What Hearts Page 6

  “Look—”

  “No? Well, how about he slates the roof? Too wet today. Besides, we really don’t want it to be some simple one-time job, do we? To get yourself a nice room, you should have to go through something long and twisty. He’s already done a divorce and a remarriage and seven moves in three years, so we can’t let him repeat any of that. Just be going through the motions. Well hey, I know!”

  She snapped her fingers. Dave just glared at her. Asa watched from the landing, stooping to see their faces under the ceiling. His mother took a step up to Dave and put a hand on his chest. She smiled. He scowled, unmoving.

  “ I know,” she repeated. “If we can’t think of anything to get out of him, well, then, we can just reserve the right to task him whenever we feel like it in the future!” She gave a fake gay laugh that made even Asa wince. But Dave took it without a flinch, right in his face. She went on, patting him on the chest fondly. “We can just give him a hard time every now and then on general principles, because he’s got this nice room he doesn’t really deserve. How about that? Solves a lot of our problems. Honey!” she called up the stairs to Asa. Her voice was strong now, natural and direct, without sarcasm. “Go ahead and pick your room and carry your stuff up and arrange it however you like. Leave room for your bed.” Then she returned Dave’s glare, took her hand slowly off his chest, and went out the door to get another load from the rented truck.

  In the next couple, of months Asa decided that what bothered Dave about his room was not so much that it was nice, but that it was far away: he could really be alone there. There were several things about this that could not fail to aggravate Dave, Asa knew. First, Dave did not trust the state of solitude. He clearly did not think anything good could come of someone being by himself; Asa could not speculate about exactly which evils Dave believed arose from such isolation, but it was obvious that bad things were supposed to happen when you let a kid think too much, or play by himself, or read. Second, Dave did not trust Asa. Again Asa was unable to come up with ideas of what specific sins he was capable of committing up there—but he knew it wasn’t really a matter of specifics. Something about him made Dave suspicious.

  So he was never all that surprised when Dave came quietly up the stairs and popped into the room without knocking. Asa did keep his door closed. Dave always asked him why-implying that anyone who shut his door must have something to hide—and Asa always replied that he liked being “snug.” This was true, Also, Asa liked listening to rhythm and blues at low volume on his radio and did not want the music to intrude on the television shows Dave and his mother watched downstairs. These reasons never seemed quite to mollify Dave, who looked suspiciously around the room from a step or two inside the doorway. Asa was usually reading, or drawing, or building a model car, so after his snap check Dave always withdrew without explaining the visit by so much as a feigned message.

  One Saturday morning in early October Asa was sitting on the floor in a dormer, reading Treasure Island beneath the window, when Dave opened the door and stepped in. Asa looked up. Something was different. Dave was wearing sneakers, thick-soled black high-tops. Asa had never seen them before. Even stranger, Dave was holding a football in his right hand.

  “It’s sunny,” he said. He snuck a quick look around the room, but he seemed to be trying to keep his eye on Asa this time.

  “Yes,” said Asa. He held up his book. “I’m reading by it,”

  Dave started to say something but stopped his mouth. Then, with an underhand snap of the wrist, he flicked the football across the room in a whirling spiral. Without thinking, Asa dropped Treasure Island and caught it.

  Dave grinned. “Good,” he said.

  Asa stared at the ball gripped unmoving in his hands. He was amazed: A second ago it had been whizzing two ways at once. “How did you make it go like that?” he said.

  “Come on out and I’ll teach you,” Dave said.

  So they went out and threw, the football to each other for almost three hours. During that time, Dave taught Asa quite a few very specific things—grip, arm motion, foot placement, the shifting of weight, the rotating of hips. How to plot a path for the throw to drop just where the running receiver would be. Dave did not instruct so much as show, perhaps—“Watch my wrist,” he would say, (instead of an analytical explanation)—but Asa knew how to learn things.

