This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel (12 page)

“Easter, baby, where are you?”

“Put Marcus back on, please,” I said. My hands had started to sweat, and I could feel my heart beating in my ears.

“Don’t be afraid, honey. The police are going to find you; they’re looking for you and your sister now. You’re somewhere with your daddy?”

“Marcus said they’re in Myrtle Beach,” a man said in the background. It was Marcus’s dad.

“Myrtle Beach?” his mom said. “Okay, okay.”

“Please put Marcus back on,” I said. “Please.” But she wouldn’t, and she wouldn’t stop talking, telling me it was going to be okay.

“What’s she saying?” asked Marcus’s dad in the background. His mom didn’t say anything to him; she just kept talking to me. But then the line went quiet.

“Hello?” I said. I could hear Marcus’s parents talking, but I didn’t know what they were saying. “Hello?” I said again. I pictured Marcus’s mom standing in the kitchen with her hand over the receiver, whispering to his dad. I didn’t know what to do, so I hung up. A few quarters clinked into the change return.

It wasn’t until starting back down the hallway toward the arcade that I understood what I’d just done. Everybody in Gastonia probably already knew we were missing. Now Marcus’s mom and dad knew where we were and who we were with. It wouldn’t be but a couple of minutes before the police would know it all too.

After going through all Wade’s quarters, me and Ruby stood out on the sidewalk watching the roller coaster while Wade called a taxi.

Just below the sounds of the roller coaster and the music and the noises of the video games in the arcade was another sound. Ruby heard it too, and we looked around until we found it; across the street to our left was a pitching cage. The noise we’d heard was a baseball being thrown against a rubber curtain; on it was a picture of a catcher squatting behind home plate. A man about Wade’s age was pitching, and another man sat on a stool beside the cage where a little screen with red numbers showed how fast the man’s pitches were. The first pitch was forty-four, the second forty-seven. A group of people stood around, clapping and laughing.

When she heard Wade hang up the phone, Ruby looked at him and pointed to the pitching cage. “I want to do that,” she said. Wade’s mouth made a straight line, and he squinted his eyes like he was thinking about something he didn’t want to think about. “Please?” Ruby said.

“Okay,” Wade said. “We’ll go watch.” He took Ruby’s hand and she took mine, and the three of us crossed the street.

We stood by the cage and watched the man throw a few more pitches before his turn was up. His friends were still clapping and cheering. The man operating the cage looked over at the three of us from where he sat on the stool. He was fat and his butt and his thighs sagged off the stool like his pants had been stuffed with water balloons.

“Y’all want to give it a shot?” he asked.

Ruby looked up at Wade and leaned her body against his leg. “Can I try it?” she asked.

“How much is it?” Wade asked the fat man on the stool.

“Ten pitches for five dollars,” he said. Wade fished his wallet out of his back pocket and found a five-dollar bill. He held it out to the man and the man took it without even standing up from his stool.

Wade reached down and put his hand on Ruby’s head. She looked up at him. “You can throw five pitches,” Wade said, holding up his other hand and spreading out all his fingers. He pointed at me. “And Easter gets to throw five too.”

“I don’t want to,” I said. “Ruby can throw all of them.”

“No,” he said. “I want to see what you can do. The old man wants to see what kind of arm his daughters have.”

Ruby stood at the front of the cage and looked at the picture of the catcher that was drawn on the curtain at the other end. The baseballs the man had been throwing sat in between her and the catcher. The fat man on the stool gestured toward the baseballs.

“Go ahead,” he said. Ruby walked into the cage and rolled the baseballs out to where we stood, and Wade bent down and scooped them up as they came toward us. He waited on her to walk out of the cage, and then he handed her a ball. She spun around to throw it, but Wade put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“You mind if she takes a few steps in?” he asked the fat man, nodding his head toward the catcher. The fat man just shrugged his shoulders. He held a wad of money in his hand with a rubber band around it. He unfastened the rubber band and rolled Wade’s five-dollar bill into the wad.

“It don’t matter to me,” he said. Wade kept his hands on Ruby’s shoulders and walked her about ten feet into the cage.

