some may roam (eBook)

R.C. Bennett (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
108 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-7778-3 (ISBN)

Infos

In his debut novel, some may roam, Bennett wrestles with the weight of love and loss from the tragic perspective of a young ballplayer named Crews.

Prior to settling back into his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee with his wife and young family to begin a career in writing, R. C. Bennett played two years of collegiate baseball at Maryville College, slashing a scalding .172/.226./207, before transferring to the University of Tennessee-where head coach Tony Vitello did not find a use for his services. Needless to say, we here at Grove Park Publishing are hoping for a better outcome in the bookstore than Bennett saw on the diamond.

Textauszug

Chapter 3

11:30 a.m.

Louise always insisted that her brown hair was more enchanting—something about how it took just the right angle of light for it to shine. In contrast, the blonde girls apparently just walked around all day, letting their light go forth with little care as to who was on the receiving end.

But the shine that I remember, sitting here now, didn’t come from her picking a table near the windows. The sort of shine that I saw in her was more like what a butterfly sees when they look at a flower. They are looking at the same thing we are when we look at flowers, but where we see red and purple and yellow and blue, they see the sorts of colors we don’t even know to think about. Sure, we see the stem and the leaves and the bud. But we really don’t see much at all. Plenty of people had the chance to see the sun bounce off Louise’s hair. But they didn’t see her. Not like I saw her.

If it is a fall that takes you into that kind of love, I think Hazel Lancaster was right, comparing it to the sort of fall that takes you to sleep. Sure, you want it to happen. Perhaps you even get enticed by how cozy the bed looks while you walk toward it, but none of those feelings really has anything to do with what it’s like to be asleep or how that sort of sleep comes upon you in the first place. That sort of knowing is its own place, set apart from everywhere else you’ve ever been. Once you’re there, you aren’t the same as before. You don’t remember leaving where you were, but you know that there isn’t any going back.

However it happens, I was there. And she was there with me.

That day, though, we were also in the lunchroom, and Louise was about to take what appeared to be her third gargantuan bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Sneaking up from behind, I slipped my hands into place, yanking the back of her chair toward me, sending the front two legs up into the air, but keeping the back two nice and steady. I was careful to strike before she picked up the sandwich, though. The slice of pizza she had lost control of on my first such attempt managed to soar a full fifteen feet before introducing itself to the back of some poor freshman situated two tables over.

Her hands, unencumbered this time, flew straight to the back of my arms under my shoulders, right in that spot small enough in circumference to grab and convenient enough for a tickle. It was her favorite spot in a wrestling bout, given its tactical benefits as both a defensive and offensive position simultaneously—just what I wanted. Contact was about as hard to come by within the walls of the school as it is in here. You couldn’t exactly go around making a scene in the hallway, much less in the cafeteria, but this was our little way of getting around it. She played the part of an angered damsel, and I took my role as the charming jester quite gladly.

The seat next to her was open, as it always was, but my reserved spot was only permissible because the girls knew I wouldn’t stay for the whole lunch period. That and they knew I was too stubborn to give up. After about a month of my quite dramatic performances, often summoning a chair from the opposite side of the room, my customary spot became a tradition. I don’t think they hated it as much as they let on—no one ever does.

After a minute or so of acknowledging my presence and sharing some generic opening remarks, the rest of the table resumed their conversation while Louise and I got to ours.

“How is the status of that curfew extension coming along?” I inquired, mustering my best corporate water-cooler-talk countenance.

“The appeal has not yet received a rejoinder,” Louise declared with her chest held high as if standing before the US district attorney.

“Has Council considered a follow-up letter?”

“The great high Justice of Monroe,” she started, falling out of character quite rapidly but continuing with the rhetoric, “has declared that a response is forthcoming before the first pitch of tonight’s great match,” as if mashing some version of Camelot with too much Law and Order.

“I like our chances,” I replied, flashing a smirk that revealed a single dimple. She liked it when I did that. It was something like my version of brown hair. Only she got to see the dimple. “Just have Sarah take you to the game. That way, after Dawkins’ party, I can drop you off at your house, and we don’t have to play musical chairs with the cars. Plus, if we happen to miss curfew by a smidge, I can break out the other dimple to ease the tension with Sir Monroe.”

