The Girl Who Threw Butterflies (17 page)

The next inning, the top of the sixth, Desmond got the first Sheridan batter quickly, a ground out to Lloyd Coleman at shortstop. But then he got into trouble. He walked the next batter on four pitches, none of them all that close.

“He's running out of gas,” Coach V said.

Desmond had pitched a fine game. He was not stylish at all. He pretty much just stepped and threw, but with some real sizzle. Molly admired his confidence and eagerness to compete. Desmond always seemed impatient to get the ball and throw it again. But now he was slowing down, kicking the dirt around the pitcher's rubber, taking a few deep, heaving breaths.

Desmond threw three more balls to the next batter, and
all of a sudden Coach Morales was shouting her name. “Molly! Molly Williams!”

For a split second, hearing her name shouted like that, Molly thought she was in trouble. She jumped up from the bench so Morales could see her and raised her hand.

“You and Lonnie,” he said. “I want you to warm up.” Then he jogged out onto the field to have a chat with Desmond.

Molly grabbed her glove. Lonnie was standing in front of her, a ball and mitt and mask in hand. He looked stiff.
Reporting for duty,
that was his posture.

“How about we play some catch?” Molly said.

Lonnie looked blank. It was almost as if Molly had said, How about we rob a bank? How about we jump off a bridge?

“Sure,” Lonnie said at last, a little grimly. “Sure.”

Lonnie and Molly arranged themselves sixty feet apart. They didn't need to measure—by now, Molly just knew. She threw easily at first, not winding up, just tossing the ball, and then Lonnie got down into his catcher's squat and Molly started to pitch. At first she threw fastballs, hers not being all that fast, but she threw them over the plate, which was good. Even if her knuckleball was knuckling like crazy, it was smart to mix it up a little.

While she threw with Lonnie, Molly stole some glances over her shoulder to see what was happening on the field. After he'd spoken with Coach Morales, Desmond had settled down and thrown some strikes. With a full count, he got the Sheridan batter out on a weak pop-up to Eli at second base. But he got behind the next batter and walked him, too. Now there were runners on first and second, two
outs. Molly could see Coach Morales standing with his foot on the top step of the dugout. He looked like he was trying to decide whether or not to go out and get Desmond.

Molly signaled to Lonnie with a flip of her glove that she was ready to start throwing knucklers. Her first one was a horror. The pitch spun, which was bad: It was a knuckle-ball that didn't knuckle. A pitch like that was what the boys on the team called a “meatball”—big and juicy and easy to hit.

Lonnie caught the ball, stood, and started walking toward her. Molly felt irritated. She had thrown one bad warm-up pitch, and now Lonnie House was going to give her a talking-to?

“I know, I know,” Molly said. “I threw a lousy pitch. I'm warming up. Give me a break.” She waved him back, but he kept coming toward her.

“Not that,” he said. “Look.” And pointed to the field. Coach Morales was standing on the mound with Desmond and Ben Malone. They were all staring at her and Lonnie. “He wants us,” Lonnie said just as Morales gestured at them. There was no mistaking what he wanted. He pointed at them twice—you, and you—and waved them toward the mound.

“Looks like this is it,” Molly said.

“Gulp,” Lonnie said.

When Molly arrived on the mound, Morales had his arm on Desmond's shoulder and was speaking to him quietly. Desmond was breathing hard. He looked exhausted and frustrated.

“Hi,” Morales said to Molly, which seemed like a funny thing to say under the circumstances.

“Hi,” Molly said. She couldn't help but smile a little, nervous as she was. Molly had thought meeting in the school cafeteria was strange! Talking on the mound was strange to the tenth power. There was a Sheridan player loitering around second base, another one at first, touching his toes. The umpire was kneeling behind home plate, tying his shoe. From a distance, he'd looked like an old pro, but up close, Molly could see that he was maybe twenty, tops, a college kid probably.

