Wiley Cash - This Dark Road to Mercy

“What’s background music?”

“It’s music you forget about because you hear it all the time. Like the music they play in elevators and stores.”

“But we’re not in elevators and stores all the time,” she said. “How could he be used to it?”

“It’s just something people say.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

I didn’t say anything because I saw Wade a couple of rows over, walking toward us like he couldn’t wait to get back to the car. Seeing him hurry like that made my stomach feel sick, and I reached back and found my seat belt and put it on. But as he got closer I saw that he was smiling. When he saw us watching him he reached into his back pocket and pulled out three tickets and spread them out like he was playing cards.

He leaned into Ruby’s window and smacked her leg with the tickets. “Y’all ready?” he asked. “Left field. We’re going to catch us a home run.”

“A ball can really carry on a bright, hot day like this one,” Wade said. “It ain’t going to take much for McGwire to knock one out of here.” He had both of us by the hand, and we were walking up a concrete ramp toward our seats. “Keep up and stay close,” he yelled. There were people everywhere, most of them in Cardinals T-shirts and uniforms, but a couple of people had on Cubs hats and jerseys with Sosa’s name and number on the back. I couldn’t hardly hear what Wade was saying for all the people screaming and the music and the announcer introducing the lineups over the speakers. I heard the announcer say “Mark,” but I couldn’t hear the rest of it because the fans were cheering so loud.

Wade led us up the ramps to a long hallway that curved around the field. To our right, shorter tunnels led out to the seats, and whenever we passed the tunnels I could feel the heat from the sun and see the green outfield and the upper-deck seats on the other side of the stadium. The seats were already full. I’d never seen so many people in my entire life.

“You think Sammy Sosa will hit a home run too?” Ruby asked.

“I’d say he probably will,” Wade said. “If I know one thing about Sammy it’s that he ain’t going to let McGwire have all the fun today.”

“You think he’d remember you?” I asked.

“Of course he’ll remember,” Wade said. “He couldn’t forget an arm like mine.” He gave my hand a squeeze and winked at me.

“I’m hungry,” Ruby said. “And I’m thirsty too.”

“You want to find our seats first?” Wade asked. He looked at me like he wanted me to say something.

“But we haven’t had anything to eat or drink all day,” Ruby said. Out on the field somebody started singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“We’re going to miss it,” I said.

“But I’m hungry,” Ruby whined.

“It’s okay,” Wade said, giving my hand a little squeeze. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“There he is!” Ruby screamed. She pointed at Mark McGwire where he was taking warm-up swings on a huge television screen over the seats in center field. Staring at the screen made her walk even slower down the steps toward our seats.

“Keep going,” I said, lifting my knee and nudging her in the back. I was holding a Coke and two boxes of popcorn; Ruby’d already opened her popcorn, and she was stuffing handfuls in her mouth while she took the concrete steps one at a time.

Behind me, Wade carried his and Ruby’s sodas and all three of our hot dogs. “All the way down, Ruby,” he said.

We found our seats, the first three to the left of the steps in row two, and I stood in between Ruby and Wade because everybody else was standing too so they could get a look at McGwire. Wade passed our hot dogs over to me and Ruby, and then he tapped a guy on the shoulder in the first row. “What did Sosa do?”

The guy turned around and looked at Wade. He had a mustache and a red Cardinals uniform on with a black baseball hat. “Popped it up,” he said. “Left Hernández stranded on first.” “I can’t see nothing,” Ruby said. I folded her seat down and helped her climb on top of it, and then I did the same with mine. I could see everything around me now: the whole outfield with Sammy Sosa standing over in right, the upper deck, and the open white circle of the ballpark above us where the bright blue sky almost looked like a lid that was keeping all the heat trapped inside. I could feel everything around me too: the crowd was so loud that you couldn’t even hear the music or the announcers, and when Brian Jordan hit a fly ball to left field and McGwire stepped into the batter’s box with nobody on base it was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. Ruby stuffed her hot dog in her mouth and covered her ears with her hands. But as soon as McGwire set his feet and got into his batting stance the whole stadium went totally silent, and you couldn’t hardly hear a thing.

Maybe it was all the heat, or maybe it was the breeze coming across the field from home plate, but something about it all reminded me of the first time me and Ruby saw the ocean. It felt like years ago, even though it hadn’t quite been a week, but I remembered it now: the way the warm sand felt under my feet, the sound of the tide like the whispering voices I heard all around me now, the sight of the waves moving far out in the ocean like the way people were moving all around the ballpark, trying to get a better look at what might be about to happen.

McGwire swung and missed on the first pitch. As soon as the ball snapped into the catcher’s mitt, everybody in the stadium sighed at the same time like the audience does on game shows when somebody says the wrong answer. But it got quiet again when McGwire stepped back into the box. The next pitch was a ball, and everybody sighed just like they had before.

But as soon as the ball left the pitcher’s hand on the third pitch it was like we all knew it was the one. The ball cracked off the bat and headed right toward left field where we were sitting, and I stood on my seat and reached for Ruby’s hand and saw the right fielder backing toward the wall, and then he stopped and watched it fly just left of the foul pole and over our heads. I turned just as it bounced off the window in the skyboxes above us and fell right down in front of our seats and rolled toward the wall.

It seemed like everyone in the stands dove for the ball at the same time, including Wade. People pushed up against me, and I stepped down off my seat and grabbed Ruby and lifted her down too. “Hold on to me,” I said. But then it was over all of a sudden, and the guy who’d been sitting in front of us stood up and lifted the ball above his head, and everyone around us started clapping and cheering.

Wade stood up too. His shirt was smeared with mustard and ketchup from the hot dog he’d been holding, and his hair was sopping wet where somebody’d spilled something-maybe Coke or beer-all over him. But he was laughing. “I almost had it!” he said, lifting his hand and high-fiving me and then Ruby. “I almost had a piece of history.” He held his hand in front of me like he wanted me to see it, but I wasn’t looking at his hand; instead I was watching Mark McGwire as he rounded third and gave the third baseman a high five, and I watched when he crossed home plate, where his son was waiting for him in a Cardinals bat boy uniform. His dad picked him up and lifted him into the air, and I watched them, thinking about what it must feel like to have your dad reach down and pick you up, lift you up off the ground away from everything while everyone watched and everyone cheered.

“Look!” Ruby said, raising her hand and pointing at center field. “It’s us!” Me and Wade both looked up; she was right. The three of us were on the huge screen, standing in the row behind the guy who held the home-run ball over his head, high-fiving everyone around him.