The Evil B.B. Chow & Other Stories (7 page)

This was why the boys of Dorset began referring to the field as the Prison Lot. They grumbled over the sense of confinement, which ran contrary to the sport's pastoral spirit. And, being children, they took up the obvious challenge: to hit a ball over the fence. In this way, they managed a collaboration that publicly confounded adult concerns. On summer afternoons, with the shadows drawn long across the grass, threads of boys in baseball mitts converged on the Prison Lot to conduct the business of childhood.

E
RIC
H
IELMAN WAS
a handsome boy and he had lived with the advantages of his looks. He was picked up and played with frequently as a baby. He made friends easily. Teachers doted on him. He had a fine jaw, his father's jaw, and eyes the green of antique glass. He was also the only boy ever to clear the Prison Lot's fence in a game situation.

Bat speed was the central issue in Eric's life. His father, who had played ball in college, explained that a major leaguer must be able to bring his bat from a motionless state to a dynamic point of contact, at waist level, in less
than half a second. This required coordination of the entire body: the eye had to pick up the ball and anticipate its path, wrists and forearms had to bring the bat to the back of its swing, upper arms and shoulders had to flex and pivot, the trunk and waist had to rotate, the thighs had to transfer the weight of the lower body from the back foot to the front in a controlled lunge. It was a kind of ballet—Eric's father had said this, a bit dreamily, quickly adding that the goal was to “maximize bat speed,” that without the cooperation of any one part the swing would fail.

The most frustrating aspect of a baseball swing, Eric's father said, was that it had to be
intuitive
. Eric, who was clever enough but only nine years old, shook his head. “You can't think about the swing,” his father said. “You can't tell your body to do all these things I'm talking about. You have to let your body figure it out on its own.”

Eric spent hours in the backyard practicing, hoping to familiarize his body with the mechanics of the swing, to bleed the process of thought, and listening for the sound of his father's car in the front driveway. Inevitably, his mother ordered him inside before his father arrived, citing darkness.

Like his father, Eric was tall and solidly built. By his tenth year, he had developed an exceptional swing: smooth and explosive. When he stepped to the plate, the infielders edged back. The outfielders positioned themselves on the
warning track and turned to one another and spat. If the ball sailed over the fence, they would have to retrieve it.

Eric himself took little notice of these adjustments. He thought of nothing in the batter's box, tried to think of nothing. This was the key to success in life, as his father had intimated. “The whole problem with this place,” his father would say, eyeing the groomed lawns of Dorset Centre, “is too damn much thinking.” Eric thought about the space at the far end of the park, where the girls now played dolls on the gazebo. And sometimes he imagined his father there, standing on a box and telling the people of Dorset what he really thought of the place. He envisioned this as a heroic moment, one they would secretly share, though he knew his mother would never allow such a thing to transpire.

A
MONG THE PLAYERS
were younger and weaker boys. Bill Bellamy was a sad third category: ungainly. He lacked coordination, and worse, lacked the good grace to remove himself from games. A doughy, red-haired boy, Bellamy was so pale his veins appeared to run green. He failed as a player, but always with an exuberance that refused to recognize his failure. He held the bat like a girl, fists apart, and came around late, even on slow pitches. He was a loss in the field, logy in his reflexes, incapable of tracking. Second base or right field were his, unless there were enough fielders, in which case he was happily excluded from the game. The
notion of placing him behind the plate was a new one. Perhaps he would do less damage as a catcher.

The experiment was a failure. Bill Bellamy was frightened of the ball and twisted away, holding his mitt out as if to shield his eyes from a small explosion, then chuckling to himself as he lumbered to the backstop. By the time Eric Hielman came up to bat, on the long last day of summer, players were yelling for a new catcher. More kids had arrived. Bill Bellamy was expendable.

Down at first base Stevie Hayes was calling out “new catcher new catcher” and Matt Anderson, the shortstop, took up the chant. They were the best players in the game, besides Eric, and the others joined in. Eric stood at the plate and waited, trying to avoid thought. But hesitation was the ally of thought; it muddied instinct. The pitcher, Jamie Blake, looked at Eric.

