A Quality of Light (12 page)

T
ournament day blew in bright and clear and hot. It was one of those windless, cloudless summer days when you stand on the land and you can actually feel it changing beneath your feet
and all around you. Growth. Life. Farming. Ordinarily I would have loved a morning like that, but this day was different from any I’d experienced. I moved through the routine of chores like a zombie. My father grinned and let me be. By the time we were ready to load the car with food, extra clothes and lawn chairs, I was as nervous as I can ever recall being. The idea of taking the game we’d learned behind the equipment shed and playing in front of people from three towns and three schools was suddenly terrifying. I knew we were ready, that we’d honed the fundamental skills to a high level and that we could think our way through any game situation, but we’d never really
played
the game. I had no idea what it was like to be a part of a team aside from our small quartet behind the shed.

“Nervous, son?” my father asked once we’d pulled out of the driveway and headed down the hill towards Highway 9.

“Yeah,” I answered in a small voice.

“Well, that’s good,” he said. “Shows that you’re not overconfident or cocky. You’ll play better.”

“I will?”

“Oh, yes. You’ll see better, think clearer, and when the time comes to make a play, you’ll be ready. Once you do something and get into the game, you won’t be nervous any more.”

“I hope so.”

We were picking up Johnny on our way through town since neither of his parents was going. He was waiting on the porch steps, looking as spooked by things as I was.

“Hey,” he said as he sat beside me, smiling weakly.

“Hey,” I said.

“John, you’re looking well today,” my mother said, turning in her seat to look at us.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “Sure wish I felt well.”

“Nervous?” my father asked.

“As a cat on a hot tin roof,” he answered.

They laughed. I missed the humor in this entirely and could only sit and grin vacantly. Johnny punched me lightly on the shoulder. I punched him back.

“Man on second, none out. What do you do?” he asked in a hush.

“I make contact,” I answered automatically, “try to move him up. Long flyball or a single. Either one.”

“Cool.”

“What would you do?”

“Knock the hell out of it!”

My father laughed. He looked at us through the rearview mirror and his eyes were alive with an excitement I’d only seen when either of us had landed a good-sized trout. “I’m prepared to offer you guys some incentive,” he said.

“Some what?” we answered in chorus.

“Incentive. It’s like encouragement, only better,” he said.

“Like what?” Johnny asked.

“Well, I think any run batted in is worth a dollar. A base hit is fifty cents and a home run is worth at least two dollars. A ball caught is a quarter. How’s that?”

“Ezra!” my mother said, aghast at this sudden philanthropy. My mother had always figured that money, like salvation, was never guaranteed and not to be needlessly squandered.

“Oh, Mother,” my father said, “it’s okay. The boys have worked hard enough these last weeks that they deserve the chance to earn something for it. I’m not giving cash away. They have to earn it.”

“By playing?” she asked.

“Sure. But by playing fair, well and hard. Where’s the shame in that?”

“It seems to me that playing fair and well and hard should be its own reward.”

“Yes. That’s true and I’m sure it will be. But I think this deserves special consideration. You know how hard they’ve worked.”

“Yes.”

“They never let their schoolwork slip and Joshua never once let up on his chores.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, I suppose. This once.”

“Great! Hear that, fellas?”

“Yeah!” We were jubilant at the idea of earning some spending money.

“How’s the farm doing, sir?” Johnny asked suddenly.

“It’s doing well, John. Why?”

“Because … you’re gonna be awful poor by the end of today!”

The parking lot at the Mildmay fair grounds was filled. There were two buses from Wingham and Teeswater and everywhere small clumps of players were throwing balls back and forth. We noticed that both schools had uniform jerseys with numbers and matching caps. Johnny and I exchanged glum looks. People were moving between vehicles and the picnic area and the two baseball diamonds. There seemed to be a lot of visiting going on between friends and relatives who hadn’t seen each other in a while and the whole scene looked as convivial and open as fall fair days.

Alvin Giles smiled when he saw the four of us approaching. “Ezra. Martha. Boys,” he said, saluting casually with his index finger. “Glad you could make it.”

