Country Hardball (6 page)

He’d be back the end of the week, Champion had told her, but she didn’t believe him. She’d seen him drifting away from Eleanor for a couple of years, like he always had. A little nudge this way or that. Inertia. The sort of thing where someone says, “Let’s do this” and you just go along. When they were growing up, mostly left to themselves, she hadn’t minded so much. Let’s go see what the creek washed up. Let’s play school at the old barn. When Champion had started dating Eleanor, Averdale had noticed a new spark to him. A sparkle. Trying new things. Out on the town. Raising a family. But then he and the boy had started coming to Sunday dinners without her. And Averdale got the feeling that maybe Champion was sitting on the side of the creek, watching Eleanor drift along. And then when she—when she left like that—Averdale realized the sparkle she’d seen had just been someone else’s reflection. That Champion was just the boy standing back on the cinderblock steps, waiting.

She looked through the kitchen window to see her nephew walking across the yard, dragging his pellet gun in one hand, holding a bird cradled in his other arm.

Outside the house, she looked at the bird, pulled it loose from the boy. Then she held the boy’s shoulders tight in her hands.

“What did you do?”im with angel

In the photograph I’m holding my grandfather’s baseball glove.

Short. Stubby. An early glove, back before Spittin’ Bill Doak of the St. Louis Cardinals made them put in the webbing. A glove. Not a mitt. Old when my grandfather had it.

Doak retired to Florida and opened a candy shop. He died in November of 1954. The next year my grandfather was on his way home from work when he was shot in the back six times and died in a ditch alongside Highway 29, two miles south of Bradley, Arkansas. They never found his truck.

I was pulling pictures from boxes when my grandmother walked into the room.

“Find anything worth keeping?” she asked.

I said I’d found a few things, nodded toward a toppled stack of pictures and books. A journal. A pocket watch. A box of cufflinks and tiepins. A silver dollar.

She picked up the silver dollar, turned it around in her hand. “This here is a Peace Dollar.”

I had no idea.

“The artist modeled Lady Liberty after his own wife. Take a gander. 1934.” She handed the coin back to me. “Your grandfather got that from a man over in El Dorado for something. Can’t remember now. Called it his lucky coin.”

“You want it?” I asked.

“No, no. You need the luck more than I do.” She winked. “See the woman? Lady Liberty? Everyone got all hot and bothered because the woman has her mouth open.”

I looked at the coin. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” she said, “now.” Then she laughed a little high-pitched cough. “You going through your mama’s stuff today? Your daddy’s?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Got a job interview at three.”

She hummed a little in agreement. “Want something to eat before you go? Leftover chicken. Rustle you up some pie, I imagine.”

• • •

I was standing at the sink, looking out the window and washing out my glass.

My grandmother squeaked back in her chair. “What’s this job? This the one your cousin Cleovis set you up with?”

“No, that one didn’t work out. This one is with a guy down on Dorcheat.”

“On Dorcheat Bayou?” She whistled through her dentures. “Roy, hadn’t been nothing doing down there since a hundred years ago.” She laughed.

“Yeah. I know. He wants to start up some canoe business. Said he does some fishing down there now. A little trapping. Local meat and fish for these restaurants around.”

She shook her head. “I can’t see it,” she said. “But I never did have a head for business. That was your Pawpaw’s thing, you know.” She reached across the green-and-white he pressed a button and the chair ">“mavchecked, vinyl tablecloth, pulled along the photograph of me with the baseball glove. “Yes, sir. He knew how to take care of us. Yes, sir, he did.”

She stood up from the table and I looked back out the window as she re-snapped the middle of her housecoat.

I pulled a butterscotch candy from a bowl on the television, kissed her goodbye, and headed to the cabin on Dorcheat.

In thirty minutes, I was listening to a man I’d never met explain how I could make good money by killing his wife next Wednesday night during choir practice.

• • •

That Wednesday night, the man pulled out of his driveway and flashed his lights as he passed my car. When I reached the house, I took the hidden key from under the flowerpot and let myself into the mudroom.

I pulled the pistol from my jacket pocket. She was folding clothes in the guest room. A stack of white towels was on the bed. Soft. Warm. Clean.

