The Grass and Clay Field

By N.H. Stack

12-year-old Roy O'Callahan's plan to be the pitcher for his father's little league team, play at the little league world series and finally get the girl of his dreams was right on track until the refugees arrived. Not only was the refugees' middle eastern culture foreign to the small, southern town of Taylor, West Virginia, so was their spo

• Language: English
• Publisher: N.H. Stack
• Release date: Jan 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578734439

Book preview

1

My April vacation was over and even though I didn’t know it at the time, the way I looked at the world was about to change. My family and I had spent a week in Cooperstown, New York, the baseball capital of the world. New York was a long trek from my front porch in Taylor, West Virginia but seeing how me and my father lived and ate baseball we thought it high time we hauled ourselves out to Cooperstown.

We drove hours long down the interstate, back roads and side roads until we got our wheels spinning on our own downtown Main Street. It was after midnight when we drove past Miss. Nancy's Diner which had the best meat pies on the east coast. At least that’s what Miss. Nancy always told us. As we drove down the quiet, dark street, salty, crusty meat pies cooking for the next day floated on the midnight Main Street air. I rolled down my window, stuck my nose out the gap and sniffed in a whiff of cooking crust, salty meat and melting cheese dancing on the darkness.

My father’s chest expanded out then in as he sat in the driver’s seat, steering our way homeward bound. He took himself in a breath of Miss. Nancy’s pie too. He had been the coach of our little league team, the Orioles, long before I came around on the diamond, the world too. The year before, my father promised the team a trip to Miss. Nancy’s if we won the season. We never even made it to the finals. Never got any meat pies either.

The pitching slot was open this year. Bucky Jackson had always been our pitcher until he moved last winter. Seventh grade was my last year of little league and I was hoping I’d finally get my chance to pitch this season. I trained hard all winter, throwing in the snow, night, and rain. Like always, my fate as pitcher rested with my father and I had no choice but to wait on it, pray on it too.

When my father passed the park, he slackened his speed so he could have himself a proper showing of the diamond. Each time he passed it was like his first time seeing it, I guess. Like he relished in all it had to offer and all it had given him. I swear I saw him bow his head when he drove by. For him, driving slow past third base was like taking off your baseball cap when the U.S. anthem caroled out the throats of all those honoring its song at the start of a baseball game. I never minded it because that park, that baseball diamond in the heart of that park, was like a temple shrine in Bethlehem to me too.

The white bright moon shone down with stars sparkling above the turf like a throng of early bird fireflies. Every summer I watched those sparklings dance in the dim ribbon of night trees at the bed of the wrapped around cliffs embracing my most favorite place in the world - my town’s one and only baseball diamond.

Between the diamond and the cliffs, a run of pure glorious green meadow spread like an ocean between countries. The meadow grass reached high above the crowns of all us kids’ heads and was as deep and dense as the amazon jungle stretching between the outfield and the cliffs beyond. We loved that meadow like we loved our dogs and baseball cards. We hungered for its country when our despaired limbs, confined all day beneath wooden desks, craved room for running, our voices aching for hooting and hollering at the endless sky above. The meadow was a home where we could sway with the grass on wind. It was a land of losing yourself to wondering, a harbor of safe keeping, a shroud when the truant officer came knocking or when fathers or mothers clamored their walls with scornful words, and hateful accusations. That park, that meadow, was part of my juice. My father's juice too seeing how he grew up in our house before me.

I stuck my face kissing close to my car window, my breath fogging up a patch of glass. I had the fixings to dial my excitement up looking at that diamond because of tryouts the next morning. Instead of excitement for baseball, a different restlessness budded in me. The flurry I found flittering beneath my heart arose from worrying instead.

A disquieting ache gnawed at my gut from seeing a shadow in the meadow’s middle. It looked like someone cut themselves a hole out of her. Like a long rectangle slice of midnight sky wriggled itself loose and dropped flat in the middle of that lofty meadow grass. An itchy unease pestered and festered in me something cruel from that aggrieved meadow who had no hurt in her before we left. I could do better than see the difference from what was before; I could suffer and share the burden of it.

My mother's head rested on the car seat pillow in front of me bobbing from shoulder to shoulder. She'd been out for hours. My father steered the car and was chomp chewing on a toothpick like a cow gnawing on fodder. Cigars preyed on my father like a badgering regret. My mother once told my father toothpicks might do the trick for kicking his smoking. My mother always said the blackening of his lungs from the coal mine he labored all his life in and for was enough harm to bear, he didn’t need no other sins hitching a ride as well. I knew a toothpick couldn’t take the place of a big thick cigar in the end, though. That cigar instilled a need in my father that was tricky to tame.

