The Youngest Hero (31 page)

“Don’t get your hopes up,” my mother said, looking out the window.

I may never get my hopes up again
. I couldn’t wait to get back to the pitching machine and see what the new gizmo would add to my workouts. But the rest of
the way, all I could think about was seeing Daddy again and all we would talk about.

I phoned Chaplain Wallace from the train depot near the taxi stand.

“Get yourself a room nearby,” he said, “and I’ll come get you. You may see Neal at four this afternoon. You’ll be happy to
know he is ambulatory and will be able to walk into the visitors’ picnic area to greet you.”

I was grateful Elgin wouldn’t have to see his daddy in a hospital bed with needles and tubes running in and out of him, but
the chaplain didn’t say the prognosis was any better.

Elgin and I showered. He dressed up. I dressed down. There would be no encouraging Neal on this visit, though it felt strange
to think I might be seeing the last of him.

Reverend Wallace was a kind-looking man, perhaps softer and plumper than I expected. He had fleshy hands and wore thick glasses.
When he picked us up, he spoke to me in code. “The incarcerated individual,” he began, looking at me over the top of his glasses
to see whether I was following, “remains in a negative prognosive state. He must be very careful, however, to avoid anything
that would exacerbate his hypertension or threaten his cardiovascular system.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s so good of you to come, ma’am,” he said. “Have you thought more about that of which we corresponded?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m not prepared to reconcile, if that’s what you mean. I don’t plan to be nasty, but I’m here for the boy.
I don’t mind seeing Neal again, but I will not be encouraging him.”

“Ma’am, I think he knows what’s happening here, and I doubt he’s looking for any romantic encouragement.”

“I know what he’s looking for, sir,” I said. “He’s not going to get absolution from me.”

The chaplain showed his card to the guard and began the process of getting himself and his guests inside the maximum-security
facility.

“A little mercy or grace to a terminal patient is an inexpensive but precious commodity.”

I took that as a rebuke and fell silent. Wallace turned his attention to Elgin. “I’ll bet you’ll be glad to see your dad after
all this time.”

“Momma says he’s sick.”

“He might not look like what you remembered, but you’ll recognize him.”

The chaplain led Elgin and me to a picnic table beneath a huge tree. “I am happy to stay,” he said, “but will be just as happy
to make myself scarce.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We prefer to see him alone. But would you mind staying within sight in case I let Elgin and Neal spend
some time together? I don’t know what to do with myself here.”

“After I have pointed you out to him, I will be over there.” He gestured to an area where several tables had been pushed together.

I found myself nervous and curious. It wasn’t that I wanted to see Neal, but I had long wondered what age and illness and
prison had done to him. Surely he wouldn’t be the vision of athletic prowess he had once been.

Elgin said something I didn’t hear. I had watched the chaplain
until he disappeared. Now I watched wives and children embracing men and laughing and crying. I planned to do neither, and
I certainly would not touch the man.

“What?” I asked Elgin.

“There’s Mr. Wallace,” he said. “Where’s Daddy?”

The chaplain now stood where he said he would wait. He waved at me with a small flick of his hand and smiled politely. Several
prisoners milled about, looking for people. I did not see Neal.

I raised my palms at the chaplain in a question. He pointed past me to the corner of a building. I saw no one I recognized.
It would be too much for Elgin if Neal could not join us. It wouldn’t be fair to make him wait another day.

I scanned the grounds again and told Elgin to wait as I hurried to the chaplain. “Where is he?” I said.

Reverend Wallace pointed back toward Elgin. “Right over there,” he said. I looked. “Right there.”

Past a group of families and about twenty feet from Elgin, slowly, carefully making his way toward his son, was Neal Lofert
Woodell, number 092349. Over his prison blue dungarees he had wrapped a drab green woolen blanket around his shoulders.

My knees buckled and the chaplain caught me as I sank to the bench.

