by
Trisky
That’s what it takes, precision and an unwavering focus. Some would say it’s the way you curve your arm, or how your fingers circumnavigate the globe in your hand. They’d say it depends on the pressure you exert or the force of your release. They might even go so far as to say, it takes a certain ingrained skill. I’d say you can teach almost anyone who’s willing to learn. All it takes is a true and determined focus on your objective. Never, ever let your eyes leave the target.
I feel the joint in my shoulder lock and tense as I pull my arm back. I grasp the firm ball, massaging it with my thumb. I take a step back, angle my body just so, keeping my eyes trained in tight, extreme focus on the tip of the elongated shaft, even as my body moves around. I barely feel the release as I throw my weight forward with all the power I can muster.
A bead of sweat trickles along the side of my face, but I don’t blink. I never blink. I never avert my eyes. Always remain focused. I can practically feel the current in the air. The way it sails forward, staying aloft in its position. Always rod straight, never veering left or right. Focus Sonnyboy, focus. It connects! Right where I wanted it to. The crack of the impact sends the target crashing to the floor.
It doesn’t even have to make a sound. I still feel the rush course through me. I did that. Me. All by myself. All it took was a little focus.
“Jesus Brian, where did you learn to throw like that?” He sifts through the cloud of dust at his feet, looking for the plastic water bottle I just creamed.
“I spent ten years in Little League. Eventually, you pick up on these things.” I absentmindedly rub my shoulder. Funny, I don’t recall having to do that twenty years ago.
“I spent two, and the only thing I ever picked up was a bee sting on my tongue sitting in left field.” He laughs and beats the dust off the bottle, against the fence, as if anyone is going to be reusing it now.
“Do I dare ask how you managed that?” It’s slightly freaky that my tongue and other sensitive parts have been anywhere near a tongue that experienced that kind of trauma. Okay, it’s a lot freaky.
“I left a piece of candy in my pocket. Took it out, put it in my mouth without looking and the next thing you know, I was passed out cold on the field.” I rest my case. Let your focus shift, and you lose sight of the bigger picture... or sight altogether.
“Allergic reaction?” He cringes. I tug at his shirt.
He relents. “No. Pretty much just pain.” I smile. He smiles. We’re good with the smiling.
I look around for the old ball, at our feet. It’s a bit tattered and worn, the seams coming apart at a few stitches on the cowhide. You can almost see the rubber cement underneath it. It must have been some ball a kid hit out of the park ages ago, that no one could ever find or didn’t even bother to look for. Either that or a really bad foul ball. It looks weathered and worn, like it might have been through a few rainstorms, maybe even snow. Doesn’t matter what condition it’s in though. When you throw, it’s all about the focus.
“I don’t remember the pitcher’s mound feeling this close to home plate.” I shade my eyes from the glare of the sun, wishing I’d remembered to bring a pair of sunglasses with me.
“I wouldn’t know. I never spent enough time there to find out. Pitching and batting weren’t exactly my thing. Too much coordination required.” He butts his hip against mine, stifling the laugh forming in my gut.
“Let me guess, you were really good at catching.” I laugh anyway and he tries not to.
“As a matter of fact, I was.” He grabs for a ball. I’m not quite sure which one, so I twist my torso away from him to protect all three. “Shut up! Some of us find our calling early in life, what can I say?” He keeps his eyes focused on my face the entire time he’s stealing the ball from my hand. I don’t notice it’s gone until I see the tip of his tongue tease between his teeth in a self-satisfied smile.
“I guess catching the ball requires its own kind of coordination.” The catcher sets the pace in a lot of ways, I suppose. Doesn’t matter how well someone pitches or how great a batter connects with the pitch. The catcher can always redirect the course of the game. I suspect he wasn’t that kind of catcher though and no one thought to put him in that position. He was the versatile type, playing in the field, his true talent being ignored.
“Yep, always have to keep your eye on the ball, no matter where it goes. The pitcher always pitches to the same place” he says, while tossing the ball back and forth between his two hands, “and when you’re the batter, you always know where to look for the ball. But when you’re out there catching, you never know what direction it’s coming from.” I watch his hands, his two strong hands, grip and release, grip and release. Back and forth, back and forth. He unconsciously shakes the right one, every few tosses.