“This looks good,” he said. Ruby reared back her arm and lobbed her first pitch at the catcher. It arced like a rainbow and fell against the curtain just above the catcher’s head. I looked at the little screen beside the fat man: the red numbers said twenty-four. Ruby turned around and ran toward me, but she stopped by the fat man’s stool and looked at the twenty-four on the screen.

“Twenty-four!” she said to Wade.

“That’s great,” Wade said. “And you still got four more.”

Ruby finished her pitches, and then she walked out of the cage and brought all three baseballs to me.

“Your turn,” she said.

“I don’t really want to,” I said. Wade followed Ruby out of the cage and stood beside me.

“Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” He nudged me with his elbow. “I want to see you sling some heat.” I sighed loud enough for them both to hear me, and I set two of the baseballs down and stood up straight and took a step toward the cage. “All right,” Wade said, clapping his hands, “bring the heat.”

I held the ball in front of me with both hands and stared down the cage at the catcher on the rubber curtain, and then I turned my left shoulder toward him and raised my right leg just like I’d seen John Smoltz do a hundred times. I threw the ball as hard as I could, and it smacked against the rubber about three feet to the left of the catcher’s head. I looked at the screen to see how fast I’d thrown it: thirty-six.

“All right!” Wade said. He clapped, and when I turned and looked at him he had his hand raised like he was waiting on me to give him a high five. I reached out and smacked his palm, and I felt my face getting hot and I knew it was turning red, but I couldn’t help smiling. Ruby raised her hand for a high five too, and I smacked her palm just like I’d smacked Wade’s. I bent down and picked up another ball, and when I stood up straight I could feel Wade standing right behind me.

“Just focus on that mitt. Just imagine the ball going right into it.” He leaned over me and put his hands on my wrists, and he raised both my hands up to my chest. “Now, when you bring your knee up, make sure your left shoulder is pointing toward the catcher.” I stared at the catcher’s glove and imagined the ball smacking right into it. When I turned my shoulders to begin my pitch I realized that Wade had stepped away from me. I brought my knee up just like I had before, but this time I kept my eyes on the mitt and turned my left shoulder in like Wade had told me to. I threw the ball as hard as I could, and this time it smacked the catcher right in his mask. The screen said forty-two. I heard Wade clapping behind me.

“Right in there,” he said. “If he took it in the mask it’s his fault.” I didn’t look back at him this time because I was smiling for real, and I didn’t want him to see it. I bent down and picked up the last baseball. When I stood up straight I heard another voice behind me.

“Look out!” the voice said. “You can’t touch this!” I turned and saw the four kids who’d sat behind me in the haunted house. One of the girls was still holding her big stuffed teddy bear, but the tall boy must’ve finished his lemonade because he had his hands in his pockets. The shorter boy standing beside him laughed, and then they gave each other some kind of handshake that ended with them bumping fists. The girls just stood there staring at me like they didn’t recognize me from earlier in the night.

I looked down at Ruby; she’d turned around and was looking at them too. When I looked over at Wade I saw that he was staring at the boys with a crazy smile on his face like he thought what they’d said was funny.

“Y’all play ball?” he asked. I couldn’t believe he’d even talk to them, much less try to make friends with them. He had to know they were making fun of us: the way we were dressed, the way we looked.

I turned back to the cage and stared at the catcher’s mitt, trying to concentrate on it—trying to picture the ball smacking right up against it—but the longer I stared at it the more I felt like I might start crying. Instead I threw the ball as hard as I could. I didn’t care if it was a strike or not; I just wanted it to hurt whatever it hit. It smacked the curtain about three feet to the left of the catcher again, but this time the screen said forty-five. I turned around to make sure Wade had seen it, but he hadn’t even been watching me. He’d walked over to the two boys and was talking to them.

“Are you serious?” the tall boy asked. He looked at the shorter boy standing next to him and smiled. He looked back at Wade. “All right,” he said. I looked down at Ruby. She’d been watching me the whole time like she was waiting to see how hard I was going to throw the next pitch.

“Come on,” she said. She pointed to the forty-five that was still on the screen. “You can throw harder than that,” she said.

“I don’t want to pitch anymore,” I said. I handed the two balls to Ruby and stepped back.

