Fragile Beasts (38 page)

It turned out Brent spent the summer in a kind of boot camp where people send their misbehaving or poorly performing athlete kids to get a taste of what army life was going to be like if they didn’t shape up and snag college scholarships in their respective sports.

Brent’s folks could pay for his college, but his dad insisted his kid wasn’t going to have his life handed to him on a silver platter—and then he would hand him a hundred dollars to fill the gas tank in his new SUV and let him keep the change.

Mr. Richmond’s here today standing off to one side in a tan trench coat under a big black umbrella even though it’s not raining anymore. He’s frowning and talking to someone on his cell phone.

His wife’s not here. She never comes out in bad weather.

“Looks like it’s starting to clear off,” Bill tells me.

I look above me at the sky. Not even the smallest patch of blue is showing through the clouds, but they’ve begun to lighten from a soot gray to a dirty sock gray.

“Yeah,” I reply.

Bill’s already opened one of the bags of chips he brings to every game. He holds it out to me, and I take a handful. He also always brings a twenty-two-ounce Big Gulp cup filled with beer. He takes a few slurps through the red straw and looks innocently around him.

He hasn’t said anything to me about how weird it is to be sitting here without Dad. He hasn’t even asked about Klint except for his usual questions about how life is with Miss Jack.

I tell him what I always tell him: it’s okay. And I’m not lying. It’s not as good as living with parents who love you, but Miss Jack’s not that bad. I see why people think she’s mean and call her a snob, but I think she’s just very private. She’s not a touchy-feely person. She has very strong opinions, but she’ll seriously listen to yours, too, before telling you you’re wrong. I think I could go to her with pretty much any problem, and she would do her best to help. I’d like to talk to her about Klint, but I don’t know what I’d say.

“There’s Klint,” Bill tells me and gives my arm a nudge.

He’s stepped out of the dugout for a minute. His red jersey with the number 8 emblazoned on the back is still clean for the time being, but his white pants and socks are already spattered with mud from warming up. His white batting glove hangs limply from a back pocket. He has his arms crossed over
his chest and is staring out at the fence at the far end of the field where he hopes to send a few balls this afternoon.

“Hey, Klint!” Bill shouts through cupped hands.

Klint has always refused to look at anyone yelling for him in the stands, even Dad, but he raises one hand in acknowledgment.

Bill grins happily. One ritual successfully completed.

I’m watching Klint when I notice Doc and his brother, Nate, the baseball coach at Western Penn, walking over to the diamond. Coach Hill joins them and exchanges a few words with Nate, then goes back to his clipboard while they continue on their way over here to the bleachers.

College coaches don’t usually show up to scope out the talent during the regular school season because they’re busy with their own seasons, but Western Penn is nearby and I know they don’t have a game tonight. Coach Pankowski probably ducked out of practice to come have a look.

I’d never say hi to a teacher, even one I like, so I start looking around everywhere except where Doc’s standing; eventually, though, my eyes sweep by him and he sees me and waves at me then gestures for me to join them.

I get up as reluctantly as I can, put a little scowl on my face, and clump down the metal steps doing my best to look like I have no choice.

“Hi, Kyle,” Doc greets me.

“Hey, Mr. Pankowski.”

“Kyle, this is my brother, Nate. He’s the head coach at Western Penn.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He holds out his hand, smiling. I take it and he shakes my hand vigorously.

“Nice to finally meet you, Kyle. I’ve met your brother and your dad. I’m very sorry about what happened.”

“Yeah. It’s okay. Thanks.”

At first glance, Doc and his brother don’t appear to resemble each other at all, but the more you watch them, the more you realize they look almost exactly alike except Doc is long and stretched out, thoughtful and weary, and looks older than his years, while Nate is cheerful and compact, full of pep with the face Doc might have had when he was ten. He also talks with his hands while Doc keeps his buried deep in the pockets of his baggy corduroy blazer.

“Kyle’s one of my top students,” Doc tells him. “He’s got a bright future ahead of him.”

“Yeah, if my future’s taking true or false tests about ancient Rome,” I say.

They both laugh. I’m feeling pretty good.

