OUT

 

ONE

The dew was falling. Asa frowned and scuffed the grass with his right foot. In twenty minutes it would be slick as wet tile. He sighed. This was the peril of playing in the second game of the evening: the dew always fell.

Far away at home plate, the batter swung. Asa jumped as he always did when the ball sprang off the bat. This time it was not sailing to him in center field; it lifted straight up in front of home plate. Asa kept moving anyway, his feet keeping pace with the choices his intuition made. He watched the catcher, looking straight up, spin and stagger in a rough circle as the ball peaked and began to drop. Asa trotted low and quiet along a curved shadow that ran between left and center, where the pools of light from the high spots did not quite meet.

The ball came down just as the catcher, in mid-step, was recovering from a dizzy half turn, two feet inside the first baseline. The ball glanced off the heel of his mitt like a waterfall off a rock. The kid who had hit it and run looked back as he rounded first. He hesitated a second while the catcher whirled his head around in confusion, looking for the ball the way a dog does when someone stands on it for a joke; then the runner lit out for second. The catcher found the ball, looked up, saw the runner, and, swaddled by his heavy gear and strained by his panic at the infielders’ screams, unleashed a wild throw that disappeared into, the black sky fifteen feet over the shortstop’s head. The runner, grinning, kept right on running, around second, lightly and surely for third.

Forty feet beyond the shortstop, however, stood Asa, unnoticed. He hollered the third baseman’s name, calmly caught the catcher’s wild ball on the fly, turned, and fired it—tamed and orderly now—on one hop to third. The third baseman, alerted by the holler, caught it and neatly tagged the runner, who was so surprised by the sight of the ball arriving in front of him that he went into his slide six feet early and never even reached the base.

The umpire jerked his hand. The runner howled. Infielders strutted, slapped hands. The catcher, standing tall, jutted his jaw, jammed his mask on with a warning glare at the next batter, as if to say he hoped the kid had watched carefully and learned not to try to fox him with any twisty pop-ups. Asa trotted back to his position in center. Inside, his sense of right and wrong registered once again the justness of baseball: it was too fine a game to allow a triple off a dippy pop five feet from home plate.

The grass was wet now. Asa had to straighten his knees and jog on his heels, more upright, slower. He hated slowing down. Asa liked a challenge, but a dew slick was not a challenge. A challenge allowed solutions without sacrifices; adjustments, yes, but not sacrifices. Sacrificing speed was cheap and easy. Anyone could slow down.

The third batter of the inning swung too hard at an inside pitch and dribbled a grounder to the second baseman, who bobbled it but had plenty of time to throw it in the direction of first. The first baseman caught it, looked around for the bag, and stomped on it an instant before the runner arrived. Three outs. Time to bat.

Asa knew he batted fourth this inning; he could get his cuts if one of his teammates got on base. This, he also knew, was unlikely. It was equally unlikely that he would reach base when his turn came. The Quik-E-Freeze Cool Guys had not scored a single run in the first four games of the season.

Asa watched the boys assemble on the bench, rowdy and happy in relief that another spell amidst the mysteries of defense had somehow been brought to an end. For them, playing in the field was a bad dream—fielding frantic grounders that seemed to pick up speed as they kicked closer, and fly balls that vanished on the way up, only to reappear suddenly coming fast as cars; remembering which base to throw to when there was one out instead of two, or two on base instead of three. They tried to survive until the moment when three outs had miraculously accumulated, then—hooray! r—it was off to the dugout to jostle and laugh and spray insect repellent in each other’s ears until Coach told you you were on deck.

Mack and Jeff, who Asa knew were scheduled to bat first and second this inning, sat along with the rest, waiting without a clue. Only Tim, the third baseman, up third, seemed to know his spot: his batting helmet was already on.

“Mack up, Jeff on deck, Timmy in the hole,” said Coach Henderson. The boys scrambled eagerly. Asa listened for the slightest sound of disappointment in the coach’s voice, but there was nothing but warmth and ease. He never seemed to expect them to keep up with the game. Watching him, you would think he barely paid attention himself: he seemed committed more to making the kids all feel good than to building a ball team.

Mack hit a line drive back to the pitcher. This boy, whose height and clear jawline revealed he was nearer 13 than 12 (the league’s upper age limit), ducked and stuck up his mitt sideways without taking the extra second to try to open it for a catch. The ball caromed off the glove to the shortstop, who threw Mack out.

“Good hustle,” said Coach Henderson as Mack returned, full of pep, no regrets, happy with the feel of the decent smack he had given the ball. Jeff stood in and the coach clapped. “Little bingle, Jefferoo.” Inspired, Jeff swung early at three high pitches in a row. Out two.

“Good cuts,” said the coach.

“Yeah,” said Jeff, eyes aglow. “I almost fouled that second one!”

“Attaboy.” The coach and Asa watched Tim move out to the plate. Asa waited a moment, then stepped over to the on-deck circle.

He loved being on deck. He loved swinging two bats in a leisurely, patient way, as if this were all there was to it, lulling his arms to stretch and strengthen to handle the big weight. It was a trick, of course. When he went to the plate with only one bat and clicked into the quick intensity of the swing, his arms would find they were able to whip the wood around as if it were a hickory switch. It always worked. his arms never learned. This was a miracle to him—one part of him could remain innocent while another knew perfectly well what was happening.

He was delighted. All of this made him feel mysterious to himself, capable of doing things he could not foresee, with a power that reversed the usual cycle of observation, analysis, understanding, practice, action. This power came from not knowing, not understanding.

Tim took a couple of high ones, then scythed at a low pitch. The ball looped high over first and landed halfway out to right field, just on the line. The right fielder charged hard, scooped it up, and cocked his arm; but instead of firing a throw by instinct, he looked up at Tim rounding first. Tim was ready with a scowl that gave the fielder just a moment’s uncertainty, and by the time the boy recovered, his throw was too late to beat Tim.

Good. Runner in scoring position. Asa clapped. He liked the way Tim played offense (though he was careless and impatient with his mitt on); now they might actually score a run, against all odds. The other team, Table Talk Bakery, was one of the best in the league. Their last game against Asa’s team had ended 9–0, even with the Table Talk scrubs playing the final three innings.

Asa walked to the plate and took his stance. The Table Talk catcher, an ebullient All-Star named James Neal, chattered at him with a stream of good-natured taunts that were taunts nonetheless.

Asa ignored him and began what he called his “checkup,” going over his positioning limb by limb, using a special perception trick: he pretended he was his stepfather in the stands behind home plate. His stepfather was there, along with his mother; Asa knew this, though he never looked up at them during a game. And Asa knew his stepfather was scrutinizing his every move, holding the set of each elbow or eye against the technically determined ideal adopted when they practiced together. Dave knew everything about baseball, and was a patient, precise teacher. If Asa bent his knees too little, sat back on his heels too much, moved his head during the swing, or failed to roll his wrists all the way in his follow-through, he would hear about it next time they took the field together.

