Plunking Reggie Jackson (15 page)

This dilemma, though—if it even was one—faded when he saw the bruise. It was blue green, about the size of his little finger. It reached from her collarbone upward toward the flare of her shoulder.

“What's this?”

“What does it look like?” she said.

“It looks like a bruise.”

“Then I suppose it is one.” She darkened suddenly, like a stormy sky. She turned her head away.

“So how'd you get it?”

“I don't know, how do people get bruises? How do you get yours?”

“Usually playing sports,” Coley replied.

“That's how I got mine,” she declared. “I got it in PE when we were playing field hockey.”

“On your shoulder?” He supposed it was possible to get a shoulder bruise playing field hockey, but not likely. “How did it really happen?”

“I told you how it happened, weren't you listening?”

“Yeah, I was.” He was using the back of his hand to wipe some of the water from his eyes. “But I think you're hiding something.”

“I don't know why you have to ask so many questions.” With that, Bree hoisted herself onto the edge of the pool, then walked briskly to the first row of bleachers. She picked up her towel and began to fluff her hair.

Coley waited a few moments before he followed after her. “We're supposed to be in love. That means we aren't afraid to talk about private stuff.”

“Is that what it means?” Her head was down, and the towel draped around her shoulders. “Okay, then, if you think you have to know. He beats me.”

Before he replied, Coley leaned back, his shoulder blades against the second row of bleachers and his hands locked behind his neck. “You mean your father, don't you?”

“I mean my
step
father. I mean Burns.”

“Okay, stepfather.” Coley felt a surge of sympathy for her, joined with the urge to be protective. “How does he hit you?”

“He hits me. What are you asking?”

“I mean, does he, like, hit you with his fist, or does he slap you?”

She sighed. Her head was still down. With the corners of the towel she was wiping at her eyes. Coley wondered if she was crying or if it was just water from the pool. “Usually he slaps me.”

“Usually? For what?”

“If I break a rule or talk to him with a smart mouth. How many questions are you going to ask?”

“I don't know how else to find out. It's like pullin' teeth with you, Bree. If you loved me like you say you do, you wouldn't make it so hard to find out.”

“I
do
love you, you know I do. It just scares me to talk about it.”

He put his hand on her shoulder where the bruise was. “He didn't give you this one by hittin' you.”

“He grabbed me and threw me on the couch when I smarted off to him.”

“What did you say that was like smarting off?”

“I told him I was going to see you as often as I wanted and there was nothing he could do to stop me.”

“Jesus Christ.” Coley leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I oughta come over to your house and pin his gut against his backbone.”

Bree lifted her face to look at him. In her eyes was authentic terror. “You can never do that, Coley. You can never. You have no idea how strong he is.”

“That's rich. I'm supposed to be afraid of a chickenshit who slaps girls around?”

“But you just can't. You just had to know, so I told you. But you can't ever try to do anything about it, or you'll just make it worse.”

“What about your mother?”

“She's afraid of him as much as I am.”

“But I mean, does he hit her, too?”

“Sometimes he does.”

Coley's frustration was roiling in his stomach like nasty indigestion. “Why the hell don't you just leave? You and your mother, I mean. Let him find somebody else to slap around.”

“Oh, God, I don't know. My mother loves him.”

“How can you love somebody if you're afraid of them?”

Bree got to her feet. Now there were tears rolling down her face. “I don't know. Now do you see why I don't want you asking so many questions?”

“No. Tell me.”

“Because there's no end to it. The questions get harder and harder, and I don't know the answers. Then you ask me why I don't know the answers.”

“It's only because I care about you.”

“If you really care about me, you'll drop the whole thing, because it can't go anywhere except more trouble. More trouble for me, I mean.” Now Bree was crying harder; she turned to leave. Coley rose to follow her, but when she entered the girls' locker room, he was stopped in his tracks.

