Alive on Opening Day (2 page)

The good news for Dan was
that the Red Hawks
did
need a new third baseman, because both Tom Rumpke and Eddie
Watson were graduating in June. The bad news was that Harris’
choice for the last scholarship slot had come down to Dan and Elmer
Deskins, from Melville.

As luck — or the baseball
Gods — would have it, the Eagles were hosting the Warriors on the
third Monday in May, just five days before Dan was set to graduate
from high school. By eight o’clock that evening, the two teams had
battled to a 2-2 tie going into the bottom of the seventh inning in
the first game of the sectionals.

The first two Eagles
batters of the frame struck out against big Jim Jackson, Melville’s
fire-balling righty, and then leadoff man and second baseman Brent
Wilson managed to slap a single to right field. Center fielder Mike
Carter worked Jackson to a full count, then fouling off a couple of
pitches before taking ball four, a close-call breaking pitch just
off the outside corner of the plate.

Dan had watched Carter’s
epic plate appearance unfold from the on-deck circle and said a
little prayer with each practice swing and each pitch from Jackson.
As Carter trotted to first and Wilson ran to second, Dan looked
into the stands to find his parents, sitting behind home plate, and
Gabbie, positioned next to third. The two women smiled and blew him
kisses, while his father greeted him with a steely gaze and a
single, solemn nod.

You can do this, the old
man was telling his only son.

The game, the whole
season, and Dan’s entire baseball career had come down to this one
at-bat. Both he and Elmer had collected a single hit on the night,
neither one scoring or driving in a run. Elmer had handled one
liner smashed in his direction, but Dan had chased down a high fly
ball that nearly landed in Gabbie’s lap before he snatched it from
in front of her. It was as even a matchup as Dan could have
imagined, but he had one last chance to differentiate himself. His
college hopes were on the line.

He strode to the plate and
pawed at the dirt with his cleats, then stepped into the box to set
his feet. He took a couple of practice swings, steadied his body,
and stared out toward the mound, where Jackson stood looking like a
bull ready to charge. Behind Dan, catcher Jason Fisher moved
slightly, and Jackson nodded his agreement with the sign. He reared
back and unleashed a searing fastball that popped into the
catcher’s mitt seemingly before it had even left the pitcher’s
hand.

Strike one.

Dan stepped out of the box
and adjusted his helmet. “Come on, Danny!” Gabbie called from
behind third. He stepped back up to the plate and looked out toward
Jackson again.

This time, the big hurler
did not even wait for the sign but uncorked another flaming heater.
Dan was more prepared, but still couldn’t catch up to the scorching
fastball, and he swung behind it.

Strike two.

Dan stepped out again and
took a few hacks, trying to ratchet up his bat speed to match what
Jackson was offering.

“
Look for the change!”
coach Croft called from the bench.

“
You can do it, Dan!” his
mother yelled.

Once more, Dan stepped
into the box, his coach’s words still echoing. The next pitch
should be off-speed, and it might be Dan’s best chance of the whole
at-bat to make contact. The catcher gave his sign, Jackson nodded,
and the ball came tumbling toward home plate. Dan recognized the
pitch almost immediately as a change-up but his muscles were still
charged from the heat of the previous two pitches and he swung too
early. The ball bounded toward third base and bounced once inside
the line before angling across the chalk. Dan sprinted toward first
base and was within 20 feet of the bag when the third-base umpire
called it: “Foul ball!”

Dan trotted back toward
home plate and caught Coach Croft waving to him out of the corner
of his eye. Dan stopped and bent toward the dugout, trying to hear
what his coach had to say. Croft put his hands on either side of
his mouth to shield his lips and mouthed, “Curveball.” Dan nodded,
but he didn’t think his coach was right about this one. Jackson
would be eager to end the game, and he’d want to do it in style if
he could.

With all due respect to
Coach Croft, Dan settled into the box with his pitch radar set on
dead red: it would be a fastball down the center of the plate, and
Dan was going to smash it.

He adjusted his jersey,
took one half swing, and crouched into his stance, staring straight
into Jackson’s eyes. The right-hander didn’t even look at his
catcher, returning Dan’s stare instead, and adding a smirk for good
measure. “C’mon, you big oaf,” Dan thought. “Put it right in
here.”

Jackson set, lifted his
hands over his head before kicking back into a full windup, and
uncorked his pitch. The spin looked strange to Dan, and he couldn’t
quite identify what type of pitch it was. It was still moving with
plenty of steam, though, so, in that split second between Jackson’s
release and the moment when Dan had to begin his swing, he decided
it was a fastball.

Dan cocked his wrists
backwards, picked up his front foot and strode into the oncoming
freight train before he realized the pitch was breaking inside.
It
was
a
curveball!

He was already halfway
into his swing and couldn’t stop his momentum, but he watched the
ball sail across the midline between the mound and the plate, then
veer up and in, directly into his twisting field of vision. The
head of his bat whipped around behind his left shoulder and spun
him toward the third base line, and he caught a glimpse of Gabbie
in the stands, bringing her hands to her face to complete her
growing expression of horror.

Her compact flashed in the
low sun, and there was a loud crack. Had he hit the
ball?

Then everything went
black.

CHAPTER THREE

Awake

Dan woke to a ray of
sunlight that found its way through a pinhole in his bedroom blind,
and he rolled onto his side to face into the still-dark part of the
room. As his eyes adjusted to the morning shadows, he thought of
the dream he had been having and tried to grasp its details like a
drowning man reaching for a wispy, rope-shaped cloud.

