Fragile Beasts (12 page)

Mom started noticing him around the house and said we couldn’t keep him. She claimed if we had a cat it would mean more work for her. The woman was always responsible for everything, she said, and she couldn’t cope with the burden of another life.

Dad didn’t mind him hanging around as long as he stayed outside, but he made it clear he wasn’t a fan of cats. It wasn’t until Mr. B started depositing dead mice, voles, and chipmunks on the porch steps that Dad finally brought home the first bag of Cat Chow.

He filled out nicely in no time and started letting me pet him, but he never warmed up to anyone else in the family.

Dad used to call him that “big frickin’ cat.” It was the only way he ever referred to him. He’d say, “Look what that big frickin’ cat killed last night,” or “Get that big frickin’ cat out of my house.” I started calling him Mr. Big and eventually shortened it to Mr. B.

I can’t believe I’m never going to see him again.

These past few days I’ve discovered possessions are meaningless. I can’t think of anything I own that I care about. Not a single video game or board game. Not the iPod Dad, Bill, and Klint got me for my birthday last year. Not
my concert T-shirt from the Lynyrd Skynyrd/Hank Williams, Jr. Bad Ass Tour or my poster of Miss February. Not my books or my art supplies. Not even my collection of “guys” I’ve had since I was a kid: aliens, pirates, dinosaurs, soldiers, farm and jungle animals that came in plastic tubes I got in my Christmas stockings, Pokemon characters, knights, robots, rainbow-colored rubbery frogs I got out of bubblegum machines, a set of bendable monsters I got in a goodie bag at a Halloween party, a set of peanuts painted to look like Steelers that Dad found at a flea market up in Cameron County when he was on a fishing trip with Bill, and a bunch of random cartoon and Disney figures I’ve accumulated from Happy Meals. I’ve used them my whole life to wage battles and populate imaginary cities, and now I’m suddenly looking back on all those safe, lazy afternoons as a waste of time.

If I could take Mr. B with me, though, things wouldn’t be so bad.

I keep holding him and enjoying sitting outside. After the long sticky summer we had, these first cool nights have a clean brightness to them. The white moon and stars look like they’ve been freshly polished and stuck into the dark violet sky, and the stillness in the air is so complete it’s more like a calming presence than a lack of movement.

If I could take this Pennsylvania night with me, things wouldn’t be so bad, either.

Klint comes walking across our yard, and I quickly set down Mr. B. He gives me an indignant look, then notices Klint and disappears into the bushes.

Klint picks up one of the dozens of baseballs that are always lying around our house and starts absentmindedly tossing it one-handed in the air and catching it again. He thinks better with a ball in his hand.

Klint’s not stupid; he just doesn’t want to be smart.

A lot of people think baseball players are dumb, and I don’t blame them if they’re watching a game without any real knowledge of what’s going on. It seems the players spend most of their time sitting in the dugout and standing in the field, and while they’re waiting around for something to happen they’re usually wearing dopey expressions on their faces and occupying themselves by spitting and scratching.

When there is action, it’s over so quickly it appears effortless. It only takes a few seconds to hit a ball four hundred feet or to gun someone out from deep in the hole at shortstop. It seems to barely require any physical exertion, let alone mental power.

What people don’t understand is the whole act of hitting the ball is a lesson in physics and once that ball is hit, a hundred different scenarios can unfold and the players in the field have to be able to respond correctly and instantly.

A dumb guy can’t do it.

Klint sits down next to me on the steps, still tossing the ball. I take out the pocketknife Dad got for me when I was ten, find a branch, and start paring away strips of the wood until I come to the tender green center.

We sit that way for a while until I can’t stand it anymore.

“Are you ever gonna talk to me again?” I ask him.

“Why do you need me to talk to you?”

“I don’t.”

“Then what do you care?”

We sit for a while longer, Klint with his ball and me staring at the stars. Less than a week ago I was looking up at those same stars through the ragged pattern of leaves made by the Hamiltons’ towering oaks and maples. I had a dad and a home then and Shelby Jack nuzzling up next to me in front of a fire instead of looking at me across her aunt’s table with horror in her eyes.

