Casey's Home (16 page)

Then someone, he thought the ball
boy perhaps, scrambled forward with a thick green rain tarp. Eddie, an ump, the
second baseman, and the fat ball boy held it up over Ben as the doctors worked
on him, blocking out the sun and leaving him blinking at the warm, dark dirt,
which had come so suddenly into sharper focus.

1998

I didn’t know, exactly, what I
intended to do when I borrowed Lee’s car and drove out to Ben McDunnough’s
house. Isn’t it strange that the decisions that come to mean the most to us are
often those we really can’t explain? Perhaps, when I pulled into his driveway
to find him standing there as if he were waiting for something, I had every
intention of just whipping out the letter from my father and asking, is this
it? Is this the proof of my parent’s fallibility that I, like all good
children, secretly believed existed all along? Or maybe I just wanted, as Lee
suggested, to “tie things up.” Whatever reasons I had for leaving the house
that morning, complex as any relationship, they weren’t apparently why I was
there.

Because I was now standing in the
batter’s box on the strange little homemade field of Ben McDunnough’s,
listening to the wind pick up in the grassy swamp beyond, to the cicadas and
the birds who understood the approach of rain. Where was Ben? Inside, getting
us a bat and balls. Because despite whatever motivation brought me there, I was
now going to play ball. And I knew, somewhat ruefully, the full import of that
particular metaphor.

We were so uncomfortable, the way
two people are when each of them is wondering: would it still feel the same
way? So I commented on the field.

“Well, at least that’s new,” I
said, or something equally inane.

“I haven’t changed much,” he
agreed and we both blushed at the meaning springing up around us, like daisies.

He asked me how I was doing, and
he meant it. Of course he understood how I was feeling, perhaps better than my
own family. So I answered him.

“About as well as you are.”

He seemed to think about this for
a moment, and then agreed that yes, under the circumstances, that was probably
true. He was always such a kind man, and I felt for us both. How were we
supposed to talk to each other now? God, I wanted to make the effort, to drag
up the past and connect. It was just a matter of picking the right aspect of
our shared history.

Ben did it for me. “You still
play?” he asked, as I was staring at the field, which was small and quite
shabby, really. It was merely something practical for a man whose dreams
evaporated years before he built it. Then he seemed to regret the question,
realizing, I suppose, that there was no reason I would. Shuffling forward, he
came to stand just behind me and I was aware of the heat of him, even outside
in the warmth of summer.

“Not much,” I said. “You?”

He shook his head and the motion
was so close, I had to walk. I started out for the field, hands in my back
pockets, grounding myself.

“Only if one of the boys is
sick,” he answered, following me. “My arm...” He hesitated and I turned to
look. His body was toned and firm, and the arm looked strong and capable to my
eyes, as it always did, despite the thin web of scars. “It isn’t what it used
to be.” He seemed vaguely ashamed. The sun was so warm it was almost stifling
there, almost, what with the thick humidity of the swamp beneath us. This was
the edge of civilization as Florida knew it. A few more feet and we would sink
into the thick mud and be found, years from now, like the bog people of
England, perfectly preserved and brown as the earth itself.

“Nothing really is, anymore,” I
said, and reached the batter’s box. “I don’t know who would expect anything to
be. The same, that is.” The dirt was lighter there, dry and powdery beneath my
feet. I scuffed at it, turning it over with the toe of my sneaker as if I
expected to find something there. Answers, perhaps.

“You want to play?”

His voice was further. He had
decided to wait at the edge of the foul line, and I knew he was watching as I
tapped an imaginary bat in the soft dirt and gave a fantasy swing.

“Now?” I said, to maintain
propriety. I had come there to play, though perhaps not baseball, so why not? I
wiped my hands on my jeans and turned to look at him.

