Rounding Third (3 page)

So baseball was the one thing Bobby could
give his father; the one thing he did that seemed to please him. Bobby had
barely made the JV team last year and had only played two innings as a
sophomore in a game so lopsided that even his presence couldn’t blow their
lead. He made one putout, an easy ground ball that required him to take one
step before he scooped it up and shoveled it to first. He had never batted in a
real game as a Harrisonburg High Hawk. Bobby did love the game of baseball, but
always felt out of place in the baggy uniform, like a boy donning his father’s
army uniform in hopes of looking tough, but instead it made him feel
conspicuous and vulnerable.

As insecure as he was about his size, Bobby
had been hesitant about making friends, and in the few weeks since practice
started this year, he hadn’t been welcomed by the team any more than he had
been sophomore year when some seemed to think that the presence of such a wimp
diminished the whole squad.

After he finished his long loop around
McKinley Road to let the bleeding stop, he ran back along Route 303 past the
cemetery and then Greiner’s Farm Market. The market was a ramshackle affair
that looked like a good wind or snowstorm should’ve taken out forty years ago,
but somehow it survived and even now, in the middle of spring, it still smelled
of pines, pumpkins, and peaches.

Then came the Wardells’ land. Bobby glanced
at the white, two-story farmhouse with the wrap-around porch where he lived,
but which somehow never seemed like home. Bobby’s father had told him the house
had been built by an ancestor, a Civil War veteran, for his anticipated large
family.  After the man’s wife died giving birth to their second child, he
had never remarried and no generation since had produced enough offspring to
properly fill the mansion.

Bobby didn’t break stride until he hit the
front walk. The spring sun had set and he felt a shiver. He could see movement
behind the living room windows so he headed down the side of the house across
the paved corner of the driveway where the basketball hoop was. He hoped he
could use the kitchen door and slide upstairs unnoticed.

Bobby bolted past his mother in the kitchen
and up to his room where he dropped his backpack. In the bathroom he turned on
the water, stripped, and looked down at his undersized and almost hairless
body. He would have doubted he had reached puberty if other sure signs had not
often shot forth. Sometimes on his runs he tried to figure out who he had
killed in some former life to have drawn such a lousy hand in this one. He
stepped into the water that was just short of scalding. Bobby took showers that
either boiled or froze, anything to try to shock some life into his body and
all thoughts out of his head.

During dinner, his mother noticed the
Band-aid on his forehead. “Slid into the catcher during practice,” Bobby said.
His father raised an eyebrow, but didn’t question that very questionable
explanation.

As usual, when Bobby woke at 3 a.m., he tried
to pretend that it was really his hormones and horniness that were keeping him
from sleep and that if he took care of that he would be able to sleep. And, as
on so many other nights, filling a sock had relieved the tension in his little
head, but did nothing to bring any ease to his big head. 

So Bobby did what he had done so many other
nights, he fell out of bed onto the polished hardwood floor, naked, and began
doing sit ups alternating with sets of push-ups. Most nights he would work
himself for hours and then crawl back into bed and sleep for another few hours.
These brutal nocturnal workouts did nothing to lessen his self-doubt, but they
made his body too tired to put up with his brain’s nonsense.

The next morning as Bobby walked to first
period, still groggy from his lack of sleep, a hand on his shoulder spun him
into a locker with a bang. “You pull another stunt like that again in practice,
I’ll clean every toilet in this building with your head!” Danny spun Bobby
around and smashed his face into the locker door; Bobby felt the pressure
release and heard the receding echo of Danny’s steps as he walked away. He
heard Corey Brickman laughing. So much for team bonding.

Bobby looked up and saw Edward DeLallo, the
office nerd, watching. Bobby felt like Edward was always watching him, but
never said anything. Edward never seemed to have class. He was always working
in the office or floating through the halls like Tinkerbell with a message for
a teacher or a summons for a student. Edward was tall and very thin, a walking
stick figure. His glasses seemed to always be sliding down his narrow nose,
necessitating his constantly pushing them back up. Or picking them up off the floor
when a shove from someone had knocked them off again. If Bobby was close
enough, he’d silently pick up the glasses and hand them back. Bobby wished he
could have done more to help Edward. Instead, they never even spoke and stayed
alone in their own private torments, each too embarrassed by his own
humiliations to be able to comfort the other. This misery didn’t want company;
it wanted to be alone in its own hell.

Bobby looked down the hall and saw many of
his teammates still laughing at him.

Second period history was worse than the
usual wretchedness. Mr. Welke was giving them his standard lecture of how, as a
Marine in Vietnam, he had single-handedly won the war. Bobby had a hard time
picturing the emaciated, balding Welke as a fierce jungle fighter, but then he
could never reconcile his memory of his small, frail grandfather with the story
that earned the old man a fistful of Purple Hearts during the Battle of the
Bulge. Bobby wished his grandfather hadn’t died before he’d ever got to ask him
about what it was like to kill a man. During Welke’s self-centered history
lessons, Bobby was always tempted to raise his hand and remind his teacher that
we sort of lost Vietnam.

At the end of class, Mr. Welke gave back
their term papers. Bobby should have known better than to write his paper on
Ohio’s presidents; it was as dumb as stealing first. These brief, misguided
moments of rebellion were not the path to a smooth high school career.

Bobby had started the paper with the town’s
namesake, William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States. He
wrote about Harrison’s life before his presidential term--his career as a
soldier and his battles with the Indians that opened much of Ohio to white
settlement. The sign welcoming visitors to Harrisonburg also focused on this,
but it was an old sign, pre-political correctness, so there was no question of
whether annihilating the Native Americans was the right thing to do. In Bobby’s
paper he didn’t hesitate to include a couple of massacres. The paper noted there
would be no mention of
Harrison’s
post-presidential career, since he had none. Bobby covered his presidency:
Harrison gave the longest inauguration speech in U.S. history and served the
shortest term. His verbose two-hour oration in the freezing rain gave the old
man pneumonia and he was dead in a month.

