forward, flick, follow through, rotate. She threw the ball directly at the ground. “Oh, uh-oh.”
He ran forward to pick it up, laughing. “No, no, it’s a lot to remember.”
“I want to watch you throw. I feel like it would help.”
He stood up with the ball in his hand and seemed to weigh it. “You were just watching me throw.”
“Throw for real,” she said.
“Eveleth, I don’t think that’s—”
“Not at me, you goofball, you’d kill me. Throw it at the fence.” She gestured with the glove that had pink.
He eyeballed the gray fence that bounded one side of the soccer field. “I don’t know, Ev.”
She walked toward him until she was close, and then she folded her arms. “It’ll help. Just let me observe.”
“Fine.” He turned toward the fence, stepped, and she watched his body operate. She felt like she could see every muscle and bone and tendon that he arranged, pulled taut, and then let go like a slingshot. His shoulders rotated, his hips twisted—she even saw something shift in the back of his neck. The ball flew and made a sharp bang against the fence. He turned back to Eveleth, who nodded a little.
He opened the bag on the ground next to him and turned it sideways, and ten or so baseballs rolled out. He threw them one after another, bang, bang, bang, first looking like a guy who knew how to throw, but then looking like a pitcher. He fiddled with the brim of his Calcasset High School cap. He rubbed his hand against his hip. By the time he threw the last one, he was fully kicking his leg in the wind-up, and Eveleth even saw him sneak a look at a first base that wasn’t there.
He was out of breath at the end, and a pile of baseballs had accumulated at the base of the fence. He stood with his hands on his hips. Evvie stood next to him for a minute, mimicking his stance and his forward gaze. Then she walked over to the fence and gathered up the balls, dropping them into a little pouch she made with her shirt. She came back and dumped them on the ground in front of Dean. He nodded. He picked one up. Bang.
They hit at what looked to her like a very consistent spot. After a while, she could see the marks where they were hitting, and they were close together, grouped like a basket of peaches. But mostly, she watched Dean. His forehead got a little damp, until a little swirl of hair stuck to it. There was a story in it for him somewhere in there, somebody to beat, and once, she heard him whisper what she was pretty sure was “Yeah, there it is, fucker.”
Dean threw like big cats pounce in nature documentaries. She could know it was coming, she could watch him settle, she could watch the twitches while he waited, but every time it happened it was still surprising how merciless it was and how silently it was done. She gathered up the baseballs and brought them back and put them at his feet, but this time he stopped with his hands on his hips and said, “How much of this do you need to see?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, how much of it do you need to do?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Nah, this is for you, Minnesota.”
“You sure?”
He looked at her, a little out of breath. “Why are we out here?”
She walked over to the fence with her hands in her pockets and peered at the marks on it. “This doesn’t look to me like you’re throwing all over the place,” she called over to him. “What am I missing?”
“Fuck’s sake,” he said, looking at the bright blue sky. “Evvie, it’s inches, pitching. It’s inches. The fact that I’m not throwing it over the fence into the road doesn’t mean anything has changed. Why are we talking about this again?”
“Because if I could do anything as well as you do that, I’d want to keep doing it as long as I could. And I think you do, too. I’ve seen what it looked like when it wasn’t going well. You weren’t doing that.” She pointed at the little cluster of marks on the fence. “So something’s different. You’re not even curious?”
“I quit. It’s done.”
She walked toward him. “If it’s done, why did you sit on a boat called Second Chance and let them take your picture?”