On the way home from work, the dads would detour past the field where their sons played ball. They slowed their cars, coughing sedans with payment plans that always outlived the engines, and pulled to the curb. No matter how their work had gone, the dads knew that at the end of the day they could count on their sons.
It didn`t matter if the boy at bat was their own. The dads didn`t come here to see how well their sons played ball. Later, the dads would care about the days of their children and wives. During dinner or in front of the TV, they could hear about the failing grade or flooding sink that had made this day different from all the others. And if anyone bothered to ask, the dads would say that their day had gone okay, the usual, the same as always, and in a way it was. Every day brought another new worry, something wrong to remind them where they were. Their grandfathers, refugees from another continent who had crossed an ocean with nothing to their names, had managed to provide their families with a home. And their fathers, by the time they`d reached this age, already had found a new promised land, the block of bungalows that were then crowding across the outskirts of the city. But these dads hadn`t even made it out of that neighborhood. They`d gotten only as far as the complex of apartment buildings that rose one year to replace the few remaining empty lots. To their children the dads could offer no lawns, no basements or attics, nothing permanent, none of the places that had brought to light the pioneering spirit of their own boyhoods. Instead, the legacy of these dads would be two- and-a-half rented bedrooms of temporary furnishings, temporary memories, temporary security. And if, by some stroke of good fortune that always seemed to happen to the other guy, one of the dads did make the move to the suburbs, all of the families in the unit would gather for a farewell barbecue in the parking lot out back, where there should have been a yard. There the dads would reassure one another that they`d done what they could. They`d given their children an education from the Sisters of Mercy, in a safe neighborhood, with one good ball field.
Every month, when the dads would sit down with their wives to pay the bills, they`d go over the old figures again, checking their expenditures and adjusting their estimates, based on their joint incomes as well as current interest rates, and the result was always the same. The day they could get their families out of here was still far away. Then they`d help with the homework or fix the faucet. But in the late afternoons, when the day was still their own, what the dads did was only for themselves: They watched their sons, boys who were worried by nothing but the distance they could bat a ball.
A home run was a fly ball onto the blacktop beyond the patch of grass that the boys called left field. The boys understood that there were strategies on the basepath, fundamentals of fielding, subtleties to the batting stance that they were ignoring. But that was the stuff of the major leagues. This was sandlot ball, with only four or five guys to a side. Almost everyone got to bat at last once an inning. It was hardly baseball at all. It was more like batting practice, except that they kept score. Base hits were okay, and trying to stretch a single into a double got the adrenaline going, but the aim of the game, really, was to hit the ball long enough to land on the tar for a home run.
The boys played every day. The neighborhood was mostly old people, so the boys didn`t have competition for their field. In summer, they started playing so early that the sun was in the batter`s eyes. The grass was wet enough to soak through sneakers, but by noon their feet were dry, and in the late afternoon the sweat evaporated as soon as it appeared on their bronze skin. They stayed until the shadows from the row of bungalows across the street covered the infield and the sun was in the eyes of the left fielder. In spring they had to wait until school was over, but then they ran here as fast as they could in a race against the setting sun. No matter what the calendar said, no matter how many paper flowers their teachers pinned above the blackboards, the boys knew that spring didn`t really start until the first pitch.
One spring they had to wait clear into May. First there was a freak April snowstorm. Then there was rain, and then more rain. Even after the rain stopped, the boys had to wait while overcast skies and damp winds kept their field from drying. Every day they brought their bats and gloves to school in case today was the day. Baseball was what had gotten them through winter, and now it was what pulled them through school. They daydreamed about the weight of that wood in their hands, the moment when anything could happen, the snap of the wrists, the whack of ball upon bat. And even if nothing happened, there was always the next time, another inning, tomorrow. The only time there was no tomorrow was at the end of the season, when their heavy coats forced them into football. But at the start of the season, summer still lay ahead, and summer always lasted forever, almost. It would be another few years before the boys had to worry about jobs.