Now he was ready. The pitcher, looking bored, flipped a pitch that caught the outside corner in a hurry. His next one was in the dirt in front of the plate, and his third was high. Asa hated batting against a pitcher who wasn’t taking the job seriously: it was impossible to fox someone who had no strategy. He stepped out of the batter’s box, took a practice swing to refocus, then stepped back in. The pitcher, impatient, threw quickly.

The ball flicked toward the plate, and without deciding to swing Asa swung—it just looked like a good one. He hit it flush and it flew away. As he dropped the bat and ran, excitement fluttered in his chest. The ball soared high over center field; he willed it to keep going away, not to peak, not to begin its fall. He had never hit a home run; he had never hit a ball this hard. But as he touched first and watched, the ball faltered in its flight. He knew it would stay in the park—his center fielder’s eye would not deceive him, no matter what his hopes. He kept running dutifully, in case of an error, but the excitement turned to a sigh. The outfielder, running back, slowed, turned, reached up, and caught the ball snugly. Asa, too, slowed down and stopped. He could hit okay, but he was small. Talent and technique could not create power.

TWO

When they moved into the big two-story house, Dave did not seem to want to let Asa have one of the two second-floor bedrooms to himself. The master bedroom, with its own bathroom, was on the first floor, in the rear of the house; the room that seemed logical for Asa was in the front of the second floor, over the living room. It was a nice room, with three dormer windows, a peaked ceiling, and a walk-in closet. Asa gravitated toward it as if he had been born there. But then, he was getting to be pretty quick about finding his spot in a new house: this was his tenth move and he was barely eleven.

On the day they moved in—the first time Asa saw the place—he raced up the stairs with the large box containing his comic-book collection, which he had carried on his lap from their old house. Dave grumbled, “Not so fast now,” and Asa froze on the landing.

“What’s the matter?” Asa’s mother asked. Asa heard in her voice something warning, dangerous, tired.

Dave said, “Well, I don’t know that the boy should have that room.”

“And why not?”

For the first time Dave noticed the dangerous tone. He looked at her and, frowned. “Well, it’s a big room. An awfully nice room.”

“Ah,” she said, nodding. “Too nice, you mean. For him to just get.”

“Well—”

“He should have to go through some hardship first, or something. Have to share it, maybe—the way you did, of course, with your two brothers.” She made a show of looking around earnestly. “Trouble is, see, there are no other kids.”

Dave cocked his head to the side and pushed his chin out a smidgeon, a sign that he was just about to be inclined to begin to get a little tough. “Now, be careful.”

“And,” said Asa’s mother, “as for hardships—well, it’s a bit late to come up with some task to make him earn the right to a room in our house, since we’re moving in right now and all, but maybe we can think of something. What could we have him do? We don’t want anything to be too easy for him, do we? Got to keep it rugged. Let’s see—he could refinish the floors up there. We said they needed it. How about that?”

“Look—”

“No? Well, how about he slates the roof? Too wet today. Besides, we really don’t want it to be some simple one-time job, do we? To get yourself a nice room, you should have to go through something long and twisty. He’s already done a divorce and a remarriage and seven moves in three years, so we can’t let him repeat any of that. Just be going through the motions. Well hey, I know!”

She snapped her fingers. Dave just glared at her. Asa watched from the landing, stooping to see their faces under the ceiling. His mother took a step up to Dave and put a hand on his chest. She smiled. He scowled, unmoving.

“ I know,” she repeated. “If we can’t think of anything to get out of him, well, then, we can just reserve the right to task him whenever we feel like it in the future!” She gave a fake gay laugh that made even Asa wince. But Dave took it without a flinch, right in his face. She went on, patting him on the chest fondly. “We can just give him a hard time every now and then on general principles, because he’s got this nice room he doesn’t really deserve. How about that? Solves a lot of our problems. Honey!” she called up the stairs to Asa. Her voice was strong now, natural and direct, without sarcasm. “Go ahead and pick your room and carry your stuff up and arrange it however you like. Leave room for your bed.” Then she returned Dave’s glare, took her hand slowly off his chest, and went out the door to get another load from the rented truck.

In the next couple, of months Asa decided that what bothered Dave about his room was not so much that it was nice, but that it was far away: he could really be alone there. There were several things about this that could not fail to aggravate Dave, Asa knew. First, Dave did not trust the state of solitude. He clearly did not think anything good could come of someone being by himself; Asa could not speculate about exactly which evils Dave believed arose from such isolation, but it was obvious that bad things were supposed to happen when you let a kid think too much, or play by himself, or read. Second, Dave did not trust Asa. Again Asa was unable to come up with ideas of what specific sins he was capable of committing up there—but he knew it wasn’t really a matter of specifics. Something about him made Dave suspicious.

So he was never all that surprised when Dave came quietly up the stairs and popped into the room without knocking. Asa did keep his door closed. Dave always asked him why-implying that anyone who shut his door must have something to hide—and Asa always replied that he liked being “snug.” This was true, Also, Asa liked listening to rhythm and blues at low volume on his radio and did not want the music to intrude on the television shows Dave and his mother watched downstairs. These reasons never seemed quite to mollify Dave, who looked suspiciously around the room from a step or two inside the doorway. Asa was usually reading, or drawing, or building a model car, so after his snap check Dave always withdrew without explaining the visit by so much as a feigned message.

One Saturday morning in early October Asa was sitting on the floor in a dormer, reading Treasure Island beneath the window, when Dave opened the door and stepped in. Asa looked up. Something was different. Dave was wearing sneakers, thick-soled black high-tops. Asa had never seen them before. Even stranger, Dave was holding a football in his right hand.

“It’s sunny,” he said. He snuck a quick look around the room, but he seemed to be trying to keep his eye on Asa this time.

“Yes,” said Asa. He held up his book. “I’m reading by it,”

Dave started to say something but stopped his mouth. Then, with an underhand snap of the wrist, he flicked the football across the room in a whirling spiral. Without thinking, Asa dropped Treasure Island and caught it.

Dave grinned. “Good,” he said.

Asa stared at the ball gripped unmoving in his hands. He was amazed: A second ago it had been whizzing two ways at once. “How did you make it go like that?” he said.

“Come on out and I’ll teach you,” Dave said.

So they went out and threw, the football to each other for almost three hours. During that time, Dave taught Asa quite a few very specific things—grip, arm motion, foot placement, the shifting of weight, the rotating of hips. How to plot a path for the throw to drop just where the running receiver would be. Dave did not instruct so much as show, perhaps—“Watch my wrist,” he would say, (instead of an analytical explanation)—but Asa knew how to learn things.