He pitched two innings against Danville, but he wasn't effective. Even worse, he wasn't effective because he couldn't throw with comfort or confidence. At times, when he tried to drive off the right ankle with real thrust or leverage, he felt pain that shot clear up to his knee. The fear that the ankle was damaged beyond even Dr. Nugent's assessment—or might be if he didn't protect it—caused him to try to throw with his upper body.

He couldn't abandon his fear of reinjuring the ankle. The pain along the left side of his back surfaced after the fifth or sixth hitter. He was afraid of developing a sore left shoulder.

Coley walked two of the Danville hitters, and then two more got base hits. Not the scratchy kind of dribbler or chopper, but bona fide ropes into the outfield. Giving up line drives wasn't something he was accustomed to. It wasn't a hot day, but with sweat beading on his face, he paced around the mound tentatively and played with the resin bag. He scanned the sparse crowd for faces of men he didn't know, men who might be professional scouts.

When he was done with the two innings Coach Mason wanted him to finish, he sat on the bench with his head down. The coach couldn't know Coley's level of discouragement and apprehensive-ness, but he had to have some clue at least. He said, “Not bad for the first time out, Coley.”

It was a lie, of course, but such a lie that seemed to join them at the hip.

The following Monday was the senior class trip. Coley didn't expect megafun from it, but at least it got him away from the old man's nagging, Grissom's class, and any sense of apprehension about the ankle.

There were three water slides. About the third time down the highest slide they started tossing girls into the receiving pond at the bottom. Higher and higher.

There were plenty of squeals of delight and big-time yuks, but the lifeguards were blowing the whistle on it. Nobody paid any attention. Once, Coley launched Gloria so hard into the waiting basin that she nearly lost the top of her suit. When she came up for air, she flipped him off.

David Huff was the best at the game. He was a huge tackle on the football team who spent most of his spare time pumping iron. He already had a full ride to Notre Dame. He tossed Brooke Womack ten feet into the air the last time down. She made a mammoth splash when she smacked the water's surface. It was the final straw; the guards roped off the staircase and started identifying culprits. By the time they finished, Coley was kicked out, along with four others, including Kershaw and Huff.

Laughing madly, they made their way to the pool, where they stretched out in some vinyl loungers.

Coley turned to David Huff and asked, “Where'd you get the beer?”

“Brought it with.” Huff was drinking his beer from a can, but the can was disguised by a wraparound Styrofoam Pepsi-Cola container. Bobby Lovell was using the same disguise.

“You got any more? I wouldn't mind havin' one today.”

“In the bus, not here.”

“Which bus?”

“Number three,” Huff informed him. “There's a cooler under the third or fourth seat on the left side.”

“You mind if I get one?”

“Go for it.”

Coley made his way to the parking lot, where he found the bus and the cooler. There were four cans of Keystone left in gritty water swimming with puny ice cubes. The beer was cool, but not cold. He put the can in one of the soft-drink wraps before he headed back across the parking lot.

Now that he was alone and the ruckus was over, he found himself slipping into the brooding mode. He began scrolling the same issues that seemed to torment him every day:
What if I'm not eligible for the play-offs? Is it really true that Bree's stepfather beats her? But why would she lie about something like that? Is there anything actually wrong with my ankle or is it all in my head? You can have phantom pain from an injury. That's called psychosomatic, according to human dynamics class. Combat veterans even have phantom pains in limbs that have been amputated. It's the memory of it in their subconscious mind
.

He was hungry. He made his way through the crowd until he found the concession area. There were inside tables located beneath ceiling fans; a jukebox was playing old pop hits. Outside there was a small pond nearby, surrounded by a shady grove of picnic tables. Ruthie Roth was sitting there, by herself.

Coley approached her. “What's up, R.R.?”

“Are you lost? Your cool friends are over by the water slides and the pool.”

“I got kicked out.” He took a seat next to her on the bench.

“I heard.”

Coley took a long pull on the beer. He wished it was colder. “Why are you by yourself?”

“I vant … to be … alone,” she camped.

“Save it for the theater.”

