Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,110

live in Yonkers.

I got you, says Marcus. Like he doesn’t care at all.

How bout you? I ask.

Played in college for the Gators for a season, says Marcus. But I hated it. Now I’m trying to make this happen, he says, patting the air on either side of him, indicating Gerard Kane and everything that goes along with him.

Before I leave I take out my mother’s note and look at it. I want for it to comfort and inspire me, but it doesn’t.

The main area of the facility is perfect. It’s strange to be enclosed by something so large. Sound bounces off things here. I can speak quietly and still be heard.

They have us toss the ball back and forth for a while. Farther and farther away from one another, to see what kind of carry we’ve got. It’s something I’ve always been proud of: I can throw the damn ball as far as I want to. And precisely. Always I’ve been able to do this.

I chuck it to Marcus and it’s high and right. He chucks it to me and it’s perfect, it stings. Within a few throws I can feel my right shoulder warming up and then aching dully. It is not something I have felt before.

A mattress in the backyard. A mattress with a red bull’s-eye on it.

Marcus can throw the ball too—better than I can, maybe. It stings to catch a ball that this kid throws in from the outfield. I can feel it for seconds afterward. They have video cameras on us. They’re recording what we do.

Warm up, Kel, says Gerard Kane, and hands me a weighted bat. He takes over what I was doing and throws the ball with Marcus for a while. I imagine what he’s feeling: the sting of Marcus’s arm, the winging ball hitting his glove and stinging.

The ache in my right shoulder gets stronger while I’m swinging the bat.

Several boys from a local team, there early before a game, pile into the bleachers to watch us. They are twelve or thirteen. The age I loved playing the most. They tumble over each other, getting into the bleachers; they shove at each other’s backs and heads. Go! says one to another. They are very happy, they are thrilled with life.

At end-of-year banquets she sat by herself and I sat with her, not my friends. I was good then and guilty.

She didn’t let me paint the door. They took pictures of me with the door all peeling. Junk in the yard.

A kid from the facility is the catcher. He’s excited, you can tell. He squats behind home plate, mask on, mitt on, kind of bouncing on his haunches. I feel I am not ready yet. I keep swinging and swinging the weighted bat. Marcus Hobart walks to the pitcher’s mound and stands there, even taller than he was when we met. Very casual.

Ready, Kel? asks Gerard Kane.

The man who used to be my father gave me a baseball glove for Christmas. The last Christmas he was with us he gave me a glove but he didn’t tell me to oil it and he didn’t put a ball in it and wrap it around with string. I had to learn that on my own. I had to learn everything on my own.

Gerard Kane says, Hang on a sec. He walks up to one of the guys standing around watching us: one of the managers, maybe, someone who works here.

You mind clocking this for me? he asks, and hands the man a clocking gun.

I drop one of the bats and walk toward the plate. When I was little I had this superstition: I had to step into the box with my left foot first. I had to, or I wouldn’t get a hit. Then at twelve I forced myself to break this habit in practice, over and over again until it didn’t scare me anymore. Today I step in with my left foot. Just in case.

I try to remember how it was when I first began doing this well. When I first began getting attention for hitting. There were times when I just knew. I knew I would knock it out of the park. I try to feel this now but it won’t come.

Marcus winds up and releases a pitch that I misjudge. I don’t swing. It’s a perfect strike. I stand and shake my legs out.

Ninety-six! calls the man clocking it.

Hoo, baby, says Gerard Kane.

My mother used to come to all my games. Every