He was thrilled by the whole day: the cool edge in the air, the dry detachment with which Dave offered simple expertise, the thin yellow of the light, and the passing itself, especially the eerie connection he felt between the hand that had just released the ball arcing into space and the hands that caught and carried it away on an unchecked run. But there was more going on than just the sport. After a half hour Asa realized quite clearly that for the first time he and Dave were giving free play to the natural tendencies that usually brought them into tight-lipped contention: Dave was being an authority, and Asa was being intelligent.

During their first couple of years as fake father and fake son, Dave had tried to make Asa do many things—but he was terrible at it, like a bulldog sergeant major crushing the recruit in a bad army movie. As for Asa, he tried to make Dave respect his ability to think—but he was a bit of a show-off, snapping out uncanny perceptions about things he knew were supposed to be beyond his reach, racing ahead of both his mother and Dave to note the end points of ramifications just opening before them. When the family considered anything at all together, from dinner at a particular restaurant to a drive in a rainstorm, Asa rattled off the string of consequences attendant on each alternative choice. At eleven he was already a pedant. Dave, at thirty, was still a bully.

They both knew the terms of their life together. But sports, it appeared, was different—perhaps it was not really a part of life. Dave could show him how to let a football slip off his fingertips without the chippy force that usually pushed his commands, and Asa could accept the instruction without feeling belittled, without having to show that he had already figured it out alone, Asa asked himself: Why? Was it because sports did not “matter” (the way saying “Sir” and “Ma’am” in exactly the right tone of voice mattered, or having a short enough haircut, or any of the other things that Dave demanded)? Or was it because sports—clearly a male domain—never brought Asa’s mother into play between them? Asa thought about it a lot, as he and Dave expanded on this newfound opportunity to enjoy, if not harmony, at least cooperative neutrality, by playing football and then basketball throughout the fall and winter.

One day they were shooting foul shots and Dave missed five in a row. Without thinking (he never spoke to Dave without thinking; the slightest carelessness could be a step into a red elevator shaft of wrath) Asa said, “You’re not bending your knees before you shoot. So you’re standing up too straight and your shots are flat and long.” He added, as if suddenly aware of his temerity, “Maybe we’re tired.”

Dave stared at him. His eyes narrowed for a moment. Then he looked at the basket, bent his knees, and bobbed a couple of times, spinning the ball in his hands as he eyed the rim. He hit three shots in a row, then said, “Let’s go.” On the way home he patted Asa once on the shoulder and said, “You’re learning good.” Asa. felt good—cold, appraising, alert only to the technicalities of form and result: he was relieved of emotion. This was sports: action without emotion, liberty from putting anything on the line.

Or so it seemed, for a long time over the winter. Certainly there was less tension in the house, and Asa equated less tension with less emotion. He and Dave would return home at dusk, and his mother would be happily setting out the family dinner; they would eat quietly while she talked nonstop; Dave would take his second cup of coffee into the den to watch television, and Asa would scoot upstairs. Often he snuck back down a little later, after Dave had fallen asleep in front of The Beverly Hillbillies or 77 Sunset Strip, to help his mother wash dishes. Oddly, this was a household job Dave had never assigned to him; Asa was certain it was because he did not like the idea of the two of them alone together.

One night as he was scrubbing a glass casserole dish, his mother said, “I’m sure glad to see my boys getting along so good.”

He hesitated; when she expressed herself in this girlish-whimsy way, complete with grammatical mistakes—-he couldn’t convince himself she was being genuine. How could she be so shrewd and resolute sometimes, then so content with cuteness at others? He sensed a huge longing in his mother, a catalogue of keen needs that were beyond him and Dave, even together, even with his long-gone father thrown in for good measure. And often when he suspected her of playing a part, he sensed behind it a desperate will to sincerity; she was trying out a way of being someone people could readily understand. It was not the kind of acting he held in contempt. It was a sadder, nobler performance.

“We’re kind of having fun,” he said to his casserole dish.

His mother sighed happily and rubbed brisk circles into a dinner plate with her towel. “Fun,” she said.

Asa tried to keep it going. He said, “Dave’s teaching me a lot.”

His mother said nothing for a moment, and he imagined she was putting the plate away. But then her arms closed around him from behind. “Maybe,” she said, her mouth pressed against his ear. “Maybe so, baby doll. But ‘fun,’ now—well, I mink my boy has just as much to teach him. And that’s what I like.”

One day in late March, he and Dave were walking along a cinder path that wound through woods to the basketball court outside his school. Buds were poised everywhere, as if waiting for a cue; a sweeping glance took in the sight of a misty green below the surface of everything, but focusing on a single branch showed nothing especially verdant. Asa drew a happy sigh and announced that he wanted to play Little League baseball.

Dave frowned. “Well,” he said. “Not much of a game.”

Asa was ready for this; perhaps the weather made him quick, even funny. “I think baseball’s got everything,” he said with a smile, “including dullness.”

Dave grunted. They walked on. Around them the sumac was sending up its antenna-like shoots. Dave said, “It’s complicated, baseball. Too many things to do—catch, throw, swing a bat, run bases. Two months, you can barely shoot a jump shot. Too hard for you.”

Asa amazed himself by laughing. “Hey, but you’re a great teacher,” he said, going so far as to clap Dave on the back. “And I’m a fantastic student.”

There wasn’t much Dave could say to that. So, reluctantly, he agreed. But from that moment, Asa felt their cool detachment begin to clench into some sort of grip. Starting the next day, they practiced baseball—not all those complicated parts of the game, but just the elemental art of hitting the ball. However, Dave’s instruction lost its air of indifference, took on an edge; and Asa found himself more and more determined to show his stepfather something unexpected and strong. It was still spring, and in the paths and fields fern tendrils unwound and hot new leaves splayed outward. But he and Dave turned away from the green and tightened up.

THREE

Somehow the great Table Talk team could not score. In the fourth inning two men reached base with no one down, but the next two hitters struck out on terrible pitches, and the third lashed a line drive that Asa outran to right center and caught one-handed over his shoulder. In the fifth the Cool Guy on the mound walked the bases full, and as he came out of the game, his teammates looked at each other almost with relief: “Ah, this is more like it, this is where we lose.” The next hitter chopped a grounder the new pitcher scooped at and missed—but his mitt knocked it back to home, where the catcher was waiting with his foot on the plate for the force-out. Feeling better, the pitcher threw hard down the pipe to the following batter, who hit the ball on the nose right back at him. It smacked into his glove, spinning him half around; the base runners thought he was watching the ball sail in a flash into center field, so they ran. Grinning, the pitcher trotted to first and tagged the base for the easiest of double plays.

As the innings passed, the facts began to sink in to the Cool Guys: they were not being clobbered. Hits started to fall in. In the top of the fifth they got three base runners, and only a pickoff and a double play kept them off the Scoreboard. In the top of the sixth, the last inning, Tim led off with a sharp single to center. Asa, swinging down at a low pitch, crushed it into the infield. Spraying dirt, the ball bounded over the ducking second baseman, and Tim hustled to third. Freddie struck but trying to uppercut a sacrifice fly to the outfield, but everyone hollered happily from the dugout. Asa, on first, saw three of the Table Talk infielders glance fretfully at the hopeful Cool Guys jumping up and down. Then, he, too, knew Quik-E-Freeze had a chance.