It was one thing to watch a game from the dugout, an-other thing altogether to stand in the middle of things. Molly felt as if she'd walked onto the set of a movie in the middle of a shoot. Things were in full swing, everyone seemed to know their parts—everyone but her.

There was some time to kill while Lonnie was in the dugout strapping on his catcher's gear. Morales had motioned Ian in from left field and was sending Desmond out to replace him. But before he left, Desmond held out his hand. “Gimme some,” he said, and they performed a subdued, slightly abbreviated version of the handshake.

Finally, Lonnie came jogging out to the mound, the buckles of his shin guards jingling. “How do you feel?” Morales asked Molly.

“I feel good,” Molly said, which, true or not, she knew was the right answer.

“Good,” Morales said. “You have runners on first and second, so you need to work from the stretch. You got two outs. Throw strikes and get us the last one.”

Molly nodded, and Morales headed back to the dugout. Lonnie pulled his mask down, turned, and trotted to his position behind home plate.

And now, for the first time, Molly was on the mound, all alone. She thought about all her make-believe backyard games with her dad, all the imaginary batters she'd faced. She thought about her last rotten pitch on the sidelines with Lonnie. She thought about Coach V in the dugout with the scorebook, pencil in hand, the blank squares in the inning, waiting to be filled in.

hile Molly was taking her warm-ups with Lonnie, the Sheridan team apparently noticed that the opposing pitcher was a girl. There was a mild commotion in the dugout. It wasn't as if they were a mile away. Molly could hear what they were saying plain as day. “Hey,” she heard. “Check it out. On the mound. It's a girl.”

Molly threw three fastballs and two knuckleballs, both only so-so, and the umpire brushed off the plate. From the Sheridan dugout came some halfhearted attempts at bench jockeying.

“How come you don't throw like a girl?”

“Hey, Baseball Barbie! What accessories do you come with?”

And then a man's stern voice. “That's enough. Knock it off.”

Over the general din, Molly could distinctly hear Celia's hollering. Maybe because she was that loud, maybe because Molly was especially attuned to the pitch and frequency of her best friend's voice. “Show ‘em what you got!” Celia was shouting. “You're the man, Molly! You're the man!”

The batter stepped in. Lonnie asked for a knuckleball and held up his mitt for a target. Molly started into her windup. She felt weirdly distant from herself. She felt robotic, as if she were on automatic pilot.

Halfway into her delivery, Molly realized that with runners on base, she should have been pitching from a stretch. Now it was too late to stop. She continued with her pitch, but the awareness of her mistake made her pause and jerk—it put a little hiccup in her windup. As a result, she held on to the ball too long and released it a split second too late. The pitch bounced at least two feet in front of the plate and skipped over Lonnie's shoulder to the backstop. The batter waved his arms to the runners, and each of them took another base while Lonnie retrieved the ball.

Runners on second and third now. Lonnie signaled for another floater. Molly nodded. This time she remembered to stretch properly. She brought her hands together at her waist, looked back at the runner leading off second base, and then directly at the kid on third. Neither of them was going anywhere.

This pitch was wild, too, just like the first, but wild in a new way. It was a real knuckler, no spin to it at all, but it came in high and inside. A lot of knucklers, most of them, dropped. But not this one. This one was a nonconformist.
This one just kept sailing—up, up, and away. The batter ducked out of the way, and once again Molly watched in mute, helpless horror while the ball went all the way to the backstop. Lonnie chased it, picked it up on the rebound, and turned toward the plate, arm cocked and ready to throw. But there was no one to throw to. The runner loped across the plate, and the Sheridan dugout exploded in cheers. The game was tied.

Lonnie walked slowly back to the plate, looking at Molly the whole time. She had forgotten to cover home, which was her responsibility. She was just standing there on the mound, gaping, a bystander. So much for smart baseball.

“Molly,” Morales was saying. “Molly, Molly.”

Was it possible that she had suffered some kind of baseball blackout? Molly had no clear recollection of the umpire calling time, no memory of Morales coming out of the dugout to join her on the mound. But here he was. Lonnie, too, breathing hard, a swatch of sweaty hair plastered across his forehead.

