Becky's Kiss (17 page)

“To find that ball!” he said. “I think it might be a record!”

They had to climb a scraggly hill that actually had root clusters they needed to use as foot holds like an unrolled flap of Marine Corps rope netting. There was a short rock face to scale, a path between an odd cluster of birches that went for about fifty feet, and next, a piece of ancient wooden fencing to climb through. Then the foliage opened out to a glen of sorts, and Becky gasped.

There, in the semi-dark of the wood, was a dilapidated farm house with moss and ivy spreading up from its base, the barn doors warped and splintered. There were shingles missing from the thatched roof, and weeds surrounding the hitching post to the side. It was Becky’s doodle to a tee, the window with the broken shutter busted with a small circular hole in the bottom left pane, cracks spidered around it.

“I…” Becky said. “I’ve been drawing this since I was little.” Danny went to the doors and pulled one of them open with a rusty squawk.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve been dreaming of hitting one through that window for as long as I can remember. Com’on.”

She followed him into the dark space, the smell of wet hay and old sawdust heavy in the air. She felt in front of her, despite Danny’s faint image a few feet ahead, and she shuffled her feet, wary of stepping on the business end of some pitchfork or hoe. At the back corner of the space, she followed him up a rickety ladder, and then lost him there on the second floor for a second. But Danny was to the far right by the window, picking up the ball, blowing off the glass shards.

“Five-sixty,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Five-hundred-and-sixty feet. A record.”

“Congratulations,” Becky said. She creaked across the floor, placed her palms on his shoulders, turned him, and slid her arms along his collar bones. She tilted her face, bent in, and kissed him.

It was electric and hot, and he dropped the ball. His arms were around her then, and they pressed themselves together, making shapes in the dark. It was long and deep and involved, and when they broke the embrace, they both stepped back and looked at each other, stunned. Their breathing sounded heavy in the enclosed space.

“That was my first kiss,” Becky said.

“Mine too.”

“I liked it, Danny. I liked it a lot.”

“Same. But Becky, there’s more here. That kiss just brought us to the second phase of this thing.”

She laughed.

“Strike two, you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

Becky was still feeling giddy, but something in his voice made her smile wither. The mood had changed, she could feel it.

“What?” she said.

He put his hands in his pockets and turned half away from her. His head was titled down, and he spoke at the floor.

“Strike two is where we bend the rules we just pushed. And sometimes, when you bend something too far, it snaps back like whiplash, leaving a mark.”

“Like a welt or a bruise on your arm?”

“On your soul.”

“You’re scaring me.”

He looked up.

“Wrong emotion, Becky Michigan. Get ready for another vision, one that ain’t gonna come from a lamp post.”

She carefully moved her hair behind one ear, then the other, and tried not to let her voice tremble.

“What am I going to see, Danny?”

He glanced up at her, eyes filled.

“You’re going back to the field we just played on, Becky. You’re going back in time to see how I died.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Becky Michigan was indeed projected inside a human host this time, and he was Danny’s father, Anthony Tarragna, thirty-three years old, and he was coaching third base. He’d gotten out of work early, and the gang had cheered as he walked through the phone tank: salesman, managers, and receptionists, everyone on the floor putting their receivers on their shoulders and applauding, because this was the day, the big day he’d been waiting for, and even though it was just a fall ball scrimmage, they knew it was today or bust, and that opportunities like this didn’t come around all too often.

And Becky didn’t just know things about Anthony Tarragna, but she knew things
as
Anthony Tarragna, like the fact that he had lower back pain that he refused to medicate because he just didn’t believe in that stuff, and that the back left tire on the Mazda looked low this morning. Becky knew he was late on a mortgage payment, that he wanted to quit smoking, and that deep in the back of his mind, he wanted to buy Donna something just for the heck of it, but most of all, Becky knew that he was annoyed with the scoreboard.

New-fangled technology. Why couldn’t they use the slot cards like they were supposed to? Bulb lights? What would they think of next? Couldn’t they see that it was in the batter’s sightline? What about glare and after-image?

