(2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery (33 page)

I've crawled back up that drain many times and spent hours in the vault. Despite this, I can't prove what happened in the summer of 1979. My nose tells me only one man can do that, but for some reason he's not talking. When he does, he quotes dead people or says something that only he understands.

Discovering the basement and the trapdoor in the vault didn't help my case any. By giving him access, it only added nails to Unc's coffin. By keeping it a secret, he's thrown dirt on it. By admitting he's known all along that Jack stole the money, he etched his own tombstone. Contrast that with my college philosophy class-my professor said there are five ways of "knowing": personal experience, revelation, empirical evidence, logic, and hearsay. Given those methods of knowing something, I know this-and I'd stake my life on it: William "Liam" McFarland willingly took the fall for something he didn't do.

I have lived my entire life in a chasm, pulled between two polar tensions. On one side stands the entire town, what they believe, what history has recorded and suggests. And at the front of that crowd is Uncle Jack, confirming everyone's belief. Helping him out is Unc's silence, which only makes matters worse.

But on the other side stands Unc. Battered. And unbending. Somewhere in the middle, scratching my head, is me.

ue to some beltway traffic, an overturned car, and a bypass around Spaghetti Junction, Mandy, Unc, Sketch, and I arrived at Turner Field just a few minutes before the game started. Unc left the windows cracked, giving Bones a cross-breeze as he curled up in the backseat. Scurrying across the parking lot, we were intercepted by a one-legged man in a wheelchair. His hair was matted, and he reeked of alcohol. He spun around in front of us, slurring his words, his lips thick and numb, and spit across the asphalt. "Chhhhhangggge?"

I walked past him without a second glance. As did Unc and Mandy, who had turned her head and was breathing into the wind. About the time I took a deep breath, a small hand tugged on my back pocket. I turned to find the kid standing with his hand out and palm up. I pointed toward the stadium. "Wait 'til we get in there, and I'll get you whatever you want."

He shook his head and jerked his hand.

"What?"

He pointed at the man in the chair.

"Sketch, if I give that man money, he's going to wheel himself out of this parking lot and down to the corner liquor store."

The kid stomped one foot and jerked his hand a second time.

"I'm not giving that man money."

The kid opened his notepad and wrote in dark, bold letters, GivE TO ALL WHO BEG FROM YOU.

I put my hands on my hips. "Who says?"

The kid looked up, then back at me, expressionless.

Unc and Mandy stood behind me, trying to decipher this round of charades.

I looked up and behind me. "Who!?"

He flipped a page, drew a cross on a hillside and the words MAJTHEW 5 beside it, and held it up for all three of us. By now, the man in the wheelchair had rolled himself up behind the kid.

"You're quoting scripture?"

He opened his notebook and pulled out a single wrinkled page that had been torn from its binding.

I turned it over in my hands. "You've got to be kidding me."

The kid shook his head.

Unc stepped in front of me, pulled five dollars from his pocket, and stuffed it into the man's shirt pocket. Looking at me, he said, "I should've raised you better. Come Sunday, you're front and center. You been spending too much time fishing."

We walked into the stadium, up a couple ramps, and out into the stands. Our seats were down past first base, about thirty rows above where the clay meets the outfield. We bought a program, sat down, and I took a long look around. The park had changed, the roster had changed, the music was louder, and the food and drinks were twice as expensive, but it was still magical. Sketch's face told me that he thought so too.

I studied the program and looked at all the new faces and talent. Terry Pendleton was now the hitting coach, and Chipper Jones was in the fourteenth year of his career and a shoo-in for Cooperstown. I counted-it'd been fifteen years since "the slide." I looked over toward where our seats would have been in the old stadium and tried to remember being there with Tommye. I caught Unc's eye and realized I wasn't the only one who remembered.

