Home Run: A Novel (7 page)

He walks down the street in the middle of the black night with no car around for miles, and he vows to keep walking until he passes out or he’s struck by a semi. The blood he spits up is all over his hands and his shirt and pants, but it’s so dark in the middle of this nowhere that he barely knows how bad he looks. He can taste blood, but he thinks it’s from his cut lip.

Soon he’ll realize that a couple of ribs are broken and it’s not just his lip bleeding.

Tomorrow he’ll see crimson-splattered Nike shoes and jeans and a shirt. His right fist will show bloody scrapes from trying to fend off his father. Punching the side of the house and the railing on the deck didn’t help either. He will see the black eye and the J-shaped gash along his cheek.

But mostly Cory will see those eyes that finally know. That finally understand.

He can count on one hand the amount of times his father’s hit him. But earlier tonight, everything that happened—with Mom screaming and crying and eventually taking off with Clay in the car and Cory standing off with his father—it was pure and utter insanity.

The games had gotten to him. Cory was starting to feel big, and maybe his dad thought he didn’t have many more chances to make his son feel small. The old game of standing beside the barn and taking in the blistering pitches no longer worked. Cory would hit every single ball. He’d try to stop the grin from washing all over his face. Every single hit was a message.

You’re not better than me, you foolish old man.

But on this night, the old man was better than him. Because Cory decided to make a stand, and he got beat up. Badly.

His father shoved him back once. Then moved in and punched him over and over and over again. With punches that felt like they’d been stored up inside for a long time.

When Cory finally fell to the floor and bent over and spit out blood, something clicked.

Good old Dad stood there looking at him in horror, his drunken eyes suddenly sobering up and realizing. Then he spoke Cory’s name, but it was all done.

Cory needed help standing up, but then he stood before the monster and asked if he was done. His father started to cry like a baby, and Cory just cursed at him. Then he walked out the door.

He doesn’t care about baseball or Emma or this farm or Okmulgee. All he wants is to get far, far away. He is going to walk to California and start a new life.

But sometime around midnight, Cory stops on the side of a lonely two-lane rural highway. He sits down and puts his arms around his legs and begins to cry. Everything leaks out. Everything.

Chapter Nine

Error

Cory wasn’t sure if it was the collision with the tractor or the ambulance ride to the hospital that sobered him up. If he was forced to blow in a Breathalyzer, it would surely reveal that he was technically inebriated. But as he sat in the chair in the lonely waiting area in the hospital, he felt the cold, hard slap of reality striking him across the face again.

He already felt hungover, even though the buzz hadn’t completely worn off. And Cory knew all too well that not all hangovers are created equal.

He could still remember his first and last encounter with Jack Daniel’s in high school. It hadn’t been pretty. The last thing he remembered was sitting in the backseat between two pretty girls while holding a bottle between his legs. The next memory was ten hours later, when he woke up in his boxers in the basement of one of those girls’ houses. The parents knew, of course.
All
the parents knew, including his own. He’d gotten in a lot of trouble for that one, but the worst thing had been how bad his head and stomach felt.

Cory hadn’t blamed it on himself, however. He blamed it on the awful taste of the whiskey.

There was a time while playing baseball in college that he’d decided to drink only wine one evening. His stomach was beginning to hurt from all the beer he’d been drinking, so like an idiot he decided to try to drink cheap wine instead. As if he was drinking beer. That had made the Jack Daniel’s hangover seem like child’s play.

Now he sat in a hospital waiting room, the throbbing in his head minor compared to the guilt he felt. Like every drunk driving cliché, Cory had walked away from the collision with the tractor with only some bumps and bruises. A nice square bandage on his forehead was taped over a cut he’d received from the broken glass flying everywhere. He also walked away without getting another DUI, all because of Clay.

Clay was going to be fine. He
looked
awful—broken arm and some broken ribs and other bumps and bruises—but the guy on the ambulance was confident that Clay’s injuries weren’t serious.

’Course you thought he might be dead the moment you looked at him once the careening car came to a rest and he just sat there hunched over and bleeding.

