Home Run: A Novel (6 page)

“That smile is dangerous,” a tenth-grade Emma teases.

“I know. It’s like a James Bond kind of smile.”

“No way.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the farthest thing in the world from James Bond.”

“But you just said—”

“That your smile is dangerous.”

“I don’t get—”

“James Bond is cocky.”

“So I finally met a girl who doesn’t think I’m cocky.”

“Deep down, there’s someone else. Not a superhero.”

“A baseball player?”

“No. An actor. A comedian. Used to stepping up to the stage and making everyone applaud and laugh. But I’ve seen you when the lights shut off and there’s no one else around.”

“Uh oh. Emma Johnson knows me.”

“I think I do. And that’s what scares me. Because I’m falling for that guy. The one no one else knows.”

Chapter Seven

Fly Ball

“This is a bad idea.”

Clay knew Karen would say that because she didn’t want Cory near their family. She didn’t want him anywhere remotely close to the state of Oklahoma, much less Okmulgee.

“It’s not like I bought him the ticket,” Clay said. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“I’ll be happy when Cory stops thinking of himself and cools his temper.”

“Isn’t that the point of recovery? Karen—”

“Now isn’t a good time.”

“A good time for what?” His cell phone was almost out of juice; he had to wrap this up quickly. “It’s not like he’s moving in with us.”

“I know people like Cory.”

“He’s my brother.”

“And you’re my husband, who has better things to do than having to go around cleaning up for him.”

“That’s unfair.”

Their flight was a couple of hours from leaving the Denver airport. Cory had wandered off somewhere, saying he might not see Clay until they landed. “First class” was all Cory had said in an amused, we’re-taking-an-adventure sort of way.

“So where is he going to stay? And what’s he going to do?”

“His agent is taking care of it. You should see this lady. She’s something else.”

“Cory’s something else.”

“This might be the change we’ve been praying for.”

“Recovery doesn’t happen overnight,” Karen said.

Clay couldn’t say anything to her. He understood. He also knew that this wasn’t Cory’s decision, but his determined agent’s. An agent trying anything she could to make the publicity nightmare go away.

Karen didn’t need to know all of that. Clay just wanted her to know where he was and what was happening with his brother.

“How’s Carlos doing?”

“He’s still talking about the big game,” Karen said, her defensiveness dialed down.

“He’s going to love having Uncle Cory in town.”

“As long as his uncle doesn’t run over him with a truck.”

“Wow.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“This is a side of you I haven’t seen,” Clay admitted. “Mama Bear protecting her new cub.”

“Do you blame me?”

“No. I mean—I like this side of you. It’s kinda sexy.”

“Oh, stop. See—you’ve been around your brother twenty-four hours, and you’re already starting to talk like him.”

Clay laughed. “I just want us to be a family.”

“You have a family.”

“I want Cory to be a part of it. To maybe start from square one, like Carlos is doing.”

“Cory has a long way to go to be as loving and
mature
as that beautiful ten-year-old boy.”

“Can I tell him you said that?”

“Please,” Karen said. “And tell him I’m saving a nice spot for him to sleep. In the barn.”

Clay couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll see you guys soon.”

Cory sat in a booth in the corner of a restaurant, having a conversation with the love of his life. The beauty of this private chat was that she didn’t talk back. She comforted and soothed him, allowing him to vent without saying a single word. She understood his deepest and darkest feelings. She didn’t judge him, either. She simply let him be Cory and let him enjoy as much of her as he wanted.

He finished his “conversation” with the vodka and tonic and crunched an ice cube as he glanced up at the screen above the bar. The volume was down, but ESPN was replaying the glorious highlight of him going ballistic at the game and striking the batboy. A couple of commentators followed to share their own thoughts, and judging by their expressions, they were doing the whole good-commentator/bad-commentator routine. Several pictures came up showing Cory; first his official team picture, then a few other at bats for the year. Cory laughed and looked back at his empty glass, thankful to see the skinny little thing walking up to refill it.