Finally they got their chance. That day it was so hot the school principal allowed the boys to remove the neckties from their blue uniforms. With the ties trailing from the loops on their belts, the boys ran to the ball field, picking sides along the way. One team took the field, the other team chose a batting order, and with a squint into the sun and a kick at the dirt to make sure it all was real, they played ball.
The first batter hit the first pitch of the new season for a home run. The ball rose, a shrinking circle of white against a brilliant sky, and they all knew it was gone. Even the team on the field cheered when it bounced on the blacktop. Then they pounded their fists in their mitts to let the other team know that now they meant business.
But the next batter hit a home run, too. The team on the field didn`t yell. The left fielder just turned his back when he saw the ball leap off the bat, and he trotted off to shag it. But the team at bat howled, slamming their hands against their new hero`s back even before he crossed home plate.
Then the third batter hit a home run. This time his teammates gave a nervous giggle, but before he reached first base, they were whooping again. When the fourth batter also hit a home run, they waited until he crossed second base before calling to the team on the field that it was going to be a long day.
It was this day that all the dads came to watch their sons play ball. They, too, had been outwaiting the weather. Every afternoon for the past week one or two dads had driven past the field, only to find puddles in the mud. This afternoon, though, with a cloudless sky and a warm breeze that made them think of green, the dads knew their sons would be
there. They drove like teenagers who`d just gotten their licenses. They squealed around corners, windows down, radio up, speakers crackling, fingers snapping in time with the tunes.
The first dad to arrive saw six consecutive home runs. Afraid to break the spell, he stayed in his car until one of the boys made an out, a long fly ball undercut just enough that the left fielder caught it a couple of steps from the tar. Then the dad shut off the ignition, waited for the engine to quit clattering and approached the field.
When the next dad found the first dad outside his car, he knew something was up. It took him three home runs in a row to figure out what it was. Then he too climbed from his car. As other dads arrived, they took their places along the third-base line, their hands in their back pockets, their bodies swaying forward and backward on the bottoms of their feet. At first they stared only at their sons and their home runs. Before now, when a dad had seen another dad at the ball field, he would pretend to check his watch, wave politely to the neighboring dad, and then head for home. Until now, it had not occurred to any of the dads that they each came here often.
Now, as the home runs rocketed overhead, they stole glances at the other dads. They allowed themselves smiles, then grins. Soon they were elbowing one another in the ribs. With each home run they exchanged high-fives. They pointed to one another`s hairlines above their foreheads, and they poked themselves in the flab at their waists. They swung their own imaginary bats.
The dads found it hysterical that none of them had any idea of the score. They wished aloud that they`d had a day like this when they were their sons`
age. They agreed, leaning on each other`s shoulders, that they didn`t see one another often enough. Then they planned a barbecue in the parking lot that weekend, for no reason except to have a barbecue.
They also studied their sons. Something out there was different. The field was the same, the creeping shadows were the same, so it had to be their boys. Sometime over the winter their sons had gotten the power to make it to the tar. The dads hadn`t noticed the changes day by day, but now, conjuring in their minds the image of these boys from last summer, they could see the difference.
It was in their arms, and it was in their legs, and it was in their chests. All their limbs had thinned into muscle, while their torsos had swollen. The wrists had lost their baby fat. The fingers were nimbler. Angles had entered their cheekbones, jawlines, brow ridges. Their eyes flicked with each pitch, straining to pick out the weakness that would send it onto the tar. Their backs arched in anticipation. They shifted their hips. As the shadows of the houses across the street stretched over the batter`s box, and past the pitcher`s mound, and onto the outfield grass, the dads grew quiet.
One by one they called to their sons that it was time for dinner.
But the boys didn`t budge. The team on the field held their positions, shading their eyes. The team at bat stayed along the first-base line and stared back at the dads. The dads looked at the ground, then back at the line of cars at the curb, then at the shadows on the infield. Soon it would be too dark to play. Soon it would be the end of another day. Besides, isn`t this magic what they wanted most for their sons?
Someone ran to get a couple of six-packs. The other dads took turns walking to the corner phone booth and calling to their wives and trying to explain. But they couldn`t explain. The words wouldn`t come. It had something to do with baseball, something to do with their sons out-growing this field, something to do with having something to do. They couldn`t say for sure. They took turns squinting through the scratched glass of the phone booth at the dads in the dusk, and wishing they were back there.
