Casey's Home (14 page)

Shrugging, he shut the trunk and walked
over to join her. The car was hot against the back of his legs. “I don’t know,
I never saw any reason to tell you.”

“Do you know the constellations?” she
asked.

“Yeah, most of them,” he said. “There’s
Orion, there, and Cassiopia, the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, but you know
those.” She nodded.

“When I was in earth science, we had this
crazy teacher... Mr. Sundahl. He was incredibly difficult, one of those
teachers who always assigns things it’s impossible to actually do, you know?”
He nodded and she continued. “Every week, we were supposed to go out in our
backyard and map the night sky. I never understood that. I mean, it’s not as if
it changes.”

“Did you do it?”

She shook her head. “Never. And you know
what? I got an ‘A’.”

“Maybe he knew how hard it was,” he said.
“Maybe he didn’t really expect you to actually do it, but thought it would just
be great if you tried.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She looked away from the
stars toward her feet, tapping her toes lightly against the road. “But I always
felt like I had disappointed him anyway.”

They were quiet for a moment, both
watching her feet. He had never seen shoes that color, and wondered if she’d
had them dyed to match her dress. It was something he could remember girls
doing when he was in school.

“It’s funny, isn’t it, how easily we set
ourselves up to be disappointed?”

She hadn’t looked at him, but he felt as
if he’d been kicked with one of her sharp shoes. It wasn’t until she continued
that he realized she wasn’t talking about him.

“I was supposed to go to the prom,
tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. First time ever.” She crossed her
arms and shook her head. “I was supposed to have this fabulous time, like the
girls in magazines always have, like Lee always had. I set myself up with all
these expectations of how wonderful it would be, how much fun I would have, and
of course, nothing happened. I was supposed to remember this night for the rest
of my life.”

He hadn’t meant to let her catch him
smiling, so when she did, he tried to placate her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That is
disappointing. I know it is.”

“You think I’m being silly,” she said.

“Not at all,” he reassured her, though
really, he did think she was silly. “I know it feels bad now, but believe me,
you’ll get over it.” When he bumped her shoulder gently with his own, she
rolled her eyes and looked away. “So what happened?”

She hesitated for a moment, then said: “I
guess my date was more interested in seducing my father than he was in seducing
me.”

“Well, he must have been a stupid guy,” he
said, “because Billy would look terrible in that dress.” That made her smile,
so he continued. “So you gave him the boot?”

“It was sort of a mutual booting, I
think.”

“Any guy who’d dump his date at that diner
must be an idiot anyway,” he told her. “Particularly when she looks as pretty
as you do, tonight.”

She smiled at her toes and he chuckled,
pleased to have made her happy. It was such a small thing, but right now, he would
take whatever he could get.

“You know, I used to have the most
terrible crush on you,” she said and he was stilled. “I thought you were the
most beautiful person playing the most wonderful game on earth.”

“Yeah?” he sighed, the happiness gone in a
rush. “I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

With his eyes closed, he felt the soft
brush of her shoulder as she nudged him. “I was a kid,” she said and he opened
his eyes. She was watching him, looking sly. “I think I’ll get over it.”

Letting his breath out in a slow sigh, he
smiled at her. “I’m glad,” he said.

“You remember what I said, about not
thinking you’d come back?”

That wasn’t quite how he remembered it,
but he nodded anyway.

“That’s not true at all,” she said. “I
always thought you’d come back. Always. Even before you left.”

She was looking at him, not at the sky or
her feet. His mouth was dry.

“I should get you home,” he said. Pushing
herself away from the car, she rubbed at oil he could just see caught in the
whirls of her fingerprint. “Don’t get that on your dress.”

Shrugging, she rubbed the edge of one
fluttering sleeve between the fingers of her clean hand. “Doesn’t much matter,
now, does it? I certainly don’t have anything to save it for.”

