Painting the Black (12 page)

“Forget football,” I kept telling him. “It's time to start thinking about baseball.”

“Pretty soon,” he'd answer. “Pretty soon.”

Right before the Christmas break, my grades came in the mail. I'd done better than ever before, all A's and B+'s. My parents were happy, especially with the B+ in chemistry. “We know that's a hard class,” my mom said, and I was glad she realized it had been tougher to earn than my A in art. Those grades somehow got me even more pumped up to play baseball. I felt that I was on a roll, and I didn't want to lose my momentum.

That night Josh and I took the bus down to the waterfront and walked around, doing nothing. After a while we were both hungry, so we got some fish and chips at Ivar's, sat outside under their heaters, and looked at the ferries moving across the Puget Sound.

“How about if we start throwing the ball around once vacation starts?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Can't do it. We're going to L.A. to see my brother over Christmas.” He must have seen the disappointment in my face. “Don't blame me, Ryan. It's not my idea.”

I bit into a piece of fish, swallowed.

“Look,” he said, “as soon as I get back, we'll start throwing the ball around. Absolutely the first thing.”

“Is that a promise?” I asked.

“It's a promise.”

I used to love Christmas, especially all the little things that come with it. I was the one who cracked the eggs, measured the butter and flour, stirred up the batter for the cookies. I passed the strings of outdoor lights up to my father on the ladder. I hung the fancy ornaments on the tree; I lit the candles at Christmas dinner.

But I'm seventeen years old now, and the thrill is gone from that stuff, though my parents don't seem to realize it. As Christmas neared, I heard the same old phrases. “Ryan, you can lick the bowl if you want!” “Ryan, you can put the angel on top of the tree!” “Ryan, I'll pass the lights up to you and you can hang them!” It's kind of sad, the way they think that I'm still ten. But it's irritating too, and it puts me in a foul mood.

My grandfather Kevin always comes a couple of days before Christmas and stays until New Year's Day. He's my father's father, and he's okay. Other than his fingers, which are gnarled and arthritic, he still looks good. He stands straight and tall; his hair is white and shiny and full; he swims every day. He doesn't go on and on about how hard things were when he grew up. In fact, the only thing I don't like about him is that he gets my bed and I have to sleep downstairs on the sofa.

For years Grandpa Kevin has given me a fair chunk of money for Christmas. There's always been a note with it: “For your college education.” It's nice of him and all, but since I've never been all that sure about going to college, I would have liked to have spent at least some of it right then.

I figured on money again, but Christmas morning there was a big box under the tree marked: “For Ryan, from Grandpa Kevin.” Inside were a catcher's mitt, chest protector, mask, shin guards.

“Your dad says you're trying out this year,” Grandpa Kevin said as I stared, open-mouthed, at the unexpected gifts. “You probably don't know it, but I used to catch. I was pretty good, too. If you want, I'll show you a few things later on.”

I was plenty glad to get the gear. It was high quality stuff, all name brands, the best. And I let him know that I appreciated the gifts. But listening to tips from a seventy-year-old ex-ball player was not something I wanted to do. “Sure,” I said, halfheartedly. “That'd be great. Later on we'll have to do it.”

I hoped he wouldn't bring it up again, but after we'd eaten breakfast, he asked again. “Maybe this afternoon, Grandpa,” I said. “I'm pretty full right now.”

I thought I was being clever, but he smiled in a way that let me know I wasn't fooling him. “Well, it was just an idea.”

That was it. No lecture on how much I could learn if I'd only listen. As I said, he's okay.

Around two o'clock that afternoon I thought:
Why not?
I was bored and there was nothing else to do. Playing ball with Grandpa Kevin might be better than nothing, and it would kill the guilt. So I went upstairs and tapped on my own door. “Grandpa, you still want to show me some stuff?”

His face lit up.

We went to the backyard. He turned a garbage can onto its side so that the open end faced across the yard. On the other side of the yard, as far away as possible, he laid down an old doormat.