“Hello, Alvin,” my mother said. “What a great day you got for this!”

“That’s true. It should be fun.”

“We’ve brought two excellent players for you, Alvin,” my father said.

Alvin Giles looked at Johnny and me, eyed the gloves in our hands almost warily, squinted in concentration and then smiled. “Well, that’s good. Boys, I thought you weren’t interested in baseball.”

“We weren’t. Not at first. Now we wanna play,” Johnny answered.

“Well, good. The team’s over by the first diamond. We’ve got jerseys for everyone, and caps. So if you hurry over there you can get suited up. We play Wingham in twenty minutes!”

Ralphie Wendt was handing out jerseys to the late arrivals and
he looked at us in disgust. Behind him Lenny Weber and Victor Ringle looked on in surprise. Sue Crawford and a circle of girls huddled closer together and whispered.

“Spazzes? The spazzes showed up? What next, retards?” Ralphie smirked at Lenny and Victor.

“And look. They got gloves,” Lenny said.

“We need jerseys,” Johnny said firmly to Ralphie.

“Yeah, sure,” Ralphie said. “We probably got a zero and a double zero here somewhere!”

“Anything’s fine,” Johnny said quietly.

“Anything’s fine,” Victor Ringle mimicked with a whine.

“Okay. But listen, Spaz,” Ralphie said. “We’re only lettin’ you play ’cause we gotta. Nobody wants you here. Just try to stay outta the way, ’kay?”

“Yeah. Sure. Now can we have jerseys?” Johnny asked calmly.

“Here.” Ralphie tossed us each a jersey. They were white, with maroon pinstripes and Mildmay scrawled across the chest in curly letters. “Spaz One, right field. Spaz Two, oh, shit, well, second base.”

As we walked away to change and warm up we traded looks.

“Which one are you? Spaz One or Spaz Two?” I asked.

“I think I’d rather be Spaz Two,” Johnny said with a grin. “Second base is busier.”

“Okay. Spaz One is me,” I said heartily.

We changed into our jerseys and began tossing a ball back and forth lightly. Alvin Giles and the Wingham principal appeared and got ready to start the first game. We understood that we would play each team twice and the two winning teams after four games would play for the championship. Each game would be five innings. After a brief huddle around home plate, Alvin Giles blew his coach’s whistle and signaled us all towards our bench.

“Okay, team, we’re home team so we’re in the field first this game. It’s five innings with one point each if it’s tied. No extra innings. So let’s get out there and show these slouches how we play ball in Mildmay! Ralphie, have you got everyone in position?”

“Yup.” He looked glumly at Johnny and me.

“Good. Let’s go, team!” Alvin Giles said and clapped his hands.

Johnny and I trotted out onto the field. We stopped at second base and looked at each other. In the bleachers we could see my parents gazing at us and when they waved, we waved back weakly.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Guess. You?”

“Guess,” he replied.

“Scared?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t wanna be the only one.”

Ralphie jogged over from his shortstop position. He looked beefy and out of place in his tight jersey, and his ears stuck out from the sides of his cap like cauliflowers. “You Spazzes wanna visit or play ball? Come on. Get with it!”

I ran out to right field with my stomach churning and a familiar wish that all balls avoid my area. I reached deep right field just as the first Wingham batter stepped up to the plate. Finally, after all this time, Johnny and I were playing baseball. The bleachers were full. Loose children raced around the perimeter followed by bounding dogs and from somewhere behind them, a radio played a country song. It was a fair-like atmosphere, and I understood, finally, how baseball felt. It was a game and an event and I loved it. Sue Crawford was pitching, and as she delivered her first lobbed pitch I felt a fluttering in my stomach like the first motions of a newborn chick. There was a pause that seemed like an eternity as the ball arced towards the plate and for me it was filled with images of every minute behind that equipment shed. I swallowed hard.

