Brighton (2 page)

HITTING’S ALL
about hips and hands. Unless you thought about it too much. Then it was impossible. But Kevin was fifteen and the world was still pretty simple. See the ball. Hit the ball. Hips and hands.

The kid from Charlestown stood behind the mound and rubbed up a new baseball. Just like Catfish. Kevin stepped out and picked up a handful of dirt. Just like Pudge. The pitcher climbed back up on the mound. Kevin let him wait. The backstop behind him was packed with hard, white faces. Someone told him to get the fuck back in the box. Kevin told him to piss off without looking back. Then the catcher mumbled something and the umpire took off his mask and yelled at everyone to shut the fuck up. Kevin leveled the bat back and forth, testing its weight and feel. His eyes were on the pitcher now. Watching him watch. Kevin stepped back in the box, dragging his spikes through the loose gravel. He was in an 0-2 hole and shortened up an inch or so on the bat. Tommy Doucette danced off second. Someone yelled from down the third base line. Kevin pointed his bat once, twice, at the mound. The pitcher wound up and threw. An inside fastball, but not inside enough. Kevin opened up his hips and let
his hands fly. The moment he hit it, he knew the third baseman had no chance. The only question was whether it would stay fair. Kevin snuck a look as he ran. The ball caught a lick of chalk and skittered into a pack of locals who scattered in a flurry of Styrofoam and beer bottles. The umpire screamed fair as Kevin hit first and dug for second. He slid out of habit, but the shortstop already had his glove on his head. Tommy Doucette was on the bottom of a half-dozen teammates at the plate. Brighton was in the other guy’s park but had been designated home team for the city semifinal. And now they’d won, 3–2.

Kevin stood on second and felt his heart thump in his chest. His teammates turned and began to run toward him—a series of grass-stained images framed forever in his mind. He pulled off his helmet, never knowing where it landed as they fell upon him, crumpling under their weight on the hard infield while a couple hundred Townies watched and cursed. At fifteen, the game was easy, a world unto itself. That time, however, was drawing to a close. And somewhere inside Kevin knew it would never be like this again.

They drove out of Charlestown in a daze. Kevin sat in the backseat of Teddy Boyle’s rusted-out convertible. Teddy was an assistant coach for the team. His claim to fame was that he’d been arrested after his wife was found dead in her bed by a neighbor. Teddy swore up and down he’d slept in the same bed with the corpse for two nights and never noticed a thing. Teddy told the police his wife had always been a sound sleeper and the couple never talked much anyway. When the coroner’s report came back as a massive
cerebral hemorrhage, the cops let Teddy go. And he had a great story for his buddies at the Grill.

Teddy had given each of the kids a bat before they left the parking lot, just in case they had trouble getting out of Charlestown. Teddy wore a porkpie Budweiser hat sideways and had a cold bottle of the stuff tucked in his crotch as he tooled through Thompson Square, laying on the horn and flipping off the locals. Once they hit Storrow Drive, he told the kids to put away the bats and gave them each a beer, sharp and wonderful at the back of their throats. Teddy did seventy-five on Storrow, leading the car in chants of Brighton and city champs as they cruised past Harvard and its clock tower, gleaming crimson and white on the far side of the river. By the time they rolled through Oak Square, streams of people were bubbling out of various bars and into the street. Charlestown had been city champs three years running and a heavy favorite to make it four. No one gave Brighton a chance. They circled Tar Park, Teddy laying on the horn, then pulled into the Grill’s parking lot as Kevin’s coach, Jimmy Fitz, blessed the car in beer. Kids piled out. Fitz grabbed Kevin by the back of the neck and raked his face with a bristle of beard.

“What did I tell you? What did I tell you?”

Fitz let Kevin go and began to dance a jig in the gutter. Kevin tried to explain they still had one more game to play, but his coach wasn’t having it. Someone yelled Fitz’s name and he wandered off, stopping once to tip his head back, spread his arms wide, and howl a toothless howl at a starless sky. Then Kevin was alone again. He picked his way through the crowd clogging the street, taking all the hugs and pats on the back in stride until he’d broken free. In the middle of Oak Square was a traffic rotary with a spit of grass surrounded by park benches. Everyone in Brigh
ton called it the Circle. Bobby Scales sat on one of the benches, watching the festivities and drinking a Brigham’s frappe.

“You won?”

“Yeah.” Kevin sat down beside him.

“How did you do?”

“Two for three. Single and a double.”

“Who do you play next?”

“City championship against Dorchester. I think it’s downtown. At the Boston Common or something.”

Bobby finished his frappe and threw the cup in a barrel. “I played there. Nice field. No rocks, real grass. They got a P.A. system.”

“No kidding.”

“Sure. They announce the name of every hitter.” Bobby was the best baseball player Brighton had ever seen. Kevin remembered standing behind the backstop one night as he hit three over the right-field fence and into Friendly’s parking lot. Brighton lost to Medford 6–5, but all anyone talked about afterward was Bobby and the sweet, left-handed stroke.

“Dot’s always tough,” Bobby said. “Lot of hockey players.”

Kevin shrugged like he didn’t give a fuck, which was a lie. Bobby studied him.

“You wanna grab a slice?” Kevin said.

They walked across Washington Street to Imperial Pizza. The owner, a small, neat Italian everyone called Joe, sat at a table, folding delivery boxes and reading a soccer magazine.

“You win?” Joe said.

Kevin nodded.

“Good boy. Slice?”

