would stay put, sending another smaller flurry of sparks skyward, before turning to confront him. “Alison is too nice a girl to get hurt.”
“Oh hell, Mom,” Kyle answered. Tired of the argument already, he knelt at the end of the hearth building a neat triangle out of six rough split cherry quarters.
“Don’t you ‘Oh hell Mom’ me, young man.”
At the edge of his vision he watched his mother straighten from the fire and give him a long look before retreating. When he straightened too and turned he found her already sitting in the Morris chair, face set, arms folded.
“I just think you should be clear with her one way or the other. You know people are beginning to talk.”
“Since when would that matter?”
“It always matters.” Unfolding her arms, she set them on the wide oak rests of the chair. “Anyway,” she added more softly, “she’s not getting any younger, and neither are you. And I know for a fact that Everett Wertz has been trying to court her for over a year now.”
“Everett Wertz, for crying out loud.” Kyle thought a half-melted slush ball in hell stood a better chance than that idiot. “Okay, Ma. You’re right. I should call her up, right now, and ask her to marry me.”
“Maybe you should, dear.”
Kyle stalked from the living room through the kitchen, taking his coat from the rack on the wall in the back room. He picked up the gym bag full of old baseballs and walked on out across the yard to the place behind the barn where his father had hung a tire against the rough siding, going on now twenty years ago. Placed exactly sixty feet, six inches away, centered crosswise on a mound, lay a sawn piece of split locust fencepost substituting for a rubber. Kyle zipped open and upended the bag, spilling its contents. Taking a ball off the grass, he stepped back and cupped it with both hands, studying the place he would throw to.
He soon felt angry at himself, for in God-honest truth, his mother was right. He probably should get married, settle down, and give up this stupid quest to be something he deep down knew wasn’t in him. Alison herself had said as much, indirectly, relating a snippet of conversation overheard in the diner a few nights before: That Summer boy is just too nice, someone murmured, when he went for the restroom. He won’t throw for the batter’s head, and all the players and managers know it.
Well, he thought, I’ll show them nice. He pulled the ball back to his chest and gave a long sidelong look to check the runner. Then he pulled in his right leg, bringing the knee with it a half foot higher than his belt. In perfect, perched balance he held the pose for barely a quarter second before pushing off the mound with his left foot, sending the ball in a straight rising trajectory to hit against the barn, just high and wide of the mark. And then he gritted his teeth and snorted, angry at the verdict, glowering towards home plate.
But after throwing hard a half dozen more balls his anger subsided. The world started to darken, so he went to the yard pole and turned the switch for the hooded yard light, which threw down a soft encompassing glow. Working on his control, he began throwing for the edge of the tire, hitting each quadrant in turn, adding points for the center, deducting them for strikes nicking the periphery. As any pitcher will do, he tried to keep the score to a minimum. In such manner he envisioned himself earning a low run average or even, one day, a no-hitter.
His arm felt better than it had since early spring. And he was on tonight, so incredibly on. His control and speed were both amazingly good. Too bad he wasn’t pitching a real game.
He retrieved the thrown balls, refilling the bag, and then emptied it once again. After sixty-eight pitches he quit and stood still. The night air had cooled appreciably; he noted the surrounding chill, feeling warmth radiating from his skin, through his clothes, dissipating outwards. Overnight, the world would cool in the same manner, so that the morning view of the valley would include a rising river of fog. A slight breeze from the north carried the smell of his mother’s wood fire across the yard and over the barn to the fields and woods further on. He stood still, listening, his body steaming from exertion. Other than for the smell of the fire, the world beyond this small arena of light might well not have existed.
The whole time Kyle stayed at the mound, Baron lay watching, his back to the timothy grass which all through the summer had grown tall and fringy against the crumbling cement ring where the silo had once been. The faithful dog waited and rose to follow whenever the balls were retrieved and then returned to lie back down on his favorite spot to watch the ritual of their being thrown all over again. He waited patiently, ears pointed and alert, knowing the time approached when there would be one last throw before the day’s companionship ended and his master went in.
When it was time, Kyle called the dog near. He gripped an abraded and grass-stained baseball tight across the laces, briefly beholding the contained weight in his hand before rearing back and flinging it as high and far as he could.
The ball climbed into the night sky over the adjacent field, but even as it rose towards apogee and disappeared, Kyle held his breath, withholding the command fetch, delaying the moment when the old shepherd would leap from his side and run headlong into the darkness.
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