We bought food and drink from most every vendor who walked past our seats: popcorn, cotton candy, peanuts, hot dogs, cold beer, pretzels, a couple slices of pizza, cokes, water, ice cream. By the sixth inning, the kid's stomach looked like a little Buddha's. Mine too. We had to slouch in our chairs just to make room for them.

I looked around the stadium at all the fathers and sons sitting side by side, gloves ready to catch a foul ball, rally caps turned up, and smiles spread earlobe to earlobe. Despite the multimillion-dollar insanity, the steroids, and the egos, baseball still does that. It brings them together.

Then I thought about Sketch's life and what lay ahead. Since the means of terminating parental rights was a public process, the DA's office had placed ads in nearly twenty papers around the Southeast. That's like waving a sign that reads, "Hey, come pick up your kid." And -no matter what I thought of them-they might read that ad, show up tomorrow, throw him in the backseat, and disappear. Forever. 'Course, they'd live under some close scrutiny for a while, but if they kept their noses clean, they'd keep him. They could be the worst, most abusing white trailer trash in the country, and yet neither Mandy nor I could do anything about it. The law protected the parents.

Sketch's right arm rested next to mine. He slid his arm down the armrest, rubbing his elbow along my forearm. The skin was thin, tough, and felt like it'd been run through a cheese grater.

When I was about his size, Unc had me working in the greenhouse. One night after dinner, we went out there to check on his plants. He clicked on the light, sat me down, and slid a purple orchid with a three-foot stem close to my nose. "Pretty bloom, isn't it?"

I nodded.

He tapped it. "The bloom doesn't come from up here"-he brushed away some crushed bark and loose dirt from around the roots-"it comes out of here." He held the orange clay pot in both hands. "Care for the roots, and the flower will bloom all on its own."

Unc then took a slender but strong bamboo shoot, about four feet long, and slid it into the dirt along the stem of the orchid. Then he loosely tied the stem to the shoot. "That's to guide the stem. Otherwise it'll bloom too much, and the weight of the blooms can break the stem. So, let it bloom all it wants, but give it something to lean on."

Mandy caught my eye and the look on my face. "You okay?"

"Yeah ... just ... taking in the game." It was a pitiful lie.

I watched Sketch study the field, follow the path of fly balls, read the scoreboard, and saw how his feet dangled from the seat when he leaned back. Mandy watched, too. He was no longer just an assignment to either one of us.

I thought about my story, the last in the three-part series, which Red wanted on his desk in a few days. He said our readers would tire and lose interest if we didn't reach some resolution, so "find it ... because it's out there." Resolution? How can an orchid bloom if the roots have been twisted off with pliers, burnt with Marlboros, and drowned with beer? Where's the resolution in that? Where's the happy ending?

Sketch was watching the batter at home plate, intensely trained on the movement. His right hand-sticky with sugar-unconsciously sketched lines and shades in the thin air, showing that the pencil was tethered to his brain. To his left, Unc was feeding him a constant stream of information, telling him about the batters, the players, who was good at what and why. For once Unc got to play the role of color man. Not surprisingly, after thirty years of following the Braves, he was good at it. But listening to him, I missed Tommye.

With two outs in the middle of the seventh, the batter hit a high pop fly to center field, where Andruw Jones caught it for the third out. The Braves ran in, ground crews pulling screens across the field ran out, and the music began to play. On cue, Unc and I jumped up out of our seats, took off our caps, crossed our arms around each other, and sang at the top of our lungs with the rest of Atlanta. "Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd.... "

Mandy laughed, and Sketch pulled both feet up on his seat, watching us with a mixture of curiosity, odd amusement, and maybe a little bit of shock. Unc and I raised our caps and sang louder.

The seventh-inning stretch is almost as entrenched in baseball as the baseball itself. Several theories about its origin exist, but truth be known, we have no idea where and when the custom began. One suggestion involves President William Howard Taft, another a Brother Jasper of Manhattan College. While Unc gave Sketch this lecture, I climbed the steps and went to the restroom.

