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An auto body shop welcomed you in on the west side of Main Street as a person drove in, a funeral home on the east side. If it weren’t for the high school, which had been known for its baseball and football teams since before I came along, the town would likely have dried up and turned to dust like so many had before it.
The high school was the pearl of Murdock, Texas. Murdock High was where the town centered on Friday nights during football season and during the afternoons of spring and summer. At one time, when I was there, the stands were packed with people from out of town, coming to watch the kid with the slider. I was that kid.
That was a long time ago.
Now I was driving back into town, passing the funeral home on my left and seeing the high school loom in the distance, sitting on top of Slater Hill. It was all coming back to me, and I wasn’t happy about it.
If this had been any other scenario, maybe then I would enjoy seeing my old high school. Taking in the quaintness of my old hometown. Relishing the drive through what was my old stomping grounds and maybe even stopping by the bar to grab a drink with buddies I hadn’t seen in years.
But this wasn’t one of those happy scenarios.
I hadn’t been back in Murdock in years, so I wasn’t prepared for the sudden outcrop of shops in the heart of Broad. They were artisan shops, standing side by side in a row, separated by a parking lot from the pawn shops, auto dealers, and franchise fast food places that had been there all my life. It was nice to see that the town was trying, but it was a bit like shining up a turd.
Still, it was home. Then and now.
I groaned.
My career had been so busy I hadn’t stopped by, and friends I’d had since childhood lost touch. Some of them sent me emails telling me that they wished I hadn’t gotten such a big head. That I remembered my roots. I never responded to them. They were right, and I knew it, but I thought it wouldn’t matter. I had new friends. Agents and trainers and coaches all over the league.
There was no family left in Murdock, either. No family, no friends to speak of, no real reason to be there. No one except Ryan, really. I had kept in touch with him, mostly because I respected the hell out of him, going back as far as our high school days. He was a tough bastard and took care of his mother and sister, then joined the military right out of high school. I wasn’t able to make it to his mother’s funeral, but I did come to a memorial service for her, and Ryan and I stayed tight.
When Ryan moved back to Murdock, I was surprised. He could have gone anywhere, and I really didn’t think there was much in town pulling him back. But he seemed to love it there and met a girl next door and started popping out babies. When he heard what happened to me, he emailed me immediately. He wanted me to know I had his support, no matter what that meant. And if I needed to get away from everything for a while, I always had a spot at his place.
He was probably surprised when I took him up on it, but he didn’t show it. He was right. I needed to get away from the reporters and the lawyers and the attention in general. I had craved that spotlight for so long, relishing in being the star pitcher. Now I was a cautionary tale. A case study. I had a law named after me.
I didn’t plan on being there long. Just long enough to figure some things out. In the meantime, I would stay with Ryan at his place, work at Murdock High as a coach, and take some time to drink beer on a back porch and mourn the career I’d thought would last until I decided to retire.
Ryan was waiting for me outside of his house, the same house his mother had been in when I was a kid and we played in her front yard. I opened the car door, and he greeted me, giving me a big hug and slapping me on the back the way he always did. It had been more than a year since we had seen each other in person.
“You son of a bitch, how are you?” Ryan said as he broke the hug. “Come on in, I’ve got beer and pizza.”
“Oh man, you don’t know how good that sounds. Angelo’s?”
“Where else?” he laughed. “This is Murdock, man. We don’t have a hundred pizza shops. We’ve got two. And you drew Angelo’s.”
I followed him inside. His house was pretty much like I remembered when his mom lived there, though the furniture had been updated. Some of the knick-knacks his mother was known for were gone, replaced by pictures of his wife and kids. It was a step up, for sure.
“Where’s Allison?” I asked.
“Ah, she took the kid out for the afternoon,” he said, handing me a beer. “She thought you might want a couple of hours of catching up without worrying about Leo showing you all of his toys.”
“I wouldn’t have minded that,” I said, taking a sip and sitting down. It was a local-ish brew, out of Austin, and something I didn’t usually get while on the road. It reminded me of nights in Murdock when the whole world had been in front of me.
Nights I’d spent thinking about the girl with the red hair.
“So how are you, brother?” Ryan asked. “Seeing someone?”
“Like a girl or a psychiatrist?” I asked.
“Either,” he said, taking a big swig and sitting across from me. “Both help in different ways.”
He would know. Ryan lost his dream too, though his dream was a life in the military. An injury removed him from service the same way it had removed me, though he was a freaking hero. I was just some former ballplayer.
“No and no,” I said. “I never really had time for girls, and I felt like an idiot talking about being sad I couldn’t throw a ball anymore.”
“Come on, man,” Ryan said. “It’s been six months. You have to have dealt with it a little.”
I shrugged.