Becky registered the score through Anthony Tarragna’s critical, squinting eyes, and saw that it was the seventh inning, last ups, Home two, Visitors three with one out, and then everything came to her in a horrible rush, Tarragna’s consciousness and her awareness inside it merging in a cold acknowledgement of time and of place. This was the “magic” field overrun by the advance of the forest, and it was pristine and anything but magic, because it had just been built, and the scoreboard was ‘new-fangled’ because it was 1978, and this game was a showcase, set-up by hundreds of phone calls and letters, newspaper clippings and score sheets, all filled with numbers and statistics sent out by Anthony Tarragna to countless organizations connected with major league baseball, claiming that not only was his fifteen-year-old son, Danny Tarragna, the best hitter in Southeastern Pennsylvania, but a prodigy that was going to change the game. And even though his boy was in ninth grade, he was worth seeing now, and Anthony Tarragna had built up the hype, slowly and methodically, finally catching the interest of some bigwigs out of state, and this was his one chance to prove things.

Tarragna turned toward the wooden fan bleachers behind the player’s benches and gave a tight grin. It was a circus back there: three hundred people at least, crammed into the sitting area and spilling into the dirt lot where folks had driven in and set up shop, a number of them sitting in lawn chairs propped in the back beds of their pickup trucks. There were kids riding bikes with cards in the spokes and girls in groups playing patty-cake. The air was sharp and crisp, and there was the smoky tang of barbecue in the breeze, as the Rutledge P.T.A. had firewood burning in three fifty-gallon drums cut down the middle and laid down sideways to cook burgers and dogs and brats and ribs. Oh, this was a carnival, but Anthony Tarragna didn’t really care so much about the kids or the cars or the bikes or the burgers. Mostly, he was aware of the guy sitting behind home plate, up on the second row of the bleachers, with his cigar and his speed gun.

His name was Marty Frick, and he was a scout for the Cleveland Indians. He was new with the organization but a visionary, firmly believing in farming talent early, and his interest in Danny had been promising.

Still, it hadn’t turned out to be the best platform for showing Danny’s talents. Of course, the kid had gone three for three, hitting better than any of his team mates with two line doubles and a homer, but the pitching on the other side had been rather average.

Anthony and Danny’s junior high school coach Eddie Hanrahan—back in the ’70’s you didn’t hit high school until the tenth grade—had scraped this game together at the last minute when they’d found out Frick was flying in to the Philadelphia area on other business, and the best they could put up against their ninth grade varsity squad was this A.A.U. team based out of Delaware, supposedly good, but newly assembled.

And the opposing pitcher, a little lefty named Sullivan, was no more than adequate really, all junk, sloping curves, and basic change-ups, fast balls that didn’t really move, the usual. Danny had hit him pretty good, but the competition just hadn’t been anything to write home about.

Luckily, the rest of the Tigers were pretty lame for all intents and purposes, striking out left and right, making this ‘pick-up’ team look like rock stars, and the game was a nail-biter, at least in terms of the score. And here, it was all coming down to a final at bat where Danny had a chance to win it with a walk-off home run. It would be a nice way to show that his boy could come through under pressure, and the day was going to be a success. Tarragna only hoped it was enough to make Frick take them seriously.

Tarragna looked over to first base. Laraby had just worked a walk, and was already taking too much of a lead.
Don’t be a hero,
Tarragna thought.
Just let Danny hit you in.

Danny Tarragna came out from behind the fence and stood for a moment in the batter’s box, wearing his favorite t-shirt since this wasn’t an official game. It was a yellow jersey with green lettering in a cursive slant that said ‘Newtown Edgemont Bic…’ and, like Becky had seen in the empty classroom when she’d sat in beet juice, some of the letters were rubbed off, but now, she knew that it was his favorite shirt, his lucky shirt, and when it was new it had said clearly, ‘Newtown Edgemont Bicentennial Tournament - 1976’ when he’d helped his travel team win the whole thing two and a half years ago.

He took a warm-up swing, and Becky’s feelings welled up inside her. But that was
nothing
compared to the way Danny’s father saw him. The love he had for this boy was so fierce it was almost crippling. It was different than the way a girl felt affection, for there was a competitiveness in it, all wrapped up in a masculine coil ready to explode, to lash out in pride and a kind of loving anger that would scratch, carve, and forge their name into the face of the world, all through harsh rites of passage proving again and again that they both stood worthy of each other.