Bobby held up two fingers. They ate sitting on the curb. Hot
tomato and cheese, crisped slices of pepperoni sitting in puddles of grease, pillow soft crust. Kevin noticed for the first time that his pants were ripped and stained with blood. He peeled back his uniform at the knee and cleaned out the rocks and dirt as best he could.

“You working tomorrow?” Bobby said.

Kevin worked weekends at his grandmother’s cab office. Bobby lived in a spare room above the office. He’d gone through a string of foster homes growing up, finally landing in a house run by some priests in Cambridge when he was thirteen. Then Kevin’s grandmother took him in. Kevin remembered the day she came home with Bobby. She swore up and down she’d never go to mass again, then stayed up all night with Kevin’s mom, whispering over cigarettes and tea and saying decades of the rosary. When he was sixteen, Bobby quit high school. He wasn’t dumb, far from it, but he’d decided that was how it was gonna be and started driving cabs the next day.

“I was gonna go in about nine,” Kevin said.

“Come in at seven. We’ll go behind the Jeff. Get you a little time behind the wheel.”

“I don’t even have my permit.”

“Fuck it. We ain’t going nowhere except around an empty lot. Besides, your grandmother won’t mind.” Bobby slapped Kevin on the brim of his hat. “Congrats on the game. Now go kick the shit out of Dot.”

Kevin watched Bobby walk back to the Circle and take the same seat on the same bench. He stretched his legs out in front of him and draped his arms along the back, content to survey the world as it spun past. Kevin mimicked the pose, leaning back on the pavement with his elbows and letting his sneakers trail
into the gutter. A car hit the Circle and slowed. A kid stuck his head out the rear window, but Bobby waved them on. Across the Square, Teddy Boyle was standing on the hood of his car, singing a song Kevin couldn’t hear while someone pounded the horn. Tomorrow they’d climb out of their three-deckers and head to the job. Punching tickets on the T. Banging nails into drywall for some rich lady’s house in Newton. Fixing carburetors and flat tires in Allston. Drinking a ball and a beer for lunch. Boiling in their own rage and drowning in a puddle of sorrows. But that was tomorrow. Tonight they’d celebrate.

He walked up Champney Street alone, the crooked line of two-families and three-deckers lit up for the evening, a dull yellow smear running uphill and into the night. A shade jerked to Kevin’s right, and Mrs. Chin’s face gleamed from a second-floor window. She and her husband ran a Laundromat, living above it with their girls in a three-room apartment. Kevin had been scared of Mrs. Chin when he was a kid and wouldn’t look at her face cuz it was covered in peeling patches of white. His grandmother explained that she’d lived in Hiroshima when “they’d dropped the bomb” and had her skin cooked by the blast. Kevin asked his grandmother why she’d said “they” dropped the bomb when it was really “us.” She’d told him that was a good point and when did he get so goddamn smart. Kevin hesitated, then raised his hand to wave at Mrs. Chin, who tracked him with her eyes, looking like an animal who’d been tied to a tree and would never trust another human being again. He continued up the hill to number eight. A single light burned in a bay window that sagged out over the street. That
would be the old man, sitting in his chair, drinking whiskey by the glassful, smoking cigars and humming tunelessly to himself. Somehow he’d already know about the game. And Kevin’s winning hit. And that would kill him.

Kevin cut down a hidden path that burrowed along the far side of the three-decker. Light from the porch cast wispy shadows over the weeded lot that served as his backyard. A scrub of trees ran a dark curtain down one side of the property. The other side was bordered by Indian Rock, two acres of woods, granite, and grass growing wild. Indian Rock was owned by the church and favored by every kid within five miles who was looking to get drunk, laid, or, in that best of all possible worlds, both. At the very back of the lot was a chain-link fence and two-story building with a peaked roof and five or six dark shapes surrounding it. His grandmother’s cab company. Kevin thought about going over and crashing on a couch in the office. There was a blanket and some pillows there and a TV he could wheel out and watch in the dark. In the end, Kevin scooted up the back steps of the three-decker and slipped into the first-floor apartment.

He slept on a mattress laid out on the floor of a converted pantry. Down the hall, his sisters slept in one of the two real bedrooms. Kevin eased their door open, an ear tuned to the Sox game blaring on the TV in the living room. A pair of single beds filled the narrow room from wall to wall. Plastered above one bed were posters from movies.
Bambi, Dumbo, The Wizard of Oz,
anything with Julie Andrews in it. Kevin’s baby sister, Colleen, was nine and already hooked on make-believe. All things considered, he couldn’t blame her. On a shelf above the other bed was a thick medical dictionary and a lumpy copy of
Gray’s Anatomy
. Those belonged to Bridget. She was three years younger than Kevin and
liked to take things apart to see what made them tick. Except instead of a toaster, Bridget picked the legs off spiders she caught in the yard. More than anything, however, she liked to dissect her little sister. And then watch her squirm. Kevin was about to back out of the room when Colleen lifted her head, shook out her long, rumpled locks, and yawned.

“What time is it?”

“Almost ten. Go back to sleep.”

She yawned again and stretched her legs under the covers. Colleen still slept the sleep of a child and Kevin envied her without really understanding why.

“Did you win?” she said.

“Sure.”

She held out her hand. He deposited a baseball in it. It was a ritual they’d started at the beginning of the summer. She dated each ball and kept them in a cardboard box under the bed. Kevin played it off like he was doing a favor for his kid sister but was secretly thrilled, feeling a little bit like a big-leaguer signing autographs every time he handed over a ball. Colleen was studying the latest addition to her collection when a hand snaked out from under a lump of blankets and ripped it from her fingers. Colleen looked up at Kevin, enormous eyes already beginning to fill.

“Cut it out,” he whispered.