Cory had gotten a response from Clay, thankfully. Then when the county cop arrived, Cory was out of the car while Clay still sat inside. The guy’s name was Murphy—that’s what Clay said when he saw him. Clay told him to call an ambulance but made up some excuse about Cory and him being distracted in the car. Murphy recognized Cory, of course, and seemed a bit starstruck.

Once the ambulance came and Cory climbed in with his brother, he was off the hook. The other cops who didn’t know Clay as well and weren’t as starstruck as Murphy were going to ask questions, but they couldn’t do a thing. Clay said once Cory got in the ambulance and left the scene of the accident, the police could no longer arrest him.

The last hour after arriving at the hospital had been like the accident itself: a twisting and turning crash that never seemed to stop. Cops were swarming around him.

“I don’t care who your brother is,” one yelled. “And I don’t give a rip who you are. You should be going to jail.”

This wasn’t the first time someone had yelled in his face. Cory ignored them all. He had mastered that art.

His phone vibrated, so he checked the incoming text. Helene.

I’M OUT FRONT. WHERE ARE YOU
?

Cory thought about making a wisecrack, then decided against it. Even he knew when to stop joking around. He stood up and began walking to the front of the building. As he moved through the hallway, he could hear steps approaching quickly. The clean, stark look of the hospital seemed to match Karen’s face as she rushed past him in the hallway.

Cory couldn’t think of anything to say to her as she glared his way and kept walking.

He went on outside to meet Helene, hoping he wouldn’t run across anybody else he recognized. Or who recognized him.

Helene smoked a cigarette the way she did everything else, sucking the life out of it with no time to waste and then tossing the butt onto the curb and forgetting about it until she lit up again. Cory hated the ugly habit but knew she hated some of his habits even more.

“I can’t watch over you 24/7,” she began without even a
how are you doing
or
glad to see you’re okay.
“With the new collective bargaining agreement in effect, you’re gonna be dealing with more discipline from the league on top of whatever the Grizzlies decide.”

“You can’t smoke here.”

“Watch me.”

They were in the entrance of the hospital, and Cory glanced at the sliding glass doors leading to the dark night outside. A part of him wanted to dart through them and head back into the shadows. Not just a part of him, but every inch of him.

“What do I need to do?” he asked his agent.

“Pray your brother can swing a suspended sentence. And try,
try
, to stay out of trouble while I cover your butt.”

He knew that when Helene told him to pray, things were bad. Very, very bad.

“Clay already bailed me out,” Cory admitted.

“How?”

“He knew the county cop. A young guy. Clay said things were fine—that he needed medical attention. He told me to just shut up and act quiet. I went with him in the ambulance.”

Helene knew how lucky Cory was at times. This wasn’t the first story of this kind he’d told her. She was probably going to say as much when they heard the sound of a group of people coming toward them. A bunch of kids in faded red T-shirts with
Bulldogs
printed across the front were walking up the sidewalk like little possessed dwarves haunting his nightmares. A couple of mothers were following them as they all marched into the hospital.

“Oh, man. The kids are here.”

“Who are they?”

“My brother’s baseball team.”

Helene let out an incredulous moan as the group converged in an animated circle nearby. “Your brother is the kids’
baseball coach
? Next time why don’t you just shoot Bambi?”

Then yesterday walked in with the kids and glanced over in Cory’s direction.

For a moment, he couldn’t move or do anything as he stared at her.

Emma Hargrove stood there looking a bit shocked herself, staring at him as the kids ran around her. She crossed her arms and suddenly appeared uncomfortable, like she was freezing in her short-sleeved shirt even though it was still warm outside.

She looks the same as that young girl I left ten years ago.

Helene smiled as she took a drag from the cigarette.

“Uh oh,” she said to Cory in a hushed voice. “There’s a story here.”

Not just one story, Helene. A whole book of them.

Cory was about to act when a couple of obvious newshounds sniffed their way into the hospital and spotted him standing there.

“There he is,” one of the reporters said.

“Cory Brand,” another announced to the hospital and the rest of the world.