Ben McDunnough was a handsome
man, in his youth. Or he was to me, it was impossible to tell anymore what was
real and what stemmed from my own need. Standing at the edge of the field,
wearing an old-fashioned Yankees’ jersey and jeans that held more dirt than the
pitcher’s mound, he was still something to be reckoned with. Shrugging, he
seemed confident, though I doubt he really was.

“Why not? I’ve got the equipment
in the house.”

“It’s going to rain,” I said,
glancing to my right, where the clouds were skimming across the flat land from
the sea.

“Not for a minute.” He was
already turning to the house and walking swiftly toward the porch. My heart,
for a reason I didn’t care to examine at the time, was pounding wildly. I took
a moment to catch myself, slow my racing pulse. Would it be the same? How could
it, with everything that had come between now and then?

He returned a moment later and I
saw, as he handed me the aluminum bat, that he was as breathless as I felt. It
was gratifying to know, even as I tightened my hands on the cool metal and took
up the familiar stance, that I was not the only one who felt out of control.

“I’m no good anymore,” I said,
checking the position of my feet and releasing my knees, which had locked up in
an effort to keep me from jumping wildly.

“Right, and I can’t pitch for
shit, so we’re even.”

Ben bent over at the mound, his hands
on his knees. This was, ostensibly, to warm up his muscles, but I knew that he
was really trying to calm his own body. He stood then, holding the glove in
front of his smile, and released the ball. We both jumped as it hit the
backboard with a bang.

“Jesus, Ben,” I said, startled
and pleased. “Go easy on me. I’m not one of your boys.”

He seemed puzzled and I realized
he had probably just thrown a baby pitch, thinking he was favoring me.

“Sorry,” he said and threw
something that could more safely be called a toss. All the years of training,
the drills and shouting and constant practice, came back to me in that instant,
seeing the ball approach me. Perhaps my father was right, I did have a sense of
it, of where it would be. Swinging easily, I watched as the ball slammed past
Ben and skidded neatly to a stop in the tall grass of the outfield.

“You can throw a bit harder than
that,” I teased him, stretching my arms over my head with the bat propped up
between my feet. Was he looking at me, seeing with appreciation the ways my
body had changed, had held up or let me down over the intervening years? I
couldn’t risk a glance, but I knew I wanted him to be looking, more than
anything.

“Fine,” he called, and did, incrementally.
I swung again and with that same sense of the placement of the ball, sent it
over his head, though he jumped.

“Should I start running?” I said, cocky.
“I wouldn’t want to take advantage here.”

To my satisfaction, he laughed, slightly.
Chuckled, with his head down. What would it be like, to kiss him again? Would
it still make my heart race?

“I don’t chase,” he said. “Here, try
this.” He let me have it, then... fifty, maybe sixty miles an hour. I narrowed
my eyes, trying to see the ball, and swung, catching the edge and sending it
high over my head. We both ducked as it fell. “Better?” he called.

“Damn,” I told him. “And I just came out
here to say hello.”

This seemed to disappoint him and I
realized he thought I was there on some sort of sympathy call. Let’s go see Ben
once, before he’s fired and sent away. And perhaps I was there out of sympathy,
but it was not for him.

“Well, stay awhile,” he called out. “I’m
just warming up.”

I laughed, feeling strangely nervous, and
stepped forward again. “Don’t overdo it,” I reminded him and I had the feeling
that I was talking about something else.

He threw me a slider, and I missed,
swinging harder than I expected and wrenching the muscles in my back, but I was
still able to throw it back to him with an easy arm. Had I been a boy, I
thought for the thousandth time, there was no doubt where I would be now. How
strange life is, the choices it tosses to us and the things it denies.

“You’ve still got it,” I said as the first
rain fell behind us, hurtling forward like a car wash, humid and greasy. “You
should have warned me.”

“I had no idea,” he said, grinning, and
looked up to feel the rain arrive.

Turning to the house in unison, we
scrambled to the back porch, drops hitting the dust behind our feet like
bullets in a Western. We were spared.