“This is home base,” he said, “and that garbage can is second. I'll pitch a ball to you. You pretend somebody is stealing. I want to see you throw the base runner out.”

“It's not nearly far enough,” I protested. “You can't tell anything about my arm from a throw that short.”

“I'm not interested in your arm strength. I can't do anything about that anyway. I want to see your form.”

I crouched down. He tossed me the ball. Actually that's not fair. He threw it to me with more steam than I expected. I caught it, stood, and threw to the garbage can: a strike that rattled around inside the metal. I thought he'd be impressed, but when I looked at him he was shaking his head.

“What was wrong with that?” I asked. “It was right on the money.”

“The throw was accurate and strong, sure. But my God, Ryan, even I might have made it to second by the time you got rid of the ball. A speedster would have gone in standing up.”

I didn't like what he was saying. And I didn't like the way he was saying it, either. But there are times when people talk and you just know they know what they're talking about. That's how it was with Grandpa Kevin. I swallowed my pride.

“How does a catcher throw?”

“You want me to show you?”

“Yeah. I do.”

He reworked everything about my motion. “As soon as a base runner reaches first, you start preparing to throw him out at second. You dig your toes into the dirt a little deeper so you can come out of your crouch faster. And you watch him out of the corner of your eye.

“If he goes, you're starting your throw even as you're catching the ball. You swing your mitt and your right hand up toward your right shoulder, taking the ball out as you do it. Once the ball is in your right hand, extend your left arm forward and cock your right wrist at your ear. No farther back than that, or you won't get rid of the ball in time. As you step toward second, fire the ball right at the bag.”

It wasn't easy to understand what he meant, and after he walked me through it a dozen times, I discovered it wasn't easy to do it. He kept telling me I had to be quicker, but I felt all tied up in the gear—the mask, chest protector, shin guards.

It took three cold, drizzly afternoons before I was even okay with the throwing motion. Then he had me work on coming out of my crouch differently. “You don't want to come straight up,” he said. “You want to come forward and up. That way you get clear of the hitter, you've got a better look at the bag, and you've got a foot or two less distance to throw. Those two feet can be the difference between nailing a runner and having him slide in under the tag.”

When he wasn't teaching me, we talked baseball. I'd ask him some simple question like “Did you ever see Johnny Bench?” and he'd describe games in a way I'd never heard them described before—the way a catcher would see them. As he talked, I could imagine the whole field. He told me how a good catcher positions fielders based on the stuff his pitcher has, and that proper positioning sometimes changes from inning to inning, even pitch to pitch. The more he talked, the more I wanted to hear. The cat-and-mouse game between pitcher and hitter—suddenly I could see myself controlling that, deciding when to call for the curve or the slider, when to come with the big heat or the change.

I'd thought that being a catcher was like eating leftovers, something I was going to do because there was no other choice. But Grandpa Kevin changed that.

“Messing up your ankle might be the best thing you ever did,” he said the morning he left.

“How did you figure?” I asked.

He smiled. “Well, otherwise you would never have become a catcher.”

It was a crazy thing to say. Crazier still, I believed him.

Grandpa Kevin left early New Year's morning. I was sorry to see him go. He'd connected me with baseball again, and I'd have gladly given up my room for as long as he'd wanted it to keep that connection.

That was a strange day. The sun was out, which doesn't happen much in January. But instead of getting warmer, the air grew colder every hour. The sky was strange too. The clouds were high and a different, whiter color than usual.

“It's going to snow,” my dad said.

My mom groaned. “Don't say that.”

Seattle has lots of hills and no snowplows. It doesn't snow often here, but when it does, even if it's only an inch or two, the whole city shuts down.

“You wait,” he said.

My father spent New Year's Day watching bowl games on television. He kept asking me to join him, but I couldn't watch for long. I'd see some quarterback get massacred and I'd think about Josh, and it just wasn't fun. I went out to the yard and practiced throwing the way Grandpa Kevin had shown me, but even that didn't work. You can only do so much alone.