Danny stepped over toward the batter’s box, confident, gorgeous, eyes bright and shining.

“Time, blue!” the opposing coach called, walking out from behind the fence and waddling up to the mound like his calves hurt him. He was an older guy with pock marks on his neck, and he was talking to Sullivan and waving back toward his bench, touching his right arm, calling in his closer.

Anthony Tarragna grinned and nodded to no one.
Good! You got a flame-thrower you’ve been hiding, send him on in! Let’s get someone my boy can really crush, someone good, someone with a bit of spunk.

He looked back toward the enemy bench and the smile fell from his face. He couldn’t really see from this angle since the high sun was glaring off the chrome of the fence, but he saw enough. The kid was a beast—wide shoulders, huge legs, and he had one of those Mohawk haircuts, at least it was a variation of one, where a few inches above his ears were white-walled, and his long black hair fell behind like some war-crazed Indian. He reached for his hat, then threw his head down, hair coming over his face. Then he hiked his head back up hard, making the mane of black hair flip behind his head, and he grabbed it in a ponytail, shoving it through the hole in his hat.

Then, he stood, slowly, menacingly, and it seemed it took forever as he grew taller and taller, and when he stood at full height, Anthony Tarragna felt himself gulp, because this was the biggest fifteen-year-old he had ever seen, six-foot-five, at least, and built like a train.

The monster came from behind the fence, and he started doing a circus trick with massive hands that looked like slabs of beef, one of them balancing the ball on the back knuckles, and while Anthony Tarragna was marveling at the way the guy flipped the ball up into grip after grip, all eight of them, Becky noticed that he had a birthmark under his jaw, and the German flip that he’d held onto all these years was originally this odd Mohawk, falling behind his neck like some warrior head dress.

He stalked across the infield, and there was a glint in his eye, a bully’s glare, a confidence that couldn’t possibly do anything but make him both feared and hated by most that he knew, and when he took the mound he towered there, standing, arm dangling, waiting.

The umpire was still standing out in front of the plate, and he called out to the new pitcher, “Take a few warm-ups,” and in horror, Becky felt herself saying the next words to herself…

I don’t need any warm-ups.
And the guy curled his lip and said, “I don’t need any stinkin’ warm-ups.” Then he pointed his glove at Danny Tarragna and said, “Get in the box.”

Danny was smiling at him, that gorgeous, beautiful smile, and he stayed calmly where he was in the on-deck circle. He took an extra second to take a huge practice swing, right in this evergreen’s face.

“Get in the box!” the pitcher shouted, and it made Anthony jump despite himself. He’d heard of this guy and was surprised that an A.A.U. team would take him—bad sport, always spitting in front of the rubber instead of behind it, taunting players, jawing with parents, and intimidating coaches. He was from somewhere in Lewiston, Brett something, last name the same as a state. He’d also heard the guy threw a million miles an hour, though no one had ever speed-gunned him.

Anthony took a deep breath. This was it. The ultimate test, the ultimate stage, the marquee players going head to head, David against Goliath.
This is what you paid the big money for, right?

Danny walked out of the circle and looked down the third baseline. Anthony was about to give the signal to hit away, and suddenly, from the bench, Hanrahan put on a flurry of hand motions, hat to chin to nose back to hat to chest.
What? A sacrifice bunt? Are you kidding me?

Anthony Tarragna was furious. You didn’t take the bat out of Danny Tarragna’s hands, not in front of a professional scout. He shook his head ‘no,’ and Coach Hanrahan put the signals on once again.

Hands on the hips, Anthony stewed, looking off into right field.
Common sense. Calm down.
Hanrahan was moving up to the high school next year, heck, he was doing it
because of
Danny, because he wanted to be the one who groomed the great one, and that meant, like it or not, they would all be working together for four solid years, including the rest of this one. Grudges weren’t good, and as much as Anthony didn’t want to admit it, Danny did still have a lot of time to put in before walking into Yankee stadium as a visiting Cleveland Indian.