Home Run: A Novel (28 page)

The old me never wanted those peaks to go away.

He prayed for guidance and peace as he walked, closing his eyes for just a second.

Then he heard footsteps coming toward him and his name being shouted out.

By Emma.

That sweet and pretty girl he’d fallen in love with in high school hadn’t changed much. She’d just grown into a beautiful woman and mother, and he hadn’t been there to watch the change. He’d missed every good and glorious part about it.

But Emma was there now.

She walked toward him and then embraced Cory for the first time in ten years. Their last embrace had been cold and had signified good-bye. This one signified hope.

Cory stepped back for a second to make sure it was really her, to look at her face.

Those eyes looked at him once again without any walls or barriers between them.

Cory might have been a fool and might still be a fool, but he knew this woman still loved him. Anybody could see that.

He wanted to say that everything was going to be okay and that he was going to take things slowly and that he would never
ever
leave their family’s life again if they would allow him back into it.

He tried to show this all with a smile and a nod.

Emma knew. She knew him a lot better than he knew himself.

Cory looked toward the truck and saw Tyler’s gawking face of disbelief in the window. It made him laugh while Emma stood back and seemed to regain her composure.

She cleared her voice. “You hungry?”

He needed to wrap his mind and heart and soul around what was happening here.

Please, God, don’t let me wake up in the roach motel, watching ESPN and staring at the Devil’s fridge.

Cory smiled at Emma and regained his composure as well. “Always.”

Tyler was out of the truck and had reached the two of them.

Only two fans were left in the stadium parking lot of the Tulsa Mustangs after their home game, but Cory Brand definitely did not feel alone anymore.

When the night is over and Emma and Tyler are gone, Cory doesn’t collapse back into his own little world he’s made for himself. He doesn’t panic or have a pity party at being left again.

This time, Cory simply says a prayer of thanks to God who forgives. To God who answers prayers. To God who has mercy, just like the woman who’s allowing him back into her life.

It used to be that emotions like this terrified him because ultimately they would let him down. Cory no longer believes that. He no longer fears the silence and the shadows. He’s no longer afraid of the void inside of him, one that will never truly be filled until the day he steps before his heavenly Father.

Cory thanks God for one of the best nights of his life. He believes there can be more of them, God willing.

But right now he remains in the moment and remains thankful for this day.

Chapter Forty-five

Home Run

These pieces of you, imperfectly sewn and patched all over, blur by like a blinding pitch.

That image woke Cory up at three in the morning. He’d been able to go back to sleep for a while, but the picture had stayed with him as he drove back home to Okmulgee for an important occasion.

It was there as he passed his sweet home-away-from-home and spotted the sign outside the motel that said Cory Brand Stays Here. The old Cory Brand would have stopped and told them to stop using his name; now he found it oddly amusing.

The image had been there as he spotted Hank’s Tavern, where his father used to drink and where Cory had found himself at a crossroads of his life.

It was especially there as he drove past the Little League field.

Now that his moment had arrived, it felt like he’d been building up to it for the past thirty-four years. Cory stood in the large church sanctuary before a crowd of familiar and loving faces.

Suddenly he could see all the broken strands of the story intersecting.

The man in the front pew still resembled that pesky and annoying little kid who always seemed at his side wherever he was. He would forever be the little brother who loved him unconditionally. No matter what.

Next to that man sat a pretty girl who had grown into a lovely woman, still lit up with all the potential she somehow saw in Cory even when nobody else could have ever imagined it.

He pictured the boy belonging to this woman, a boy who looked a lot like the one threatened and abused on a farm around here years ago. If that boy could be here at this moment, he would be a portrait of happiness and hope and pride.

Karen sat in the pew with Emma and Clay. While children weren’t allowed in CR meetings, Cory knew that Tyler and Carlos were close by. He would see them soon. J. T. sat a couple of rows back.

He had pictured their faces all day, but now he saw them in light of this story, of
his
story that he was going to be reading. He had failed all of them at one point or many points along the journey. Yet ultimately there was only one person he had failed time and time again.

But God graciously continued to love Cory Brand despite all he did.

“I’m a believer who’s in recovery and struggles with alcoholism and anger,” Cory started out, a statement now as familiar in his mind as the act of stepping up to the plate.

The room gave him a rousing greeting that brought chills over his skin.

“Some of you know that I occasionally play baseball,” he said, a line that brought the sound of laughter.

He needed to hear that because he was so nervous about these words he was saying. As usual, he made the joke to feel a little better. Yet in this case, he wasn’t hiding from anything.

Not a thing.

Cory shared pieces of that broken puzzle. His relationship with an abusive father, his desire to take care of his brother. He shared his love of baseball and how it opened doors and how it also shut doors.

“I was given a gift many years ago, but I was too stupid to realize it,” Cory said, looking at Emma and thinking of Tyler. “I thought that gift was the ability to hit a ball into the stands. I didn’t realize that gift came in the form of a new life, a precious baby boy that I didn’t want to think about, that I ran away from. Even then, all I could think of was myself and my career.”