“You need to slow the game down a little,” Morales said. “You're letting the game get away from you. You're acting like a passenger. You're letting the game happen to you. Do you know what I'm talking about?”

Molly nodded. She knew what he was talking about. She felt as if she'd been riding the game, like a roller coaster, hanging on,
barely
hanging on, feeling queasy, just hoping she could hold on until it stopped.

“It's your ball,” Morales said. “You don't have to throw it until you're ready. It's okay to make them wait a little.”

The umpire had positioned himself just a few yards away from them. He was eavesdropping, or maybe just trying to hurry them along. If so, Morales didn't seem to notice. He was slowing the game down himself.

“Do you think you can do that?” Morales asked.

Again Molly just nodded. She didn't trust her voice.

“I think you can, too,” Morales said. “Don't forget to breathe.”

Molly stood on the pitcher's rubber and tried to remember some Zen thing from her reading.
You must learn to wait properly,
the master told his student in the archery book. Lonnie had taken his position behind the plate. Molly decided just to look at the batter, really look at him. He was wearing a too-big batting helmet, and underneath it, he seemed to be grimacing. Trying to look fierce but, maybe, trying too hard. And he was standing awfully far from the plate. Maybe that last inside pitch had unsettled him a little.

Lonnie called for a fastball outside. He must have noticed the same thing she had. This kid wasn't eager to swing, and even if he did, he probably couldn't reach any-thing away.

“Go, McKinley!” some guy hollered from the sidelines. “Put 'em away!”

It was only a middle school game, but still, people were into it. This wasn't intramurals. It counted. That guy in the stands, whoever he was, he cared who won, and surprisingly, so did Molly. She really wanted to beat these guys. She wanted to win.

Molly stretched, paused, checked the runners. She paused again. It was her ball, Morales had told her. It's okay to make them wait a little. So she did. She waited. Molly heard Desmond shouting encouragement from left field. She heard Celia still hollering from the grandstand. She heard Mario Coppola at third base pounding his fist into his glove.

Molly rocked and threw. A nice pitch, straight and reasonably swift. It was on the outside half of the plate, thigh high. The batter watched it go by, and the umpire raised his right hand. “Strike one.”

The Sheridan third-base coach starting clapping his hands. “That's the way, Pitch,” he said. “Good effort.” Molly took Lonnie's return throw.

Since when does a third-base coach offer happy talk to the opposing pitcher? Talk about patronizing! Molly glared in his direction. That slowed things down a little. He was a neat little man with rimless glasses and a clipboard. He'd probably read a whole shelf full of books about coaching baseball. He smiled at Molly.
Good effort? Good effort?
She stared a little longer, then spit.

Lonnie called for the same pitch, same spot. Molly stretched, checked the runners, and once again she took her sweet time doing it. She checked the jerky condescending coach, too, and then gave Lonnie a pitch right where he asked for it. He barely had to move his glove. The batter never moved. Strike two.

Molly enjoyed the satisfying
pop
the ball made in Lonnie's mitt and the little puff of dust that wafted from it. It was a pressure situation and all that, but that little puff of
dust just seemed beautiful all by itself. It was something that even Coach V, as meticulous a scorekeeper as he was, had no symbol for. You'd have to write a poem about it, a haiku maybe. It would never appear in the official book, but it was real.

Lonnie stood to return the ball. “One more!” he shouted. “Just one more is all we need!” It was something to see him so pumped up. This was a new side of him.

This time he called for the knuckler, and Molly nodded. Again, at the stretch, she paused, breathed, and just let in the sounds of the game. Molly heard the third-base coach clapping his hands. She heard a siren in the distance. And she heard a new voice from the grandstand, a familiar voice, so familiar she couldn't place it right away. This voice wasn't shouting instructions. It was just saying her name, “Molly, Molly.” This voice wasn't excited or urgent. It sounded calm and loving.