Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Breslin POV
Ramona, Oklahoma
I stared at the handset. The email claimed it was from “Coach Nevins”, one of the assistants who managed evening study hall. The message said it contained midterm study materials, but the subject line seemed off: “Study Hall materials you requested”. I didn't go to study hall, I'd also not seen any emails where the first name was “Coach”. And I hadn't requested anything. I'll ask Coach on Monday.
“How's the arm doing?” Dad asked as he sat in the same faded recliner he always did. The thing had been around since the last one broke down—the summer before sixth grade. Mom had been the one . . .
I winced and forced the memory from my mind. “Not a pitcher, Dad.” I tucked my phone back into my pocket. The living room, this place, I could almost pretend when I was in my dorm room, that she was just far away. At home. Alive.
But coming here . . .
“I know that, son. But how else do you—?” He sighed. “Never mind. You doing ok?”
No, I'm not ok. My life started sliding sideways, out of control, ever since Mom died. Everything I'd worked for. Everything I wanted . . . I hung my head.
“How's the schoolwork? Making new friends and having a good time?”
There was an edge to his voice. I knew where this was going.
“Didn't go away to college, you know. Just studied classes nearby at the junior college. My Dad wanted me to learn the business side of running the farm, that was the only reason.”
“I know. College wasn't my first choice, but Mom wanted me to go.” And I didn't have much of a choice.
“Your mother was from a different universe sometimes. I don't know how I got so lucky.”
“You met her at the junior college.”
“Her father was the baseball coach. You get all that from her side.”
I bit my tongue. His brother played through high school, but they weren't on speaking terms. My Dad could hold a grudge like no one else I knew.
There are the things I can change. And the things I can't. I took a deep breath.
His lips stretched into an expression that I couldn't name. It just looked . . . old. Aged. Worn. His skin sagged from his features like it was too tired to hold on anymore. Bags pooled under his eyes.
This is what you get for kissing girls instead of chasing baseballs, huh, Mom? I shook my head.
“Son?” He cleared his throat like he was about to launch into a speech.
I rubbed at my forehead as if I could massage the irritation away. “Yeah.”
“I think it's time I considered selling this place.” He let out a heavy breath.
I nodded slowly as if I was considering his words. I knew he expected me to have some kind of reaction, but I wasn't sure what the farm or selling it—what any of it had to do with me.
But what was I supposed to say? I didn't want to set the man off. He had a temper when he got going. I studied my hands in case they held an answer. But the more I searched inside for any sort of reaction or even something I could pretend to feel for his sake, the less any of this part of my life felt like . . . it belonged to me.
God, why couldn't I get my shit together? Why did everything feel like I was running with everything I had just to not fall backwards? Fall behind. I'd had no time to study, midterms were already here. And I was unprepared. On edge.
The exhibition game was coming up. And so far, Schorr seemed content with his lineup from last year. None of us freshmen were getting any looks. Meyers and Jacobs were being considered for long and middle relievers. No starts.
Latske and Jimenez were getting some reps at catcher, but there'd been a gap left at the position. Jimenez normally played right field. Latske seemed their first choice.
“Son?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hear what I said?” Dad's voice rumbled.
“Selling the farm. Yeah, I heard you.” I glanced away, my eyes catching on the hallway to their bedroom. My chest tightened. What I wouldn't give for her to emerge from that room . . . Like the old days, when she'd make me pancakes on a Saturday morning.
“I swear your shirt should say: powered by pancakes. Although my dad always said pancakes fueled excellent baserunning.” Her laugh echoed in my ears.
“I'm sorry, son, I don't know what else to do.” Dad buried his face in his hands. “I can't keep going like this.”
Lead weighted my stomach. I didn't want to be here anymore. Mom's picture on the mantle. Our family photo on the wall. “So, what’ll you do?” I knotted my hands together and twisted to the point of pain.
“What?”
“If you sell it. Where will you live? What will you do?”
“That's what—” He looked up from his hands and stared at me like I'd turned green or something. “You're not gonna come home and help out?”
“What?”
“It's supposed to be yours someday. And you'd just walk away?” His recliner slammed shut.
“I told you, I've been telling you.”
“I always figured . . .”
“You figured what?” I found myself on my feet, towering over him. “That if you guilted me enough I'd come home and fix shit for you? Or is it what you've said so many times over the years—that I'd eventually burn out on baseball?”
