Home Run: A Novel (25 page)

You ain’t special
, a voice tells him.

Doesn’t matter how many times he’s been voted an all-star or how many awards he’s earned or how many runs he’s batted in.

That voice remains the same.

You’re always gonna be a nobody.

The voice follows him off his barstool as he runs out of the bar to try to find Tyler.

It’s the same old scene. Yet it’s different.

Everything is different now.

This is Tyler
,
another voice says.
This is your son.

This is a snapshot of a boy you could have been. A face of hope you could have had.

And you’re destroying it just like your old man destroyed you.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Rundown

Tyler was standing next to his bike by the time Cory got to his side.

“What are you doing here?” Cory wasn’t yelling anymore, but he was talking with the firmness of an adult and a parent.

An adult and parent who’s just downed about ten shots.

The boy didn’t say anything. Hurt still filled his face, the kind of hurt that Cory knew about too well, the kind that wouldn’t go away with a simple apology.

“Look, Tyler, you shouldn’t be out this late. And you definitely shouldn’t be here.”

They heard the sound of a truck engine racing down the street. Headlights splashed over them, and the truck pulled to a stop.

A part of him knew what was coming.

The door opened, and a woman he hardly recognized bolted out of the truck. “Get in,” she screamed at Tyler. “Now!”

She grabbed his bike and put it in the back of the truck.

Cory wanted to stop her or at least slow her down and explain, but he knew he wasn’t the most stable at this moment. He carefully thought over his words so he wouldn’t slur them.

“Emma—what’s going on?”

She looked at him, and he knew she could tell he was drunk. It wasn’t a big secret.

I didn’t bring him here, so don’t go crazy over something I didn’t do.

Emma shouted out Tyler’s name again and tried to get him to go around the truck and get in the passenger side. She grabbed something off the front seat of the vehicle and threw it at him. It was a newspaper. A newspaper she threw in his face.

“You had no right.
No right.
”

Cory had never heard Emma sound like this. Even the time she laid into him at the baseball field, it wasn’t like this. She sounded like she wanted to rip out his heart.

“Tyler, right now,” she said, pointing to the truck.

He looked over at the boy and saw tears on his face.

What happened? Is he in trouble?

Everything was happening too fast for Cory. What was going on?

Tyler looked at him, ignoring his mother’s demands. “Are you my dad?”

The world suddenly trembled, and the dark mouth of the beast opened up. Cory felt paralyzed.

He glanced down at the paper and realized the truth. Somehow the word had gotten out.

But I didn’t say anything to anybody. Did I?

Tyler unzipped his backpack. Emma came to his side, still out of her mind with rage.

“I can’t believe you’d use us like this,” she said, moving Tyler toward the truck. “Get in the truck, Tyler.”

“No!” Tyler jerked out of her grip and was fishing for something in his pack.

Then he turned and presented Cory with a box.

Tyler was holding the wooden box Cory had made so many years ago for himself and Clay. The one he’d gone out of his mind looking for in the barn.

“Here’s your cards,” Tyler said. “Your dad gave them to me. He used to cut our lawn. Before he—before he died.”

As Cory took the cards, not knowing what else to do, the image of Dad cutting Emma’s lawn was almost as crazy as his giving the cards to Tyler.

The monster who used to berate him daily about baseball and chores and school and life …

He gave Tyler these because he knew who Tyler was. His grandson.

“Tyler—” Cory started, his voice weak and lost.

“I didn’t know they were yours,” Tyler said in a scared voice. “I’m sorry.”

Emma cut off this moving moment by grabbing Tyler’s arm and telling him again to get in the truck. The boy moved away from her grip and then walked to the truck, turning to face her before he got in.

“You lied to me,” he said to his mother.

Emma didn’t even bother looking at Cory as she got in, shut the door, and drove off.

Cory could see the tears in her eyes.

The truck drove off, leaving Cory standing there on the side of the street.

Alone with hundreds of mementos from his youth that now meant absolutely nothing.

He gets in the truck knowing he shouldn’t be behind the wheel. But knowing he shouldn’t do something has never stopped him before.

He shouldn’t have left Emma behind when she told him the news.

He shouldn’t have abandoned Tyler before he was even born.

He shouldn’t have left in fear to follow his dreams while wrecking the dreams of so many others.

Cory drives to the one place he can hide. The only place in this world that has ever really, truly suited him.

Chapter Forty

Foul Line

On the drive home Emma didn’t say a word. She was angry at the situation, not at her son. She understood his need for answers—she would’ve been the same way. She also knew this wasn’t the place to explain things to him—in the shadows of the truck on the drive back home.

Yet when she pulled into the driveway, Tyler was already half out the door before she had even finished parking. He bolted inside the front door and disappeared.

