It takes mere minutes for us to find it, and we are sitting on the bench along the third base line. Where there used to be four slats for baseball butts, there are two, but that is plenty for us. Jarrod does the assembly work, Da smokes another cigarette and stares out over the playing field and the smoke and the overgrowth and time, the way smoking always seems to allow an older person to do. Almost seems worth the smoking for, losing some years at the end of your life, in order to have all that screen time with your younger self.
“You ever play?” Da asks out loud.
“Sure,” I say quickly. “You know-”
He slaps my thigh, hard. “I know you did,” he says calmly. “I remember every pitch you threw, every one you hit, every one you missed. I will forget my feet before I’ll forget any of that. I was asking him.”
“Me? Ya, I did,” says Jarrod.
“Very good,” Da says, looking over the short chain-link fence curving around the outfield.
“Except, you didn’t,” I correct.
“Hey, if he can make up stuff, so can I?” Jarrod says, risking a broken nose or something.
No such thing. Da just sits, still staring. He takes on that creased, crunched expression folks get when they are asked a question they know they should know, they know they do know, only they don’t know it right now. He looks frustrated and confused and reluctant, but he takes the joint when it is passed. Then he smokes and extends it to me, and I am so close to asking him if he indeed knows which of his stories is true and which is otherwise, I can actually feel that W forming on my lips.
“No, I can’t,” I say, and he withdraws.
Jarrod takes the smoke back. I start walking, and point at him as menacingly as I am able.
“I will be right back,” I say. “Do not go anywhere. And do not lose him.”
“How could I even do that? He’s, like, full size.”
I run up to the corner, where we passed one of those discount stores. Probably was a five-and-dime once, a Wool- worth’s, a dollar store, a whatever-the-name-says, but always cheap as cheap and always the kind of place you could get a Wiffle bat and ball but most likely not authentic Wiffle brand.
That’s not exactly what I am looking for, anyway. I find what I want, a sponge ball, orange, and an enormous fat bat, plastic but three times the strength of and about twelve times the barrel width of a Wiffle bat.
I buy four of those balls. Because I am feeling very jacked right now and some balls are going to go downtown.
Next thing, I am standing at home plate. I look out at the fence. How did it get so close? How did the whole field get so small? I feel like I could touch the left field foul pole with the tip of the bat. I played Little League and Babe Ruth League and hit a fair few long balls before I stopped respecting baseball enough to work hard and compete with the guys who did.
Da hated that. Hated it so much, the notion of being good enough at something but not giving it the proper respect. “Suck with dignity,” he said at the one game of mine he ever booed me and walked off from, “but don’t suck with apathy.”
Even when I was good, though, the fence always seemed so far away, such a tall order, not within my reach. Now I’m embarrassed that I ever felt that way.
Suddenly there is Da, on the mound. He has one orange ball in his right hand, one in his left, and two at his feet.
“You,” he says, long past the possibility of committing Jarrod’s name to memory, “out there and shag flies.”
“They are too small for me,” Jarrod says, giggling from the bench.
“Get out there and play some outfield,” Da shouts, and Jarrod jumps.
My cousin camps in center field, and Da waves him over to left. Farther. Farther.
“Come on,” Jarrod whines, “I’m going to have to run a long way if he hits it over there.”
“He won’t. He can’t. He was too lazy to learn to use the whole field. He could only pull and everyone knew it and that’s why he sucked.”
I laugh out loud. Jarrod laughs out loud. The pitcher himself turns in my direction and stares me down.
“Bring it, old man,” I say.
For someone of his age and limitations, Da’s windup and delivery are sweet, as they always were. He rears back, lifts the left knee up about ten inches, extends the left elbow straight at me, comes straight over the top with his right hand, and lets go of the ball at the optimal release point. Straight it comes.
It whistles in fast, and pap, smacks me right in the ear.
“Hey,” I shout, pointing the fat red bat in his direction. “You did that deliberately.”
“Of course I did. Get back in the box.”
I get back in the box, ready to swing. He winds up, unloads one straight and meaty in the middle of the strike zone. I am so excited, by the moment and the ball and the fence, that I swing so hard I pull a chest muscle; I feel it instantly.
I make contact, though, and the ball leaves the infield.
Dribbling harmlessly along the ground, then slowed by the tall grass, right to where Jarrod is waiting for it. He doesn’t even have to move.
The pitcher laughs. The left fielder laughs.
“Bring it, old man,” I say, because it has been a long time since I taunted a pitcher, so I am short on material.
He brings it.
“Ow.” I drop the bat. “Da, that really stings. If you do that again…”
He starts walking toward me, bouncing on the balls of his feet. I may have found the cure for old age here. “Yeah? You’ll what?”
He backs me down. “Nothing. Just pitch.”
“I will. But if you whine one more time, next thing I hit you with is a rock.”
I dig in silently. He winds up with the third ball.
And smacks me in the ear again. If there was a game of ear hitting, he would be world senior champion. But we are not playing that game. We are playing a very different game.
I shut my face. He winds up with the fourth ball. He slings it.
He jams me on the hands and I hit another dribbler to Jarrod.
“Damn,” I say, digging in once more. The old man is laughing, pleased at still topping me, pleased I am no longer moaning. He winds up and throws.
I cream the ball. I murder it, and it does not go to any stupid damn left field, either. I have mashed the ball high in the air and as straight to dead center as possible, and Jarrod is making a lame attempt to get out there, but that is pointless, people, because I have gotten all of that one.
I am running the bases, shocked at how thrilled I am over this. Over the fence. I hit one out. I look as I round first toward second, to see the ball land.
It’s only about a foot beyond the fence. Jarrod is actually in position, and he reaches up, and if the ball hadn’t bounced right off his forehead, he would have caught it. I hit that with everything I had.
I am elated and defeated, all in one go.
I still do my homerun trot because at least I can taunt Da, which I do, pointing a big finger his way and hooting at him as I hit third.
But he’s not watching. He’s not listening. He’s not here.
Still looking up at some spot where the ball may or may not have crossed the sky several seconds ago, Da steps sideways off the mound, stands there looking up awkwardly, hands held out for balance. Then he looks at me, awkwardly, lost, and falls sideways, landing on his hip.
“Da,” I say, running straight across the diamond. I get to him, pick him up, and he winces.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “I am so sorry, this was a stupid idea. I am sorry. Are you all right?”
He stares at me. He stares and stares and stares.
It is a sandwich shop, about ten booths and a ten-foot counter. Smells like coffee. Smells like tomato soup. Smells like just enough Lysol to be reassuring.