“Just pitch the ball,” Eric hollered.

It hadn't been his intention to make a noble gesture, only to move the game along so he could take his turn at bat. He felt strong today, and the spot where he stood, at the center of this enclosed diamond, emphasized his strength. As he squared his shoulders and watched Jamie Blake dip into his windup, he experienced the euphoria of perfected focus. The other boys scattered across the brown and green, the hovering sky, the smell of bubble gum and linseed oil on leather, the new tar of distant roads: all these
seemed a part of his brightly appointed future. Behind him, Bill Bellamy said, “Thanks Eric,” said this with a goofy conviviality he seemed to feel was shared, and stooped forward on his clumsy cleats, hoping, apparently, to offer his gratitude with a pat on the back or a handshake or some other gesture of touch, which Eric Hielman never noticed.

The pitch came in, one of Blake's halfhearted sliders, and Eric could see that it would not break; the rotation was insufficient. It would sit up and wait to be drilled. Eric's body would execute this and was already beginning to execute this, wrists and arms and trunk and legs acting in concert to pull the swing around, into abrupt dynamic motion, a single whipcord arc beginning over his left shoulder and ending as he stepped forward and felt his bat explode into Bill Bellamy's head.

H
E DID NOT
understand that this was what had happened. Not immediately. What he understood was only a truncation of the bat's natural progress. He had come up against something, a spongy feeling he would recognize later as flesh giving way to wood. The pitch came in at waist level, but he was off-balance now, as a result of this obstacle, this thing, and falling toward the plate, the trance of his swing broken and shouts knifing in from the field and, on the face of Jamie Blake, a pinched look he had never seen
before. From behind home plate came the heavy sound of a body falling without resistance.

Eric stumbled then righted himself. He turned around. Bill Bellamy lay on the ground, half-curled. His shirt rode up over his belly. An arm lay over his forehead. But even obscured, it was clear his skull was wrongly shaped. His orange hair had begun to mat with dark fluid. His feet twitched. “Bellamy,” Eric said. There was no response.

Jamie Blake and Stevie Hayes and the others were now gathered around home plate and Eric turned to them and saw that they sagged back an inch or two. Jamie looked down and Eric realized that he still held the bat in his hand and that the bat was cracked. Not a deep crack, one that he would be able to tape if he wanted to use the bat for practice, which of course was no way to be thinking at the moment. He dropped the bat.

One of the younger kids, Tom Sevrance, began whimpering. “Blood,” he said. “Blood.” He pointed to the small puddle beneath Bill Bellamy's head, as if it were important to convince some adult just out of view. Without a word, Stevie Hayes set off for the gate and Matt Anderson flew after him, mitts thumping against their hips. The others followed. Only Jamie Blake remained with Eric, trapped in the grim duty of attending to Bill Bellamy.

“He's hurt,” Jamie said. “He's really fucking hurt.”

Eric said: “Bellamy? Bellamy, can you hear me?”

“Blood,” Jamie said. “He's fucking bleeding from his head.”

“Okay. Calm down. An ambulance is going to come. They'll call an ambulance.”

“We should do something, man,” Jamie said. He had begun to cry and now fell to his knees and pounded his head into the dirt. “Fuck, man. Fuck. His head, man. Fuck.”

Eric considered this idea, of doing something. He looked at Bill Bellamy and noticed that his eyes were closed, but his stomach was moving, quivering with fast, shallow breaths. He knew about CPR from a film in school (a firm thrust of the palms below the sternum, use your weight) and, from swimming certification, he knew about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (clear the breathing passages and form a seal over the mouth, four breaths then a break). But he knew nothing about head injuries. They hadn't gone over that: what to do when you have smashed someone's head in with a baseball bat.

Jamie was on his hands and knees, making retching noises.

“Calm down,” Eric said. “He's breathing. He'll be alright. We just have to wait until the ambulance comes.”

“Fuck,” Jamie said and retched again and continued crying. “It was like he was down before you hit him.”