“What a dump!”

“You heard me,” he said. “You won't have any fun all by yourself.”

“Why do people like you have such a hard time understanding that being alone isn't a form of punishment? But if you have to know, I only came on the trip because I thought Mrs. Alvarez was going to be here. I thought she was one of the chaperones; I was wrong.”

“You got a problem or something?”

“No, I don't have a problem.” Her exasperation was evident. “Yes, I've got a problem. More than one. Who doesn't? That's not the point, though. I enjoy talking to her.”

“You mean you like talkin' to her just for fun?”

“That's what I mean.” Ruthie was staring straight at him. “Why is that such a stretch for you?”

“Don't start the smart-ass stuff, okay? Come on—I'll buy you some lunch.”

“You're going to buy me lunch.” It was a question.

“Sure,” Coley replied.
This will probably make it a
date
in Bree's mind
, he couldn't help thinking. “Why not? My cat is rich and my dog is good-lookin'.”

“Funny, funny boy. There might actually be some hope for you yet.”

Ruthie insisted on eating at one of the tables in the grove. “My skin can't stand much sun,” she said.

Looking at the mottled, pale flesh of her arms, Coley assumed she was telling the truth. “A little sun would do you good,” he said. “You put that theater makeup all over your skin, what's wrong with a little sun? At least the sun is natural.”

“Theater makeup washes right off,” she replied. “A sunburn doesn't.”

“Okay, okay. What're you havin'?” he asked her.

“Okay, then. I'd like a plain hot dog and a Pepsi. Make that a Diet Pepsi.”

For himself Coley bought three chili dogs and the Big Barrel Pepsi, the thirty-two ouncer. He got a lid from a cardboard box so he could carry all the food down the incline to the picnic table. He wolfed down one of the dogs before Ruthie had a chance to ask, “What are we going to talk about?”

“I need help with a book report for Grissom,” he replied.

“So that's the catch.”

“It's not a catch. If you don't want to talk about it, fine.”

“You did that report on
The Old Man and the Sea
. What happened to that?”

“Grissom didn't like it. She says I missed all the symbolic stuff.”

“Yeah?” Ruthie took a bite of her hot dog.

Coley had so much food in his mouth he had to jam it to the side in order to speak. “She's all bent out of shape on some symbols of Jesus Christ. She was all over my case. She wants me to reread the parts about the old fisherman carrying the mast from his boat up the hill to his house.”

Ruthie wasn't very sympathetic. She wanted Coley to try to see it Mrs. Grissom's way.

“What is this ‘her way' that you want me to see?”

“Hemingway is using symbolism. He means for old Santiago to be a Christ figure.”

“What's that supposed to mean, ‘a Christ figure'?” Coley demanded.

“It means Hemingway is using the old man as a symbol of Christ. The Passion, the Resurrection, the whole bit.”

“I can see him guttin' it out. I can see courage. But not this other stuff.”

“‘This other stuff,' as you call it, is what makes literature,” said Ruthie. She was being pleasant, but Coley had to wonder how soon she would run out of patience and break out the sarcasm.
This is what makes literature
? Coley finished the last of the beer before he began swilling down the Pepsi.

“Let's change the subject,” he said.

“Okay, what's the new topic?”

“I need help with another book report.”

“That's changing the subject?”

“Sort of, it is, yeah.”

“Why don't you just do the revision like Grissom wants you to?”

“I can't get into that heavy stuff, I really can't,” he said glumly. “I think it'd be easier to start over with another book.”

Ruthie Roth sighed and took a long swallow of her Pepsi. “Okay,” she said. “What kind of help this time?”

“Well, to start with, I need a book to report on.”

“You want me to choose a book for you. After that, shall I just go ahead and read it for you and write your outline?”

“Don't start the sarcasm, Ruthie. I told you I've got a lot on my mind.”

The conversation went in fits and starts because they were trying to talk with their mouths full. “What about that questionnaire for human dynamics we worked on?” she wanted to know.