  He was thrilled by the whole day: the cool edge in the air, the dry detachment with which Dave offered simple expertise, the thin yellow of the light, and the passing itself, especially the eerie connection he felt between the hand that had just released the ball arcing into space and the hands that caught and carried it away on an unchecked run. But there was more going on than just the sport. After a half hour Asa realized quite clearly that for the first time he and Dave were giving free play to the natural tendencies that usually brought them into tight-lipped contention: Dave was being an authority, and Asa was being intelligent.

  During their first couple of years as fake father and fake son, Dave had tried to make Asa do many things—but he was terrible at it, like a bulldog sergeant major crushing the recruit in a bad army movie. As for Asa, he tried to make Dave respect his ability to think—but he was a bit of a show-off, snapping out uncanny perceptions about things he knew were supposed to be beyond his reach, racing ahead of both his mother and Dave to note the end points of ramifications just opening before them. When the family considered anything at all together, from dinner at a particular restaurant to a drive in a rainstorm, Asa rattled off the string of consequences attendant on each alternative choice. At eleven he was already a pedant. Dave, at thirty, was still a bully.

  They both knew the terms of their life together. But sports, it appeared, was different—perhaps it was not really a part of life. Dave could show him how to let a football slip off his fingertips without the chippy force that usually pushed his commands, and Asa could accept the instruction without feeling belittled, without having to show that he had already figured it out alone, Asa asked himself: Why? Was it because sports did not “matter” (the way saying “Sir” and “Ma’am” in exactly the right tone of voice mattered, or having a short enough haircut, or any of the other things that Dave demanded)? Or was it because sports—clearly a male domain—never brought Asa’s mother into play between them? Asa thought about it a lot, as he and Dave expanded on this newfound opportunity to enjoy, if not harmony, at least cooperative neutrality, by playing football and then basketball throughout the fall and winter.

  One day they were shooting foul shots and Dave missed five in a row. Without thinking (he never spoke to Dave without thinking; the slightest carelessness could be a step into a red elevator shaft of wrath) Asa said, “You’re not bending your knees before you shoot. So you’re standing up too straight and your shots are flat and long.” He added, as if suddenly aware of his temerity, “Maybe we’re tired.”

  Dave stared at him. His eyes narrowed for a moment. Then he looked at the basket, bent his knees, and bobbed a couple of times, spinning the ball in his hands as he eyed the rim. He hit three shots in a row, then said, “Let’s go.” On the way home he patted Asa once on the shoulder and said, “You’re learning good.” Asa. felt good—cold, appraising, alert only to the technicalities of form and result: he was relieved of emotion. This was sports: action without emotion, liberty from putting anything on the line.

  Or so it seemed, for a long time over the winter. Certainly there was less tension in the house, and Asa equated less tension with less emotion. He and Dave would return home at dusk, and his mother would be happily setting out the family dinner; they would eat quietly while she talked nonstop; Dave would take his second cup of coffee into the den to watch television, and Asa would scoot upstairs. Often he snuck back down a little later, after Dave had fallen asleep in front of The Beverly Hillbillies or 77 Sunset Strip, to help his mother wash dishes. Oddly, this was a household job Dave had never assigned to him; Asa was certain it was because he did not like the idea of the two
of them alone together.

  One night as he was scrubbing a glass casserole dish, his mother said, “I’m sure glad to see my boys getting along so good.”

  He hesitated; when she expressed herself in this girlish-whimsy way, complete with grammatical mistakes—-he couldn’t convince himself she was being genuine. How could she be so shrewd and resolute sometimes, then so content with cuteness at others? He sensed a huge longing in his mother, a catalogue of keen needs that were beyond him and Dave, even together, even with his long-gone father thrown in for good measure. And often when he suspected her of playing a part, he sensed behind it a desperate will to sincerity; she was trying out a way of being someone people could readily understand. It was not the kind of acting he held in contempt. It was a sadder, nobler performance.

  “We’re kind of having fun,” he said to his casserole dish.

  His mother sighed happily and rubbed brisk circles into a dinner plate with her towel. “Fun,” she said.

  Asa tried to keep it going. He said, “Dave’s teaching me a lot.”