Reaching for her hand, he brushed her
fingers against his hip, against the dark fabric of his jeans until only a
faint gray smudge remained on her skin. “There,” he said. “Save it because it’s
pretty and you look nice in it. Save it because tonight you told some guy to
get lost and he actually did.” She tugged at his hand lightly and he realized
he hadn’t released her wrist.  As he let go, she stepped forward until he could
feel the fabric of her skirt push against his knees. He said nothing as she
rose onto the toes of her bright blue shoes and pressed her lips against the
side of his mouth. Slowly lowering herself back onto her heels, she watched
him, waiting for a reaction with a slightly concerned face.

He placed one hand on her cheek and dipped
his head to kiss her, firmly and with tenderness. For a few moments, everything
in his world was concentrated on the feel of her mouth against his. When he
straightened up again, she made a small sound that seemed like “Oh,” or maybe
“Ah.” He badly wanted to keep kissing her. Common sense kicked in when she drew
her lips away again to take a breath.

“Come on,” he said quickly. “Let’s get you
home.”

“Yeah,” she said, but he could feel the
edge of her left hip, pressed against his own.

“Casey,” he said slowly, to be sure she
heard him, “your dad just hired me. This is the first chance I’ve had to play a
little ball again. I think... I think I need to take you home now.”

She took a step back and tilted her head,
examining him. He waited, sure she would be angry. Finally, she licked her lips
once and then slipped past him toward the passenger side of the car, her hand
clasping and releasing his arm as she passed. Blinking away the humming in his
head, he listened to the click of her heels until they stopped. He turned to
find her standing at her open door, waiting for him.

“Ready?” she asked, with a small smile.

“Yeah,” he said, adjusting his jeans as
she looked down to settle into her seat. When he was seated beside her, hand on
the stick shift, heart still loud in his chest, she spoke.

“You know, there’s got to come a time in
my life when everything doesn’t revolve around my dad.”

“Probably,” he agreed, starting the car
and pulling back out onto the road. Shifting into third, a thought came to him
as they picked up speed. “Won’t it be a strange day when that happens?” he
said. “For both of us?”

He dropped her off and even walked her to
her door. The lights were off in the house, and he was tempted to kiss her
again on her doorstep, the way he was sometimes tempted to do anything risky,
but as usual, his practical side won out.

It took him almost two weeks before he
could work up the courage, during a morning workout, to ask Billy about her.
The boys raced back and forth on the field, running lines. Billy’s eyes
followed them, tracking who would run well, who would slow them down, who
simply needed to hit the ball frequently and who had to hit it well.

“Casey?” he said, never looking in Ben’s
direction. “She’s fine. She left for college two days ago. Drove off with Lee
to find an apartment before school started. Lee tells me she’s got some tiny
room in one of those shared houses, which scares the shit out of me because I
know what sort of boys live in those places. I can’t trust Lee to look out for
a damn thing, apparently.”

Ben opened his mouth to reply, to say
something about boys and shared houses and girls. Then, thinking better of it,
he merely licked his lips and stayed quiet.

1998

Three years before Kevin Costner plowed
under half the family farm to create his field, Ben stood in the swampy back
grass of his grandparent’s home and decided to put in a diamond. What the hell,
he figured, no one but his grandmother’s long-dead pet cow had ever used the
space. Not wet enough to be wetlands, not dry enough to till, the thick grass
rose to his knees and poked him, prodded him to action. It wasn’t as fancy,
when finished, as the Field of Dreams. There were no bleachers, and the dirt
paths from base to base were really dirt, not something he’d had carted in from
another state. In the winter, it was soggy. In the summer, well, it was soggy.
But it served him now, on this impossibly hot afternoon, giving a few boys from
the team a place to practice without pressure.

Cale Grochow, Billy’s pride and joy this
year, was developing a stance. It was something they allowed the boys to do
around their junior year. Before that, they were required to stand with the
same perfect form, like Little Leaguers, and hit that way again and again until
the ideal swing of the bat was imprinted on their brain as surely as the motion
required to run. “But Coach,” they would whine, “I hit better when I hold it
like this...” and then some nineteen year-old boy with no more sense of his own
potential than a baby would hold the bat up above his head, helicopter it
around a few times and swing so hard he’d threaten to put his own sweet face in
the dirt. “Right, that’s great,” Billy would reply. “Now do what I say.”

