Becky's Kiss (16 page)

Becky nodded. Then, on pure instinct and emotion, she blurted,

“Oh, my gosh, Danny, I love you so much!”

Immediately, she brought her hands to her mouth, wanting to push the words back in where they came from. It was selfish of her somehow, with his father’s memory still lingering over them like some fine tropical mist. Danny shifted uncomfortably.

“You might not love me so much when I tell you the next part.”

“What next part?”

He sat forward on the bench, elbows on the knees, hands clasped up by his mouth.

“You’ll run away screaming.”

“No I won’t.”

“You will.”

“Try me.”

He looked at her, his eyes actually glowing soft blue in the gloom.

“I know about your dream, Becky, the one with the eight pitches. There was a saying at the end of it…a saying that didn’t make sense.”

“Three strikes and you’re in,” Becky whispered. He was right. This was kind of creepy, but she certainly wasn’t about to run away screaming. “What’s it mean?”

He paused, but only for a second.

“It’s better if I show you instead of tell you,” he said. “But if I do, you’ll have to be ready for anything, like seeing things in the here and now that make the vision from the lamp post seem lame. Seeing things, like…not of this earth.”

Becky did
not
pause, thank you very much.

“Show me,” she said.

“It’ll start a cycle, like lighting a fuse,” he said carefully.

“Let’s light it,” she said.

“It’ll be strike one,” he said back evenly.

“Then strike one it is, whatever that means,” she said, standing up and folding her arms. “I’m going to say it again, Danny. I love you so much I almost can’t think straight, and if you want to tell me stories and turn me into light poles and make me trip out and see things, well, whatever.”

She sifted through her thoughts, prospecting, trying to sound mature.

“I want to meet your family, and I want to hold you if you’ll let me. I want to have a relationship.” She glanced down and kicked at a pebble, sending it tumbling off into the gloom. “I kind of don’t believe my own eyes anymore anyway…all this “magic,” all these things that have happened.” She looked at him and shook hair out of her face. “And I don’t really care. I just want to be with you and make you stop disappearing all the time.”

He stood and came near.

“If you really mean it, Becky…if you won’t freak out seeing weird stuff that couldn’t possibly exist…if you’re ready to put something in motion…something…unnatural but totally natural, something…
supernatural
…then pitch to me.”

“What?”

He came even closer, that rich, wonderful breath mingling with hers, becoming her own.

“Pitch to me, like my dad used to.”

“That’s it?” Becky said. “That’s the big “strike one,” the universal, cosmic trigger switch or whatever you call it?”

“That’s it, all right,” he said. “If you have the guts for it.” He smiled craftily then. “But don’t worry. If you decide to pitch to me, Becky Michigan, I promise to lift ’em, nothing coming back at you straight through the chute.”

Something crackled in the air, and the moment of awkward, unworldly promises twisted to an edge that was hard and competitive. Becky moved even closer so their noses were almost touching, like two boys about to fight in the schoolyard.

“Lift ’em?” she said. “You aren’t even gonna get wood, not even a foul tip. This ain’t soft toss under a lamp post.”

“You’re good, but you ain’t that good.”

“Really? Well, let’s just find out tomorrow then, huh?”

“Why wait?”

Becky’s heart was pounding time to this strange mixture of sexual tension and the desire to throw one by him at ninety eight miles per hour.

“It’s kind of dark, isn’t it?”

“Follow me,” he said.

“Where?”

“To the magic place.” He was already heading toward foul territory, becoming one with the brush and the darkness.

Becky Michigan took a deep breath. Then she followed him into the woods.

Chapter Twenty

It was difficult at first, considering the prickers, the hardened vines that snaked across the forest floor, the stones jutting out at odd angles, and the branches crisscrossing in the dark. There was a creek nearby, Becky could hear it, and off to the left, down in a short gully, she could have sworn there was some family of small animals scratching and scattering in the leaves. There were faint slants of moonlight coming through, but only in odd places, making random angles. At one point, there was a long, black shape blocking the path, a mammoth upended tree trunk, and as Becky side-saddled over it, she saw the massive roots at one end reaching out like the gnarled fingers of some petrified witch.

