Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

Would it happen to me? Would I one day wake up, put on mittens, and wrap a scarf around my neck? Go out into the woods and nod trustingly at Elohim? Would I start buying frozen vegetables in bulk? Would I see in Sal what they did?

I frightened at these thoughts. I needed to feel like a boy in the summertime. Nothing made me feel more like that than watching Grand play ball. That’s baseball for you. A bat-and-ball cure for any boy lost and looking to run home.

The baseball field was behind the high school. It sounded like wasps that summer because the small shed by the field had a nest of them. I walked past the empty bleachers, a pair of dirty cleats tied to the rail. A fly hovering above them.

I smelled pine tar and sweat as I clung to the holes of the chain-link fence surrounding the ball diamond. The fence was painted the deep, dark shade of purple that represented one half of the school colors. The other being lavender. The color of the dugouts and the main color of the team’s home game uniforms.

Though there was hardly, if any, grass left in that drought, the nearby lawn mower gave off its heat and fumes of just-worked mechanics. I moved a little farther down the fence, where the air was less gasoline.

Grand was on the mound, waiting impatiently for the ball to come to him from the outfield. It was a practice in which they wore no shirts. Even the thinnest cotton shirts could feel like parkas. I swear, they dripped like faucets.

I once asked Grand what it was like practicing in that heat. He said it felt like being the only ashtray in the world open for business.

“Imagine that, little man, all them cigarettes dumpin’ down their hot ash. And you, unable to breathe. в ловушке.”

When it came time for Grand to pitch to Yellch, it was a pitch no doubt given. Their friendship hadn’t been the same since Yellch went running from Grand. Grand was trying to take things back with a pitch forward. Make it the same as it always had been, but Yellch wasn’t ready. He threw all his anger into the swing, sending the ball in a line drive back to Grand, who managed to duck before it cracked open his skull.

The tail of Yellch’s mullet flapped as he ran the bases, eventually sliding into home, with the ball in the catcher’s mitt only seconds behind.

As the dust settled and Yellch pushed his glasses back up on his nose, the coach and other teammates gave the usual congratulatory gesture by slapping Yellch on the behind. They were quick slaps like water flicking from fingers. Slap, slap, slap. Then Grand and his slap that reminded Yellch why he had run in the first place.

He pushed Grand back. “What the hell you think you’re doin’?”

“What?” Grand hugged his glove.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch me, man. Didn’t y’all see ’im?” Yellch asked of his teammates. “He just touched my ass.”

“He’s proud of ya for hittin’ a homer.” The coach and his chest-high shorts came in front of Yellch. “The heat is gettin’ to ya, boy. Why don’tcha sit in the dugout a bit? Pour a bucket of ice over your head.”

“Yeah, Yellch,” one of the other boys agreed. “Why ya actin’ like a dick?”

“’Cause I don’t want no dick.” The veins in Yellch’s neck popped like long stems. “You hear me, Grand? I don’t want no dick. And I don’t wanna play ball with someone who does.”

Grand looked to be one sweat drip away from disappearing as the team urged Yellch to give further explanation.

Grand tucked his glove under his arm and held up his trembling hands like Yellch had a gun. “C’mon, Yell. Don’t. I’m sorry, okay? Please. Don’t say anything.”

But Yellch had to say it. If he didn’t, what would it mean for him? Would it mean he liked what Grand did to him? If he didn’t yell it out, if he didn’t respond with anger, wouldn’t that be what people thought if they ever found out about the time Grand Bliss kissed him on a bed while Anthony Perkins played on the TV downstairs? Yes, Yellch had to say it, for his own sake. Fuck you, he must’ve thought as he pointed at Grand and said without doubt, “He’s a fag.”

My brother. A fag? It was like seeing American flags impaled on white picket fences. He had been red, he had been white, he had been blue and July Fourth. But now, the mythology of him was over. He who was so handsome, as children all the girls thought they would marry him and leave the earth for the stars.

Yellch’s accusation was a lingering echo. A full-bodied thing, pumping and veering like poison-dipped arrows. It was as if the entire, astonished world was right there on a ball field in Breathed, Ohio. Between teammates and coach, the little things of years began to be added up.

The quick peeks in the locker room, the lingering hugs, the slaps on the rear that went beyond congratulations. That was enough for them to see him coiling with the snake. It was enough for him to become something they could not sweetly accept.

“Grand, I think you should go home.” The coach squinted behind his 1950s glasses.

“Do you mean go home just for today?”

“Grand—”

“I have a right to know if I’m still on the goddamn team. Whatcha gonna do for pitcher, Coach? Hmm? Use Arly?”

“I ain’t so bad,” Arly came to his own defense. “I’ve been layin’ off the sodium. Think I took off the drag.”

“Your arm’s dead, Arly. You see its goddamn funeral every time you pitch. мертвых.”

“Arly will be fine.” In those four words, the coach stripped Grand of the pitcher mound.

I never thought I’d see my brother defeated. He was always so strong. The boy with the durability of linoleum. On that day, I realized the linoleum was just an accessory for effect, and underneath it, he was just as fragile as us all. My brother. The one I thought was marked for eternity, and yet here I am, and where is he? Maybe forever on that ball field. Forever being revealed and they forever stepping back as if he’s sickness between sickness.

It was small use to remind them of how they’d say, I love you, Grand Bliss, in the golden glow of a big win. Even smaller use to say he was once their friend. The buddy who bought them all tickets to the Reds game, and drove all the way to Cincinnati and back. The pal who stayed sober when they got drunk. The one who punched the guy who would’ve punched them.

He was the heart they could all be loved by, and yet not one of them loved him back. I wanted him to shout. To cancel out what they were telling themselves. To deny until he won. To shape back his hero self and put on the cape to become my perfect brother once more. But all he did was squeeze his glove and walk away.

When he saw me at the fence, it was like it was through a microscope against his brow, magnifying me to the point of shocking him into a run that was so fast, I would never have caught up to him had he not stopped to get sick.

“How long were ya by the fence?” He wiped his mouth in one long gesture.

“I just showed up as you were leavin’.” I couldn’t bear for him to know I’d seen it all.

He turned a cheek to his vomit. “Really?”

“Really. I’m stumped why ya left practice so early.”

He looked at me and knew, but the lie offered him a chance. All truth could do then was to tap us on the back. We never turned around.

“Heat’s made me sick. Coach said it was all right for me to go home.” He lifted his cleats, checking his shoelaces to see if any vomit had splashed.

As we walked home, I knew from far away the trees would’ve looked nice, the grass would’ve looked green, and we would’ve looked like just a couple of boys walking home, armed with Midwest love and Bible Belt morals.

But up close, the trees were scorched, the grass was dead, and the boys were on the verge of tears with the belts of those morals tightened around their necks, threatening to hang them if they dared step off the stool of masculinity.