The wedding partners exchanged rings. Hers went on easily, her fingers were so slim. Blank out, Kevin, blank out. You don’t know anything about her fingers. His they had trouble with; finally Hank muttered, “Let it stay there above the knuckle, the beer’s getting warm.” They kissed. At Hank’s instigation the crowd applauded loudly, cheered. Kevin clapped hard, teeth clamped together. Hit his hands against each other as hard as he could, sure.
Picnic party in the park. Kevin set about getting unobtrusively drunk. The Lobos had a game to play but he didn’t care. Danger to his long-forgotten hitting streak! He only laughed and refilled a paper cup with champagne. It didn’t matter, it meant nothing. The laws of chance had bent in his corner of the world, but soon enough they would snap back, and neither the bend nor the snap would be his doing. He didn’t care. He drank down his glass, refilled. Around him people were chattering, they made a sound like the sea.
He saw the wedding couple in an informal reception line, laughing together shoulder to shoulder. Handsome couple, no doubt about it. Both perfect. Not like him. He was a partner for someone like, say, Doris. Sure. He felt a surge of affection for Doris, for her bitter fight against Alfredo in the council meeting, for her pleasure in the plan for Tom’s memorial. They had almost become partners, she had wanted it. How had they ever drifted apart? It had been his fault. Stupid man. He had learned enough to understand what her love had meant, he thought. Learned enough to deserve it, a little. Stupid slow learner, he was! Still, if something as flawed as the wedding couple could be made right… He refilled, went looking for Doris.
He spotted her in a group of Lobos, and watched her: small, round, neat, the sharp intelligence in that big laugh, the sense of fun. Wild woman. Down to earth. Could talk about anything to her. He walked over, feeling warmth fill him. Give her a hug and she would hug back, she would know what it meant and why he needed it.
And sure enough she did.
Then she was talking with Oscar, they were laughing hard at something. Oscar hopped up and began doing a ballerina routine on a bench. He wavered, she took a chop at the back of his knee. “Hey there.” He hopped down, staggered gracefully her way, she leaned into him and pretended to bite his chest. They were laughing hard.
Kevin looked into his cup, retreated back to the drinks table. He looked back at Doris and Oscar. Hey, he thought. When did that happen? All the desire he had ever felt for Doris in the years they had been friends surged into a single feeling. She’s mine, he thought sharply. It’s me she liked, for years and years. What did Oscar think he was doing? Doris loved him, he had felt it that night in Bishop, or after the council fight, almost as strong as ever. If he started over, asserted himself, told Doris he was ready now, just like Alfredo had told Ramona—
… Oh. Well, it was true. Situations repeat themselves endlessly; there aren’t that many of them, and there are a lot of lovers in this world. Perhaps everyone has been at every point of the triangle, sure.
Kevin walked behind a tree. He couldn’t see his friends, could only hear their two voices, ragging each other vigorously, to the delight of the teammates nearby. When had they gotten to be such friends? He hadn’t noticed. Last he knew they were sniping for real, and Doris seemed serious in her dislike. And Oscar was so fat!
He felt bad at that. Oscar was a good friend, one of his best. Oscar was great. He learned things from Oscar, he laughed and he made Oscar laugh. There was no one like Oscar. And if something was starting between him and Doris—
Again the intense burning flush. Jealousy, possessiveness. “Hey,” he said to the tree. Feeling betrayed. “God damn.” How many people, how many things could go wrong? He had thought his cup full, there.
He shook himself like a dog just out of the surf. Remembered how he had felt about Alfredo. He laughed shortly at himself. Raised his cup to the couple behind the tree. Drained it. Went to get more, feeling virtuous and morose.
It was a relief when the game started. Make-up for a postponed game, it was supposed to count but no one cared. Kevin pounced on the grounders that came his way, threw people out with a fierce pleasure in the act, in the efficiency and power of it. Mongoose jumping on cobras. Third baseman Kevin Claiborne. The phrase, spoken in a game announcer’s voice, had resounded in his mind millions of times when he was a kid. Maybe billions. Why the appeal of those words? What makes us become what we become? Third base like a mongoose, this announcer had always said. Third base like a razor’s edge. And here he was doing it. That broke her heart.
They were playing Hank’s team, the poor Tigers, who rose above their heads to give them a challenge. Ramona, looking much more like herself in her gym shorts and T-shirt, played a sparkling shortstop, so that between them it was a defensive show. “We’ve got this side shut down entirely,” she told him after another hot play. Low scoring game.
He hit as always. Walk to the plate and turn off the brain. Easy today. Swing away. Line drive singles, no problem. Not a thought.
Bottom of the last inning they were down a run, confident of a come-from-behind victory. But suddenly they were down to their last out, the tying run on first. Ramona was up, and Kevin walked out to the on-deck circle swinging a bat, and out of the blue he thought, if Ramona gets out then the game is over, and I’ll have batted a thousand for a whole season.
He took a step back, shocked at himself. Where had that come from? It was a bad thought. Bad luck and maybe worse. It wasn’t like him, and that frightened him. What makes us…?
Ramona hit a single. Everyone yelling. Two on, two out, one run down. Game on the line. If only that thought hadn’t come into his head! He didn’t mean it! It wasn’t like him, he never thought like that. It wasn’t his thought.
Into the batter’s box, and the world slipped away. Make sure you touch the right home plate, he thought crazily. Tim, the Tigers’ pitcher, nodded once at him, disdaining to walk the man who was batting a thousand. Kevin grinned, nodded back at him. Good for Tim, he thought—and that was his thinking, back in control. Good. Everything forgotten, the luck, the curse, the world. Tim’s arm swung back and then under, releasing the ball. Up it lofted, into the blue sky, big and round, spinning slowly. All Kevin’s faculties snapped together in that epiphany of the athlete, in the batter’s pure moment of being, of grace. An eternal now later and the ball was dropping, he stepped forward with his lead foot, rocked over his hips, snapped his wrists hard. He barely felt the contact of bat and ball, right on the button and already it was shooting like a white missile over Damaso and out into right center. Clobbered it!
He ran toward first slowly, watching the ball. Hank, out in center field, had turned and was racing back; he put his head down and ran, thick short legs pumping like pistons. Forty-six years old and still running like that! And in his minister’s shirt no less. He glanced over his shoulder, adjusted direction, ran an impossible notch faster, watched the ball all the way. It was over his head, falling fast to his backhand side—he sprinted harder yet, leaped up, snagged the ball at full extension, high in the air—fell, hit the ground and rolled. He stood up, glove high. And there in an ice-cream-cone bulge was the ball. Catch.