Pete, the catcher, was up. Catchers, according to Coach Henderson, were supposed to be the smartest hitters, because they knew all the tricks a pitcher could call upon. Pete, failing to notice that at this level of baseball there were no tricks, believed him, and Asa could tell that for this at bat Pete thought himself cunning as a raccoon. He waggled his bat, cocked his head, relaxed his hands, and shot beams of daring at the pitcher. It was unnerving, apparently: the first two pitches scudded in the dirt. Pete didn’t even watch them.

As he leaned into his lead at first base, Asa thought: How could this be? How could we all know what is about to happen? For it was clear that everyone did know. The Table Talk bench, usually as cute and mechanical in its cheering as a Baptist child choir on TV, now slunk forward in gloomy foreboding. The fielders, brows wrinkled, kicked at pebbles between pitches, sometimes not looking up until the ball was on the way to the plate. The pitcher sucked in breaths as if they were cough syrup. But the Cool Guys—hey, life was great! Tim stood on third with his hand on his hips and blew a large pink bubble that did not pop. Asa’s legs tingled with speed-to-be. The boys in the dugout laughed. It was as if Pete had already hit the ball somewhere far away. There was no doubt.

The pitcher decided it was time to get it over with. He threw an easy pitch that floated to the plate at the level of the FREEZE! logo on Pete’s chest, and Pete stepped and swung. The ball was in the sky before anyone heard the solid tock of impact. Asa held back, waiting to see it land, but Tim streaked home and hit the plate at the same instant the ball dropped onto the grass way beyond the running boys in left center. Now Asa swept around second and burned toward third. The “coach” there—a third-string infielder—was too busy cheering with two hands in the air, his eyes on the ball, to give Asa a sign to stop or go, so Asa cut across the base and sped on toward home. As he bore down on the catcher, his universe shrank: he was running in a tunnel and the opening at the end got smaller as he got nearer. There, the last thing in the world, was the All-Star catcher, his mask off, his face sweaty and red, crouched with his weight on both legs, blocking the plate; his eyes flashed over Asa’s head, pleading for the ball; his mitt, as Asa watched, began to turn and reach. Asa slid without slackening his speed, shooting his right foot between the catcher’s legs at the plate and kicking out with his left at one of the boy’s planted legs. He scooted almost entirely through before the catcher fell heavily onto him. Beneath his left hip he felt the hard rubber of the plate.

The umpire above him yelled something, but Asa did not pay attention. He was too busy trying to untangle himself from James Neal and stand up; now, finally, it seemed to be his turn to hoot and holler and leap about, and he wanted to strike while the urge was on—deep in his chest he was ready to be delivered of the strange, cool restraint that always kept him apart from his teammates’ ups and downs. Up at last, he shook free and spun toward the dugout with a wordless whoop, a scream of joy, waving his fists in front of him as if he had caught something wild in each. But his teammates stood with their mouths open, watching someone large who was at that moment bustling past Asa toward home plate, making noise. Asa, after a glance at the stunned boys, turned to follow their stare.

What had rushed past him was Coach Henderson. It was hard to recognize him. The crisply mannered, fine-featured man was now hunched and flailing, his face like a plum-colored knot squeezed out from his humpy shoulders. He was snarling at the umpire; Asa noticed, as the ump stepped away and Coach Henderson turned his head to follow, that the coach had crooked teeth. Asa had never seen them before; he would never have expected them to be crooked. The opposing coach, a consistently jolly Greek man named Stravros who owned the Table Talk Bakery, was out of his dugout, trying to catch Coach Henderson by one of his elbows. There seemed to be four or five of them in the air, but he couldn’t snag one. Then the umpire, his face full of fear, shot his arm into the air.

Still Asa did not know; he stood there not knowing, his fists of celebration still made. It was only when Coach Henderson stormed by, flushed with anger and, now, with what Asa recognized as shame, and said, “Sorry, Asa, but you were safe, my boy,” that he realized. He was not safe. He was out. The umpire had called him out.

He walked back to the dugout. A couple of boys patted him and said, “We got one anyhow.” On the field, as if in a hurry to reestablish the nature of things, a Cool Guy swung at a bad pitch and popped out. Asa found his glove and trotted out to center.

Out? Well, perhaps. How did he know? He hadn’t been watching: he had been in there, inside the moment—tangled in legs and red shin guards and twisting arms at the end of the tunnel, not watching, not thinking, just concentrating on getting to the plate. What kind of judge was he? For once, it was up to somebody else to see the sequence of things, and somebody had done so. Out? It could be. There were only two choices, and one had been made. Asa would have preferred being safe, but preference was not knowledge. He wasn’t angry. In a way, he was thrilled, simply to have been too involved to know.

The Table Talk batter swung at the first pitch and lofted a long fly to left. Asa watched without surprise as it soared, peaked, kept flying, and cleared the fence by twenty feet. The Baptist child choir woke up. He did not watch the hitter jump and dance as he ran the bases; they all did that, and he hated it. If he ever hit a home run, he would put his head down and scurry. He supposed he would be proud, but pride was private. Eventually the gamboling Table Talk boy touched home, and the game was tied.

Next up, the pitcher cracked a line drive that hit the shortstop in the chest. The Cool Guy collapsed, cringing and crying, while the ball spun like a planet in the dirt. He came out of the game, replaced by the kid who had been coaching third base when Asa had run around it. The runner was held at first. The next batter popped up a bunt. Pete snatched it out of the air and nearly doubled the runner off first. One away. Left-handed hitter. He swung at the first pitch and bounced it on one hop over the right-field fence. Men on second and third. One out.

The next Table Talk hitter knocked a grounder that Tim dove to his left to spear. Springing up, he drew back his arm at the runner who had taken off from third, until the boy dove back. Then Tim hummed a throw across to first and beat the runner by a stride. It was a great play. Asa hollered Tim’s name. Great play. Two out. They could get out of this. If they did not let up, they could get out of it.

James Neal sauntered to the plate. He was a right-handed hitter but his power was to center. He was the best hitter in their league: every swing was level and true, no matter what the pitch, a disciplined slash that swept the ball through the infield in a blink. When James hit home runs—and Asa could think of half a dozen he had seen—they were line drives that just kept rising as they flew. Once he had struck one over Asa’s head into the tin Scoreboard, and its impact had sprung five numbers off their nails onto Asa’s grass.