T
here had never been one clue that I could ever lose my resolve to hold against Neal the loss of my unborn daughter. The man
had cost me a child, my dignity, my security, a normal family life, my childhood dreams. He had lied as a matter of course,
even when lying benefited him nothing. He was evil and worthless.

But now as I saw the broken husk of the boy I had fallen in love with in high school, I was overcome with pity. Perhaps he
deserved this. Perhaps I should be glad he finally got his due. But what a sad and sorry price! I had not even recognized
him, had looked right through him.

Barely into his thirties, he was wan and frail. His gait was deliberate, his step unsure. He clutched the blanket around his
shoulders as a wisp of a ninety-year-old would. I felt the warm, soft hand of the chaplain on my shoulder and fought to control
myself. I needed to make sure Elgin didn’t bolt from his father. It would be no good for either of them.

I dabbed at my eyes and forced myself to watch. Elgin stiffened and stared as his father approached, prison-issue hat mocking
the baseball caps that had looked so smart on him in his youth.

Elgin stood, and I felt myself rising too. I pulled away from
Chaplain Wallace, insisting I was all right, and moved a few feet behind my son. Neal glanced at me.

“Dad?” Elgin said, his voice thick.

“El,” Neal said, and the boy rushed to him, embracing him. Neal put one arm around his son and held the blanket up with his
other hand. “How ya doin, boy?”

His voice was weak, his face dark and shadowy. He looked as if he had lost more than thirty pounds. His eyes were sunken and
dark, his teeth bad, and thin strands of hair poked out under the cap. I was impressed when Elgin helped his father get one
leg under the table so he could straddle the bench. The boy hurried around to the other side and leaned forward.

“Did we surprise you, Dad?”

Neal hesitated, thinking. “I believe the chaplain told me you might come.” A flicker of amusement came to his eyes. “I never
was much for bench sittin.”

“Me either,” Elgin said, and went into a long explanation of why he was not playing on a team yet this summer.

“That’s a crime,” Neal managed. “I oughta write somebody and tell em I’m gonna sue em if they don’t let you play.”

“It’s all right, Daddy,” Elgin said. “If I don’t get to play till next summer, I’m gonna be something because of that pitching
machine,” and he proceeded rapid-fire to bring him up to date on that. Neal, whose attention seemed to flag, merely smiled
and nodded occasionally.

What I felt for the man was compassion and sympathy, not love. Still I wanted to embrace him. What would be the harm? There
would be no false encouragement in it. The man was clearly dying. Anything and everything he had ever done had caught up with
him, and now he was in an irreversible spiral, years before his time.

“El,” he whispered, “there’s things I got to tell you, and then I want to talk to your momma. Listen to me. Remember me for
the good things, you hear? For what I could do on the ball field when I was healthy, for teachin you all that stuff. Know
what I mean?”

Elgin nodded. “I inherited my baseball from you, Daddy.”

“Sounds like you’re already better than me at your age. But let me tell you somethin, boy. I been a liar all my life. I two-timed
your momma from the day we started dating. You know what that means?”

“You had another girlfriend?”

Neal nodded miserably. “She wasn’t someone you’d marry, just have fun with. Bad news. Bad thing to do. I even had other girlfriends
after we was married.”

Elgin winced, and I wished Neal could spare him this. It was little surprise to me, though I had tried to believe otherwise.

“I been an alcoholic since high school. Not just drinkin, but needing it, doing anything to get it, lettin it run my life.
There were times I controlled it a little, sometimes in the minors, just after your mom and I got married. But I never got
a handle on it. My job was drinkin and everything else was just to finance it, right up till the time I killed that old man.”

“You said that was an accident.”

“Elgin, I’m tellin you I was a liar. Believe what I told you about baseball. But everything else I ever told you, you can
take to the dump. You know your mom believes I killed our baby.”