For a moment Emma just sat there in the silence. For so long she had carried this around with her, like the wooden box of baseball cards Tyler had been carrying in his backpack. She didn’t know what it would be like, now that the secret was out and her backpack was empty.

She prayed for guidance, for God to give her the right words to say, for patience and clarity.

“God be with us,” she said as she walked into the house.

She stepped through the open doorway and shut the door behind her.

James was gone, and Cory had never been and would never be part of the picture. It was just the two of them, and now Tyler was furious with her.

I was a kid once too, and I didn’t have anywhere to go.

It had taken everything inside of her to leave Okmulgee and move to Claremore.

It had taken even more for her to finally open up to the army private who won over her heart.

Years later, she had to summon up the same courage to do it all over again after James was killed in Afghanistan. She made the decision for Tyler and her to move back to Okmulgee and start again just over a year ago.

All these decisions she had made on her own.

She heard something crashing in Tyler’s room. Rage spilling out and not knowing where to go.

It’s time I started making Tyler a part of those decisions. He’s old enough to know some things. He’s old enough to help make decisions with me.

Emma started up the stairs, knowing it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. But he deserved to know the truth about his fathers. The one who was wounded and died in a foreign land. And the one who was wounded and went out to live life in another foreign land.

Both were gone forever.

That was the only truth Emma knew and believed. The only truth she could share with Tyler.

Cory sat in the shadows of the barn, one lone, cold light shining a bleak glare his way. He was drunk and couldn’t stop his mind from doing cartwheels in his head.

Everything that had happened in his life, these awful and broken pieces following him into the woods like bread crumbs tossed by a child, paled in comparison to this moment. All the nightmares with his father. The guilt from leaving Emma and Tyler behind. The booze and the women and the constant grind. The emptiness creeping up on him in full stadiums. The death of his mother. The failure to make amends with his father. His banishment from the game. His booting from the Grizzlies.

None of those things compared to this. To now. To the kid who had met him and idolized him and befriended him and then discovered the truth.

Tyler’s real father wasn’t some hero kids looked up to.

Tyler’s real father was a coward who had left the one kid he needed to be there for.

The walls and the haunting draft inside the barn reminded Cory of all those times he’d felt confused and angry and in need. All he had ever wanted was a father who was there, who didn’t scare him. A father who acted like a father should and loved him.

I’m no better than he was. In fact, I’m worse. Dad stayed around. I bailed.

Everything in him was broken. Everything in him couldn’t ever be fixed.

This whole world sucked you dry and then some and then tossed you out without a care.

All people wanted was to take and take and take more. And they had done exactly that, and now there was nothing left to take.

Nothing at all left to take.

This feeling—the guilt and sadness and anger—felt like a blanket. Not one you’d put over a child to keep them warm at night, but the kind you’d put over someone’s head to smother them to death. The kind you’d put over a dead body on the side of the road to keep it from being viewed.

Cory had done everything possible his own way—the good ole Cory Brand way—for thirty-three years.

Thirty-three lonely, empty years.

He couldn’t go on like this.

Every time he closed his eyes he saw Tyler’s eyes staring back at him. Confused. Hurt. Totally disappointed.

The sound of boots crunching the ground made Cory look up. He could see J. T. standing near the open door.

“Got your message.”

Cory just sat there, looking up at J. T. without knowing what to say.

This man had been there the last two months, helping and guiding Cory, unasked. Cory had never been willing to let his pride go down and ask J. T. for his help.

J. T. walked over and sat down next to Cory. He didn’t say a word, just looked ahead, patient as ever.

“What’s going to happen to me?” The words leaked out of Cory. “I can’t stop. I can’t make myself stop.”

Instead of a solution, or a quick fix, or a Bible verse, or a told-you-so, J. T. simply said, “I know.”

Cory felt the tears hovering like grenades in his eyes. He fought crying like a baby but didn’t know what else to do. All this time, and all he’d seen and done …

J. T. just sat next to him. Not giving him a brotherly pat on the back. Not sharing an anecdote.

The guy was there at his side and let Cory take everything in.

I need your help, God. ’Cause nobody’s gonna be able to do it if You can’t.

He thought of his mother, could see her walking on this property and smiling at Clay and Cory playing or doing something stupid.

Does she still see me? Is she still watching over me?

Maybe she could put in a good word for him up there or wherever it was she was at.

Cory needed help.

Cory wanted help.

The man next to him was silent, but in his head Cory could hear J. T. talking. He was remembering something J. T. had quoted when he gave his testimony to the crowd.

“If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Cory closed his eyes and let out a sigh.

Help me to believe this. Help me to confess this.

Help me, Lord.