When the Ball Died at Second

Written By: TMC

Posted on June 21, 2007

We had all bled on the field and played through the pain at one time or another, but none of us had ever seen the ball bleed before. Parry had hit the damn thing so hard that we didn’t hear the familiar crack of bat on ball—some of us heard nothing, while others, me included, swear they heard it scream, real quiet, just a tiny yelp like when you step on a dog’s toes. And instead of leaping off the bat and soaring over the outfield wall, it tumbled to the ground and skittered in the dirt at my feet at second base.

There was no open wound, but the blood flowed freely, as if from a gunshot. I refused to touch it, even as Artie chugged past me on the way to an inside-the-infield home run. The ball lay there, groaning. A low painful hum. A sad sound of resignation, as if prepared to die. It seemed wrong to lift the ball out of its deathbed and toss it into someone’s uncaring glove as if nothing strange had happened. I heard my wife yelling from the bench to get my head in the game, her voice shrill and angry. Angrier, even, than last night, when she told me that she knew—that she’d always known—about my affair with the neighbor woman. I’d been fucking around with the woman next door for about six years, and I think I was probably trying to get caught. It was the only way I could think to hurt my wife, and, besides, I couldn’t stand to be in the house anymore because I was sure it was haunted. “If you knew,” I’d said, “then why would you wait so long to do something about it?” She turned off the light, pulled the covers over her head, and lay in silence for at least an hour. As I began to drift off the sleep, she told me, again, that I had to stop blaming her for what happened. Then we had that old argument again. I was tired of that argument the first time, and now I can’t stand even thinking about it.

Artie scored and gave his team the lead. I stared at the ball. My teammates rushed over to me to see if I was having a stroke, and then they saw the ball drowning in its blood. The blood—there was so much. I couldn’t believe it all fit inside that little ball, but it just kept coming and coming until the dirt was stained a deep, devilish red. The only time I’d ever seen so much blood was after my daughter’s accident six years ago.

An awed circle had formed around the ball, mumbling that there must be some kind of logical explanation. Art leaned forward as if to pick the ball up, but I stopped him. Then my wife pushed her way into the center of the circle. “What’s the big deal,” she said, “Just pick the ball up and keep playing.” Heads nodded through the circle and she moved to pick it up. As she bent down, she looked over her shoulder at me and added, “We shouldn’t have to stop playing just because Paul’s scared.” Before she touched it, I shoved her face-first into the dirt.

The circle jumped back to accommodate her fall, and now she lay in the dirt, her forehead cut and bleeding. She was always so quick to give up. “I’m not letting you pull the plug on this one,” I said, and I sat next to the ball, caressing it along the stitches like it was a sick cat.

She kicked dirt on me and told me not to come home that night. And she warned me never to bring that ball into her house. I think she was crying, but, to be honest, it seemed like one of us was always crying.

I’m sure there was a time when I didn’t hate her, but it’s so distant that I don’t think I’ll ever remember it. Thinking about that stuff is like looking at pictures of yourself as a baby—even with the proof right in front of your eyes, you still can’t be convinced that you were there, that you existed in any meaningful way. I remember the last six years, and everything before that is nothing but a blurry old black-and-white.

The ball died right there on the field, and I carried it with me, the blood staining my back pocket. I didn’t bring it into the house, but only because I was afraid it would begin to smell. I buried it in the backyard, behind our daughter’s old swing set. The swings rocked lightly in the breeze, and I tried again to remember what things used to be like.

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