“Another?”

The young woman didn’t smile like the ladies usually did. That was because she was oblivious to who was sitting there. And that was fine with him. The last thing he needed was to cause a commotion and have people start asking for autographs or pictures.

It wouldn’t be good to be seen drinking in a bar at the airport.

But he was inside and facing the back so that he couldn’t be seen. To the waitress, Cory was just another businessman traveling for his job and worried about the wife and kiddies at home.

“Give me a double,” Cory said, knowing the flight would be taking off soon.

He’d spent enough time “catching up” with Clay and making sweet chitchat. He could already see his brother’s mind working. Clay had seemed glad that Cory had to go back home, even if it was for a brief visit. Now Cory could get to know Carlos a little more and try to make amends with some of those he’d lost touch with. In particular, with Emma.

That was why Cory was sitting in this place, in the muted light and the soft hum of conversation. He needed some peace of mind. Some time to not have to think about all that twelve-step nonsense.

Missing one step to tag third base shouldn’t mean I have to enter a freaking twelve-step program.

Helene didn’t care what it meant or what he thought. She didn’t care whether he actually believed in the recovery program. She just knew he needed to get his rear out there in the spotlight to show he was doing something about his “problem.” He had to go through it so he could get back on the field and start producing. Already he’d made her job more difficult in terms of negotiating a new contract. But the idea of talking about a new contract now made him think of NFL coach Jim Mora answering a reporter’s question about the play-offs—“Play-offs? Don’t talk about play-offs!”

Cory couldn’t help laughing a bit. The waitress brought him back a drink, and he gave her a few twenties to cover the tab, telling her to keep the change. He took a sip and stopped thinking of Helene and the team and Clay and all the other stuff. It was just one downward spiral that wouldn’t stop. Feeling bad didn’t change a thing. He’d spent his entire youth feeling bad about his father, but that had gotten him nowhere. There was never anything anybody could do, and then one day not long ago he heard his father had finally died.

Boom.

Just like that. There was no dramatic deathbed scene where his dad gripped his hand and asked for forgiveness.

No, if Cory had been there, Dad probably would have started complaining about the way he’d been hitting.

Feeling bad couldn’t bring Dad back, couldn’t make him replay his youth.

It is what it is.

This was a favorite saying of his because it spoke so much truth. You live, you die. You excite some people, you let others down. You bat a ball over the wall, you knock a batboy over.

Life was full of surprises.

Cory glanced at his first-class ticket and then thought of what awaited him back home.

He wondered if he’d see her, and what she’d say to him after all these years.

It starts to be amusing.

Ten straight hits in three games in the middle of his junior year.

Cory Brand knocking them down.

Home run.

Single.

Double.

Single.

Home run.

He finds a group named Queen, and he starts playing “Another One Bites the Dust” after each game.

People aren’t just watching him with interest anymore.

People are talking about him.

And they should be, because he’d be talking about someone like him.

Cory doesn’t know what it feels like to be arrogant because he’s still some poor kid living on a farm with a freak of a father who berates him every single day. And every day he bats back and shows him. Maybe not his father, because his father isn’t anywhere around, but he’s showing someone something.

Chapter Eight

Hit and Run

The first thing he thought about when he stepped off the plane and waited for his brother by the gate was how he could get another drink. He felt too good to waste this buzz just for Clay.

Cory never wanted this feeling to stop. It was like playing. The game, the moments, the rush, the thrill. It was a tangible, living and breathing thing, something he could scoop up in his arms and then let go to the amazement of the crowd. They burned inside his head and his heart, these strangers who watched and waited and cheered every movement. Time stood still and breaths would be held all while they waited. Hoping for the same rush and thrill. Hoping for the ride.

Sometimes—no, all the time—it was hard to come down. It was hard to turn off the switch. Normal human beings couldn’t understand being put into a situation like that. The pressure and the madness and the adrenaline and the joy. To feel yourself blast a ball out of the park and then to see a whole host of fans under the bright lights, cheering you on … Nothing compared to it. Nothing.