“Did that profound bit of wisdom come to you in your unconscious state, out on the field?” He pitches the ball lightly at my stomach. My hands fly up to receive it, always focused on the movement of the ball.
“It was my dad’s way of trying to explain why standing around in the hot sun, doing nothing but picking grass out of the field wasn’t totally suck ass. His idea of positive reenforcement was to lie through his teeth about my importance.” I throw the ball back at him, watching his concentrated gaze find his feet, as it comes at him. He never lifts his eyes, looking down as he throws it back at me, haphazardly.
“Sounds like my father.”
“Really?” That immediately draws his attention, for some reason. It’s odd how he can focus on everything but the ball, but still catch it. It must be the timing. He knows to expect it in a set pattern.
“If you consider ‘get your ass on the field and throw the fucking ball’, positive reenforcement, then yeah, absolutely.”
“Sorry.” Sorry’s bullshit, but thanks anyway.
“Don’t be. You shouldn’t apologize because your father was halfway decent to you once upon a time. Be glad.” I toe the edges of dirt, where home plate should be. “I heard...” It feels like my entire body is stuttering as my throat catches and lets go. “I heard Daphne tell you that he called when I dropped you off the other night. What are you going to do about that?” He rubs at the loose stitch on the ball, throwing it into his left hand before he changes track and throws it back in my direction, again, with a little more force than I expected.
“Do you think you’ll teach Gus how to play?” The ball stings my hand slightly.
I consider it. I might have thought about it briefly when he was first born, but as he’s gotten older and become an actual person who needs to be taught things, it’s somehow become more and more removed in my mind. I keep waiting for that moment where I become a parent, even though I already have a kid. That moment where having a kid is paramount, above all else. I guess I expected lightning bolts. Most of the time I barely feel a twinge.
“I’ll leave that up to Melanie.” It sounds sarcastic, but I think I really mean that. I think Gus is more her kid than he ever will be mine. I think that should probably bother me more than it ever does. I think it’s the way it should be.
“Not everyone is cut out to be a father, Brian. And that’s okay. It’s probably better to establish that now.” I hesitate with the ball, surprised by the conviction in his voice. I’m eerily startled and it must show. “Don’t look so shocked.”
I guess I shouldn’t be. He’s not the same 17 year old kid he once was. “Are you giving me permission to ditch my kid?”
“No.” He shakes his head, staring off into right field. “I’m just trying to stop you from breaking his heart, unnecessarily.” He turns his face back to me, but his attention is a million miles away. “It’s better to establish the kind of father you’re going to be now. If he doesn’t expect much, when he doesn’t get it, it won’t be that much of a letdown.”
“Thank you, Dr. Spock. And when does your next parenting guide come out? I’ll be sure to be the first in line to buy it.” I lean against the fence, crossing my legs in front of me. I don’t know if I’m more bothered by his change in attitude or the fact that he not only understands mine, he actually accepts it. I’m not sure who to blame for that.
“You’ll have to wait until it goes to paperback. You couldn’t afford a first edition.” He eases the air around us with a furtive smile. I smile back. We’re good with the smiling.
“You mean you wouldn’t give me, your loyal and devoted fan, a free copy?” I clutch the ball to my chest, careful to put my free hand behind it. I can’t afford the dry cleaning bills.
“If I gave you one, then I’d have to give all my fans one. Sorry, can’t afford it.” He maneuvers his thumb into the belt loop closest to my zipper. “Unless, of course, you’re willing to prove the extent of your devotion and loyalty to my genius.” The blue of the iris of his eyes changes in the sunlight. I can almost see right through them when they get like this. He doesn’t shade his eyes, he widens them, focusing on my squinted stare.
“I thought I already did.”
He nods in acknowledgment and leans his forehead against my chin. My hand comes to rest on the crown of his head, holding him there. “I was kind of thinking of something else that might make you blow a different kind of wad.”
I can feel the fuse begin to light already. I move my chin from his resting place and look down at his two very focused eyes, staring holes into my chest. “Just tell me that it’s not going to cost me anything more than say, a night’s sleep. I need to get myself in gear and start putting some feelers out there.”