She screamed when I put the gun to the side of her head and clamped my left hand across her mouth.

I showed her the gun and nodded. Then I put my finger to my lips. Shhh. She nodded back and I took my other hand away.

She tried to ask me not to hurt her, but she was shaking too much, her jaw in some sort of seizure.

I pushed the towels to the side of the bed and the stack toppled over. Then I lowered her to a sitting position and stood in front of her.

On the wall behind the bed was a shelf full of trophies. Little silver baseball players standing on top of columns and blocks. A team photograph, decades old, of little boys in bright yellow shirts standing in a field.

The television in the corner was muted. Onscreen police scientists in lab coats pretended to look at things in microscopes. Making everything better after a murder. Catching killers. Keeping people safe.

I pointed the gun between the woman’s eyes until she closed them. Then I found a chair along the wall. I reached back and pulled it forward. I sat down in the chair and tried to explain the situation to her.

“He knows?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“Does he know that James and I are in love? That I’m going to divorce him?”

“I imagine so,” I said. “Pretty much why he came up with tonight’s solution.”

“Why you? Is this what you do? Rape people? Kill people?”

“Friend of a friend had a job.”

“So what now?” she asked.

“Up to you,” I said.

She nodded. “What am I worth, if I can ask?”

“The job, you mean?”

She nodded, and I told her three thousand. Her husband and I had settled on eight hundred, but she seemed nice and I didn’t want her to feel cheap.

“Did he pay you? Good money?”

I shook my head, trying to think what would sound real. “Wanted to make sure this was done right. Owes me half.”

She nodded again and asked if she could stand up. She walked to the closet, pulled out a footstool, and stepped up. F anything,” he said., but ing outrom behind a stack of sweaters she pulled a small box. She opened it and counted out some money. “That’s all I have. It’s what he owes you. Plus.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“I’m sure,” she said, putting the box back. “I have a feeling money won’t be a problem soon.”

On the way out I wiped away my fingerprints, put the key back under the flowerpot. Walking back to my car, I slid the pistol back into my jacket. Then I folded the money she’d given me into the wad I’d gotten from him.

• • •

The next night I took my grandmother out to eat at Wiley’s on the Bayou. Catfish. Hush puppies. I wanted to ask her about my grandfather’s journal, about whether she’d read it after he died. About whether she knew he met a woman after work during his last year.

She pulled a clump of fish bones from her mouth, lined them up in a neat row along the edge of the plate. Dipped a hush puppy in ketchup. “Isn’t this a nice night?” she asked, looking out the window, through the cypress trees in the bayou. Watching the sun go yellow and red in the distance.

“Yes, ma’am.” I took the last sip of my tea, rattled the cup down so the waitress could hear. “I="indent" aid=

“They want me to play short,” he said, running across the field to the chainlink fence where Nancy and I were standing by the dugout.

I asked him to tell me again.

“Yeah, Coach said they wanted to see me play short, ’cause they already got two catchers.”

“Who’s got two catchers? Slow down. Who’s got two catchers?”

“The All-Star team. Said he wants me to play short. Show them I can play. Said I had a shot at making the All-Star team.”

I said it was great, even though I wasn’t so sure.

“Coach said I need my glove. To play the field.”

“You didn’t bring your other glove?”

He looked down at the weeds growing through the bottom of the fence. “No, sir.”

“Why not?” I ahe Lord works in mysterious ways.">“mavsked, maybe a little rough. Nancy squeezed my elbow.

“Sorry, Dad. I just, I just didn’t think I’d need it. Ain’t used it all year.”

Nancy cleared her throat. “Haven’t used it all year.”

“Sorry.”

I took a slow breath. “Where is it?” I asked, not moving my jaw.

“In my bedroom.”

“Any idea exactly
where
in your bedroom?”

“I don’t, I mean, maybe, I don’t know.”

Nancy squeezed my arm again. “Maybe in your closet, sweetie? Maybe on your shelf? Maybe that’s where you left it last time?”

“Yes, ma’am. That’s right. On the shelf with all my Hot Wheels. It’s there.”

“All right,” I said, and he ran back onto the field with his catcher’s mitt.