“That woman was messed up,” Klint says out of the blue. “Asking us all that shit about Mom and Dad.”

“She was thinking about letting us live with her,” I explain feebly. “Maybe she wanted to know something about us.”

“She was never gonna let us live with her,” he growls at me.

“Then why did she invite us to dinner? Why would Shelby lie?”

“You don’t understand anything about people. Especially rich people.”

It’s true that Klint has more experience with rich people than I do. He’s been to Brent Richmond’s house a couple times for team-related functions. Brent’s dad owns Sunny Valley Homes. He rips up quiet green hillsides and slaps together identical, prefab houses and fills them with poor young families with screaming kids and frustrated, yelping dogs, and poor single people who play really loud music with their windows open in the hopes someone will think they’re cool and want to hang out with them. Aunt Jen lives in one of his developments: Sunnybrook Estates.

Klint also got to go to the home of the dean of a university when he was invited down to a special batting camp sponsored by a group of Florida colleges
last December. It was a huge coup for a sophomore to be asked to attend, and Dad talked about it for the entire off-season.

One of the schools hosted a reception for the ballplayers at the dean’s house. All Klint remembered about the house was that there was an aquarium full of colorful fish as big as an entire wall, and that there was a fountain with two gold dolphins spouting water in their front yard. The only thing he ever told me about Brent’s house was that he had a huge hot tub with a TV mounted above it and that his mom had a sunken bathtub that looked like a gigantic clamshell.

Apparently for Klint, one of the most striking differences between poor and rich people is a more creative use of water.

“We were a diversion for her,” he goes on.

“A diversion?”

“Yeah, you know. An amusing distraction from her boring rich old lady life.”

He’s definitely let his guard down when he starts using big words and then providing definitions.

I spy Mr. B sitting on his favorite tree branch, watching Klint intently like he wants to be prepared in case my brother suddenly shrinks down to small rodent size.

All of a sudden his gaze turns wary, and he slinks off his perch into the dark leaves.

A moment later we hear the sound of the car engine that he heard first.

A big black SUV comes rumbling down our road. We both know who it is before it comes to a stop.

“Shit,” Klint says.

“I’ll leave you guys alone,” I say gladly, and go inside.

My bedroom’s in the front of the house and my window’s right next to the front porch. I keep my lights off and sit on my bed where I can hear everything.

“Hey, Klint.”

“Coach.”

“Hope you don’t mind me dropping by like this. I had something I wanted to discuss with you, and I didn’t feel like using the phone.”

I sidle up next to the window and peer out the screen.

Coach is wearing his gray Centresburg Flames windbreaker and ball cap. He has his hands stuck in his pockets and is working a piece of chew inside his lower lip.

The skin on his face, neck, and arms is the consistency of beef jerky from all the days spent standing in the sun. He teaches tenth-grade history at the high school and his evaluations from the students every year always say his class is a great place for a nap. He’s the kind of guy no one notices except for when he steps on a baseball field; then something electric happens to him, and he becomes the guy everyone needs to look at before and after every single play.

Coach glances down at the ball in Klint’s hand.

“So what’s going on?”

“Not much.”

“How are you doing?”

“Okay.”

“Mrs. Hill and the girls wanted me to tell you that they hope you’re feeling better. They’re all very concerned about you.”

No one’s ever seen Mrs. Hill but the coach often relays messages from her: “Mrs. Hill says good luck,” or “Mrs. Hill is home rooting for us.”

There are two types of coaches’ wives: the type that’s almost as involved as the coach, who shows up at every game in sunglasses and a team cap, greased with coconut oil, toting a cooler full of Gatorade and a clipboard, who knows the RBIs, allergies, names of girlfriends, and shoe sizes of every player; and the type who wouldn’t be caught dead at a game. Mrs. Hill appears to be the second type.

She and the coach have three daughters and no sons. The middle one is a year older than Klint and the youngest one is my age. They both have things for Klint. They cheer wildly for him at the games and try to talk to him when he’s waiting to bat.

The oldest daughter is away at college on a track and cross-country scholarship. Because of the coach’s well-known disdain for girls’ sports—he was quoted once in a newspaper interview as saying the school board should take the money they spend on girls’ softball and hire a new sex ed teacher—she was able to have a flourishing high school running career without any pressure put on her by her parents.