Asa looked around at his teammates. They were watching James Neal advance to the batter’s box, and they were all slinking. No! Asa wanted to holler. Stop! We can do this guy! There are two out! Just one out to get and we are back at bat and we can win it. He wanted them to see this—it was so simple! Asa kicked at the grass. They were giving up. He did not understand giving up—that was all. Giving up did not work.

The first pitch whizzed in. James Neal took a cut and everybody gasped. Asa leaped a step forward, but it was a foul back up over the Quik-E-Freeze dugout into the night. The runners, cocky in their trots, touched up, and waited; with two out they would fly on any hit. Both would score on a single. James Neal waved his bat and stared at the pitcher. He was a very emotional player, but there was no feeling in his face right now, only concentration. And here came the pitch.

Asa realized as soon as James Neal started his swing that he ought to have been playing in closer. So he started his run just as the ball sprang off the bat dead on a line four feet above second base. Asa did not slow down; he sprinted from his jump start, straight at where the ball was dipping, dipping, touching the wet grass, and rising in a long, low bounce right at him. Somewhere in his awareness he registered the whirling arms of the base runners romping safely home, the yowls from the Table Talk dugout, the cheers of half the parents springing to their feet in the stands. But mostly he was aware of three things—the ball he was speeding to intercept, the moon face of his first baseman turned this way to watch the hit, and James Neal, his grin bright with the grandest pleasure, his arms held straight up, his legs scissoring as he celebrated with a couple of leaps on his way to first. Somewhere inside Asa there was a whiz of physics that added these things up, and though he hadn’t time to feel it, he knew there would be happiness in a moment. For now, he gloved the ball and plucked it out with his throwing hand and planted his left foot perfectly, then with every ounce of momentum developed over fifty feet of sprint he whipped his hips and snapped his arm and spun into a follow-through. He watched the ball. It flickered through the air and smacked into the barely opened mitt of the first baseman while James Neal was coming down from his last scissor leap, six feet from first.

The first baseman stared into his mitt at the ball, then looked down at his foot on the bag. Nobody cheered. James Neal stopped, gaped, then shook his head and looked around. He walked to first and stomped on it. “It’s a clean single,” he said to no one, his voice winding up for tears.

The Cool Guy infielders still didn’t get it; neither did most of the boys on the Table Talk bench. But they all began to see that Asa got it. He trotted in with his head down, and one by one the players grew still and watched him. His rubber spikes crunched on the infield dirt. No one spoke but James Neal; he ran to the umpire, who stood between first and second, watching Asa approach.

“It’s a clean single,” he pleaded. His cheeks were red as match heads. He grabbed the umpire by the left arm but the ump shook him off without looking at him. Then, slowly, the man raised his right arm until his fist poised high above his ear, as if he had a knife. He watched Asa; only James Neal did not.

As Asa crunched by, he glanced up and met the umpire’s look. “Out,” said the man clearly.

FOUR

After a couple of weeks on a low twilit field not far from their house, Asa found he and Dave were communicating entirely through the baseball itself. At first there were a few blunt instructions, but it became clear that not only did Dave dislike baseball—he also did not know it very well. After telling Asa he should “watch the ball” and “not try to kill it” he hadn’t much to add that Asa couldn’t pick up better simply by swinging. So Dave pitched, hard, from a bag of old baseballs he had wangled from a semipro team sponsored by the company he worked for. Asa stood and swung and stood and swung and stood and swung.

It also became clear that the absence of words did not mean they had nothing to say. Between them, suddenly, the air crackled with danger; through that air passed the ball. Asa could feel shoves of anger or doubt or pure competitiveness in the spin and speed of the pitch at the moment he struck it—always as hard as he could—with his bat. He was certain his replies were just as clear: high-strung line drives, overmatched pop-ups, meek ground balls, and spirited, sloping flies he watched with a burning in his chest that could not have been more violent and celebratory if he had strode out to Dave and socked him. Two hours might pass without a word, but at the end they would both be drained.

It was not fun, but it was practice. And it worked: pitch by pitch Asa learned things, and soon he was becoming a hitter. Occasionally he sensed some grudging satisfaction in Dave when he lashed out six or seven tough pitches in a row to all parts of the field; they both seemed to remember, if only for the moment, that Asa’s progress meant they were both doing well.

But sometimes they forgot. If Asa hit too many pitches too hard, Dave would hum one way inside at him, and Asa would have to spin away from it into the dirt. The first time this happened, he said, “Hey!” and Dave said, “Hey what? Part of the game,” and motioned for him to stand back in; the next pitch was right over the plate. After that Asa said nothing. He saved his energy to bash the next ball.

One day, Asa stroked a long fly to dead center and stood watching it contentedly, holding a hand up to Dave as a signal that he should wait until Asa finished gloating. The ball landed far out in the green; Asa sighed happily. When he lowered his hand, Dave hit him with the ball. There was no pretense about it. He did not even wind up the way he did for a pitch: he let Asa step up to the plate and then he drew his arm back and threw—hard, always hard—directly at the boy’s ribs. Asa froze. The ball seemed to take forever to arrive, but then it sprang at him and burrowed into his bones. He dropped backward and landed flat, screaming and rolling over and over. He knew he was crying because he felt mud on his cheeks from tears and dust, but he did not hear a thing, nor did he notice any vision: the whole world was a hole in his side. But before he could think, the pain switched over, and the world became a fury in his heart. He stood up.

Dave was out in the outfield collecting the balls Asa had hit, putting them in the canvas bag. His back was turned, and Asa knew he would keep it turned. Asa looked around home plate. There were three balls he had fouled into the backstop. He picked up his bat and one of the balls. In left center, Dave bent, straightened, bent, and straightened. Asa tossed his ball and hit it viciously. It sailed toward Dave with good distance, but tailed away toward right; Asa watched as it whizzed over Dave’s head and landed twenty feet beyond him. Dave looked up and watched it land, too, but he did not turn around. In fact, he remained upright and motionless, as if offering his back in case Asa wanted to hit another. Asa did not. He left the other two balls and took his bat home.

The family ate dinner as usual that night—or almost as usual. It was obvious that something had happened, but neither Dave nor Asa spoke of it. Asa saw his mother studying Dave, and knew she was studying him when he wasn’t looking. He wondered if Dave would tell; he certainly wouldn’t.

The next day he remained in his room after school, reading comics. As the hour for their daily practice approached, he reached for more comic books; there was no, question about whether or not the workouts would continue. They were finished.

But about ten minutes past the time, someone knocked on his door. He said, “What?” and the door opened. His mother stepped in.

She was wearing white tennis shoes and one of Dave’s golf caps and holding Asa’s bat in her right hand. His glove hung over her left wrist: she wore it like a bracelet. He stared. She smiled. “Let’s go,” she said.

“But—”

“Come on. Your tryout is in two weeks. Let’s go chuck a few.”

He started to protest. But in her eyes was a look that made him rise. It was part command, part entreaty; part confidence, part loss. He went with her.