Ben leaned forward and studied Cale. The
boy lifted his bat up above his head, without helicoptering, and stepped back a
bit. He looked strong, sturdy, a bit short, but Ben knew he could plow into the
grass of the outfield like a bull. Nodding to the pitcher, Ben watched the boy
let go with a mildly fiery fastball. Cale’s body hovered in its new position
for a moment, then just before the ball reached him he slipped into the old
classic, stepping up to the ball and following through in one smooth motion. It
was perfect, Ben mused, how all the drilling and yelling and endless battling
paid off in that one moment. Cale would think of the stance as unique. He would
practice it until he could stand that way without thinking about it. Modifying
it over his years in the Majors until some diligent sports reporter would line
up the photos showing the progression from raw recruit to seasoned player. And
the whole time, as he thought he was swinging with Grochow’s own, he would be
wrong. At the last second, his body would relax into the same predictable shape
he’d been using since grade school. The most efficient way to hit a ball,
refined through generations of practice and applied science, and it would never
even occur to Cale to thank them for making him do it until he couldn’t help
himself. There was a certain logical science to the sport that appealed to Ben.
It was wonderful to have something steady to rely on, something not worth
changing.

Ben smiled as the ball sailed forward and
to the left, skirting the foul line to land in fair territory, deep in the
thick grass just beyond the field. One of the boys out shagging balls scrambled
after it.

“Good,” Ben called and was rewarded by a
nodding grin from Cale. “Do it again.”

The pitcher, a boy from the inner city who
had come to them with a shiny coat of bravado covering a well of insecurity,
now drew back and threw another fastball, straight down the pipe. Batting
practice was boring for a pitcher. Ben could remember standing on the mound,
throwing the same dull balls at least fifty times, watching the batters whack
them out into the bleachers with an ease that wasn’t just annoying, but
infuriating. He had wanted to cut loose, just once, surprise them. But again,
without meaning to, he had been learning. Not just the feel of throwing
straight and true, but he was developing an immunity to the sound of a
perfectly hit pitch. It couldn’t rattle you, or someday during a big game, with
everything on the line, you would hear that distinctive sound and that would be
it. Your ability to concentrate, your confidence, would be gone the instant the
ball sailed over the far wall. Sometimes it happened anyway, but batting
practice helped. Ben wasn’t even sure it was supposed to, but it did.

He hadn’t been sure, this morning, if
calling the boys had been the right thing to do. It didn’t feel disrespectful,
exactly, to be out here on a perfect early summer day. Still, it couldn’t help
but feel like they were somehow rubbing their lives in the dead man’s face with
each powerful movement of muscle and tendon. Ben wanted the boys to have a
sense of security in their own futures, even if he didn’t share it. Perhaps the
familiar routine of standing out here in the early afternoon sun, sweating and
swearing and laughing with one another would keep them from feeling the
pervasive strength of death. After all, there was still the rest of the season,
short as it was.

In the pale white distance, he could see
rain clouds sweeping forward. Right on time.

“Ok,” he shouted, “Let’s wrap it up.”

Cale took a final swing at a last fastball
and sent it sailing up and out, a perfect pop fly. The right fielder stretched
out a lazy hand and caught the ball.

Ben enjoyed these afternoons, just him and
the boys; their intensity tempered by the sun and the knowledge that it was,
after all, just practice. This, he realized suddenly, watching the boys deposit
balls and bats at his feet, was what he would miss most. What the hell was he
supposed to do with his afternoons? What did other people do?

When he’d first realized that he would
never play again, it seemed impossible that he would someday find himself
standing on a field with sweat beading around his hairline, shouting and
laughing and waiting for the moment when the ball soared into the sun and was
lost. He wasn’t sure he could bear losing it again.

Cale jogged up last, wiping his face on
his sleeve and grinning.

“I think I’m finally getting it,” he said
and Ben agreed. Cale would be picked up after next year, he was sure, barring
injury. Most of the boys weren’t ever chosen to go forward, even to the Minors.
They had degrees, career goals, and their years here would only resurface later
at cocktail parties or with their mistresses, when they talked about the chance
they’d had and didn’t take, forgetting that it was never theirs to decide. “I
want to keep working on it,” Cale told him as Ben zipped up the duffel bag and
began to carry it inside. “That way I’ll be going into next year ready to play,
you know?”

