That was when he saw him.
A bob of gray hair, yes, that for sure. And a dark suit, a quick step, a knowing wink in the crouch of the posture. Maybe Kyle imagined the rest, but it all added up to only one thing.
Hello, boyo.
For years after his father’s death, there was a part of Kyle that couldn’t accept the truth of it. Even though he and his father had never been close, and even though he still had a small cardboard box filled with his father’s ashes stashed in the glove compartment of his car, he long treasured the hidden hope that they would still have a tearful reunion. As a boy, whenever in crowds or walking down the streets of the city, he found himself searching for his father. And on the ball fields of his youth, he caught himself checking the stands as involuntarily as a tic, to see if maybe, just maybe, Dad had come to watch him play. Part of Kyle secretly believed that his father had run away, was hiding for some good reason, was waiting for the right moment to come back into Kyle’s life. How many times had his heart leaped at the sight of a shock of white hair, how many times had the vision sent him running, only to see that the man was not his father at all, just some old guy shuffling along?
It had lain dormant for a while now, this secret and forlorn hope, he hadn’t had a sighting in years. But suddenly here, on this pathetic little field, as he rounded first and headed for second and tracked the ball on its path deep into right center field, beyond the fence on Fitzwater Street, he spied the bob of gray hair, and, just that fast, something broke free in his heart.
He stopped in his tracks. And stared at the gray-headed figure. And the question came out in a breathless gasp, as desperate as the ache that suddenly ripped through his body.
“Daddy?”
CHAPTER 4
OH, MY GOD, it was the funniest damn thing I ever saw,” said Skitch at McGillin’s Olde Ale House, the oldest continuously operating bar in Philadelphia and damn proud of it. Skitch was sitting at one of the long, narrow tables, with a red face and a pitcher of McGillin’s house lager in his fist. “Down by three, two on, and my man Kyle like Casey himself at the bat.”
“Who’s Casey?” said one of the women from Jersey.
“Wasn’t he the governor?” said another.
“Does he play baseball, too?”
“And then, bam, Kyle hits that ball an absolute ton,” said Skitch.
“A ton. And everyone, I mean everyone, starts howling and whooping. One run scores, Tommy, running like a sore-footed woodchuck, scores. And here comes Kyle, the tying run himself, motoring around first, heading for second, and then, and then . . .”
There were six of them huddled together at the table, Skitch and Kyle and Old Tommy Trapp along with the three women in from Jersey. Skitch had his arm around the neck of one of the women. The second was leaning as far from Old Tommy as she was able, as if Tommy were made of some overripe Limburger cheese. Kyle was dutifully ignoring the third, who sat across from him and whose name was Betsy and who was breathtakingly beautiful and seemed to know it at the start of the evening but wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Then what?” said Betsy, looking at Kyle with a narrowed eye. “Then he just stopped,” said Skitch. “But not on a base or anything. He just stopped, staring out into the outfield, toward Fitzwater Street. You should have seen Junior’s face when the second baseman tagged Kyle out while Kyle was just standing there. That was it—game, set, and match, and me on deck with a bat in my hands and nothing to do with it.”
“As usual,” said Kyle before finishing off his beer and slamming the mug back onto the table. Skitch lifted the pitcher and slopped what was left into Kyle’s mug.
“I don’t understand,” said Betsy.
“What’s to understand?” said Old Tommy. “The kid’s dumb as a tick. Were you smoking that wacky weed again, you freak? I told you about that stuff.”
“Yes, you did,” said Kyle.
“So was you?”
“No.”
“Well, there’s your problem right there,” said Tommy. “You got too many damn edges.” He turned to the woman next to him. “You got nice tits on you there.”
“Thank you,” she said as she leaned farther away.
“They real?”
She turned to her friends. “Can we go now? Please.”
“But why did he stop running?” said the woman with Skitch.
“Tell her, Kyle,” said Skitch.
Kyle turned to Betsy. “You have something there on your mouth. No, above. Yeah, right there. That’s it.”
“He thought he saw his dad,” said Skitch.
“Really?” said the woman with Skitch’s arm still around her neck. “That’s so sweet.”
“Yeah, it is sweet,” said Skitch. “Except his dad’s been dead for fifteen years.”
“Fourteen,” said Kyle.
“But who’s counting?” said Skitch. “Bro, Junior near split a gut.”
“He was so angry,” said Old Tommy, “you could have strummed ‘Oh! Susanna’ on the veins popping from his neck.”
“Let him find another shortstop,” said Kyle. “I’m sick of carrying that team anyway.”
“Did you really think it was your father?” said Skitch’s friend.
“I guess. I mean, it sort of looked like him. Same hair, you know that kind of moppy gray thing?”
“I still don’t understand,” said Betsy.
“There’s a lot she doesn’t understand, isn’t there?” said Kyle. He stood up without looking at Betsy and grabbed the pitcher. “I’ll get us a refill.”
As he was heading toward the tap, he heard Skitch say, “Did I tell you about the funerals? You got to hear about Kyle and the funerals.”
Kyle was at the bar, waiting on a fresh pitcher of the lager, when Skitch slipped beside him.
“You okay, bro?” said Skitch.
“Yeah, sure.” He looked over at the table. Old Tommy was laughing at something, his head thrown back, his toothless mouth agape. He looked like a grizzled old rooster laughing there. “What’s the name of that girl, the good-looking one, sitting next to me?”
“You mean the one you’ve been negging all night.”
“You think I’m overdoing it?”
“She’s almost in tears. Her name’s Betsy. And let me tell you, if I wasn’t hitting the other one, I’d hit that. Are you okay?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You don’t mind me telling the story, do you?”
“You know me, Skitch, I love being the butt of your jokes. It beats being your butt, that’s for sure.”