“You know, strangely enough, I’m not sure that your little cheeks have quite the same effect on him, Mr. Crews.”

“It’s 2015, Madam Louise. You never know what people are into these days,” I said, lifting my chin higher with each syllable, making my backpedaled exit from the table, waving royally to Louise and her compatriots.

Given the fact that fifteen years at the same institution can make even the most quality of lunch ingredients grow stale to the palette, and that I spent most of my lunch hour harassing Louise and her friends, I found the deli up Johnson Road much more suitable for a pre-game meal. We weren’t “allowed” to do it, but there was an understanding of sorts that when I left, not much was made of it.

Sam and Joe shared the same sentiment. Each disembarking from their scholastic endeavors around the same time with equally weak excuses, we convened in the parking lot. Sam always drove, and the fishing poles in the backseat made the fight for shotgun all the more heated. While the poles were crammed gently up into the ceiling, the hooks dangled at varying lengths below despite our continual efforts to contain them. Sitting beneath them made me gain much more respect for the fish that manage to not get caught.

Sam had that sort of quiet confidence that eliminated any desire to disagree, so there was never a vote as to who drove. If he wanted to drive, you found yourself perfectly content in the backseat, hooks and all.

Standing at about six-foot-five with enough talent to earn my scholarship hitting with his eyes closed, I saved my errors for games where Sam wasn’t pitching. Otherwise, he’d call me to the mound and chew my ass out. Where Doug and I were arrogant, Sam was just better. We portrayed it, but he was it. He played with a perfectionism that scared the hell out of the younger guys. I knew the feeling well. It was intimidating until it became motivating. I had caught for Sam on the 10U Memphis Tigers back in the day. He threw so damn hard that none of the other kids on the team were brave enough to get behind the dish, and most of the hitters on the other teams were too scared to get in the box. I was scared, too, but I thought the catcher’s gear made me look cool, so I cowboyed up. Looking back, that was probably the best baseball team I ever played on. Of the twelve guys on the roster, I know at least eight guys ended up playing college ball, a few of them for big-time programs. We qualified for the USSSA World Series at the end of the season and made it through the winners’ bracket to the championship game but let the East Cobb Astros come out of the losers’ bracket and beat us twice in a row to steal our trophy.

When you are that young, the travel clubs you play on have more to do with who your dad knows than how good you really are, but once you get to high school, the recruiting pressure creates a more pure meritocracy. My squad, summer going into senior year, was fine. We had a lineup full of scholarships from schools no one had ever heard of. You can still pull up the roster and see where each player was committed. The right-hand column, beside the name of each player for my roster, short one or two guys, was blank. Not because we weren’t going to play college ball, but because the schools were so small, Perfect Game didn’t even try to find their logos. Sam’s, on the other hand, effectively served as an advertisement for the Southeastern Conference. He had a Vanderbilt logo next to his name, but we all knew he’d never step foot back on that campus as anything more than a spectator. He was set to go in the first round of the draft that summer.

All those years playing alongside him, it was an honor. I’ve racked my brain for a better word, a less formal word, than honor, but I can’t find one. It wasn’t just that I liked having him on my team. We were buddies, and it was nice to have the best pitcher in the district, but it was more than that. Where I had a knack for talking with the younger guys and making them feel included, Sam had a knack for going to war. I always led more like a coach, but Sam led like a fucking Navy Seal. I made sure the practices were organized and got onto the guys who showed up late or out of uniform. Sam didn’t do any of that. He barely even talked to the younger guys. There was just something about the way he carried himself, though, the way he moved. He took the game so seriously that it made the whole team better. Maybe he could’ve done my job, but I certainly couldn’t have done his. He played hard then, and he plays hard now.

Joe, on the other hand, was not first-team all-state. But he was a hell of an athlete and could play any sport with a...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.10.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-7778-3 / 9798350977783