My little sister Missy sat next to me enraptured by her shiny new tennis racket. She fixated on it sweet as a long-lost love discovered, or a mother ogling her fresh born baby. My mother started Missy on tennis lessons at the rec center downtown, 10 and under class. Missy took to tennis like a bee to a blossom. First thing she ever passioned herself on in her whole 6 years.

The tennis court in our park was an old one. That tennis court had herself a clay floor with cracks creeping across its surface. The ball didn’t hold much bounce as those hard-pressed blue courts we passed up in Cooperstown, but at least we had ourselves one.

That park sure offered plenty to us kids all those years and much more to give in those coming days ahead.

Missy pulled my head back from all that thinking when she sighed, Isn’t she beautiful?

I guess, I said. Why she called something an 'it' a 'she' was what little girls did sometimes. I didn’t understand tennis. Hitting a ball back and forth for hours looked boring to me. All I knew was baseball. But tennis made Missy happy, so it was all right with me too.

I can’t wait to get out on the field tomorrow, my father said, that toothpick bobbing between his teeth. When my father talked with a toothpick, his lips didn’t budge much because gripping the toothpick arrested his jaw. With that toothpick in his mouth, he talked through his teeth like one of those ventriloquists trying to throw his voice into a dummy sitting on his lap.

He kept a bundle of toothpicks in the front pocket of his flannel shirt for quick replacements of any pick he wore out.

Those toothpicks never lingered long. My father chewed them down, grinding them enjoy smoothing out a bump on a rug, or kneading crying muscles sore for soothing. He had more in his door than gnashing on wood, that's for sure.

The only time my father didn’t talk like a ventriloquist was when the yelling found his tongue. When my father didn’t have a toothpick between his lips, there brewed something spoiling in his heart.

How you like that racket, little girl? my father asked.

I love it, Missy said, hugging the racket. Love it, love it, love it.

So glad we got it for her, my mother mumbled, her eyes shut, her words drawn out by a yawn. Sleep kept a keep on my mother but like a good mother, listening didn’t allow sleep no law. My mother stretched her arms out then sat herself upright.

Oh my gosh, she declared, her eyes popping wide like a coo coo clock bird scuttling out the top of the hour. Her eyes sprouted on the outside whizzing by her window. We’re almost home!

No duh, sleepy head, my father said.

What were we talking about? my mother asked, massaging her brow and face.

My father laughed. He always laughed at my mother, amused or not. My father had the jokester in him. He made us laugh at my mother too. His fun spread out for us thick as peanut butter but not so much for my mother.

What do you mean? my father said. He didn’t miss a beat. Don’t you remember, woman? You were talking about it with us.

I strove to poke fun of my mother with my father speaking in my head. Yeah, Mama, what do you mean? You were talking about it…

I know, I know, my mother said, bowing her brain, waving her palm at me like she shooed away a fly, like she flapped at my father sometimes when he rode her too much.

Tennis, my father said, his tongue terser, like the way he taunted the team when the hot sun lulled us to languish. Tennis ain’t no sport. It’s more like a game. It's all right though, I guess, for girls.

Tennis, I remember, my mother said closing her eyes again.

The toothpick jutted from one side of my father’s mouth to the other and back again. He leaned over the steering wheel and fetched his eyes fast on the driver’s side window so he could lock himself stock and barrel and peruse the meadow proper.

I grew sore nervous about my father examining the meadow. My eyes held tight on the toothpick hoping it would stay put because if he spat it out, hellfire would ensue.

The toothpick quit in my father's mouth and aimed itself at our line of direction. It rested there straight as a pointer dog’s snout targeting a buckshot bird fallen from the sky.

You got to be kidding me, my father hissed, serious as a whisper.

I clung to the arm of my door waiting for that toothpick to shoot out his mouth, hit the windshield and fall to the dash.

Look what they did to my park, my father said.

I expected he intended on spewing out that toothpick for sure. Instead, my father smiled at my mother and proclaimed, They put up the new lights!

The thought of the meadow hole chewed on me so much I forgot about winning those lights. I didn’t notice the new poles up and down the diamond with park lights at the top of each of them, lofty park lights the same as the major league games on T.V.

Still can’t believe we won them, my father said with a proud humbled tongue. Now we can play night games.

How many towns competed with us? my mother asked, yawning again.

Twelve, my father said. We whipped them other twelve towns. The whole county. It's what I always say…

My father said an abundance of words but his one go to phrase was one my mother didn’t respect much.

My mother’s eyes opened again. She sat upright and touched his forearm. Oh, Hank, no.