On their way to the field she did not say anything to explain why she was taking Dave’s place; instead, she pointed out weeds that were coming into flower or trees that had brought forth buds. Asa nodded and commented politely, softly. In his life there had been half a dozen times when the air around him filled with an aching sweetness, a thick feeling of fragile bliss that poured into him and out of him at once, and moved with him as he moved. Always it was sad as well as happy, and always it ended suddenly. It came when someone gave him something and he took it without knowing. When the feeling was gone, sometimes the gift was too. He did not know, as he walked to the park beside his chatty mother, whether what she gave would last for him or not, but the swelling of sweetness and woe clouded around them, and he drew it in all the way to the pitcher’s mound. By the time he explained why this strange little hill was here and showed her how to put on his glove, the cloud had vanished.

Her first pitch was six feet outside and ten feet high. Her second was lower, but farther away. Her third arrived near the plate on second bounce, and he gave it a tap into right field. “See,” she yelled, gleefully. “Hooray for us!”

They had brought only the one ball; Asa retrieved it. When he came back, he went to the mound.

“Know what?” he said. “I’ve really pretty much done nothing but bat up to now, for two weeks.”

She looked at him warily, unwilling to be patronized. “So?”

He tried to sound chipper and spontaneous. “What I need is the chance to field a lot.”

“Field?” She looked around. “A lot?”

“Sorry—it means to catch the ball, make throws: play defense. I, urn, only got the chance to do offense before. There didn’t seem to be much interest in the other side. But it’s just as important. At the tryouts they watch you hit, but they also make you catch and throw. It’s actually more complicated than swinging the bat.”

She thought, liked it, nodded. “Okay.” She smiled. “I’m your defensive coach. What do I do?”

He had a feeling she could be taught to toss the ball up and hit grounders to him, certainly more easily than she could be taught to pitch. He was right. In a few minutes she had learned to toss it, grip the bat, wait for the ball to come down, and chop at it with a short stroke. He moved out to the shortstop spot, and for almost an hour she pounded it at him, slow, high-bouncing balls sprayed all over the infield. It was actually wonderful: after a dozen grounders he was breathless and sweaty and fully stretched. It was plainly wonderful for his mother, too, though she had apparently decided to play it cool. She was all business as she hit the ball, dropped the bat, crouched with her hands apart in front of her, and clapped them over the soft rollers he sent back to her after making his catch. There was no more “Hooray!” and self-celebration: she made it clear this was a natural thing now, no big deal. Nevertheless, it was just as clear they were supposed’ to be having fun and they were. The next day he did not wait for her to come to his room; he got the equipment and stood at her bedroom door while she tied her sneakers.

Within a few days she was able to pop little line drives at him. From there she moved easily into short fly balls. Before long, he was getting all the defensive work he could wish for. She had a good instinct for mixing up her hits, moving him around, making him go back to his left and then drawing him into a charge to his right. Her grounders got trickier; she could smash them on a lower trajectory now, or squib them with English so they trickled away from him if he got lazy and waited on one knee instead of running forward. The better she got, the less serious she pretended to be; the more she yanked him around, the more she chattered and laughed. He laughed too, even, sometimes, in the middle of a lunging catch that required all his reach and concentration. Every ball she hit had wit behind it. He got the joke as he made the play.

The tryouts approached; soon they arrived at the Friday before the Sunday when he would report, alone, to the municipal park at eight in the morning. Two more days! He was excited; he leaned toward the date with confidence that his chance to show something unexpected was at hand. Two days! Still, he tried to focus on the remaining practices. His workouts with his mother had gotten longer, so the two of them took breaks in the middle and sat for ten minutes by a creek that ran along one side of the field. On this Friday the weather was hot. Before sitting, he took off his shirt.

Squinting at the water, he saw his mother stare at him, look away, then stare again. He looked at her. Her eyes were on his torso. He looked down. There, in the ribs beneath his left arm, was the baseball-sized bruise he had carried for two weeks. It was an old bruise by now, greenish and blotchy, with one weird feature: the raised stitches of the ball had left two perfect curved marks of a deeper bruise, exact in their replication of the tiny bird-feet pattern, purple and geometric. The mark held no horror for Asa; indeed, he had quickly come to regard it as a fascinating study in the quirkiness of skin tissue, noting each change in color and texture. He checked it coolly each morning, then forgot about it. Following his mother’s eyes now, he realized it was an ugly thing. He pretended to shiver, said, “Actually, it’s a little breezy,” and put his shirt back on.

His mother was looking him in the eye now. He did not know what to say, so he shrugged. She did not let him off with that. He said, “No big deal, you know?”

“Oh sure,” she said. “Of course not.” She held his eyes for a moment longer; he had to say something, so he said, “It’s, like, just something guys don’t mind.” He grinned, gave himself a smack right on the bruise. She winced but he didn’t. “See?” he said. “Doesn’t hurt.” He chuckled, shook his head, smiled at the creek. In his peripheral vision he saw her continue to stare at him. It was unnerving. So, without really intending to, he began to talk. He had thought he might just say a couple of reassuring things about his relationship with Dave, but before he knew it, he had drifted into deeper waters. He found himself defending his stepfather rather cleverly, though his mother had not charged him with anything. It must be very difficult being a stepfather, he said; especially if you married the woman you had loved long ago and now here she was at last—but this time she had a kid with her! Asa joked about the terrible inconvenience of this—how the kid must get in the way, change everything; he did a cute job of imitating the frustration of the adults, He chuckled at; his own wit; his mother looked at the creek.

As he listened to himself chatter, Asa knew he was not pleading a trumped-up defense of Dave just to soothe his mother’s anguish. He was pleading because he knew that despite Dave’s roughness, the man was mostly trying to do strong, decent, difficult things with his stepson and his wife. Especially his wife. Asa was aware that he was not the main challenge in Dave’s life: He had witnessed this marriage for years now. His head whirled sometimes with a sense of the history of these two people, fading back into the past, beyond his conscious understanding. But he did understand a great deal, really; at certain moments he knew he was in the presence of something big. It was true that much of the time this big, sweet force couldn’t be easily perceived beneath the shadows of Dave’s tyranny and his mother’s torment. But sometimes it did shine, even from Dave. Asa had watched Dave coax her, without a trace of impatience, out of several of the fits of despair to which she so often seemed doomed—fits that, left unchecked, took over her life in a matter of hours. Twice in the previous year she had spun so quickly into her own darkness that Dave had handed her over to the state hospital at Butner, for nearly a month each time. Coaxing her out early was work that required a strength and self-assurance Asa knew he could not approach—but he could readily admire it in Dave. At other times he had watched Dave gently, teasingly build long, slow jokes from sly references to this and that old business from their life, as they drove along in the car for hours—jokes that accumulated power as they tickled deeper and deeper, drawing her up through perfectly paced stages of amusement and laughter until she reached a reckless, weeping hilarity that left her spread-eagled over the car seat shaking, sniffling, wailing. During these crescendos Dave simply watched the road and smiled.