Eric could see Stevie Hayes and the others crossing the
street that led to their homes, darting up front walks. He turned to Bill Bellamy and crouched. “Bellamy,” he said. “The ambulance is coming.” A sharp ammoniac scent rose from the body. Its feet continued to twitch.

Jamie was muttering to himself. “Fuck, the way you hit him. Like his head was, like, fuck, like
crack
.”

Eric didn't like the way Jamie was saying this, as if he, Eric, had known Bellamy was there, or had had some control over the situation. “You shouldn't have thrown a pitch if he wasn't set.”

“Me?” Jamie reared up on his knees. His face was webbed with snot. “You were the one, Eric. Shit. You were the one who swung.”

This was the difference, Eric realized: Jamie had seen it happen. This was why he was so upset. He had been a witness. “Okay,” Eric said. “He'll be alright. We just need to wait until the ambulance comes. We have to stay here and explain.” The two of them said nothing. They looked at Bill Bellamy every few seconds; they did not look at one another.

“Maybe we should turn him over,” Jamie said.

“No,” Eric said. “I don't think we should touch him. It's serious, a serious thing.”

“I know it's serious,” Jamie said. “Shit. I know.”

Now the sound of a siren rose and dipped. It was not a familiar sound in Dorset Centre and it made the dogs, labs and shepherds mostly, howl. The ambulance companies
had trouble in Dorset, with its cul-de-sacs and speed bumps and winding streets. Eric could hear the siren swell, then recede.

A group of girls left their place at the far end of the park and headed toward the field, squinting into the low sun and pointing. Jamie's younger sister spotted him. “What happened?” she screamed. “Jamie, are you okay? Is Jamie okay?”

“I'm okay,” Jamie said, but, at the sight of his sister, he began crying again.

“He's fine, Kelly,” Eric said.

“What happened? Who's hurt?” The girls collected at the fence along the third-base line.

“Bill Bellamy,” Eric said. “But he's going to be alright.” Eric heard one of the girls say, “Bill Smellamy,” and the others laughed. “Just go home now,” he said.

The girls were suspicious of being shooed away, but they sagged back once the ambulance appeared, howling with lights. The truck jumped the curve and drove right up to the fence. A trio of men burst out of the back with a gurney and hustled across the field. Eric had expected they would want to know what happened, but they ran right past him and Jamie and hunched over Bill Bellamy and one of them said, “Good God,” and another ran back to the truck for more supplies. A short man with a beard, obviously the one in charge, said, “Is there any way to get our truck onto this field?”

“I don't think so,” Eric said. “There's just the gate.”

“Great. Great planning.” He wore latex gloves, the fingers of which were already stained crimson. They eased Bill Bellamy onto his side and wedged a board under his floppy body and raised him up. One of the paramedics started an IV and a second held a compress to his head. The reddish dirt from which he had been lifted was darkened by blood; it looked like chocolate cake batter. The medics carried the gurney gingerly. “Go home,” the man with the beard called out. He slid the body inside, the gurney collapsing.

Eric felt a sense of betrayal at having lost sight of Bill Bellamy. He had somehow assumed he was going with the medics, that they would need him for something. He and Jamie walked home in silence.

Eric turned into his driveway. “See ya.”

“Right.” Jamie had his head down.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” Jamie walked on and Eric knew then they would never again speak about what had happened, not to each other.

Eric himself was distressed to discover his most urgent memory of the incident: he had caught sight of Bill Bellamy's face as they attended to him. It seemed to him the boy had been smiling faintly.

H
E CLOSED THE
door lightly, but his mother heard him come in, as she always did, and hung up the phone and rushed toward him. She was smoking, a vice she disdained in public, but practiced with a peculiar vengeance at home. Her words cut through the smoke. “Are you okay, honey? Marcia Hayes called and told me about the accident. That's what the ambulance was about, wasn't it? Did you do this? Hit the Bellamy boy with a bat? Marcia says it was an accident, that everybody knows it was an accident. What happened?”

“He was the catcher,” Eric said. “I was at the plate. Jamie pitched the ball. I didn't see him—”

“Jamie? Jamie Blake?”

“Yeah. I was just watching the pitch and when I swung, the bat hit him. Bellamy.”