“And what about your brother’s future?” Nate asks.

I frown and shrug.

“It’s no secret how poorly he’s doing in school right now,” Doc provides.

“You know even with his talent, he’s not going to be able to get scholarships with bad grades,” Nate adds.

“I know.”

“Who’s he looking at? He leaning toward any one school?” Nate asks me.

“I don’t know. Not really anyone in particular. He already had a lot of schools sniffing around him at the end of last summer: South Carolina, Florida State, Wichita, Virginia.”

Nate nods and smiles.

“Big names. Big teams.”

“Yeah. That’s what he wants. He’s got it in his head if he doesn’t go to a school with one of the top nationally ranked programs, he’d be a failure.”

“That’s a shame,” Nate says. “You know a lot of kids think that way, but what they don’t realize is the school or the program might not be right for them, no matter how good it looks on paper. They’re not baseball machines, after all. They’re human beings with different personalities and backgrounds and plans for their futures. They also usually can’t get the same amount of scholarship money from a big school as they can from a smaller one. I’d like to talk to Klint about all this.”

“Yeah, well, good luck.”

He laughs.

“You don’t sound like you have much confidence in my recruiting techniques.”

He leans forward confidentially.

“Haven’t you heard I got a shot at Shane Donner?”

“Yeah, I did hear that. I wondered if it was true. Wasn’t his fastball clocked at ninety-five miles per hour?”

“Sure was. Everyone was amazed when he didn’t sign a letter of intent this past fall. He’s going to graduate in two months and everyone’s circling. He’ll probably get drafted in the third or fourth round and could pull in a half-million-dollar professional contract, but his parents are insisting on college and they love Western Penn. Both his brother and sister went there.”

He pauses.

“Klint’s never hit off him, has he?”

“He would’ve,” I tell him, “if we would have made it to the semifinals last year.”

We all automatically look over at Mr. Richmond who’s still on the phone.

“I’d sure love to see that,” Nate says wistfully. “Hopefully it’ll happen this year.”

“And what about you, Kyle?” Doc breaks in. “Where would you like to see your brother play? Would you be okay with him all the way down south in Florida or across the country in Kansas?”

“Well, you know, I’d miss him but it’s his life.”

“Would you continue living with Candace Jack?”

“I guess. I don’t know. I haven’t really talked to her or my mom about it.”

“What do you think about Western Penn?”

“I don’t know. It’s a good school, I guess. If Klint went there, I could live with him.”

“In his dorm room?” Nate asks. “Where would you sleep?”

“I could hang upside down from the ceiling like a bat.”

They both laugh again.

“I can tell you’ve given it a lot of thought,” Nate says. “Hey, I’d like to have you and Klint come over to the school some time. Check out a practice. Meet the team. You could even check out a dorm room.” He winks at me. “Take some measurements.”

He hands me a business card.

“E-mail me or give me a call any time.”

“Okay, sure.”

“We’ll let you get back to your seat. They’re starting to announce the lineup,” Doc says. “See you in school tomorrow.”

I hear Klint’s name called over the loudspeaker. I don’t bother to watch him trot out to second base, but I do stop and turn around when Tyler’s announced and the crowd erupts into wild applause.

He jogs backward to first base, a huge grin on his face, his arms held in the air in a victory sign.

He has a big family, plus he’s a popular guy with the fans. All his siblings are here, and they’ve all brought friends. His parents will show up later when they get off work.

I cheer for him like everyone else. His pack of sisters wave at me, and I wave back before taking my seat.

Two seconds later one of his sisters sits down next to me. She’s a beauty with long, blond curls and big, blue eyes who wears little lace-trimmed denim miniskirts all the time and this great-smelling peppermint perfume. She’s also madly in love with me.

She’s six. This is my luck.

“Hi, Britney.”

“Hi, Kyle,” she smiles at me and snuggles up next to my arm. “I made you something.”

Her words, the candy smell of her, the small, warm, soft weight of her all mix together and send an unexpected stab of pain into my heart. She reminds me too much of Krystal at that age.

“No kidding? What is it?”

Britney produces the picture she’d been holding behind her back.

