Chapter 15 #2
Then we stepped through the tunnel into the open air, and the field spread out below us.
DJ stopped walking and stared.
The grass was impossibly green under the lights, the infield dirt a perfect brown.
The old-fashioned scoreboard stretched across the outfield, massive and dark green.
The crowd filled the seats in a patchwork of blue and white and a few splashes of Angels red.
Flags snapped in the breeze above the center field wall.
The organ played something I didn't recognize.
And on the field, Angels players in their white uniforms tossed balls back and forth, loose and easy, warming up.
"Whoa," DJ said.
Claire stood beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder.
"Pretty great, huh?"
"Yeah, Mom. It's so lit!"
We stood there for a minute, just looking. Then I led them down toward the bullpen.
The bullpen sat beyond the right field fence, close enough to the stands that you could hear the pitchers talking, hear the pop of the ball hitting the catcher's mitt.
A crowd had gathered along the rail, mostly kids, all of them hoping for an autograph or just a closer look at the players they'd only seen on TV.
DJ pressed against the rail. I stood behind him, hands on his shoulders so he wouldn't get jostled by the crowd.
Chen sauntered across the field in his warm-up jacket. Six-three, lean, moving with the easy confidence of someone who'd done this a thousand times. He entered the bullpen and walked to the mound, took the ball from the bullpen catcher, and started his routine.
Stretch. Wind up. Throw.
The ball exploded into the catcher's mitt with a sound like a gunshot. DJ flinched. Then he leaned forward, watching.
Chen threw fifteen pitches. Fastballs first, easy building his movement and velocity. Then the famous slider.
DJ didn't say a word. Just watched, absorbing it all.
When Chen finished, he wiped his face with a towel, said something to the catcher, and started grabbing balls from the bucket beside the mound. He turned toward the stands and tossed the first one into the crowd.
Hands shot up everywhere. A kid in a jersey caught it. Cheers erupted.
Chen threw another. A teenage girl caught it. More cheers.
Then he threw one high and outside, and I saw it coming toward us. I reached up and snagged it one-handed. The ball smacked into my palm, and the crowd around us cheered again.
I handed it to DJ. He took it with both hands, mouth agape. He turned it over, examining the seams, the scuff marks, the dirt.
"It's a real game ball," he said.
"Used by your favorite pitcher."
He held it up to his face and smelled it. I knew that smell, leather and dirt and grass.
Then he looked past me, and his face changed. I followed his gaze.
A little girl stood a few feet away, maybe five or six, holding her father's hand. She had pigtails and a Mariners shirt three sizes too big. Her face was crumpled, on the verge of tears. Her father kneeled beside her, speaking softly and rubbing her back.
DJ walked over to her and held out the ball.
"You can have this."
The girl's face transformed. She took the ball with both hands, looked up at her father, then back at DJ. Her father beamed at DJ.
"That was really kind of you. What do you say, Princess?"
"Thank you," the little girl said.
"You're welcome."
The father stood and shook DJ's hand. "You're a good kid."
"Thanks."
The girl hugged the ball to her chest and walked away with her father, glowing.
DJ came back to us. Claire pulled him into a hug, quick and fierce.
"I'm proud of you," she said, her voice quivering.
DJ squirmed free. "It's just a ball."
"It's not just a ball."
"You did good, DJ." I looked at Claire. "You raised him right."
Her eyes went bright. She blinked and turned away. When she looked back, the brightness was still there.
"I do the best I can," she said softly.
I wanted to say more, wanted to tell her what I saw when I looked at DJ. A kid with a good heart who'd been raised by someone who knew what mattered.
But this wasn't the time or place. So I just nodded and patted DJ on his shoulder. That seemed to be enough for the boy... and for Claire.
We found our seats in the lower section behind home plate. Not the best seats in the house, but close enough to hear the umpire call strikes, close enough to see the spin on the ball.
DJ sat between us, his new cap on his head, his new jersey draped over his lap. The stadium filled around us, voices rising, the energy building.
