The boy is right-handed, but he tries to bat left-handed. He swings wildly and misses.
"Strike one!" the little boy screams. Mickey's sitting right next to me, his voice is so loud I involuntarily clutch my ear.
The pitcher throws another ball. The English boy swings again.
"Strike two!" Mickey says. "You're out!"
"What's that, Mickey?" someone says to him.
"Only two strikes to an out in this game!" Mickey says. "That's what we decided last week."
The English boy looks totally puzzled. His face is long and pinched, his nose as skinny as a collie's muzzle. "What?" he says. "What did I do?" It seems as if he's going to cry. This makes me afraid, probably the same thing will happen when it's my turn. Maybe I should just leave. I could easily make my escape and meet Stash later at home. But the thought of stepping out from under the carbon-arc lamps of this imaginary world, a place brighter than day, into the blackness that falls immediately beyond, fills me with terror.
The captain of my team comes over to me. "I'm changing the order," he says. "You're up next."
"I thought maybe I could wait for a while," I say.
"Are you playing, or what?" the captain says. "Everyone's waiting, go ahead. Just take Paul's turn, he went to buy more beer."
I step up to the plate. Stash, the catcher for his team, stands behind me. He puts down his glove and comes over to me. While the rest of the players wait, he grabs me in a stranglehold and kisses me passionately. I disengage. "I have to bat now," I say.
"Take your time," Stash says. "That's my advice to you."
Before the pitcher has a chance to throw the ball, Mickey rushes out from the sidelines. "Wait," he says. "Use my bat! It's good for a girl!"
"That's okay, Mickey," I say. "I like the bat I have, because I practiced with it."
Stash winks at me. I let a ball go by, and then, on the next pitch, I hit one. For several seconds I stand still. I have forgotten what to do next. When I watch the ball game with Stash on TV, things seem to move much more slowly. The time from when the ball is thrown to me and when I hit it seems nonexistent. "Drop the bat," the voice of Mrs. Rourke shouts in my ear. She's more bossy than I could ever hope to be. I drop the bat on my feet and trip over it. Then I start to run. I'm out at first. That's the third out.
"Nice play!" Mickey shouts.
Stash comes over to me. "You hit the ball," he says. "Darling, I'm so proud of you." Once again he locks me in an animalistic embrace. One of his greatest fears—he's often told me—is that he will hug me so hard he'll break my ribs. Once he read something like this in the papers, how a man met his girlfriend at the airport and was so glad to see her he killed her. I don't know what my greatest fear is; maybe just that I'll be caught and discovered, accused of being a child in an adult's body.
Between innings, the little kid comes over to me. "I could be a pitcher, if anyone wanted me to," he says, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "I could be the catcher if you get tired. Why don't you let me be the catcher, then you can rest."
"Maybe later on," I say. I stand up to take my place as catcher. I don't have a mitt, I'll have to catch bare-handed.
"You mean the next inning I can be catcher instead of you?"
"Maybe," I say. "Maybe later on in the game."
"We'll split innings, that's fair," Mickey says.
"Maybe," I say.
"I'm a great catcher," Mickey says. He squints. "I'm just going to tell my dad that you don't want to be the catcher anymore." He runs off, shouting, "Dad, Dad! She wants me to be the catcher instead of her!"
"Wait a minute," I say. "You said that, I didn't." He doesn't even turn around. "Mickey!" I say. But he is running up and down the bleachers.
All through the inning I get madder and madder. I really want to be the catcher. It's fun, even though I hurt my finger on the ball when it comes at me too fast, bending my finger backward. It takes all my strength to throw the ball back to the pitcher. Most of the time it lands short, and the pitcher has to run forward to pick it up off the ground. I stagger about, trying to avoid being hit when the pitcher throws at the batter. Our team might have gotten a player out at home, but I forget to run to the base when they throw the ball to me. Still, no one yells at me—I'm glad of that. I think to myself: I like being the catcher, now this little kid is trying to take my position from me.
Stash comes up to bat. "You okay?" he says.
"Come on, Frankie baby," someone shouts to Stash from the sidelines. It's Eddie, Mickey's father.
"He always calls me Frankie baby," Stash says. Stash hits the ball and disappears down the field. A cloud of brown dust marks where he ran. I think I'll tell Mickey he can't have my turn as catcher. That's all I need to do, stand up for my rights. I don't want to wait on the sidelines while Mickey catches. Anyway, I know I'm not capable of playing left field. My arms are too weak, and in the glare of the arc lamps I'd have a hard time seeing the ball if it came at me.
After the inning Mickey comes back over to me. He hikes up his pants and rubs his stomach. I wonder what he'll look like when he gets older. His thin lips are cracked, his nose is pug. He resembles a child actor of the 1930s—Jackie Coogan, or Spanky from Our Gang. I remember how much I looked forward to being a grown-up: no school, no one telling you what to do. It didn't turn out to be so much fun; I find it traumatic even to make a decision on what to order from a restaurant menu.
"I'm going to ask my father again," Mickey says. "He was too busy before." I guess Mickey seems like a regular kid, it hasn't seemed to affect him that his father lives with a man and his mother with some woman. He runs back out onto the field. Eddie looks embarrassed when his son joins him, he keeps walking.
"Anybody got a joint?" he says.
"She doesn't want to be the catcher, Dad," Mickey says. "She wants me to take over for her."
I run to Stash. "Stash, Stash," I say. "That kid is trying to take my position away from me."
"Well, tell him he can't," Stash says.
"You tell him for me," I say. But Stash pays no attention, he goes to get a can of chocolate soda.
"Hey, Mickey," the captain of my team calls, "are you keeping score? Why don't you be the official scorekeeper?"
"I can't," Mickey says. "I'm going to be the catcher."
"No, you're not," I mumble.
Mickey races over to me, holding a ball in his hands. "My father says it's okay," he shouts from two feet away. He throws the ball into the air, but as he tries to catch it, it slips out of his hands and rolls behind the backstop. "Go get it," he tells me.
"Wait a minute," I say. "You go get it, you go get it. I don't have to put up with this. If you want to be a catcher, you go get the ball. You dropped it."
"Ah, relax," Mickey says, waving his hands broadly. His little face is white and pinched, it must be way past his bedtime. "Don't worry about it," he says. Dirt is smeared in a streak under one eye, I'm ready to send him to Boys' Town. "Where are you from?" he asks.
I don't answer him. All the men seem to take this game very seriously. The women are having a good time, but the men get very angry when they strike out. One guy hits the ball so hard it goes up 150 feet and crashes into the underside of the bridge. The guy looks humbly at the ground, the other team members applaud.
"Foul ball!" Mickey shouts. "Strike one!"
There are murmured complaints from the batter.
"In this game, a foul counts as a strike," Mickey says. "My father says."
The English boy sits down beside me. "What a terrific kid," he says.
"He sure has a loud voice," I say.
"Let me ask you something," the English boy says. "Is getting two strikes the worst thing you could possibly do?"
"No," I say. "I don't think it's the worst thing you could do."