We ate dinner. The Fiesta Bowl game was for the national championship. “You're going to watch that with me, aren't you?” my dad said. He had a worried look in his eyes, like I was sick or something, so I sat down with him and watched it, or at least pretended to watch it. When the game ended, I was glad to escape to my room. I turned on my radio and flipped through magazines. It was after midnight when I flicked off the light.

I don't remember going to sleep. I only remember waking up and noticing right away that my room was brighter than it should have been.

I went to the window, and there it was. Snow. Big soft flakes floating down. I could see them in the streetlights, millions and millions of snowflakes, swirling downward.

I stood, mesmerized, and watched as a fine layer of white formed on top of the lawn and the street. Still more snow came. For a while I could still see little patches of green or little bits of gray underneath the cars. Finally even the green and gray patches were gone. There wasn't a footprint or a tire track anywhere. All the world was white and clean and beautiful. It could have been the very first day of creation.

I don't know what time it was when I fell back to sleep. Early the next morning there was a tapping on my door. “Ryan,” my mother whispered, “are you awake?”

I almost rolled over and covered my head with the pillow. I don't know why I didn't. But for some reason, I answered. “Yeah, I'm awake,” I said.

She opened the door a crack. “Josh is downstairs. Shall I tell him to come back later?”

I sat straight up. “No. No,” I said. “Tell him I'll be right down.”

There was a pause. Then she continued, her voice lower. “Ryan, he said for you to bring your catcher's mitt. But you're not going to play baseball in this, are you?”

I'll never forget that day. What we were doing was crazy. Snow was still falling, and the white baseball got lost in the flurries, got lost against the totally white backdrop. We were so bundled up we could hardly run or throw. Josh shouted things to me about Los Angeles, and I shouted back to him about my grandfather. I only heard about half of what he said and I figure he heard about the same of what I said. The words didn't matter. The snow didn't matter. The cold didn't matter. I was laughing my head off, and so was Josh. We were playing ball together again.

After that we threw every day. Josh was loosey-goosey, trying knucklers and slurves and all sorts of weird pitches. I wished I could have joined in the fun, but I wasn't loosey-goosey at all. Nowhere close. Grandpa Kevin had taught me a lot, but the main thing I'd learned was that I didn't know much about catching.

In the summer, baseball season had been like a bright rainbow off in the sky somewhere, not quite real. But now it was less than two months away, and as much as I wanted it, that's how much I was afraid of it.

Josh noticed. “What's eating you? I thought you wanted to play ball.”

“I do.”

“So?”

“So, I'm nervous. You know you're going to make the team, but I don't.”

He waved that off. “You'll make it. I told you. You've got great hands. Besides, nobody wants to play catcher.”

“But what about the other stuff? Defense and giving signs and positioning fielders and backing up and all that. I don't know anything about that. And I haven't swung the bat in five years.”

He threw me another knuckler. I tossed it back.

“You won't have any trouble learning,” he said. “It's simple. I could teach you if you want.”

I leaped at the suggestion. “Would you?”

He threw again. “Sure.”

“Well, let's do it then.”

“You mean right now?”

“Why not?”

“No reason, I guess.” He stared at me. “What do you want to learn first?”

“That's just it, Josh,” I said, frustrated. “I don't know. You tell me. What am I doing wrong? What should I do different?”

He thought for a while. “This is a little thing.”

“I don't care. Tell me and I'll work on it.”

He took off his cap, ran his hand through his hair. “Well, I don't like the way you throw the ball back to me after a pitch.”

I didn't get what he was saying.

“Your throws aren't all the same,” he explained. “Sometimes I'm reaching up; sometimes I'm rooting around in the dirt. In a game, when I'm in a groove or trying to get in one, I want that ball coming back to me the same way every single time. I want to be able to catch it without thinking about it. All I want to think about is pitching.”