The next pitch, though, is right down the middle. High, but not too high, the ball looking a couple of sizes bigger than it really is.
I swing and am already letting go with my right hand as my bat makes contact with the ball, catching it square on the sweet spot. I’mone-handing the ball to deep left, hitting one over the left fielder and over the short fence out there the way I’d once seen Aaron Judge one-hand a ball out of Yankee Stadium.
Walk-off homer, 6–5 for Lester Construction. Now the people at Corley Park are really going crazy, the way my brand-new teammates are doing the same thing as they wait for me at home plate.
And I do feel as if I’m back in high school as I make my way—slowly—around the bases, not drinking in the cheers as much as the moment.
I’m just rounding second when I look over and see Abby standing at the end of the bleachers on the third-base side of the field.
The three punks from the pickup truck are a few feet beyond her. The group leader’s eyes, still nearly closed from looking as if he’d lost a fight, catch mine now, like he’s been waiting for me to look over there.
He makes a motion with his right hand as if he’s firing a gun at me.
Then he turns and does the same at Abby.
THIRTY-FOUR
BY THE TIME I’ve broken away from the other guys on the team and made my way down to where Abby is still standing, the punks are nowhere to be seen.
I ask Abby if they had been bothering her.
“If I’d really been bothered, I would have walked away,” she says. “But I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.”
“You know who they are, right?”
“Hard not to know after what you told me about what happened at the high school,” she says.
“Did they say anything about that?”
“The one with the black eyes told me to tell the Big Nothing he’d be in touch,” she says. She shivers. “Man, Silas, don’t you kind of wonder who givesthoseboys the creeps?”
Most of our team is headed over to Rowdy’s then, the same way we’d go to Scobee’s after a big win in high school, in any sport. Abby says she’ll meet us there. Taylor had come over to congratulate me and said she was working late at Scobee’s tonight, but to enjoy my date with Abby.
“Not a date,” I say.
“Whatever you say,” she says, and makes me think there’s all sorts of ways to end up back in high school.
When we’re all at the bar, Vince says that since I’m now a full-fledged member of the team, our next game is next Monday at Corley, not that I asked.
“Nope,” I say. “I’m already back into retirement.”
“You’re telling me a swing like that isn’t going to bring you back?”
I take a sip of my beer. “Still not enough action for me in baseball,” I say. “Look at tonight. Great example. Everybody had to wait all night for something interesting to happen.”
I stay for only one beer, but make sure to tell Earl behind the bar that I’m picking up the tab for everybody tonight.
Abby walks out to the parking lot with me. The truck is pretty much in the same spot it had been when it had been shot at. Her car is next to it.
“Like old times,” she says.
“Don’t know what got into me with that swing.”
“I do,” she says, and then her hands are around my neck and she’s pulling my face down and giving me a high school kiss that is very much like old times. When we finally pull out of it, I instinctively look around the lot to see if anybody is watching us. Small town thing. But there’s nobody else around.
“Got my own apartment now,” she says. “Over at the Vue. Just like a big girl.”
I lean down and kiss her on the cheek and say, “Not tonight, dear.”