The national anthem played. The players lined the baselines. DJ stood with his hand over his heart, solemn.
Then the umpire yelled, "Play ball," and the game began.
Chen was sharp through the first three innings. Fastball command, breaking balls for strikes, working ahead in the count. He struck out four. DJ tracked every pitch, every swing, every out.
In the fourth inning, Chen walked the leadoff batter. Then gave up a double. Then a single that scored two. Two more walks and a home run that cleared the bases. The manager walked to the mound. Chen handed him the ball and walked off the field with his head down.
DJ watched him disappear into the dugout.
"Left Chen in too long," DJ grimaced.
"Yup," I said.
The Mariners lost nine to two. The crowd thinned in the eighth inning. By the ninth, half the stadium was empty.
We stayed until the final out.
We walked out with the crowd, slower now, the energy drained. DJ dragged his feet, his cap pulled low, his jersey clutched under one arm.
"Disappointed Chen lost?" I asked gently.
"He's still a great pitcher," DJ shrugged. "That's just baseball."
The kid impressed me. The understanding that loving something meant accepting its losses. That you couldn't control the outcome, only your response to it. In a lot of ways, DJ reminded me of Scout.
Claire and I shared another look over his head. A look that said did you hear that and how did he get so smart?
It was a warm look. The kind that passes between two people who've just spent a perfect day together.
DJ fell asleep twenty minutes into the drive home. His cap slid down over his face, the jersey clutched in one hand. His breathing evened out, and the truck cab went quiet.
Claire shifted in her seat. She looked back at DJ, then at me.
"Thank you, Thomas. He was so excited for this. You didn't let him down."
"He's a good kid."
"He is." She paused. "You're really good with him. He'll never forget today."
The words hit me harder than they should have. I kept my eyes on the road, on the broken white line unspooling ahead of us through the dark.
"I'm glad I could do it. I missed catching a ballgame in Seattle."
We drove in comfortable silence, but there was something swelling inside me, a heaviness that was pressing down on me. I glanced at Claire, weighing this moment and how much of myself to reveal.
"Can I tell you something?" I asked quietly.
"Of course."
"The thing I missed most. In my marriage.
" I kept my eyes on the road. "It wasn't the companionship.
Sybil and I, we ran out of things to say to each other a long time before the papers got signed.
And that was hard, but I made my peace with it.
You can make peace with a lot of things if you're honest about what they were. "
I took a breath.
"It was never having kids. That was the thing.
That was the hole I couldn't fill. Two decades of marriage and no children.
We tried and tried until Sybil didn't want to try any more.
She could live without kids. I never pushed.
I should have pushed, or I should have left, or I should have done something other than sit in my office adjusting claims and pretending the absence wasn't eating me alive. But I didn't."
The words came out quietly, not much louder than the hum of the tires. I said them to the windshield, to the dark road ahead, but they were for Claire.
"Today. Watching DJ at that grill, his face when I put that cap on him, the way he gave that ball away without even thinking about it." I shook my head. "That's what I missed. A whole life of that. And I'll never get it back."
Silence in the cab. The engine hummed. The streetlights passed.
Then Claire's hand crossed the space between us and settled on my thigh. A warm, firm pressure through the denim.
I covered it with mine and squeezed once. Thankful for her not filling the silence with reassurance or pity or any of the things people say when they don't know what else to do. Her hand was enough.
I started to let go, but Claire turned her hand over under mine and laced her fingers through mine. She held on.
I glanced over. Her face was lit by the glow of the dashboard instruments.
Her eyes were steady on me and in them was something that had been building all summer in every harvest and every shared meal and every accidental brush of skin...
every trembling kiss. Something she'd been holding back with the same iron discipline she used to hold everything else together.
Neither of us spoke.
Claire held my hand on the console between us. In the back seat, DJ slept with his cap over his face and a jersey in his grip. The highway unspooled and the headlights reached ahead of us, illuminating the way forward.