Like all paparazzi and reporters, the couple suddenly mutated like a pack of zombies. Yet Cory almost welcomed them, since it ended whatever moment was about to happen between Emma and him.

Helene dropped her cigarette and prepared for battle. “Game face, Cory.”

He could say a lot about her, but Helene Landy knew how to sweet-talk strangers and how to work a hungry crowd. The reporters seemed to scurry toward them from all directions as Helene fronted Cory with a smile and a sharp look. Nobody in the entrance to the hospital would doubt that this woman would plant her heel in your foot if you didn’t watch yourself.

“Good evening, folks. I’m Helene Landy—”

Which meant nothing; they were here to see the ball player with the bandage on his forehead.

“Cory Brand. Did you sustain any injuries?”

“Cory, what happened?”

The reporters were elbowing to get a quote and a sound bite, but Helene remained on guard, trying to shield him as he stepped up beside her. He knew the routine. Running away or not saying a word only made things worse.

“As I was saying,” Helene said in a commanding voice, “Cory Brand is happy to report that, other than bumps and bruises, he is just fine—”

One of the more aggressive reporters, a blonde-haired woman obviously not impressed with Cory or his agent, barked out, “Cory. How’s your brother?”

“He’s, uh, okay.”

“Clay Brand is resting comfortably, and while sustaining other injuries—”

“What injuries exactly?” Ms. Barbie-Doing-Barbara-Walters demanded.

“Cory, have you been suspended by the Grizzlies?” a wrinkled-faced journalist asked.

“Was alcohol involved in the accident, Cory?” asked another plain-faced, suspicious stranger holding a recorder.

Cory wanted to take the mini-recorder and jam it down the guy’s throat.

Helene put a hand on his arm and held it firmly as she continued to talk. “A tractor was involved in the accident,” she said, elevating the mood and defusing the intensity. “And Mr. Brand, out of love for his brother, has offered to stay in Okmulgee and take his brother’s place as coach of the local kids’ baseball team.”

Say what?

Cory looked at her with a disbelieving glance, just like the rest of them. There was laughter and some levity now as the pack of reporters picked up on this latest news.

“Cory Brand’s coaching kids’ baseball?” the blonde asked.

Nobody seemed to be buying it.

“That’s one lucky team,” the older reporter said.

“Do the parents know their kids are getting Cory Brand as their coach?” Mr. Don’t-Drive-Drunk roving reporter asked.

Cory had no idea what to say. First Helene got him roped into taking some twelve-step program, and now he was coaching Little League?

Next I’m going to be working in a soup kitchen and sewing clothes for the homeless.

“Does this mean you’re moving to Okmulgee?” another journalist asked.

The others were scrambling, trying to get more details and sending others off to try to interview more people for this big story in sports.

The questions began to assault them, and Cory couldn’t answer a single one because he had enough questions of his own.

“Mr. Brand’s had a long day, guys,” Helene said, waving the white flag with her hand. “We’ll release another statement tomorrow when he attends his first practice with the Bulldogs. Thank you very much.”

I’ve gone from batting cleanup with the Grizzlies to chasing ten-year-olds on the Bulldogs. Wonderful.

Helene tugged at him to follow her back into the hospital. He gave his routine smile even as more questions came.

“Is the Bulldog venue big enough to handle the anticipated crowds?”

That was a good question, but he didn’t have the answer. The lights of the cameras went off as reporters and photographers knew this was their last opportunity to capture a moment.

Out of the entryway to the hospital and standing alone in the hallway where they could still be seen, Cory looked happy and calm on the surface, but inside he wanted to tear into his agent.

“You’re way out of line this time,” he said.

“No, you are. And I’m fixing it.” Helene raised her eyebrows and grinned as she glanced at the crowd. “Man, I’m good.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“Oh, that ship has sailed. It’s online by now. Next conversation.”

Cory glanced down the hallway leading to the room where Clay lay.

“Go see your poor brother one more time before I take you to your new home sweet home.”

Before he could tell her no or ask her another question, Helene was moving, on her way to fix things. That was her job.

He headed inside to see his brother. Not that he particularly wanted to, but he knew that was the only place he could go right now.