He squinted up at me. “It's a game.”
“Right, just a game. So all that business about me going pro, you always 'figured' I wouldn't really have a shot. That it?”
He rose to his feet, slowly, like he had to uncoil every muscle. “Don't give me that tone.” He snarled through clenched teeth.
“What're you going to do? I'm not some punk kid you can take your belt to, anymore. I can hold my own.” Heat sloshed and ate away at my insides. “The day you want a piece of?—”
The slap across my face sent me reeling like whiplash. For a broken-down old man, or so went the story he told me day in and day out—he still moved surprisingly quick. The red and purple tint to his cheeks, was the most life I'd seen in him in seven long months.
“I'm your father.” His eyes narrowed into a hard glare. “Show me some respect.”
“I don't have to be here. Hell, I don't even want to be here.” And I wasn't going to be here a second longer. I moved toward my room to pack my shit.
“The farm was something you could have.” He tailed after me. “A future, a?—”
“And you never listened to me. Never believed in me.” I crammed a random hoody in my duffel. The room pulsed with a red haze. “Not really. Not enough!”
“Baseball doesn't last. It's only there while you're young and healthy. You're a single torn ligament or rotator cuff, or some other career-ending injury away from having no scholarship, no college, no future.” He gestured wildly, his whole body raged with him. “Your mother didn't want that for you, but you're so God-damned hard-headed.”
“You can't stand that I don't need you. That I'm not going to follow in your footsteps like you're some kind of hero.” I spat. “My dad, the great farmer.”
“Farming and ranching put food on the table and afforded you all your fuckin baseball lessons. Private schools, uniforms, your damned tournaments.” His eyes widened and he straightened. “You ungrateful sonofabitch.”
I elbowed past him, escaping into the hall. He followed.
“And it paid for her cancer treatments and whatever I could afford of your God-damned legal shitstorm! All the hell you put me through.”
I kept moving. I couldn’t deal with this, unbelievable shit.
“You stop and listen to me, dammit.”
I paused in the entryway, gritting my teeth as the room pulsed and wavered like some freakish nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
“I was a mess and had to keep this place going. Help you keep your baseball shit together. Your precious backup plan. Your lost dreams.”
I threw aside the front door and stormed out onto the deck. He helped me keep my shit together?
“. . . as if you're the only person in the whole world . . . Like you were so entitled.”
My blood pounded in my ears. “I've never?—”
“You stand here, even now, acting like you're somehow entitled to play major league baseball and the whole fuckin world didn't get the memo that Breslin Cooper walks on water and is a baseball god descended from heaven.”
“Yeah, sure sounds like me.” I snarled as I turned away. I was going to get in my truck and I wasn't coming back any time soon.
“Your mother.” His voice lowered. “She believed in every cell and every breath in you.”
Something invisible sliced through me, bruising everything from my ribs to my stomach.
“She knew you were, are, a talented ballplayer. But she wanted you to have a great life . She gave that to you, she nurtured and held you.” A choked sob rang out. I stared at the door handle on my truck.
“I can still see it all happening like it was fuckin’ yesterday. The light in her eyes when she'd look at you. Her son. Our . . . son. There's a whole world out there and she thought you could do great things. And all you see, all you want, breathe, sleep and eat is baseball .”
“I was her son more than I was ever yours.” I wrenched open the drivers' side door, tossed my bag inside.
“Breslin?”
I glanced back at the old man. My father.
“You're no longer welcome in this house.” He drew himself up, and gone was . . . any hint of emotion. He was ice cold. A man I didn't know or understand. “Get the rest of your shit and don't come back until you grow the hell up.”
My hands shook all the way back to school. I don't even remember most of the drive. Just pushing past him to grab the rest of what I could think of to take with me: some old t-shirts, the sport jacket she picked out for a banquet I never went to. The fuckin’ letter she wrote me, to say goodbye. The vacuum-sealed blanket she'd crocheted for me, and insisted I keep—for my kids someday.
God, mom. Why the hell did you have to leave? I wasn't even . . . I'm still not the man I want to be.
I sat in my truck on the far edge of the parking lot, staring at my shaking hands. When I glanced up at myself in the rearview mirror.
And again those words echoed in my head.
“. . . if someone like me could be this disappointed. I wonder what would she think of you?”