So now, filled with this urgent sympathy, Asa went on babbling to his mom about how difficult being a stepfather must be. And it wasn’t just difficult being a stepfather in general. It must be really tough being his stepfather—Asa’s. He was, he knew, a very weird kid. He said this lightly, with a wry shake of the head and a rueful smile, Oh, that Asa. It was an expression he had often inspired—with a less kindly humor to it—in his stepfather.

His mother surprised him by wheeling around in a sudden fury. “What is this?” she sputtered. “What is supposed to be so weird about you, Asa?”

Her flare burned off his pretense of light-heartedness. But he had started something, so he plugged on, without playacting now. “Well,” he said, “you know. I’m—different. I mean—here we are in the South and Dave has this big family and all the kids are normal Southern kids. They go to church all the time, they take it very easy, they don’t worry about much. Great sense of humor—tease a lot, but it’s because they like you, you know. That’s the way Dave was when he was a kid, I know, and that’s the way he likes kids. That’s what kids are, to him. But I’m different. I care too much about things they don’t even notice. Stupid things I know don’t really matter, really. Like, I mind that they crease my comic books. When they come over, they come in, all friendly, and I really like them, I like my cousins—I wish I was that friendly all the time—and they plop down and yank out a bunch of my comics. That’s okay. I can put them back in order. But they fold them, fold the covers back, sometimes they wad them up and put them in their back pockets to go down and eat. It’s dumb to care so much about it, I know, but—I try to keep them land of neat. I take care of them, is all. But I know it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are all cousins, we are all family. You’re not supposed to let junk like that—like stupid comic books—come in the way of your love of your family. But I can’t help it—before the love comes on, I start worrying about my comics, and I hate doing it, and Dave is right.”

“Right? What does he say that is right?”

Asa had not planned on this, but now he was nervous and upset and he couldn’t seem to stop. He tried to back off. “Oh, nothing. I mean, he’s right. He’s just trying to help me.”

“What does he say?”

“He lets me know I’m being sort of a nervous finicky guy. Like maybe I like things better than people, you know? And that’s wrong, I know it is. So I ought to be different. It is better to be land of loose and easy about stuff.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Like Dave. He’s very loose and easy about stuff, isn’t he? That’s probably how you got that bruise.”

Asa shut up and plucked grass. His mother watched him for a minute, then stared back out across the creek. He snuck a look at her; she wasn’t crying or anything, at least. After a few minutes he asked if they could resume their practice.

She was grave for the rest of their workout. On the way home, silence waited between them. Then she said, “I’m very sorry, Asa.”

He pretended not to know what she was talking about. A few minutes later she added, “It’s no good.”

“No, don’t,” he said. He had to say something. “It’s fine.” He gave her a pretty good smile. Then he took her hand, and they held hands all the way home.

 

In the middle of the night he woke up to find Dave shaking him. He smelled coffee, but it was too dark for morning and he could feel he hadn’t been asleep long enough.

“Wake up,” said Dave. “I need your help. We have to get some coffee in her.” Then he ran from the room. Asa pushed his covers away and followed him downstairs.

Dave, in pajama bottoms, was in the kitchen pouring coffee into a mug. “Too hot,” he said. “Ice.” He yanked open the freezer and pulled out an ice tray and smacked it very hard against the edge of the counter. Chips of ice sprayed all over. He picked a few off the counter and put them in the coffee, then said, “Come on,” and walked past Asa, leaving the freezer door open.

They went into the bedroom. The light was on. His mother lay diagonally across their bed, her arms at her sides; to Asa she looked strangely heavy and still, like a slab of wet clay. His throat went cold. “Is she—”

“She’s—asleep,” said Dave, giving him a quick look. He was on the far side of the bed, at her head. “Come here. We’ve got to get some coffee in her.” He was flustered; it gave him an odd gentleness. “Do you want to hold her head or pour?”

“I’ll hold her head.” Asa went around and lifted his mother behind the neck. Dave held the mug up to her mouth and poured some coffee in. A little ran out of the corners of her mouth onto the sheets; the rest seemed to vanish until she coughed and spewed it.

“More,” said Dave. This time her throat executed a kind of swallow.

Asa’s arms were trembling; he was glad, actually. He knew he was in the middle of something that ought to be making him frantic, and instead he felt all cool and easy. The trembling showed he felt something, he guessed. “Why is she so asleep?” he asked.

Most of the coffee was in. Dave looked down into her throat, frowning. “Okay,” he said. “Lie her back down.”

Asa resisted the temptation to correct Dave’s lie to lay; instead he said, “Maybe we should sit her up.”

Dave looked at him. “Right,” he said. He jammed pillows against the headboard of the bed, and they pushed her against them. Her head fell forward, and Dave pushed it back until the pillows held it up. Her head didn’t seem to care. She was out. The only thing about her that moved was her lower lip, which pulled in a bit whenever she sucked a raggedy breath.

“Why is she so asleep?” Asa asked again.

Dave ran his fingers through his hair. “You want some coffee too? I got to have some too.”

Asa followed him into the kitchen. “If you don’t tell me, I’m calling an ambulance,” he said.

Dave was pouring coffee into the same mug. He turned as he poured. “No,” he said, far more reasonably than Asa expected. “I mean, we don’t need the ambulance. She’s all right. Really. Just sleepy.” He slurped some of the coffee and winced at the heat.

“Why is she so sleepy? Why do we have to wake her?”

Dave watched him over the edge of the mug as he took another, longer swallow. “Well, Sport,” he said, with a tone almost cheery, “she kind of goofed. She had a headache, and she went into the bathroom in the middle of the night, and she took what she thought was an aspirin. But it was a sleeping pill. They look the same.” He shrugged and lifted the mug.

“One sleeping pill?” Asa said.

Dave paused and considered, the mug an inch from his mouth. “Two,” he said, and drank.

Asa went back into his mother’s room. She had slumped sideways. The friction of the skin of her left cheek against the wooden headboard was all that held her up from lying down again; the pressure pulled her lip up above her gum on that side and opened her left eye. Asa looked at the eye. Nothing but white was showing.

He straightened her, and went into the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet there was nothing but shaving stuff and toothpaste. He looked under the sink. The wastebasket was on its side and a few wads of tissue lay near it. There was a brown prescription bottle upright on the floor there. Asa picked it up and read the name of the medicine: Seconal. Inside he found a single red, oval pill. There was no aspirin or aspirin bottle anywhere.

He went back into the bedroom. Dave was there, leaning close to her, watching for some sign; from his face it was obvious he had no clue about what he was waiting for. Asa said, “I’m calling the hospital.”