Then the path got a bit more defined and there was a fence, a chain-link fence over-run and patterned with ivy. It was waist high, and Danny climbed it with a casual ease. Becky following suit, catching the bottom cuff of her jeans for a second but pulling free just in time to avoid a tumble.

She hopped down and followed, the area before her coming into definition, the dark sky above now open and clear of the forest roof that had obstructed it.

There were ferns as high as Oklahoma rye gently waving and bobbing in the night breeze that blew across what used to be the infield, and no dugouts, but rather wooden player’s benches bordered by high fencing choked with overgrowth. The back stop rose up high to the right, and two massive trees behind had actually ensnarled their branches in it, as if making to rip the structure straight from the ground. The outfield was a jungle of marsh and reeds, the scoreboard in center field rising up against the surrounding forest like some dark and cancerous tomb stone.

“What is this place?” Becky said, wading through and following Danny in toward the backstop.

“Just a place,” he said innocently. Then he stopped where home plate would have been. “But it’s the place where we can push the rules.” He turned. “You ready?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Then say it.”

“Say what?” she said. “Strike one?”

“No, silly. It has to be the
magic
word.”

“And that is?”

He grinned at her in the semi-darkness.

“Lamp post.”

“Ha ha.”

“Not kidding. Go ahead and try it.”

Becky rolled her eyes, but he wasn’t laughing. And since the last thing she wanted was to come off exasperated, she gave in and muttered,

“Lamp post, all right?”

A sudden brilliant light kicked on from nowhere, and Becky squealed, shielding her eyes and trying not to trip over her own feet as she backpedaled a bit. She blinked a few times and then dropped her hand from her forehead, turning slowly, mouth falling ajar.

There was no more fern, no more vines, no briars or prickers or overgrowth. The baseball field was absolutely pristine now, white chalk lines running down the first and third baselines all the way to a gleaming fence marked 330 in left, 404 in center and 328 in deep right. The scoreboard was old-school but in mint condition, bulb lights blazing, bugs flying into them in swarms, and the infield dirt was a fine golden brown set in perfect contrast to the cropped green grass surrounding the pitcher’s mound.

“How did you do this?” Becky said.

“How does anyone do anything? I mean, it’s still just a ball field. Same as it always was, but better.” He was standing in a chalk circle on the first base side now, and there was a bat in his hands. He was also wearing a red helmet, and Becky thought his face looked exceptionally handsome framed by the visor and ear flaps. She moved toward the pitcher’s mound.

“No,” Danny said. “Not yet. Not that way.”

“What?” she said. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” he said, “but you’ve gotta make your entrance.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean,” he said, “is that I’m in the batter’s box, it’s the bottom of the seventh, my team is down by a run, there’s one out, and a man on first. Your lefty threw every piece of junk that he had just to keep it close, and now you’re called in for one purpose, and one purpose only.”

“To mow you down in three pitches,” she whispered.

His eyes gleamed.

“Right, but there’s a ritual. Go ahead, go over to the bench there behind the fence on the visitor’s side and sit, like you haven’t been called into the game yet.”

She walked around the fence by the third base coach’s box, not surprised in the least to see a ball, glove, and hat waiting there for her on the hard wood. She bent to try on the glove and Danny’s voice stopped her.

“No! Not yet!”

She put her hands up in a surrender posture and held there.

“Sit,” he said.

She pivoted around and sat.

“Now reach for the hat.”

She reached. It was not a Rutledge hat, but a black one with no insignia. She turned it over once, and Danny’s voice rang out across the diamond.

“Now throw your head forward so all that hair comes down over your face, then whip it back up over the top in a cascade.”

A bit embarrassed now, Becky spread her feet, arched them on the toes, and then did the hair flip, down and back up and over, thinking this was an odd time for Danny to be kinky. Would he want her to purse her lips after this? Get all pouty and sexy? The last thing she thought he wanted was some glamour-diva. Her hair settled behind her, and Danny’s voice was anything but sexy. It was choked now, like he was working through some strange sort of emotion there in the on-deck circle.