“Back as quick as I can.”

“If he makes the All-Star team,” Nancy started. “I mean, that’s great, but …”

“You mean the travel?”

“Right. It gets, you know, expensive traveling. Then if they get out of regionals …”

“I know,” I said, kissing her on the forehead. “One thing at a time. We’ll figure it out.” Behind her, the boy was walking around the infield, kicking stones clear.

“We can’t afford to …”

“It’s fine. We’ll figure it out.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“I do?”

She grinned. “Yeah.”

“Back in a bit.”

“Hey,” she said, running after me, leaning toward my face and whispering, “you paid the credit card?”

“Which one?”

“The JanFed one.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” She kissed me and walked back to the fence.

I passed Dougie Robinson on the way to my truck. “Giving up already? No faith in the Whispering Pines Tigers?”

“What’s going on, Dougie? Your boy playing today?”

“Yeah. Pitching. Coach says he’s the next Skinny Dennis McWilliams. How about yours?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Got him playing short.”

“Short? What’s that about?”

“Something the coach is doing, I guess. Heading home to get the right glove.”

“Maybe you could get one from Whispering Pines?”

“How you mean?”

“Like Hank over at the Mini-Mart. He sponsors the team, so the kids all get Icees and candy bars after the game. Figure since Whispering Pines sponsors you guys, maybe the nursing home can give you some gloves. You know, latex or whatever. Like it would matter.” Dougie elbowed the guy next to him, and they both laughed. anything,” he said.W like

“I’ll bring it up, Dougie. Thanks.”

“Hey, how’s the job hunt going?” I heard him ask as I walked away.

• • •

The glove was on the shelf, like the boy had said, next to a few cars, a couple of comics, and a blue and gold baseball cap. The year before for his birthday, all he’d asked for was a baseball cap. Light blue with gold stars. “Like the All-Stars have,” he said. So I went down to the athletic supply store by Piggly Wiggly and got him this cap and a brand-new baseball. They wouldn’t let me have one of the All-Star caps they made for the team, which makes sense, I guess.

He had opened the box and spent the afternoon bending the cap’s bill, trying it on. Bending the bill again. Finding a marker, writing his name on the underside of the bill. Then writing his number next to it. If he made the team, we’d have to get him a real cap. And a real jersey, too. And then all the travel. Sixty bucks for motels. Twenty for meals. If we were careful, maybe we could make some room on one of the cards. After the game, I could call and see about increasing the limit on one of them. Maybe we had something we could sell online. Maybe I’d start buying an extra lottery ticket each Monday. We’d figure it out.

I drove by the ATM to see whether Nancy’s paycheck had maybe gone in early, but it hadn’t. I took the envelope with our JanFed payment from behind the sun visor, slid it into the glove box. I’d check the balance again on Monday.

• • •

He was in the dugout when I got back, waiting for his chance to bat, which usually didn’t come until the third inning. I bent the fence back a little by the wall of the dugout, slid his glove through. The huge, floppy piece of leather he’d talked his grandmother into getting him at Western Auto. An outfielder’s glove, probably made for softball. He’d convinced her that a bigger glove was better, and since this was the biggest, it had to be the best. It was money we didn’t have, so what can you say? You say “thank you” is what you say.

They took the field and the Robinson kid on the Rebel Mini-Mart Marlins sent the first pitch over the broken scoreboard, then trotted his home-run walk like I’m sure his daddy taught him. I looked across the field and saw Dougie standing on the bleachers, arms raised. He saw me looking at him, made a gun with his fingers, then shot me. Pulled his index finger back, blew off the imaginary smoke.

A kid called Caleb flied out to the salvage yard sign in left. The next batter started the trouble, lining one to my boy, who got caught on an in-between hop but managed to knock the ball down, then throw the ball to the coach’s kid at first about five seconds too late.

I wanted the coach to call “Time,” to waddle his ass out to the mound and make sure my boy knew who was covering second, who would take the throw on a steal. But he didn’t. He sat on the bench in the dugout, working a pencil up and down a clipboard, spitting sunflower seeds onto the ground while my son stood alone in the field, adjusting his cap.

Nancy rubbed my shoulder. “You all right?”