He had been at a baseball
game, he was pretty sure, and Gabbie was there, but beyond that, he
couldn’t piece together the patchy memories. Funny how dreams are
like that, Dan thought. One minute, they’re everything you have in
the whole world and the next minute, you’re awake and your dreams
are completely gone, never to be heard from again. That thought
made him sad, but he wasn’t sure why. More than sadness, though,
something about those glimpses of his dream bothered him, and it
made him think harder, clearing away the cobwebs of
sleep.

Before he even realized
it, he was sitting up in the bed and then standing on the shaggy
green carpet in his room. He could see much better having had a few
minutes for his eyes to adjust, and he was surprised at how clean
his room looked. All his books were on their shelves, his baseball
cards were all in the two shoe boxes he kept on top of his desk,
and his floor was completely devoid of dirty clothes. In fact,
except for the bed he had just been sleeping in, nothing at all was
out of place.

And that made Dan even
more uneasy. He didn’t think his mom would have cleaned his room —
she hadn’t done that since he was in sixth grade — and
he
certainly hadn’t
cleaned it. Who else could it have been, then? Gabbie?

After pondering the
unknowable mystery of his tidy room for about a minute, Dan
shrugged and walked toward the hallway. Maybe a shower would clear
his head.

While he showered, Dan
thought about the day before, which had been the last Monday of his
high school career and the first day of the baseball sectional. He
had eaten lunch with his underclassman buddies, probably for the
last time, and then he met Gabbie after school for a quick snack
before heading into the locker room to get ready for the game. The
old-timers like his parents always told him to enjoy these moments,
because they were some of the best of his life, but Dan never had
time for that kind of mushy sentiment. Now, though, with the real
world staring him in the face, Dan started to think maybe they were
right after all.

He finished his shower and
toweled off, then walked back to his room to get dressed for
…

And it wasn’t until that
moment, when he had to decide which clothes to wear, that Dan
realized he must be late for school. He tore down the hallway and
grabbed the windup clock from his nightstand, throwing open the
blind to read the time: 10:15.

Oh, man … he
was
late!

Sure, it was senior week
and most of Dan’s friends were bagging completely, but he still had
buddies to see and, more importantly, Gabbie. She was just a
junior, so she had to be in school all week,
and
she had finals. She wouldn’t
have much time for him, but at the very least, they could walk to
class together a few more times.

Besides — and he would
never admit this to anyone but himself — Dan kind of liked being in
school. It was one of the reasons he wanted to go to college, along
with playing baseball and
studying
baseball.

College!

Up until
that
moment, he had
forgotten all about the game the night before and what it meant for
his college career, or lack of the same. He was dressed by this
point and standing in front of his mirror combing his hair, which
seemed shorter than he remembered. His face was clean-shaven, too,
despite his being well known for being a “blue beard” — even early
in the day, his stubble was usually thick enough to discolor his
cheeks.

Oh well, maybe it was the
dim bedroom light, Dan thought.

He put the comb down on
the dresser in front of him and stared off into space, trying to
remember what had happened in the sectional game against Melville.
He knew the two teams were evenly matched coming into the contest,
and he had a vague notion they had played a tight game, but he
couldn’t put together any specifics.

Had they won? Had Dan
collected any big hits or made any memorable plays to tilt the
scales in his favor? And what about coach Harris from IWU — had he
even been at the game like he had promised?

Dan had a thought and
stepped back to his nightstand, but the only items there were the
alarm clock and his small lamp. He turned on the light and moved
the clock, then looked behind the nightstand and under the bed.
Next, he rifled through the two drawers in the stand and the three
drawers of his dresser. He searched along every shelf in his
bookcase and looked through all the nooks and crannies of his desk,
but it wasn’t there.

The card coach Harris had
given him freshman year, and which Dan had kept by his bedside all
through high school, was nowhere to be found. Did that mean Harris
had picked Elmer Deskins over Dan for the last scholarship slot at
IWU? Maybe that’s why Dan couldn’t remember anything from the
previous evening. It would at least make some sense — he had been
so distraught that he tore up the business card and then lost the
ugly memories in his swirl of trauma.

Wow, Dan thought to
himself. That’s some pretty heavy drama for a guy. He laughed at
himself and decided it was much better to try and find the real
answers than to sit around speculating on his own. Gabbie would
know the truth about what had happened, but she was already in
school. No, Dan needed to see Dave Gentry or Chris Bisler, his
fellow seniors on the baseball team.

Dan’s mom kept the team
phone list taped to the refrigerator, right next to the wall
calendar so it would be easy to plan their days around practices
and games, and to place any baseball-related call they needed to
make. Eager to find out what had happened on Monday and at least
slightly concerned he couldn’t remember for himself, Dan padded
back down the hallway in his bare feet toward the
kitchen.

The call list was right
where he thought it should be, next the refrigerator . It did seem
a bit dingier than he had expected, but he supposed the paper
didn’t need to be crisp to serve his purposes. The wall phone hung
beside the calendar, where Dan lifted the cradle and dialed Bis’
number, since it was first alphabetically. As the phone rang, Dan
shifted his focus to the calendar and noticed his mom had flipped
it back from May to March.

Strange, he
thought.

It was stranger still that
none of his baseball practices or games were on the day grid that
hung below a grainy picture of a hummingbird buzzing around a fir
bush. He looked at the blocks his mother had circled and read the
entries she made, and they all focused on her volunteer activities:
Saturday mornings at the library, Thursday afternoons at the animal
shelter, Monday mornings at the nursing home.