Cory paused and composed himself, smiling a sad smile at Emma.

He continued to detail the journey into having his dreams come true and how that took everything good and whole from him. Alcoholism and women only dulled the pain of the past he’d run away from.

“I have spent my life replacing the love and attention I never had from my father and covering up the pain from that neglect with alcohol. But every drop of alcohol, every drunken tirade, every one-night stand—none of it would ever erase the ache inside of me. An ache only God could fill.”

Cory looked down and remembered the expression on Tyler’s face as he’d yelled at the boy in the bar. The moment when it had all come full circle and he knew he couldn’t do anything about all the broken pieces surrounding him.

“I tried to change,” Cory said. “But I failed every time.”

A sense of strength and hope soared through him, and it wasn’t from a crowd chanting his name. It had nothing to do with him. Cory believed that with every fiber in him.

“I know now that I am powerless without God, but with His help I have found a freedom from my pain and my habits I never believed possible.”

The faces staring at him smiled and nodded and gave him affirmation. For a second he pictured the face of Michael Brand, the man he had spent so many years trying to escape from. But Cory knew he didn’t have to run away from that beat-up man anymore.

“My family has suffered for generations. I suffered because of my father’s pain. He suffered because of his father’s pain. But this is where it stops. This is how it changes.”

The pieces of his life and his story blurred by like a blinding pitch.

A blinding pitch that he finally connected with.

“Today, I begin a new story,” Cory said with joy and pride. “I am a child of God, and I have a Father who loves me—on and off the baseball field.”

In his mind, Cory pictured Emma and Tyler. His joy and his pride.

“Thank you for letting me share.”

The crowd erupted with an applause he’d never quite felt as strongly as he felt it now. As they stood and cheered, J. T. walked up to the podium and gave him a hug.

It was a year to the day that Cory got sober. He wasn’t at this church because of some publicity event or some public outing he got paid for.

This truly was a celebration of one year of his life. A very good year, in fact.

Cory Brand hoped and prayed there would be many more years like this to celebrate and thank God for.

He approaches the bronze plaques in the ground. The ground around the plaques has been groomed a bit. Now the plaques are easier to see.

Nobody else knows he’s here. Nobody but God above and maybe his parents if they can see him. Cory kneels and places a gift by each name.

The dozen fresh red roses go by Alicia Brand’s name. They’re nothing in comparison to the gift she gave him so many years, but they’re something.

“I’m sorry I didn’t grant your request,” he says out loud, hoping she can somehow hear him. “But I finally did come home. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

He slips a ball out of his pocket and puts it down by Michael Brand’s name.

Seeing that ball next to that name brings tears to his eyes. He didn’t think it would, not after all this time, but then again, every new day something surprises him.

Cory Brand knows something now.

There are two ways a heart can grow. It can either harden or grow softer.

“I forgive you, Dad.”

He looks long and hard at the name and the ball next to it—the ball from the first home run he ever hit in the major leagues.

There’s only one person who ever deserved to have that ball.

Maybe
deserve
isn’t the right word, Cory thinks.

But then again, none of us deserves the grace we’re given.

That’s the beauty of it.

Chapter Forty-six

Perfect Game

Cory sat in the crowded wooden bleachers next to Karen and J. T. The Bulldogs were up by five and playing great. Tyler had connected with a couple of monster hits that reminded Cory of someone else he once knew. The second hit had gotten a basking mother’s brilliant beam coming his way. Cory knew Emma was thinking all the things he was thinking.

Well, most of them.

The early evening still had a little sun left in it for the July day. He’d been able to stay a couple of days after his testimony at the CR meeting before heading back to Tulsa to hit the road with the Mustangs. He wasn’t thinking beyond this moment, sitting here and watching Tyler and Carlos and the rest of the ragamuffins playing out there while coaches Emma and Clay worked their magic.

For a second he looked into the endless Oklahoma sky and felt at home.

If Cory could write the script that would become the film of his life, he knew how he would end it.

He wouldn’t write a scene that echoed
The Natural
, as Robert Redford’s character stepped up to the plate and blasted the home run that sent down a steady glowing stream of sparkles and explosions while the music played in the background. That was a spectacular ending for Roy Hobbs.

Nor would Cory choose the touching conclusion of
Field of Dreams
, a guy throwing a baseball with his father. That was a beautiful moment in a wonderful film too, but that wasn’t in the plans when it came to Michael Brand and his son.

No.

Cory would end things just like this. Sitting here watching his son play ball. Watching the only true love of his life be willing to invite him back into hers after he’d been gone so long. Holding a one-year CR chip in his hand. Knowing not to get ahead of himself, not to worry about tomorrow or the next day.

He knew God made his life complete when He placed all the pieces before him. Cory also knew he was promised that once he got his act together, God would give him a fresh start.

All the pieces were in place.

The fresh start would come every morning. For the rest of his life.