The ball continued to careen onto the tar. The boys were whooping again. They raised their fists in the air as they rounded the bases, pounced upon home plate with yowls, pounded on another on the shoulders, on the rumps, on the backs. The score climbed into the dozens and dozens for each side, and still the game was many innings away from a regulation finish. Between the sixth and seventh innings, the boys met on the pitching mound. The dads strained to her. When they broke their huddle, the boys called to the dads that they would no longer keep track of the score. The game would end when they had tired of hitting homers. the dads did not rgue. Someone ran for another couple of six-packs.
The ball was white against the dark blue, then purple, then light-black sky. Still it sailed. This could go on all night, the dads told one another, this could go on forever. They chuckled. They belched.
They congratulated each other. These boys, they said, then corrected themselves. These men. These men will make us proud. These men have got what it takes. And do you know why? They knew why. Because of us, they told one another, because of you and me.
When the shadows on the field finally merged with the night, nobody noticed, not the dads and not their sons. But the boys started to miss swings. Their grunts and curses reassurd the dads that a game was still going on out there in the dark. After a quick inning of three straight strikeouts on each side, the boys didn`t take the field.
They gathered instead by home plate. They shook hands all around. If the dads hadn`t broken this up, the game would have ended then. But the dads charged in there and asked their sons what they thought they were doing. Darkness, they told their sons, is for cowards.
The sons gaped up at their dads. But, they protested, it`s really dark.
The dads strummed their stubble. They thought hard about driving back from this black to the brightness of their apartments. They thought about a baseball game without a score. Then they told their sons that necessity is the mother of invention, and to give them a minute to think of smething.
The sons said they didn`t care. They said they were tired and hungry.
Tired and hungry, the dads said is for now. Did they really want this day, when they can do nothing but hit home rounds, to end? If they ever wanted to grow up, the dads said, they`d better start thinking about for keeps.
The boys wanted to grow up. They waited while their dads gathered in a circle around third base and whispered. Soon the dads marched to their cars, and the boys started to foolw, but their dads told them to wait, just wait.
The cars started like one long machine. Piece by piece the machine broke apart, climbed the curb, bounced over the sidewalk and across the grass to the foul line. The cars lined up, side by side, with their headlights illuminating the outfield and the infield and the batter`s box. When the dads emerged from the machine, they`d turned off the engines but left the light aglow.
The sons cheered. They slapped their dads on the back and swore they were the best dads in the world. The dads laughed. They squeezed their sons`
shoulders, feeling through the flimsy fabric of the school uniform their sons` firm muscles. Go on, the dads said, get out there now and make your old man proud.
The sons attacked the ball with new fierceness. The homers returned, flying from the bat faster then ever. They rose higher, landed farther out on the tar. But now the sons were silent. In time, they came to set their jaws for each new home run, as if it were their duty, and the dads came to nod their heads, as if it were their due. None of the dads dared to look at his wristwatch.
Instead, they stood side by side along the foul line, their hands in their pickets, their bodies swaying forward and backward, and they tried to commit this day to memory. They tried to take what they found on this field now and, between sips of beer, put it together with what they remembered of the game during daylight.
What the dads conjured was a cloudless blue sky that carried a breeze with the promise of summer to the biceps of boys who homered into the cloudless blue.
The headlights dimmed. None of the dads made a move to save a car. Everyone, dads, and sons alike, understood that the game would end when the field again was dark. Two by two the lights winked out. The sons cracked baseballs onto the blacktop until the last of the batteries was dead.
The sons didn`t return to the field the next day, nor the day after, and neither did the dads. When the sons eventualy went back, it was to play soccer. They never mentioned that day to each other, and they never discussed it with their dads, and the dads never mentioned it to the other dads. The day of all the homers was never spoken again. Still, the following weekend, each of the dads did pace inside his apartment, back and forth past the one window that overlooked the parking lot, watching for the first sign of a barbecue.