Probably the worst thing that ever happened to Coach and the best thing that ever happened to his kids is none of them were born male.

At the mention of the girls, I make a kissy noise at the window and Klint whips the ball so hard at me it rips through the old, rusty screen and bounces off my wall.

“What the hell?” Coach shouts at him.

“I saw a bug,” Klint says.

Coach Hill regains his composure by concentrating on his chewing and then spitting a long stream of tobacco in our yard.

“As I was saying, they’re concerned about you.”

“That’s nice,” Klint says.

“I heard you’re not real excited about going to live with your mom in Arizona.”

What he means is everyone is talking about Klint’s outburst in front of the funeral home.

“Of course, I don’t have to tell you how much the team would miss you.”

What he means is he’s going to have to kiss his shot at the state championship title good-bye.

“Mrs. Hill and I discussed it.”

What he means is I discussed it with myself.

“And we know it might be a little bit presumptuous and of course we’d have to talk to your mom about it, but we’d like to have you come live with us.”

Live with Coach Hill: it takes a minute for the idea to sink in.

I wonder if he screams and his face turns red if you don’t clean your room. I wonder if Mrs. Hill can cook. I wonder if Klint and I would have to share a room. I’ve gotten used to having my own room since Mom and Krystal left, but I suppose I could go back to bunking with Klint if I had to.

The daughters aren’t bad-looking. The youngest one, Katy, was in my English class last year. We talked sometimes. Most of our conversations were about Klint and the team, but every once in a while I’d try discussing a movie or an assignment with her and it always went well. She said hi to me at the games.

I think I could do it. I could probably live with them.

“I don’t know,” Klint says. “It’s nice of you and Mrs. Hill to make the offer. I’ll have to talk it over with Kyle.”

“Yeah. About Kyle,” Coach says. “I know you boys are close. I don’t think he’s ever missed a game. He’s practically like a mascot.”

“My brother’s not a mascot,” Klint says roughly.

“You know what I mean. The problem is we don’t really have the room for both of you. I thought he could go with your mom. He’s younger. He should be with her.”

I feel like I’ve been sucker punched in the gut. I can’t listen to any more. I roll off my bed and wander through the dark house.

I tell myself deep down I don’t care. The crucial thing right now is finding a good environment for Klint’s ballplaying and what could be better than living with a guy who eats, drinks, and sleeps baseball and wants him to succeed just as much as Dad did and even for the same reason, so someday down the road he can point and say, “That’s my boy. I made him what he is today.”

This will be Klint’s most important year of high school ball. College scouts will be watching him extrahard during the upcoming spring and summer seasons, and he’ll get his offers next fall.

College isn’t his only option, though. He could go for the draft his senior year. That’s what Dad would’ve told him to do because Dad was blinded by Klint’s potential. The golden glow coming from Klint’s dream future made it impossible for Dad to see the equally possible nightmares: injuries, burnout, drugs, alcohol, bad breaks, breakdowns; there are lots of reasons why guys don’t make it.

I’m the one who convinced Klint he needs college. I’ve done my research, plus like I said, Klint’s not dumb. He knows the road to the majors is paved with the bodies of players who were drafted in the thirty-fifth round and went on to play farm ball for their entire careers, never making any money, never once setting foot on a major-league field, and having nothing to fall back on once they couldn’t or wouldn’t play anymore.

I’m starving. A couple bites of soup wasn’t much of a dinner. I head for the kitchen.

The countertops and the table are covered with half-eaten, dried-out casseroles and lasagnas and rubbery Jell-O molds we forgot to put in the fridge. The moon shines through the window over the sink and lights up the dishes with an eerie glow, each one like a miniature alien landscape full of crumbling canyon walls, craters, caves, and lakes of grease.

The light splashes across the red-and-white tile floor Mom wanted desperately,
and Dad worked overtime to afford and installed for her one sunny spring weekend years ago while she fluttered around him smiling prettily and bringing him beers. It’s filthy, scratched, and faded now, more the color of rotten hamburger meat than the candy cane it used to resemble.