Money talks and…, my father said.

Hank, the children. My mother would never think of hushing my father except when he cursed. She despised the expletives. Having my mother advise my father to cut the cussing out of his tongue was the only allowance my father let my mother have for telling him what not to do.

Ahh, my father said, waving his hand at my mother like my mother waved at me and my father when she joked on her too long.

You also say, winners reap, losers weep, I added.

That's my boy, my father said. That one applies too.

Keeping my father happy was wise to do. I wondered about that myself. I thought on the feeling about being kept happy. A powerful feeling being kept happy. To have those around you who want to make clear you're happy because they don’t want the unhappy you can bring. I wondered on wanting to be feeling that power, that rule.

Just like my father.

How much was the town behind? my mother asked. With the lights, I mean.

Ten thousand, my father said.

Who d'you think gave the rest of the money? I asked.

Don’t know, don’t care, my father said. One thing for sure is I’d like to shake his hand someday, if I ever get to meet him.

How do you know it was a him? my mother asked, a daring squint squeezing on her eye.

My father glared at my mother with perplexed eyes like he thought my mother had gone mad insane. The toothpick quit bobbing between my father's lips and fixed itself square on the center of his mouth like a stung porcupine's quill on the butt of one who sat himself down without caution. A slow taxing quiet settled between them until my mother grinned and sunk her chin away from my father's staring. She shook her head a nod then turned around to me and Missy.

Did you both have a good trip?

My father held his stare on my mother's face. An expectant worry roiled in me as I watched my father's eyes neglect the road ahead. My father's glare rested heavy on my breast like a rock boulder ship sunk dead on the ocean floor. Memories of my mother riling my father up in times gone by, and the price she paid for it, reared themselves with a freezing fear. Neither me nor Missy answered my mother when she asked questions when my father put the scowl on her. We sat there stiff eyed as possums with paws to heaven when the threatening crowded around us.

A him, my father whispered to himself, the knuckles on his fingers brightening white on the wheel before he brought his eyes back to the road.

You've always wanted to go there, my mother said to me, blinking her eyes a few winks above a shrinking smile creeping off her cheeks.

I guess, I mumbled, afraid my allegiance to my mother would sour my father on me.

Anyways, my father said with a heavy sigh hissing out a waning fury. Just think, we can sit on our front porch at night and instead of looking at a dark field, we can watch ourselves a baseball game.

I eased out a breath myself when my father's voice talked natural again, and his teeth needled and nibbled his toothpick.

You happy about the lights, Daddy? Missy asked.

Sure am, my father said.

My mother gazed out the window, like she was looking for something or someone she lost. I seen that look a lot on my mother in tired times or when my father’s self-righteousness wore through her skin. I was wont to look lost too each winter dreaming about throwing that bound ball with red laces and scuffed white leather from a pitcher’s mound, longing for my father’s nodding smile and wink which was as elusive as a slippery frog in sweaty hands.

Every spring I waited for the moment to ask my father about my chances of being pitcher. I thought my father's sweet mood on the lights might be apt to sway him on my hopeful path. I sucked in a lungful of air and breathed out, Maybe I can pitch this year? Under the lights.

My father stroked his pointed chin and swayed his tilting head. The toothpick frolicked from cheek to cheek then back again. Each time it moved itself to the side facing me, it stayed awhile in the corner of his lips, flicking itself up and down and up.

We'll see, my father said. You got to show me your stuff and prove you're ready.

I'm ready, Daddy, I said, excitement churning in my intestines.

You know what I don’t get? my father said, peering up at the new lights passing overhead. Why do those lights go all the way past the meadow to the cliff beyond? I mean, the outfield ends where the meadow begins. Idiots. Can’t do nothing right.

The poles traveled past first and third base, then further on to the end of left and right field. If a ball fell past the line where the cut grass of the outfield quit, where the meadow rose, that ball was deemed a home run. Instead of the park light poles ending there, three more poles landed in the way far back, past the verge of the meadow, where the wall of cliffs began.

Idiots, I whispered to myself.

My father never saw the meadow shadow that night. Those newly won lights attracted his eyes heaven-side. Tomorrow would know the hammer of my father’s rage pounding on our spirits because nothing vowed to shelter the meadow’s shadow in the morning when the sun shone brilliant on the town, exposing every crack and secret, and the sky blue and cloudless, and all of us on the diamond fisting our gloves, swinging our bats and running down the bases.

2

I had a plan I'd been ruminating on ever since the holy grail of Babe Ruth's glove radiated at me behind a glass paned case at the Baseball Hall of Fame. I was going to make sure my father picked me as pitcher. I had one more