“Yeah, but I know you—”

“Well, I did. I didn’t mean to, but I was drunk and not thinkin and raging mad. Just because they never busted me for it don’t
mean I didn’t do it. I live with it every day. That baby girl comes to me in the middle of the night sometimes and—”

Elgin recoiled, and I stepped from behind him to put my hand over Neal’s. His lean, cold fingers twitched. “Neal, he’s just
a boy. Be careful, please.”

Neal’s lips had begun to quiver. “I just wanna tell you, El. Don’t ever even try booze. It’ll kill you just like it’s gonna
kill me. I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done that’s made life hard for you. I wanted to give you everything and see you
be whatever you wanted to be.”

“I want to be a ballplayer like you, Daddy.”

Neal shook his head and held up his free hand. The blanket slid from his shoulders. I pulled it up around him again. He smelled
of the infirmary.

“Be a ballplayer, El. But don’t be like me.”

He turned to force his other leg under the table, rested on his elbows, and held his face in his hands. I went around and
sat beside him, my knees facing away from the table. I pulled the blanket up around his shoulders again as his body jerked
with sobs.

“Daddy, I forgive you,” Elgin said. “I forgive you for everything.”

“You always have,” Neal whined. “Even when I was still makin excuses and lying about bein sorry.”

Elgin looked at me and I felt the accusation.

“Give us a minute, honey,” I told him, but he hesitated. I looked to the chaplain, who hurried over. I signaled him with a
nod toward Elgin.

“Son, let’s give your mom and dad a couple of minutes, hm?”

“I’ll be right back, Daddy.”

Neal remained hidden behind his knuckly hands, weeping. “I’m through lyin, Mir,” he said. “I never convinced you of anything
anyway, but I’m through.”

Something in me needed to hear this, yet I took no joy in his pain as I once had.

“Oh, Miriam,” he whimpered, “can’t you forgive me? Everything you ever accused me of was true. I’m sorry for the other women,
I’m sorry about the baby, I’m sorry about the old man, I’m sorry for what I’ve done to Elgin and to you.”

I took his head in my hands and pulled him to me, cradling him like the baby he was, the pitiable, helpless, hopeless infant
I had longed to rock in my arms since I lost my own at his hands.

“I need to hear you say it,” he said, but I could not speak. The man would soon pay the ultimate price for his worthless past.
Who was I to forgive him? How was it possible I could let go and tell him what he needed to hear? Why should he die in peace
when I had to live in turmoil?

But he would not die in peace, regardless what I said. I would not lie. I could not forgive him if I didn’t feel it in my
heart. But even then, did I have to say it? Why was the onus on me? He
could apologize for a year and cry twenty-four hours a day, and it would not bring back to me the treasures he had ripped
away.

Why couldn’t I let it go? His alcoholism was beyond a character weakness by now. He could not be sorry for the hold it still
had on him; he could be sorry only for the choices that had brought him here. I held him and rocked him and heard his pathetic,
woeful weeping.

He pulled back from me. His were the eyes of a dead man.

“If I could make it up to you, Miriam, I would work around the clock for the rest of my life. Call me a liar every time before.
Say I was bein phony every time I turned over a new leaf, and you’d be right. Sometimes I thought I meant it, but I could
never make it stick. This time, Mir, I got nothin to gain except your forgiveness. You won’t be saying it’s all right. You
won’t be saying you’re all right or the boy’s all right or that I can just forget about all the pain I’ve brought you.

“You won’t be saying everything can be wiped away with a word. All you’ll be saying is that you won’t hate me forever. That’s
all. That’s all I want. Tell me you’ll think about me sometime without hatin me and everything I was. Tell me you’ll think
about me and remember somethin good. If you can’t remember some of the fun times we had before I went crazy with the booze,
at least remember that at the end I realized what I’d done and was truly, truly sorry, probably for the first time in my life.”

I held him again, knowing full well that all he would take from my embrace was pity. Forgive him? Pardon him? What would that
mean? I would not, would not, be phony. I would not say something I didn’t mean. It would be worse than anything he had ever
done to me.