Caught Stealing - Charlie Huston [2]
This is how life changes.
You’re born in California and raised as an only child in a pleasant suburb a ways east of San Francisco. You have a nice childhood with parents who love you. You play baseball. You are tremendously gifted at the game and you love it. By the time you are seventeen you have a room full of trophies. You have played on two teams that have competed for the Little League World Series and are the star player on your high school’s varsity squad. You’re a four-tool player: bat, glove, arm, and legs. You play center field. You lead the team in homers, ERA, RBI, stolen bases, and have no errors. Pro scouts have been coming to see you play all year and when you graduate, everyone expects you will skip college to be signed for development by a Major League club. At every game you look into the stands and your parents are always there.
In the regional championship game you are caught stealing third. You slide hard into the bag as the third baseman leaps to snare a high throw from the plate. Your cleats dig into the bottom of the base and as you pop up out of your slide, the third baseman is coming down with the ball. He lands on the ankle of your caught foot and, as you continue up, he falls down with his full weight on your lower leg.
The bone sticks straight out from your calf, and you just stare at it.
The pins they stick in your fibula restrict growth in the bone. It will not heal properly and for the rest of your life you have a hard knot of scar and bundled muscle tissue that aches in cold, wet weather. No one even pretends you will play again.
You stay away from the games and don’t see much of your old friends. You have new friends, and you get in a little trouble. You work after school and buy a Mustang and fix it up with your dad, the mechanic. You drive everywhere and drag all the local motor-heads. You always win. When there’s no one around to race, you drive fast on the back roads outside of town and get a rush from the speed. It’s not baseball, but it’s something.
Out by the cattle ranches, after midnight, a calf wanders into the road through a split in the fence. You swerve and pound down on the brake pedal. The wheel crazes out of your hand and the car heels down on the front right tire. The tire explodes. The wheel rim bites into the tarmac and the car flips up and begins to sail end over end. You are suspended in the car, held tight to the seat by the four-point harness your dad insisted you install. The car tumbles through the air and passes harmlessly over the calf. The Ford completes a full revolution, lands on its bottom, careens across the road and slams its front end into an oak.
Your friend Rich does not have his seat belt on. When you first saw the calf and slammed the brakes, Rich was kneeling on his seat, turned around and rummaging in the back for a sweatshirt.
During the flip you are for a moment suspended upside down. Rich bounces around the interior of the car and falls to the roof, sprawled on his back. He is looking at you, into your eyes, his face less than a foot away, inches away. The car flips with sudden violence, Rich disappears from your vision, and as you plow into the tree he appears to leap at the front windshield from somewhere behind you. He launches through the glass and flies the short distance to where the oak catches him brutally.
Lots of people show up at the funeral and cry and hug you. You have a bruised sternum and a cut on your cheek, and you look no one in the eye. Afterward your parents take you home.
In the spring you graduate and in the