long ago against the town of Mattingly. Corn-silk hair spilling down over her shoulders. Smiling. Smiling at me.
Over the distance between us, Micky waves.
I hear the slap of Oliver’s mitt and the umpire calling strike. The count is full. Bordick steps out. Knight removes his glove to wipe down the ball in his hands. Time slows. The lights of Yankee Stadium are above me and the moon shining down, crowd buzzing, voices from our dugout telling Bordick to hang tough and wait for his pitch, the smell of dirt and grease and grass. Michaela Dullahan in the seats, cheering for me. It is all just as I had once imagined it to her on a hilltop set along the Appalachian Blue Ridge so long ago. A boy’s dream now real. Now true, or as true as anything can be had in this life.
Knight gets the sign. Anderson takes off from first. I see the pitch coming in to Bordick high and the breath catches in my throat—it’s ball four flying in, and I’ll have my at-bat. I take one step, two, leaving the edges of the on-deck circle, ready to hit. And at the last moment I see Bordick shifting his weight and his bat coming through the zone. His swing leaves a one-inch gap between the ball and the blur of his bat. Oliver squeezes his glove as the umpire turns and makes a pulling motion with his right arm, calling strike three.
Around me are bodies moving, Hairston and Anderson coming in along with the third base coach, our guys, Country included, running out to the field in order to claim the last three outs of the game. I stand alone with a bat not my own, watching. Micky smiles from her seat as though telling me it’s okay. Every single thing is okay.
Mike greets me at the dugout steps and extends a hand. He says, “Sorry ’bout that, kid. Took longer’n I thought to make sure game’s outta reach of those guys. Wish you woulda gotten a bat, but I can’t stand losing to the Yankees.”
I hand Ethan the bat and shake Mike’s hand. My words are maybe the truest I’ve spoken this night:
“S’all right, Mike. Turns out I didn’t need it.”
Bottom 9
It is a quiet three outs to end the night: O’Neill leads off and grounds out to Hairston at second. From my spot on the bench I see Micky stand and make her way down the aisle and the three rows between her and the netting that surrounds the area behind home plate. She stands there as Brosius gathers himself in the box. Still staring at me with that smile. Ryan works the count to two strikes and is winding to deliver the third when Micky reaches a hand to take hold of the netting. Her fingers pass through instead, followed by the rest of her body. She is out on the field and walking past Brosius as he swings for the third strike, and for a moment I believe I can see a quizzical look pass over his face, as though an unexpected puff of wind unfocused him for only a moment, long enough to upset his timing. He walks back to the Yankee dugout shaking his head. Micky strolls past the mound and past Hairston at second. It is as though she is tromping u
p the slope to our hill, so comfortable does she look. So in place. As though she has never left this world.
Oliver is the Yankees’ last hope. Ryan nods at Fordyce’s sign and delivers a pitch wide. Micky is now in the center field grass. She turns and looks at me again in a knowing way and moves within mere feet of Country, who does not even know the miracle that has just moved past him. Micky smiling, reaching out her hand. Curling her wrist toward herself, motioning me to come on, come on. At the center field wall she points upward to the moon over a darkened New York night, and now she is gone.
Ryan gains a strike on Oliver. The fans are filing out. In the field I see players in various stages of unconcern. Country is leaning forward, hands on his knees and head down. At shortstop, Bordick kicks at the dirt. Conine watches the waning crowd. Even Mike, calmed now for the first time tonight with a seven-run lead and only one out to get, seems to tire. It is like this for them all. The Yankee players are quiet on their bench, ready to go back to what homes they have, try again tomorrow. There is no joy here. Certainly none that I felt in the bright sunshine of this June afternoon. What comes now is a weariness I know too well, one that would follow me through my days as it must follow us all, for that is the way of this life. We’re all trying to get from one end of it to the other the best way we know. In the end, we’re all just trying to find our way back home.
Joe Oliver sends a two-one pitch on a fly to right. Country barely takes a step. Richard, still in the game since I never made it to the plate to pinch hit for him, squeezes the ball to seal things.
It is done.