  His mother said nothing for a moment, and he imagined she was putting the plate away. But then her arms closed around him from behind. “Maybe,” she said, her mouth pressed against his ear. “Maybe so, baby doll. But ‘fun,’ now—well, I mink my boy has just as much to teach him. And that’s what I like.”

  One day in late March, he and Dave were walking along a cinder path that wound through woods to the basketball court outside his school. Buds were poised everywhere, as if waiting for a cue; a sweeping glance took in the sight of a misty green below the surface of everything, but focusing on a single branch showed nothing especially verdant. Asa drew a happy sigh and announced that he wanted to play Little League baseball.

  Dave frowned. “Well,” he said. “Not much of a game.”

  Asa was ready for this; perhaps the weather made him quick, even funny. “I think baseball’s got everything,” he said with a smile, “including dullness.”

  Dave grunted. They walked on. Around them the sumac was sending up its antenna-like shoots. Dave said, “It’s complicated, baseball. Too many things to do—catch, throw, swing a bat, run bases. Two months, you can barely shoot a jump shot. Too hard for you.”

  Asa amazed himself by laughing. “Hey, but you’re a great teacher,” he said, going so far as to clap Dave on the back. “And I’m a fantastic student.”

  There wasn’t much Dave could say to that. So, reluctantly, he agreed. But from that moment, Asa felt their cool detachment begin to clench into some sort of grip. Starting the next day, they practiced baseball—not all those complicated parts of the game, but just the elemental art of hitting the ball. However, Dave’s instruction lost its air of indifference, took on an edge; and Asa found himself more and more determined to show his stepfather something unexpected and strong. It was still spring, and in the paths and fields fern tendrils unwound and hot new leaves splayed outward. But he and Dave turned away from the green and tightened up.

  THREE

  Somehow the great Table Talk team could not score. In the fourth inning two men reached base with no one down, but the next two hitters struck out on terrible pitches, and the third lashed a line drive that Asa outran to right center and caught one-handed over his shoulder. In the fifth the Cool Guy on the mound walked the bases full, and as he came out of the game, his teammates looked at each other almost with relief: “Ah, this is more like it, this is where we lose.” The next hitter chopped a grounder the new pitcher scooped at and missed—but his mitt knocked it back to home, where the catcher was waiting with his foot on the plate for the force-out. Feeling better, the pitcher threw hard down the pipe to the following batter, who hit the ball on the nose right back at him. It smacked into his glove, spinning him half around; the base runners thought he was watching the ball sail in a flash into center field, so they ran. Grinning, the pitcher trotted to first and tagged the base for the easiest of double plays.

  As the innings passed, the facts began to sink in to the Cool Guys: they were not being clobbered. Hits started to fall in. In the top of the fifth they got three base runners, and only a pickoff and a double play kept them off the Scoreboard. In the top of the sixth, the last inning, Tim led off with a sharp single to center. Asa, swinging down at a low pitch, crushed it into the infield. Spraying dirt, the ball bounded over the ducking second baseman, and Tim hustled to third. Freddie struck but trying to uppercut a sacrifice fly to the outfield, but everyone hollered happily from the dugout. Asa, on first, saw three of the Table Talk infielders glance fretfully at the hopeful Cool Guys jumping up and down. Then, he, too, knew Quik-E-Freeze had a chance.

  Pete, the catcher, was up. Catchers, according to Coach Henderson, were supposed to be the smartest hitters, because they knew all the tricks a pitcher could call upon. Pete, failing to notice that at this level of baseball there were no tricks, believed him, and Asa could tell that for this at bat Pete thought himself cunning as a raccoon. He waggled his bat, cocked his head, relaxed his hands, and shot beams of daring at the pitcher. It was unnerving, apparently: the first two pitches scudded in the dirt. Pete didn’t even watch them.