“It might be more than a night,” he almost hesitates. Almost.
I pull my hand from his head and pinch the bridge of my nose. I can feel him release himself, and take a few steps back. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t intend for me to actually enjoy losing a night’s sleep?”
“I need to do something, Brian. What are you going to get for your car? Thirty five, thirty six thousand, at most?”
“How do you know what it’s worth?” I don’t like where he’s taking this conversation. I’d much rather focus on losing a night’s sleep due to some pleasurable pursuit, and not some stress induced headache.
“I looked it up.” I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. He’s actually serious about this needing to do something business. “Even if you do get that much, you’ll just have to buy another, cheaper car to get you around anyway. So what will that leave you with? Twenty thousand? You need money to live on, until you get some kind of income and the debt isn’t going to go away.”
“And it was such a lovely day.” I’m a little more harsh than I need to be. All I wanted was to enjoy the sun, the time I have on my hands. Enjoy doing this, whatever this is, with him. I know all about my finances, I don’t need to be reminded. I try to look away from him but I can’t. If I thought for a minute, that he was reacting out of anything less than concern, I wouldn’t soften at his waiting stare. “If I have to, I’ll take another mortgage out on the loft.” I don’t want to. But what you want to do and what you have to do can be two very different things. Whatever he has in mind, to “help” seems to fall into the latter of the two categories. He’s reluctant to share that bit of information with me. Preferring to keep the focus on me and my decisions, instead.
“You don’t want to do that. That’s your home.” I pick at the undone seam of the ball in my hand, the red thread unraveling between my fingers. “I know you don’t want to do that.” He snares my wrist in his hand, pulling on it slightly. I look to him, waiting with such stoicism for my response, and I feel... guilt? Failure? I feel like I let him down, even if he does know what to expect of me.
I tap his chest with two fingers, holding the ball claw-like between the remaining fingers of my hand. “You need to stop worrying about me and start worrying about what you’re going to do. Because you’re not going to wait tables at the Liberty Diner forever or become some lackey stockboy at the Big Q.” Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things, it’s just not... he’s just not... it’s not what he should be doing. Period. It’d be a waste of his talent.
“I still have Rage,” he points out, redirecting my fingers off his chest and into his grasp “wherever the fuck that’s headed.” He mumbles more to himself, than at me.
“That’s Michael’s baby. You know it as much as I do. He’s the one that’s into superheros. I know that’s not really your thing. You want more than that.” I snicker at the irony, that there could be something more than a superhero, for fuck’s sake. “If you could snap your fingers and have everything you want, what would it be?” I smile. He smiles. We’re good with the smiling.
“It’s almost easier to say what you don’t want, than it is to say what you do, you know?”
“Yeah.” I do. “Not such an easy question to answer, huh?”
“I want more than a superhero. That much I know,” he acquiesces.
“And that’s only the beginning.” He threads his fingers underneath the grip I have on the ball, dropping it to the ground. I don’t notice, or care, where it lands. “You need to keep your eyes on the ball.” A good pitcher never loses sight of where the ball needs to be. If someone is willing to learn that, than it doesn’t take coordination or talent. It only takes focus.
“Yeah, but the thing about baseball is that it’s a team sport. If one teammate fucks up, the entire team loses. And when we win, we all win. Not just one player.”
Fair enough. He’s a convincing little fielder, playing all sorts of positions.
He’s also distracting, but not that distracting. “So how do you plan on keeping me awake at night?”
He lifts his eyebrows, curiously, the corner of his eyes drifts towards home. I can’t help but follow his stare and soon enough both of our focus is on the ball, near where home plate should be. “First you have to answer a question with no bullshitting.” And away from him.
He looks me dead set in the eyes, jarring my focus inwards, once again.
“Ask. But I’m warning you, you better make it good, because you only get one.”
I feel my free agent status slip further and further from my grasp, while I’m left waiting. I focus on the shape his mouth makes as my mind hears the question. My palm opens to release some phantom ball in my hand. Maybe I didn’t hear anything, but I’m sure I must have, because suddenly everything drops out of focus and I feel... pretty much just pain.
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Screencap courtesy of Princess of Babylon