Peter Abrahams: Bullet Point

The team took infield, the older coach standing at the plate and hitting grounders, the players fielding them-or not-and firing to first, the first baseman then throwing home, where Dub and number 9 took turns catching the ball and handing it to the coach. Once in a while the coach laid down a bunt, and whichever catcher was up had to scramble out, scoop up the ball, and snap it to first. This was maybe the moment when everyone began to see what Dub could do, because despite how slowly he ran, he was much quicker than number 9 at the scrambling part; and as for their arms, no comparison-Dub had a cannon.

The coach began hitting line drives and fly balls to the outfield. Three kids were playing center, Wyatt’s position; it was easy to pick out the starter, a tall kid, number 1, maybe taller than Wyatt and leaner, whose long legs didn’t seem to be moving fast but who easily got to every ball and hit the cutoff man every time with throws just as good as Wyatt’s, if not better.

The sun, still looking pale and wintry, sank behind a cloud, and the wind rose a little more. Wyatt slipped his arms out of the sleeves of his sweatshirt, tucked them against his chest for warmth. The younger coach rolled a screen out to the mound, started throwing batting practice, each batter getting six pitches. Dub hit the first one he saw over the fence in center, then crushed a few more. Number 9 couldn’t get the ball out of the infield. Number 1 batted last. Wyatt was shivering by that time, but he had to see what this kid could do. Swing and a miss; chopper to third; one-hopper to short; blooper to right; foul down the right-field line; swing and a miss. Wyatt rose, clambered out of the stands, headed for the parking lot. Anyone could have a bad day, but Wyatt knew he could start for this team, could have started on opening day, next week. He missed baseball so bad.

Wyatt didn’t watch any more practices. The next day he found a batting cage beside a bowling alley in a run-down part of town. No one was around. He went into the bowling alley: about a dozen lanes, snack bar, popcorn machine with popcorn popping, and only one person in view, a girl his own age or a bit older, stacking bowling shoes on shelves behind the counter.

She turned, came closer. Yes, a bit older. She was good-looking, with long shiny black hair and a silver eyebrow ring. “Hey,” she said, “looking to bowl?”

“How much for the batting cage?” Wyatt said.

She raised an eyebrow, not the one with the ring. She had shiny dark eyes, almost as dark as her hair. “You want to buy it?”

“No, uh, just use it,” Wyatt said. “For hitting.”

“Sorry,” she said, “just pulling your leg.” She had a throaty kind of voice, like someone who’d smoked for years, but Wyatt didn’t smell any smoke on her. “It’s five bucks per half hour,” she said, “but tell you what-since you’re the first customer of the year, you can hit for free if you help me set up.”

“Hey, thanks.”

She put on a short leather jacket with thick silver zippers and led Wyatt outside. The wind was blowing again.

“It’s not a little cold for baseball?”

“No.” Wyatt opened the trunk of the Mustang, took out his bat, a thirty-four-inch, twenty-nine-ounce thin-handled Easton Reflex he’d bought last summer from a graduating East Canton senior for forty dollars.

“Your car?” said the girl.

“Yeah.”

“Nice.”

“Thanks.”

They walked over to the cage and the girl unlocked it. The pitching machine had an arm-style delivery and a hopper with twenty or thirty balls on the side. Wyatt plugged it in, and it started humming right away.

“Liftoff,” said the girl. Her hand moved to the dial. “Slow, medium, or fast?”

“Fast,” Wyatt said.

She turned the dial, went out the door, and closed it.

Wyatt took his stance at the plate. Hands up, weight back, balanced, still, eyes on that steel arm. It swung back, took a ball that rolled in from the hopper, and came whipping forward. Wyatt saw the ball clearly-those spinning red laces clearer than anything he’d seen for days, weeks, months-and swung. He hit the ball on the screws, rocketing it to the far end with a force that shook the whole cage. And the next one just the same. And the next and the next and the next, smashing every ball in that goddamn hopper. He realized he was stronger than last year, maybe a lot stronger.

“Hey,” said the girl, watching from the safety of the other side of the chain link.

When Wyatt went back after school the next day, the bowling alley was closed even though the hours-of-operation sticker on the door read 11 A.M. TO MIDNIGHT. But the day after that it was open. Wyatt entered, bat in hand. The girl was alone again, behind the desk. She watched him approach.

“More BP?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Have to charge you this time.”

Wyatt laid a five-dollar bill on the counter. She was wearing a black bowling shirt with GREER stitched in white over one breast.

“Can you see that all right?” she said. “Greer-with two E s?”

He quickly raised his gaze up to her face, nodded a little too vigorously.

“The problem is everybody always spells it I-E, ” Greer said. “I’ve had to correct them maybe a million times.”

“You know a lot of people,” Wyatt said, a not completely unfunny remark that maybe surprised both of them.

Greer laughed. “What’s your name?”

“Wyatt.”

“Wyatt. Never met a Wyatt. Sounds like a gunslinger riding in from the old West.”

This might have been a place for another not completely unfunny remark, but none came to mind. Wyatt’s mouth seemed to open on its own, and out popped something really stupid. “How old are you?”

Greer raised the non-ring eyebrow. “How old am I?”

“None of my business,” Wyatt said, backtracking as fast as he could.

“It’s not a state secret,” Greer said. “Nineteen. And you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Now that we’re minding each other’s business.”

“Seventeen,” Wyatt said. “Just about.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“August.”

“So what you mean by ‘just about’ is that you’ll be seventeen in, like, four or five months.” Greer’s eyes, so dark and shiny, seemed to get even brighter, like she was about to laugh, but she didn’t.

“Yeah.”

“What date?”

“The second.”

“Me, too.”

“August second?”

“November,” Greer said. “You believe in astrology?”

Wyatt had never really thought about that; did now, real fast. “No,” he said.

“Me neither,” said Greer. “It’s complete bullshit. For example, suppose we were living on another planet.”

“Then, um, uh…”

“The angles would be different, of course,” Greer said.

“And?”

“So the stars wouldn’t line up the same way. The constellations would be gone. No Gemini, no Aquarius, no Taurus the bull. No constellations, no astrology.”

A silence fell in the bowling alley. “Are you in college?” Wyatt said.

“Nope,” said Greer. “I’m in the bowling alley business.”

“How’s that working out?”

What was this? A second not completely unfunny remark? Yes, because Greer laughed again. Wyatt had gone out for a month or two with a girl in the freshman class last year, and been to a few drunken parties in houses when the parents were gone, parties where there’d been some pairing off to various bedrooms, but other than that he had little experience with girls, so…so actually this was going pretty well.

Greer stopped laughing, very sudden. “It’s working out like shit,” she said.

“Oh, um.”

Greer’s eyes narrowed and she looked like she was about to say something negative, but then the phone rang. She picked it up. “Torrance Bowl,” she said. Wyatt heard a man on the other end. He sounded irritated. The brightness went out of Greer’s eyes. She took a key off the wall and handed it to Wyatt, not really looking at him. He went outside, let himself into the cage, turned the dial up to fast, and crushed baseballs for half an hour.