The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [92]
Standing there, looking down at him, I realized he was strapped into his chair. The expression on his face was not one of joy or expectation, but unintelligible emotion, continuously shifting while his head lulled side to side, sometimes gently, sometimes in thrashing spasms. His eyes focused on me as much as they did anything else, as if I were not there at all. He spoke no words, merely sounds and labored breaths.
I knelt and did the only thing I knew how to do in my uniform. They only thing I’ve ever been expected to do in it. I smiled and acted cheerful, like some fifties comic book hero talking to a Boy Scout. I produced the ball and held it out to him, as if it were words enough.
I expected him to take it from me, to snatch it up like every other child, yet his bent hands and crooked fingers continued to trace spastic patterns in the air. To him, I was not there and there was no ball—no souvenir, no magical bauble of white leather, no chance for a lasting memory. Spittle dribbled down the boy’s chin and collected on a napkin tucked in the collar of his shirt.
His sister stepped in. She smiled graciously and requested the ball. I handed it to her. “Look!” she said to her brother in a singsong voice. “It’s a real baseball player and he’s brought you a ball! Way cool, huh?” She rubbed his arm and placed the ball at his fingertips, but they did not grab hold. The ball fell to the ground.
The boy’s face did not react to her excitement, nor did it cringe at the dropping of the ball. Rather, it contorted in a series of expressions, the ambiguous shifting of a face that could not cooperate with its owner. His sister picked up the ball, and in her hands it remained.
I looked at the both of them, then to the fans, and then to them again. Suddenly I was not there but standing in front of my father in his kitchen chair—his head in his hands while I stood awkwardly in front of him in uniform. I held out to him my accomplishment; I pressed it into his hands. Out it slipped, tumbling to the floor, where it shattered. Unconcerned, my father looked on, ever inward into a world none of us could understand, none of us could penetrate.
Fans, parents, and kids alike, stared at me. All of them were more than capable of receiving that ball, all willing to react with the excitement I’d come to expect. I felt their gazes crush me, as if I should be doing something I couldn’t do.
I was imploding now, falling to pieces from the inside, until the uniform I wore was a hollow shell moving on its own. I didn’t want to give the ball anymore. I wanted to give a part of me. I wanted to tear my uniform off and wring out every last ounce of magic it had within it. I wanted everyone to know how powerless I felt in a costume that people believed could fix everything, yet fixed nothing.
If I could have broken my dreams into pieces and sold them for deliverance, I swear I would have. All I had was a baseball. And while so many people would have fallen over themselves to get it, and would have pushed, argued, and cussed me for not choosing them to bestow it upon, I chose that boy, the one person in the stadium who couldn’t take it. The one person I could offer nothing to no matter how hard I squeezed the fabric of my outfit. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t going to change. His sister smiled on, her patient face still watching me, ball in hand. I looked at her but couldn’t find any words. Then she spoke, saying, “I’m sorry.”
She must have known her brother couldn’t take the ball. She must have grown immune to the broken joys. She knew the game, and its most revered