Inside the back porch it was so dark I was
momentarily lost. The light that should have been filtering through the
shutters had turned thick and gray with the approaching clouds. I could sense
where he was by the warmth radiating from his body, though I was sure I was
only imagining it, because how could anyone give off something so palpable? I
moved toward his body and felt his hand on my arm. The rain reached the metal
roof of the porch and slammed it, the sound reverberating around us until I
knew we would have to get inside the house or go a bit mad.

“Come on in,” he shouted. It was a given I
would stay there until the usual afternoon rain had passed. It was not really
an invitation, and yet it was.

Opening the back door, he shepherded me
into the house, pushing gently to guide me toward the kitchen at the front. I
paused briefly to peer into the living room and it was exactly as I remembered
it, complete with the horsehair sofa that always scratched my legs below the
protection of my shorts. Though I couldn’t see it from the angle at which I was
standing, I could hear the old mantle clock, ticking its way into the new
millennium with no fear for the future.

“God, Ben, you really haven’t changed
anything,” I said and in the sudden silence of the hall my voice shocked us
both. I felt his hand move on my shoulder. “I’m surprised there isn’t a wedding
cake in there, covered in dust.”

“I threw it out,” he told me, his voice
tinged with humor, “when I realized I wasn’t going to finish it.”

We stepped finally into the kitchen. I
took in the worn wooden cabinets and the linoleum, scrubbed pale in spots.
Perhaps it should have bothered me that this man had never made any effort to
modernize the house, but it didn’t. I found it reassuring, to know he was so
little concerned with impracticalities. He was the Ben that I remembered, then.
Maybe. “Well, I see you have a microwave,” I said after a moment’s silence that
threatened to become awkward. “That’s something.”

“I had to make some concessions to the
modern age,” he said, grinning, and stepped up to the refrigerator, which was
the old Fifties model, like the formica-and-steel dining table with its
matching turquoise vinyl chairs. He had become chic, all chrome and sleek
lines, like a ‘56 Chevy. Maybe the past was a finer combination of practicality
and beauty, of innocence and design, and we were only now realizing its value.
“Root beer or lemonade?”

I accepted a brown bottle of root beer
from his outstretched hand and thought about how nice it would be if it were
real beer, with all its inherent powers. Ben leaned back against the counter,
and though one hand was loosely clasping his drink, I could see the other
behind him, gripping the counter like he might possibly fly off the earth.

“Ben,” I said at last, getting to what we
are both dreading: the reason for my visit, whatever he thought it to be, whatever
it actually was. “I opened my father’s safe deposit box yesterday.”

He looked at me blankly, his face
unchanging.

“You didn’t know what was in there? He
never mentioned it?”

He shook his head and took a long sip of
the root beer before setting the bottle on the counter behind him with a clink.

“The ’76 Series ring,” I said, and I could
see that I was confirming his suspicions, “And receipts for a quarter-million
dollar in bets someone placed in your name, sort of.”

For a moment, we were both silent. What
was there to say in the face of such betrayal? Of course, I was betrayed by the
sudden knowledge of my father’s duplicity and Ben... I couldn’t say what Ben
was betrayed by, but it was there, settling on the lines of his face, bringing
his age suddenly staggering forward.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.

“I take it you knew about this.”

He was struggling with his desire to
comfort me and his need to maintain distance. Besides, how did he know for sure
that I wanted to be comforted? I searched my own emotions and found the anger
hiding there, just beneath the surface of the grief, like a shadow beneath the
ice. Was I angry at Ben? I didn’t know, and neither did he. “It doesn’t really
matter anymore,” he said gently, pulling out a chair and sitting just across
the corner of table. Close enough to touch, far enough to move out of the way.

“Bullshit,” I said, surprising us both
with my vehemence. It seemed my anger had surfaced, looking for air. “And here
I was vaguely hoping you’d tell me it was all a big mistake. That I’d just
interpreted it wrong.” I scooted my chair away from the table, away from Ben,
unsure where I was hoping to go.