The solid whump of ball meeting bat shook me from my reverie. I looked up just in time to see Johnny race to his left for a ground ball, scoop it and throw hard to Teddy Hohnstein at first base. It was a bullet. Poor Teddy could only hold up his glove in self-defense, grimacing with his eyes closed, face turned away. The ball stuck in his glove from sheer velocity. The crowd in the
bleachers cheered and clapped and Ralphie Wendt gaped. Johnny pounded the pocket of his glove and bent forward for the next batter. Victor Ringle shook his head rapidly in left field while Lenny Weber stood there in center staring blankly at Johnny’s back. My dad gave me a thumbs-up from the bleachers.

The next batter lifted a high foul ball beyond first base. All the practice with the India rubber ball paid off as I moved with the crack of the bat, eyes glued to the flight of the ball as I ran forward. Time slowed to a crawl and I could hear myself breathing deeply as I got closer and closer to the ball that was now dropping rapidly. Silence. For the briefest of moments I existed in the world alone except for that ball. I lowered my hands to my knees, pocket up, and caught it on the dead run. The world jumped back into focus and I looked up to see my mother and father standing and clapping in the bleachers, Alvin Giles scratching his head at the bench and Johnny leaping up and down behind second base, waving his arms in joy. Ralphie Wendt paced back and forth at shortstop, shaking his head.

“That’s a quarter, Josh! That’s a quarter!” Johnny yelled, and my dad gave me another thumbs-up.

When the next girl dribbled a grounder to Ralphie and he threw her out, I trotted in towards our bench with a huge smile pasted to my face. Johnny met me halfway and we looked at each other, eyes shining, and nodded. That’s all. Just a nod. There was no need for words. We went out on our first three batters, Ralphie swinging mightily but futilely at strike three and Johnny and me smirking with enjoyment as we grabbed our gloves and headed for the field.

“Who’s the spaz now?” Johnny whispered and grinned.

We were buried so deep in the batting order that we didn’t get to the plate until the third inning. By then we’d both made catches, Johnny on a routine pop-up and me, an over-the-shoulder grab of a line drive that I almost missed. It felt good, and by the third inning our teammates were calling us by name and cheering us on. But we wanted to hit. Teddy Hohnstein blooped a wounded duck of a single with one out and it was my turn.

Johnny stared at me wide-eyed as I took a few practice swings and headed for the plate. “Ted Williams,” he said, and I nodded. My hands shook slightly and I had to wipe the sweat from them on my pants before I settled in to hit. The first pitch was outside and I let it go. The second was at my knees so I let it go too.

“Joshua!” my father yelled.

“Good one, son, good one!” my mother added.

“Come on, Spaz!” said Ralphie.

The third pitch was a thing of beauty. It arced in slowly and crossed the plate about waist high. As I stepped into it I felt like I was Tony C. himself, a perfect combination of grace and power. The thud of contact rang right up through my elbows and settled in the back of my shoulders as the ball rocketed off my bat and screamed into the gap between the center and left fielder. By the time Wingham could recover I was on third, Teddy Hohnstein had scored and we were up by one run. Johnny grinned from the on-deck area and stepped up to the plate. He didn’t wait. On the first pitch he uncoiled, lunging out at the pitch and lifting a long, deep flyball that the left fielder simply stood and watched as it orbited over his head. There was a long beat of silence from the crowd before they began to cheer and yell and stamp their feet over what must have seemed an impossible hit for such a skinny kid. Ralphie Wendt glared as Johnny loped around the bases. Alvin Giles stared and stared, and Sue Crawford smiled as Johnny crossed the plate.

“Way to go,” I said as I slapped his palm.

“Routine,” he said.

“I think you’re up about three dollars.”

“Try for ten?”

“Try for ten.”

We won that first game. I smacked a solid double in the fifth and Johnny followed me with a triple to the opposite field. Both times the crowd, and especially my parents, were jubilant. Johnny just grinned and punched my shoulder while Ralphie’s face was screwed up with curiosity and something perilously close to admiration. The rest of the team was as happy as the crowd, although I know there
wasn’t a single one of them that wasn’t amazed at the transformation they were seeing. For his part, Alvin Giles had a little half smile pasted to his face and thumped us warmly on the back.