“You sure?” she asked. I nodded my head. She walked into the cage and stopped at about the same spot where she’d thrown her first five pitches. I turned to my left and faced the beach, and I stood there wishing I could look right through the building across the street so I could see the ocean instead of being able to just barely hear it. Ruby’s first pitch smacked against the curtain, and then a few seconds later I heard the second. I didn’t hear Wade say a word to her once she finished, and I knew he hadn’t been watching her either.

But I turned around as soon as I heard what Wade said next. “Me and my buddy here are going ten more.” Wade held out a five-dollar bill to the fat man on the stool. He took it and fished out his roll of dollars again and started unfastening the rubber band. The tall boy had left his friends and was standing beside Wade in front of the cage. He looked nervous to be standing so close to Wade, but he smiled like he was trying to hide it.

“Come on, Evan,” the other boy said, clapping his hands. He and the two girls were standing in the same spot. The girls looked like they didn’t know quite what to make of what was happening. I didn’t know what to make of it either. Wade gathered up the three baseballs and sat them down by Evan’s feet, and then he picked up one and handed it to him.

“All right,” Wade said. “Five pitches apiece.” He raised his hand and pointed at the two girls. “And whoever throws the hardest gets to take that teddy bear home.” Now I knew why one of the girls didn’t look as excited as her friend and the boy who was standing beside them.

“This is all you, Evan,” the boy said. “You got this.” Evan rolled the baseball around in his hand, and then he turned his cap around to face forward. He squeezed the baseball with both hands like he was trying to make it smaller, and then he moved his head in a circle and rolled his shoulders forward and backward. Then he just stood and stared at the curtain where the catcher squatted with his raised mitt. It wasn’t until he brought the ball to his chest and cupped his left hand to hide his grip that I knew for certain that he’d thrown a pitch before. My heart sank into my stomach, and I think it might’ve sunk even lower after I heard the ball smack that rubber curtain. I looked at the screen: it said sixty-nine.

“There it is,” the short boy said. “That’s what I’m talking about.” Even the girls seemed interested, and they took a step toward the cage to get a better look.

The fat man leaned forward on his stool and took a look at the screen and snorted out a laugh. Then he sat up straight and crossed his arms. “That’s the fastest I’ve seen tonight,” he said, looking at Wade like he was letting him know he didn’t have a chance against this kid. I looked at Wade too, and then I looked at Evan where he was squeezing another ball with both hands, just like he’d done to the first one. He was bigger than Wade, and he actually looked like an athlete; Wade was at least twenty years older and looked like a skinny man with a belly who’d probably never played a single sport in his entire life. Now that he was clean-shaven I could see where the skin sagged under his chin, and I wondered how his body could seem so skinny and soft at the same time.

Evan went through his windup just like he had before, and this pitch smacked the curtain even louder, and it hit the catcher right in the chest. Seventy-one flashed on the screen. He stepped back and looked at Wade, but Wade just stared at the spot where the ball had hit.

“That was a nice pitch,” he said. “You’ve got a good arm.” Evan smiled like he’d already won the bet, and every one of us knew he was right. His next three pitches were just as fast. The last one hit the catcher in the mask and came in at seventy-four. The short boy laughed after he saw where the ball hit the curtain. He and Evan gave each other a high five, and the girl who’d ridden through the haunted house with him went over and put her arm through Evan’s.

I watched them celebrate, but then something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye; it was Wade. He was walking back and forth on the sidewalk, swinging both his arms like helicopter blades. The group of teenagers noticed it too. They stopped talking and watched him.

“What the hell?” Evan said. They all laughed. I looked down at Ruby; she was staring at Wade too. He walked up to the cage and stopped and stared down at the catcher, and then he bent down and picked up one of the baseballs. He rolled it around in his left hand, and then he squeezed it between both hands just like Evan had done. He stood up straight and let his hands hang at his sides, the ball cupped in his left hand. I’d never thought about him being left-handed until then. He brought it up to his chest and cupped his right hand to hide the ball, and then he just froze.

He stood there like a scarecrow in a cartoon, and he looked like a scarecrow too; his shirt and his shorts suddenly looked like they were a size too big for him. The sound of the traffic and the voices of people on the street got quieter the longer he stood there until the only sound was the giggling of the two boys where they stood over on his right side. I couldn’t take my eyes off Wade.