  As he leaned into his lead at first base, Asa thought: How could this be? How could we all know what is about to happen? For it was clear that everyone did know. The Table Talk bench, usually as cute and mechanical in its cheering as a Baptist child choir on TV, now slunk forward in gloomy foreboding. The fielders, brows wrinkled, kicked at pebbles between pitches, sometimes not looking up until the ball was on the way to the plate. The pitcher sucked in breaths as if they were cough syrup. But the Cool Guys—hey, life was great! Tim stood on third with his hand on his hips and blew a large pink bubble that did not pop. Asa’s legs tingled with speed-to-be. The boys in the dugout laughed. It was as if Pete had already hit the ball somewhere far away. There was no doubt.

  The pitcher decided it was time to get it over with. He threw an easy pitch that floated to the plate at the level of the FREEZE! logo on Pete’s chest, and Pete stepped and swung. The ball was in the sky before anyone heard the solid tock of impact. Asa held back, waiting to see it land, but Tim streaked home and hit the plate at the same instant the ball dropped onto the grass way beyond the running boys in left center. Now Asa swept around second and burned toward third. The “coach” there—a third-string infielder—was too busy cheering with two hands in the air, his eyes on the ball, to give Asa a sign to stop or go, so Asa cut across the base and sped on toward home. As he bore down on the catcher, his universe shrank: he was running in a tunnel and the opening at the end got smaller as he got nearer. There, the last thing in the world, was the All-Star catcher, his mask off, his face sweaty and red, crouched with his weight on both legs, blocking the plate; his eyes flashed over Asa’s head, pleading for the ball; his mitt, as Asa watched, began to turn and reach. Asa slid without slackening his speed, shooting his right foot between the catcher’s legs at the plate and kicking out with his left at one of the boy’s planted legs. He scooted almost entirely through before the catcher fell heavily onto him. Beneath his left hip he felt the hard rubber of the plate.

  The umpire above him yelled something, but Asa did not pay attention. He was too busy trying to untangle himself from James Neal and stand up; now, finally, it seemed to be his turn to hoot and holler and leap about, and he wanted to strike while the urge was on—deep in his chest he was ready to be delivered of the strange, cool restraint that always kept him apart from his teammates’ ups and downs. Up at last, he shook free and spun toward the dugout with a wordless whoop, a scream of joy, waving his fists in front of him as if he had caught something wild in each. But his teammates stood with their mouths open, watching someone large who was at that moment bustling past Asa toward home plate, making noise. Asa, after a glance at the stunned boys, turned to follow their stare.

  What had rushed past him was Coach Henderson. It was hard to recognize him. The crisply mannered, fine-featured man was now hunched and flailing, his
face like a plum-colored knot squeezed out from his humpy shoulders. He was snarling at the umpire; Asa noticed, as the ump stepped away and Coach Henderson turned his head to follow, that the coach had crooked teeth. Asa had never seen them before; he would never have expected them to be crooked. The opposing coach, a consistently jolly Greek man named Stravros who owned the Table Talk Bakery, was out of his dugout, trying to catch Coach Henderson by one of his elbows. There seemed to be four or five of them in the air, but he couldn’t snag one. Then the umpire, his face full of fear, shot his arm into the air.

  Still Asa did not know; he stood there not knowing, his fists of celebration still made. It was only when Coach Henderson stormed by, flushed with anger and, now, with what Asa recognized as shame, and said, “Sorry, Asa, but you were safe, my boy,” that he realized. He was not safe. He was out. The umpire had called him out.

  He walked back to the dugout. A couple of boys patted him and said, “We got one anyhow.” On the field, as if in a hurry to reestablish the nature of things, a Cool Guy swung at a bad pitch and popped out. Asa found his glove and trotted out to center.

  Out? Well, perhaps. How did he know? He hadn’t been watching: he had been in there, inside the moment—tangled in legs and red shin guards and twisting arms at the end of the tunnel, not watching, not thinking, just concentrating on getting to the plate. What kind of judge was he? For once, it was up to somebody else to see the sequence of things, and somebody had done so. Out? It could be. There were only two choices, and one had been made. Asa would have preferred being safe, but preference was not knowledge. He wasn’t angry. In a way, he was thrilled, simply to have been too involved to know.