The paper noted that Ohio liked to brag that
it had given birth to only one less president than Virginia. But in contrast to
the Virginians: Washington and Jefferson, Madison and Monroe and Woodrow
Wilson, Ohio could boast of Garfield and McKinley--whose only claims to fame
were being shot--and Ulysses S. Grant whose administration set a standard for
corruption that was not to be equaled until the presidency of another Ohioan,
Warren G. Harding. Bobby noted that among the many achievements of Harding’s
presidency were the illegitimate children Harding had fathered before having
the good sense to die while still in office and be buried in a fine funeral
prior to all of the dirt surfacing. Bobby also had a side note mentioning that
Grant’s fellow Civil War general and later mega-loser of all of American
History, George Armstrong Custer, was born in Ohio.

Bobby had seen a T-shirt once that said
Virginia
is for Lovers
and thought his home state should print some that said,
Ohio
is for Losers
. Or counter Illinois’
Land of Lincoln
license plates
with ones that read
Land of Losers
.

Mr. Welke rewarded Bobby’s well-researched
efforts with a D.

           
*                     
*                     
*                     
*                     
*
   

The next few practices before opening day
were especially hard. Bobby got more than a few shoves, cold stares and
obscenities as the coaches made the team repeatedly practice the basics. Josh
and Buff were the only ones who seemed to appreciate the extra work.

                       
4

The first game of the season made the morning
announcements, but no one paid any attention to baseball except the guys on the
team. Football and basketball attracted the crowds and the girls.

Josh’s performance on the mound against
Belleville was everything the Harrisonburg Hawks could have hoped. By the third
inning, only one of the opposition’s runners had reached first base on a
hard-hit single on the first pitch that caused Taylor to shout from his
position at short to Buff in leftfield, loud enough for everyone to hear, “They
should have let you pitch--going to be a long day!”

On the bench Bobby was thinking the least the
team could do was give the new guy a chance. But since that one pitch into the
fat of the strike zone, Josh had shut them out at the plate, striking out six
of the first ten batters.

Unfortunately, the Belleville pitcher, Derek
Fujiyama, who was known throughout the league for his fireball, was equal to
the challenge and no Hawk had been on base since Danny Taylor drew a walk in
the first. In the third inning, Josh, in the pitcher’s traditional ninth spot,
was preparing to bat.

The hoped-for friendship with Josh, small as
it was, had Bobby taking a special interest in Josh’s playing. Bobby realized
part of the reason he had been trying a little harder at practice was because
of Josh. As Josh walked toward the on-deck circle, Bobby was a little surprised
to hear himself call out, “Schlagel!” Josh stopped and came over to the fence
that separated the bench from the area where the batters took their warm-up
swings. “The pitcher drops his shoulder if he’s going off-speed or throwing
junk. On a fastball, he pulls his shoulder up. Just a subtle hitch in his
motion, so watch for it. If you get on, steal. He’s slow.”

Josh nodded his thanks and turned to watch
the Blue Devils pitcher. Corey Brickman nudged Danny Taylor then yelled, “Sit
down, Wardell!”

Bobby walked past the wary stares of the
other players and back to his seat on the bench.

Bobby heard the boink of an aluminum bat and
turned to see a weak pop-up to short that made the first out of the inning and
brought Schlagel to the plate. The usual chatter went up from the bench.
“C’mon, Schlagel!” “Help yourself out here!” “Let’s go one-seven!”

Bobby said nothing as he leaned forward and
grabbed the fence to watch Josh bat. The pitcher’s right shoulder went up and sure
enough, he came with a fastball. Josh was waiting for it and took a full cut
but failed to get a full piece of the ball and sent it flying high up. The
catcher flung off his mask and ran towards the first base dugout, but stopped
when he realized the ball would clear the fence out of play. Josh picked up the
mask, slapped it against his leg to shake the dust off it and held it out for
the catcher who seemed a little surprised, but smiled and thanked Josh. Again
Fujiyama went into his wind-up and again the shoulder hitched up. This time
Josh was set and sent it sailing over the shortstop’s head into shallow left.

On the next pitch, Josh was off towards
second. He took third on another stand-up stolen base. A single scored him.
Josh ran across the plate and stopped to whisper to the next batter. Josh ran
past the extended hands of the other congratulatory players and right to Bobby.
“Good call, Wardell! Way to go!” He slapped Bobby on the back. It stung more
than the slaps in the face he’d had from Danny in the past, but it felt great.
Josh hurried back down the bench to whisper instructions to the rest of the
team.

The rally ended with six runs in. The base
runners were going on every pitch. A double steal that resulted in an
overthrown ball brought in the last run before the Hawks’ catcher struck out on
three straight, very hot fastballs, leaving Josh on deck.

Josh returned his bat to the rack and dropped
his helmet. He looked down the bench and gave a thumbs up to Bobby then pointed
at him. “You should get six RBIs for that inning.”

Bobby felt the coach’s hand on his shoulder.
He didn’t remember that Hudson had ever touched him before. “Wardell, that’s
smart baseball.” Hudson’s breathy, nasal way of speaking made it seem like he
was trying to yell even when he was talking quietly at close range. Hudson
looked down the rest of the bench. “The rest of you should be paying attention.
You’re part of this game--not spectators.” Some of them shrugged, having no
idea what they’d left undone.