“No!” Dave roared, spinning on him. The gentility was gone. “You will do nothing but what I say, you hear? This isn’t a time for a kid to interfere, I don’t care how smart he thinks he is.” He glared at Asa; the boy held his eye for a moment, then started to walk toward the kitchen. Dave said, “Wait,” more gently, and came over to him.

“Listen, please,” he said. Please was not a word Asa heard from him often; he listened.

Dave put his hands on Asa’s shoulders and looked straight into his face. “Listen, son. That’s my wife over there. Your mother, and my wife. We want her to wake up and be okay. Both of us. I would not let her sit there in danger, understand?”

“You lied about the pills,” said Asa. “I can’t trust you.”

Dave groaned in exasperation, and with an offhanded force that seemed weary, almost casual, he thrust Asa straight back until the boy slammed into the side of a bureau. Asa’s ears filled with a buzzing from the back of his head, but he stayed erect; Dave stepped close and squatted, sticking his face close.

“You’ll pardon me for not giving a dingle,” he said, “but right now I just don’t feel all torn up with the need for your ‘trust.’ It’s not something your mother’s pining for over there, either. Frankly, boy, I don’t think you’re the kind of person who will ever trust anybody. It kind of takes an honest heart to do that, you understand what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Asa, “I do.” Then with a concentration of all his strength he snapped his arm out and punched Dave flush on the temple. The shock of it felt good; he left his arm, stiff and solid, in the air between them as Dave jerked backward and sat down hard. Dave shook his head and blinked fast for a moment, but quickly his eyes found Asa’s and they stared at each other. For some time neither spoke or looked away. Then Asa lowered his fist, and Dave smiled grimly. There was a red circle near his left eye.

“Well,” he said. His voice gurgled a little; he cleared his throat. “Well. Now, I guess, we’re even.” He Started to stand up, careful to lean away from Asa as he did so.

“We’ll, never be even,” said Asa. “We shouldn’t try.”

Dave hesitated, then chuckled darkly and shook his head. He stood all the way up, stepped past Asa, and went to bend over Asa’s mother. Asa walked to the other side of the room and sat on the floor with his back against the wall.

Dave left after a few minutes. Asa remained, watching her. From time to time Dave checked in, bringing coffee, which he got down her without Asa’s assistance. In a couple of hours her breathing got a little easier, but she showed no signs of waking up. At one point Asa went over and tried to hold her hand, but he felt stupid. So he sat on the floor and waited, and after a while he fell asleep.

He woke to the sound of heavy footsteps and Dave’s voice cursing. He opened his eyes. The light was off and the room was pretty dark, but it was dawn beyond the curtained windows; a long shape was just falling forward onto the bed with a thick WHUMP. The bathroom light went on and Asa heard Dave curse again. He stood up and went to the door.

Dave was looking into the sink. It was full of jagged pieces of glass, some of them covered with amber goo. Thinking back, Asa realized that before the footsteps he had heard—and incorporated into his dream, something about a science class—the sound of glass breaking. It was probably what had brought him to the surface. Glass breaking, heavy footsteps, his mother collapsing onto the bed, Dave cursing—he tried to put it together.

Dave turned. “She wanted to wash her hair,” he said. But he spoke with a pitiful lack of conviction, and a moment later he added, in a low, defeated voice: “Get dressed, son.”

They carried her out to the car in the faint blue light, and stretched her out in the backseat on some blankets. She seemed to be as heavily asleep as ever; Asa wondered how she could have waked up and gotten to and from the bathroom and then slipped back. But he didn’t need to understand: there she was. They climbed into the front seat.

Dave took turns that led them out of town, onto the road that went north. Asa had not really expected they would go only to the hospital in town; things seemed too big for town, all of a sudden. “Excuse me,” he said. “Are we going to Raleigh?”

Headlights flashed over Dave’s face. “Yes we are.”

He offered no explanation. But then Asa and his mother never needed an explanation when they were taken to Raleigh: It was Dave’s hometown, where all his family lived, and it drew them whenever they did not have a good reason to stay where they lived. He remembered suddenly that it was his mother’s hometown too; this was a fact, but not one that he felt very keenly. For one thing, he had known her first in Washington; for another, they always spent all their time in Raleigh with Dave’s family. She seemed as much of an outsider with them as Asa did, despite her native ability to talk the talk and mimic the behavior of the Southern wives who had never left.

“Is Mom going to Butner?” Asa said.

“Yes,” Dave said. “She is.”

Asa waited a long time to ask his next question. He waited while they rode between tobacco fields and past gas stations opening up for the day, while the sun rose, pink and then yellow and then white in a white sky. He listened for his mother’s breathing over the rumble of the car, and every so often he heard a snaggled intake of air. Dave stopped for takeout coffee at a diner an hour up the road and bought Asa a honey bun. Asa waited until he had eaten his bun and Dave had drunk his coffee. He waited a while longer. Then, trying to sound very light, trying to sound as if it did not really matter a bit, he was just wondering, no problem at all, he asked: “Will we spend the night?”

Dave looked at him as if he must be nuts. “Of course,” he said. He shook his head at the boy’s strangeness, and Asa knew just what he was thinking. Imagine going to Raleigh and not spending the weekend!

Asa said nothing; he vowed he would not. But Dave surprised him. After only five minutes, he said, “Oh!” and hit the steering wheel with the palm of his right hand. He turned and looked at Asa.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You were supposed to try out for Little League tomorrow morning.”

“It’s all right,” Asa said, looking straight ahead.

Dave hit the steering wheel another, harder lick, and cursed. And suddenly Asa could feel clearly that Dave’s anger was curling toward the woman in the backseat. It was her fault. She had done this, deprived his stepson of a chance to be a regular boy. Asa had seen how Dave’s shifty anger could work, and he knew that soon his missed tryout—indeed, perhaps the entirety of his strange life, all predicated upon this lost shot at normalcy—would be another black mark against her, another sin.

Well, for this Asa would not stand. If he could get by without anger, what right did Dave have to be mad? Whose tryout was it, anyway? So, looking over, Asa said firmly, “Oh, no. It’s all right. I wasn’t going to try out.”

Dave frowned. “You weren’t?”

“No,” said Asa.

“Why not?”

Asa took a breath. Outside, a sparrow hawk fluttered in the wind over a red clay field. “Well,” he said, “it’s a complicated game.”

Dave thought for a moment. Then he let out a long breath. “Well,” he said, “I told you so.”

“Yes,” said Asa, “you did.” And that seemed to do it. They spoke no more. Asa turned then to watch out the side window, in which he could see a reflection of his face, watching. The drive went on in silence. After a couple of hours, as he stretched, he decided the scrub shortstop, the one who had come in after the line drive popped the other boy in the chest—he decided this kid would hit a home run in the top of the eighth. Yes, he liked that. Quik-E-Freeze would win. He felt a little guilty about this, a little selfish. But what the heck, he would do it: the Cool Guys would win, and he would feel great. Somehow, he hoped, he deserved this.