“You’ve got the whole summer,” Ben said,
noncommittal.

Cale hesitated. The others had already
piled back into their cars and were peeling out of the driveway like extras in
Road Warrior. He could remember driving like that, working with the sleek
strumming of the engine instead of tempering it. Ben slung the duffel in
through the door of the back porch and turned to his remaining student.

“Are they going to keep you on?” Cale
asked, and he had the grace, bless him, to look nervous about it. Ben, not for
the first time, wondered at the sudden tightening in his chest.

“I don’t know,” he answered, then thought
better of the lie. “I doubt it.”

They were standing on the back steps,
awkward for the first time since meeting each other three years before. Ben
sighed. He wanted, above all, to be honest. Strangely enough, it was what he’d
always wanted, he just hadn’t realized that’s what the feeling was. “You wanna
come in? I’ve got root beer or something inside.”

Cale seemed to think about this. Ben knew
that just a few days before, he wouldn’t have had to.

“Nah,” the boy said at last. “I’ve got a
ton of homework. Finals are week after next.”

For a moment neither seemed to want to
move. Ben understood what Cale wanted to say and wished the boy wasn’t finding
it so difficult. At last he stepped down and began to walk Cale out to his car,
the noisy gravel shifting beneath their feet to keep them from feeling the
silence. At the door to his rusted old Mustang, Cale paused, his hand hovering
by the window. Here it comes, thought Ben.

“I just wanted to say that I think you’d
be a great head coach,” Cale said. “I don’t know what the fuck they’ve got up
their asses, but...”

“It’s all right,” Ben soothed. “I’m not
that surprised.”

Cale nodded and stared past Ben briefly,
back at the field.

“You were a good pitcher, right?” he
asked.

Ben shrugged. “I knew how to pitch, and
for a while I was good at it. I guess my body let me down, in the end.”

Cale seemed fixated on the field, watching
the grass in the outfield move like water.

“Can I ask you something?” he said at
last.

“Sure,” Ben replied easily, though the
tightness was constricting until he had to force himself to breathe.

“Do you... miss it?”

Every year there was one; one special boy
who felt, just for a moment, the injustice of it and wanted to understand how
something so monumentally ridiculous could have happened. Ben knew that nothing
he said would make any of it any clearer. It was part of growing up, Ben
thought, letting go of your expectation that all dreams could be fulfilled,
though he sure as hell wished in that moment that it wasn’t. Or at the very
least, that no one ever had to see him for what he really was, just a dusty
middle-aged man waiting for the rain.

“What do you think?” he asked gently.

Cale sighed. “I know I would. I can’t
imagine making it all the way and then, boom, it’s over. I would never get over
it.”

Ben felt like laughing, though he knew how
insulting it would be.

“I’ve found new things to make me happy,”
he said instead, “over the years.”

“That’s why you’re here, huh? Because this
kinda makes up for it?”

“No,” Ben replied. “No, Cale. This doesn’t
even kinda make up for it. But it’s great to see you guys play, to watch your
dreams develop.”

At that Cale looked away, and opened the
car door. “Yeah, I just hope…”

Ben cut him off. “That you don’t end up
like me? Washed up a couple years in, then sitting around twenty years later
hoping you don’t get laid off from the only avenue you’ve found back into the
game?”

Cale shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking
that. I was thinking about Billy. I just hope I can be as great a player as he
was.”

Ben had the good grace to blush.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “Six
o’clock.”

“Yep,” Cale said, and shut the door.

As the boy backed out onto the road, Ben
stood in his driveway and thought about tomorrow. Not the tomorrow on the
calendar, but the grand theme. If they were to let him go now, he wondered if
he would tumble straight to the bottom without recourse once again, or if
something unexpected would happen.

He was still standing there, watching the
approaching clouds and thinking not of rain, but of thunder, when another car
pulled into the driveway.

“Hey,” Casey Wells said as she stepped
from one of Jake’s many luxury cars, and for a brief second, Ben thought
perhaps fate had decided to give him a bit of a breather.