be like in the house on the hill if CJ did indeed make an appearance. Very little of what was written in CJ’s books was, with his own family as the model, complimentary to his kin. And that might make for some awkward moments.
Of course, drama had been a frequent guest among the Bax-ters as far back as Artie could remember. That was something else upon which he had a unique perspective, and not just because of the time he’d spent as George’s boyhood friend. While CJ was in high school, he’d spent a few summers working at Kaddy’s. In Artie’s opinion, CJ was the best employee he’d ever had. He was a natural with tools, and he had the eye of a true craftsman. Over the last two years that he’d been in his employ, Artie had been confident enough in the boy’s skills that he’d dropped CJ’s name to anyone looking for someone to do basic contractor work. During that time, CJ must have hung drywall, replaced a roof, or installed an appliance for half of the families in Adelia.
But where CJ had really excelled was as a woodworker. The week the boy left for college, he’d presented Artie with a rifle stock he’d coaxed from a piece of balsam wood. It was a beautiful piece, with silver inlays and Artie’s name carved by the rear swing swivel. Artie had it finished with Remington parts that winter, and had used it the following fall for hunting whitetail. It was a shame CJ had never got the chance to see it.
He took a last look at CJ’s photo, searching for the boy in the man he’d become, and feeling much older than he had when he’d walked into the store this morning. With a sigh, he turned the book over and found his place in the story.
Nashville, Tennessee
Each August, when highs over a hundred degrees came with regularity and people moved with the purposed paces of those traveling between air-conditioning, young men and women from all over the country—all over the world—descended on the city of Nashville. An energized mass of fashionable clothes and deep credit lines, the odor of privilege evident before one got close enough to smell them. They were the high academic achievers, the sons and daughters of wealthy alums, the athletes who could devote sufficient time to study in order to remain eligible under the university’s high standards. It was a throng that filled West End Avenue as lines of cars streamed onto campus grounds, as those who arrived early navigated their bicycles around Centennial Park, or walked past businesses that had been waiting for this influx. Most of these were returning students, with a year or more under their belts, their knowledge of the campus and the surrounding city hard-earned. Among these, though, were a percentage of teens who, while as energized as the rest of their contemporaries, were also bewildered—overmatched by the sprawling university and the weight of its history.
At one time, CJ had been among these first-year students, although that seemed like a very long time ago. Even so, he could remember stepping onto the pristine grass at Charles Hawkins Field for the very first time. He’d taken off his shoes and let his toes sink into the grass, absorbed in a place that seemed so unlike his home.
It was his first time away from the Northeast, and he’d come with no preconceived ideas about what life in this part of the country would be like. It surprised him how quickly he learned to love it. It had taken only a week—the beauty of the campus, the friendliness of the locals, and one lovely young lady—to start him toward eventually achieving the status of transplanted Yankee, a status he had held now for seventeen years.
In truth, Nashville was Southern sleight of hand—a halfway house of sorts for Northerners. A cosmopolitan community that over the last few decades had seen its demographics change to the point where, in certain communities, it was difficult to find someone native to Nashville, or even to Tennessee. Whole sections of the city and the surrounding suburbs were made up of people who came from somewhere else. Nashville was a transitional city, a place to stop and get one’s bearings before continuing on to the deeper South, to places where families could trace roots back to the dawn of the nation. In that respect, those far-flung places were much like Adelia.
CJ had come to Vanderbilt on a baseball