Everywhere I looked, I saw Tommye. Little girls clutching pink cotton candy, their faces painted with tomahawks, floated around like ballerinas high on the clouds where their fathers placed them. I could hear Tommye's straight-faced commentary, watch her laughter, soak in her little-girl-ness-and yet the woman at home, draped in shame and bad decisions, walked beneath a rain cloud rather than floating atop one. When I reached the walkway overlooking the parking lot, I dialed my loft apartment. It was nearly nine thirty, and chances were good she was asleep under the snowfall of my window unit.

The phone rang seven times, but she never answered.

The Braves were down by two in the bottom of the ninth. Things were not looking good for Sketch's first game. Unc looked worried. The Braves' batter was down in the count and inched in to guard the plate. With two men on, the pitcher came from the stretch and sent a wicked slider at about ninety-four miles an hour. The batter took a wide swing, tagged it poorly, and sent it arcing high and to the right. The first baseman ran back, and the right fielder ran up, both in foul territory, but the ball spun further foul, dropping in the stands some twenty rows below us. It landed smack in the middle of the steps, bounced hard, spinning sideways, and climbing further foul.

Every boy enters a baseball game wanting a souvenir. A pennant, a cap, a program. These mark the moment; they're proof that we went, we watched, we were a part of the greatest game in the world. And once we leave, we hold them like brittle eggs, guard them, brag about them. For with them, we are the envy of every other boy who's ever thrown a baseball. But in all the history of baseball, there's really only been one souvenir that mattered. And to us who worship the winds of baseball, it's the Holy Grail.

Every boy and man around us was trained on that ball. The noise of it spinning sounded like a miniature tornado or drill bit, and it was radar-locked on Sketch's head. I knew it was coming fast, but I reached too slowly. The ball nipped my fingertip just a few feet from him. The speed of it froze him. His eyes crossed, and the veins in his neck popped out. Inches from his face, Unc's huge, knotty hand spread across the space in front of his nose. The ball struck Unc's hand square in the palm with a loud smack and his fingers wrapped around the ball like a vise. Men and boys around us let out a collective, deflated breath of air. Unc slowly opened his hand, palm up, and held the ball in front of Sketch like the Hope Diamond.

Unc's eyes were as round as Oreos. He shook his head, his smile wide. "In one day, I got a Hank Aaron baseball card and a foul ball." He looked out over the crowd. "When we leave here, I'm buying a lottery ticket."

Next, the pitcher sent a blistering fastball, high and slightly inside, which is about where the batter struck it. The ball took off like it was attached to the back end of a plane. It passed over the center field wall maybe seventy feet in the air, clearing the bases, winning the game, and clinching the pennant race. Unc sat back like he'd just eaten a really great meal. He took off his hat, wiped his brow, and looked out over the center field fence. "Yep, I'm definitely buying a lottery ticket."

I looked at the ball. "You know, it's customary, as you get olderbeing the patriarch and all-"

Unc flashed me an Oh boy, here it comes look.

"-to give ... you know ... your fishing buddy ... any foul balls that you catch at a pennant race game."

He stood up and hefted the ball. "Why don't you spit in one hand and wish in the other."

Mandy laughed while Sketch held out both hands, palms up, eyeing one and then the other trying to figure out which one would get fuller the quickest.

We drove out of the parking lot with the kid still looking at his hands. His face was the closest thing to a smile I'd seen since his birthday. That's not to say the ends of his lips were turned up, but his eyes looked amused and excited.

'Course it didn't compare to the stretcher pasted across Unc's face. With Bones sitting in his lap, helping him steer, we hopped on 1-75 North, pulled off at Tenth Street, and rolled into The Varsity a few blocks later. Unc pulled into one of the full-service parking spaces and rolled the window down. Driving a hearse always raises a few eyebrows. Now was no exception. People kept looking in the back to see if we were carrying a casket.