“That’s right,” he said. “Now gather it and put it through the hole in the hat, bringing the brim forward hard, like you’re ready.” He paused while she did it. “Good, now push up and come around the fence. No, slower! Shoulders back, like you’re a warrior-god, that’s right, and now do the ball trick.”

Becky approached the mound like she had done in the gym, a cold anger in her step, ball resting on the back of her knuckles. Then she began flipping it to the different grips with total intimidation and absolute confidence:
four seam, cutter, slider, curve…Vulcan change, sinker, splitter, slurve,
and Danny was there in the on-deck circle taking warm up swings, face gleaming wet with strange tears.

“Now take the mound,” he said, “and call it out like you did in the gym. Tell your catcher you don’t need any warm up pitches, go ahead, say it!”

“I don’t need any warm-up pitches,” she said.

“Louder! Like you mean it!”

“I don’t need any stinkin’ warm ups!” she shouted, face hot, hands itching. “Now get in the box!”

Danny strode to the batter’s box, breath hitching in his chest a bit, eyes wide and red with emotion. Whatever he’d been going through, however, blew off like smoke, and his expression became one of fierce concentration. He set up, and behind him there was a black dot, like a catcher’s mitt for a reference point, and Becky thought
four seam
and went into her wind-up.

While she was spreading and stepping, she saw Danny rocking back in rhythm with her, locked in and loaded, and when the ball exploded out of her hand she knew somehow that she’d broken a hundred miles per hour.

The ball knifed through the air, and Danny swung, and there was contact, a smash, a high line drive straight to center field that banged off the scoreboard, sending up a dramatic burst of sparks and bulb glass.

“Gosh,” Becky muttered. Her shoulders slumped a bit, and she turned back.

Danny was smiling like the five-year-old under the lamp light.

“You really think you’d get ahead of me first-ball-fast-ball right down the middle? That the best you got, Michigan?”

She bit her lip, half laughing, half miffed. She set then, knowing somehow that he was expecting slider away, then quickly deciding to go fastball right in the same place. She’d blow it right by him.

She wound up, bent her back, snapped her hips and fired. Danny adjusted immediately and whacked a low line drive over the fence in right center.

She tried her cutter high and in, and he roped it down the left field line. She dropped her splitter nice and heavy, and he golfed it over the fence in deep right. Her Vulcan change was executed with perfection, slow as molasses out of a fastball motion, then exploding down and in at the plate, but like a hero in a trench, Danny followed it, timed it, and smacked it sky-high, bouncing it off the left field foul pole.

Becky’s forehead and neck were slick with her effort, and she ground her back teeth with determination. Each time the ball was hit out of the park, a new one appeared at the top of the mound, and she turned this one in her glove, forming equations, doing the math. Every pitch, he was one step ahead of her, out-guessing what was to come, seemingly predicting what she predicted he wouldn’t expect like he had some universal cheat-sheet.

She put the ball in her sinker grip and sold out, totally. It was the last place she would go in any guessing game, especially since he was so good at hitting the low stuff.

The ball spun heavy out of her hand, and he swung, fouling it back. His mouth came open and he shut it quick. He looked at Becky and made a motion like he was tipping his cap.

“Okay,” he said. “Now let’s see you do that again.”

Becky reared back and threw a fastball. Danny swung and hit the ball so hard it echoed. It was one of those long flies that went so high and so far it nearly broke your heart, and it went fifty feet over the scoreboard and at least twenty feet over the trees. A few seconds later, Becky could have sworn she heard breaking glass, but couldn’t imagine what he could have hit that far into the forest.

She turned and saw Danny running the bases, jogging out his home run, living his dream as if there were thunderous cheers in his head.

When he crossed home plate, she jogged down the mound to embrace him, to hold him, to show how proud she was of him, and how much she loved being a part of his moment.

But he kept on running straight past her to the center field fence, and he called over his shoulder that she had to follow him now.

“Where?” she said, falling in step, pushing hard to catch up.