It’s the usual little kid subject matter: an apple tree and a house with a family standing in front of it. In Britney’s case, a very large family. She’s also added a dog they don’t have that’s bigger than any of the people and a couple of pink cats that look a lot like piglets. It’s very cheerful and colorful except for the black clouds in the sky spitting out black raindrops.

On the back she’s written: Roses are red, violets are blue, today is yucky, I love you.

“Did you write this poem all by yourself?” I ask her.

She nods.

“Nikki helped me spell.”

“This is really nice.”

“Are you going to hang it in your bedroom?”

“Sure.”

“Tyler says you live in a mansion now.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a mansion, I guess.”

“Do you got a swimming pool?”

“No.”

“Do you got a movie theater?”

“No.”

Soft creases of confusion appear on her smooth little forehead as she tries to figure out what kind of stupid mansion I’m living in.

Bill gets to his feet.

“What the hell?” he shouts. “Come on! What was that? What’re you thinking, Martelli? What’re you, blind? Get your head out of your ass!”

“Did Tyler do something wrong?” Britney asks me.

“No. The left fielder did.”

Bill’s not the only one expressing his displeasure at the error, but the commotion quickly dies down.

No one is bothered by the name-calling and the occasional curse word. It’s considered a good healthy display of the crowd’s love for its team, which translates into a desire for the team to win and therefore a need to tell certain players they suck.

I definitely prefer our more colorfully expressive parents over some of the types I’ve encountered at other schools.

The two types that bother me the most are the well-off, social-time moms who don’t spend any time actually watching their sons play because they’re too busy loudly bragging to each other about how drunk they got on their last Club Med vacations and how much the new marble countertops in their kitchens cost.

And then there’s the self-esteem moms who have mindless smiles pasted on their faces throughout the entire game no matter how badly their team is losing, who bring healthy snacks no one wants to eat, who call out ridiculous lies every time someone screws up like, “Nobody cares. It’s okay,” or “You’ll do better next time,” or the worst one of all, “Everyone’s a winner.”

Everyone’s not a winner, I want to explain to them, and telling people who are losers that they’re winners isn’t good for anybody. How are kids who suck ever going to get better if people tell them they’re good when they’re not?

I’m not saying our parents are perfect. Sometimes they go a little too far, like the time Cody Brockway’s dad took his belt off and chased Cody around the field during a Little League game after he fumbled a groundball.

But for the most part, they’re just being honest with us. They aren’t worried about hurting our feelings or treading on our self-worth. This isn’t because they don’t love us. It’s because they understand we come from a place where we need to hear the truth about what we are, not a lie about what we’re never going to be.

“A double. A damn double,” Bill grumbles as he sits down again.

“Look at this, Shel. I think we’ve got some competition.”

My head turns at the sound of Starr’s voice. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Shelby told me she didn’t think she’d be able to come to the game, and I didn’t even know Starr was still around. The last I heard about her from Miss Jack, she had run away to India.

“Hi,” Shelby says as she smiles prettily at Britney. “I’m Shelby. What’s your name?”

“Britney.”

“Are you Kyle’s girlfriend?” she asks, winking at me.

“No,” Britney giggles.

“She’s one of Tyler’s sisters,” I explain.

“Oh.”

“You better get back to your family, Brit,” I tell her.

She goes scampering off with the agility of a kid who spends a lot of her time on baseball bleachers.

I’m so happy to see Shelby, I can almost make myself forget that she’s not here to see me; she’s here to watch Klint.

I’m glad to see Starr, too. I’ve never been able to get Klint to tell me what happened between the two of them on Christmas Day. It’s a closed subject like so many subjects with him.

Starr’s got on the kind of plaid cap old Irish guys are always wearing in movies about old Irish guys and a bulky cream-colored sweater over her usual skintight jeans tucked into high-heeled boots. She’s completely covered up, but her presence feels so naked to me, I can’t look at her directly.

Shelby sits down next to me, taking over the spot where Britney had been. Again I feel a warm soft weight against me and smell a sweet girl smell, but this combination has a different effect on me than the first one. It’s not emotional pain I feel coming from loss. It’s physical pain I feel coming from desire.