Eventually the lights were turned off, and the fans went home.

Eventually, Cory was left alone.

And this was just a little help to get to the next game. To the next rush and thrill.

It used to be enough. The immense spectacle of it all. The spotlight on him. The favors that came with it. The women. But eventually none of those nothings could fill the inevitable void.

Drinking did that.

To an extent.

His mouth was dry when he simply nodded at Clay coming toward him. Cory needed to do something about that dry mouth, and quickly.

“Whose closet did you raid?” he asked his brother after noticing what he was wearing for the first time.

Clay wore a matching Nike athletic shirt and a pair of sweatpants, both of which were too large on him. He simply nodded at the joke. “A vastly overpaid and overrated baseball player.”

“He obviously works out to fill those duds.”

“Yeah, but he’s also got chicken legs.”

“You know—if you worked out you might look good in my clothes.”

“I’ll never be as pretty as you.”

Cory rolled his eyes at the brotherly jab. There were only a thousand of them they shared. It was nice to have that one person on this earth who would never think of him as
Cory Brand
but simply as the annoying older brother who never let him win at anything. The big brother who liked to tease and bully, but who’d spent his whole youth protecting this kid’s butt.

Soon they were in the parking lot, looking for the car Cory had rented. Cory pressed the unlock button on the remote, and a black Corvette nearby greeted them with a chirp.

“You didn’t need to waste money renting a fancy car.”

“I’ve never met an upgrade I didn’t like,” Cory said. “Don’t worry about it.”

When they got into the car, Clay mentioned he was hungry. And Cory was thirsty. He figured they could kill two birds with one well-thrown stone.

“What do you say we make one last stop in civilization?”

Cory started up the engine and then revved it as he smiled and raised his eyebrows at his brother.

After loading up on roast beef sandwiches and jumbo-sized drinks at Arby’s, Cory and Clay walked back to the car to eat their food on the way to Okmulgee. It was an hour to town and another fifteen minutes to the old farmhouse, which Clay and Karen now owned. Before getting into the Corvette, Cory looked through the bag he carried and let out a curse.

“Mr. Arby forgot my curly fries.”

Clay glanced at him across the top of the car with a look that said,
What do you want me to do about it?

“Don’t make me go back in there,” Cory said.

“Oh, come on.”

“He nearly cried when I signed his hat. A grown man.”

His brother looked at him in the same old way he used to as a kid when Cory was pulling his leg. “He did not—”

“I swear to you. There were tears.”

“Right.”

Clay’s eyes seemed to be in a perpetual state of rolling whenever he was around Cory. He headed back into the restaurant.

“Don’t forget the Arby’s sauce,” Cory called out.

His brother could only shake his head. This was their typical banter and shtick. It never changed even as they got older.

When the door closed and Clay was inside, Cory popped the trunk on the Corvette and then walked around to the back of the car. He quickly walked to the nearby trash can and tossed the box of curly fries into it. Then he riffled through his duffel bag till he found the thing he’d been thinking about since deplaning.

His eyes scanned the parking lot as he casually poured out most of the Diet Coke in his cup and refilled it with vodka. He closed the lid, then slipped the bottle back into its place. He had a feeling he’d need it later this evening.

The sun began to drift off to sleep in the west as they headed south on the rural two-lane road toward the farm outside Okmulgee. Cory remembered heading the opposite way very well; it had been his escape route out of this place. It seemed like something that had happened to another person, one who’d died just like his mother and father had in the time that had passed since then. That kid was long gone, buried underneath a thousand blurry memories that tried to bury another hundred thousand bad ones.

Cory took a sip from his nearly empty Arby’s cup as he turned up the Led Zeppelin song on the radio and cranked up the engine. Sandwich wrappers shifted on the console next to them. Clay seemed to brace himself. Not another car in sight. The Corvette drifted over the double yellow lines as if it owned them.

“Careful,” Clay shouted above Robert Plant’s wailing voice.

The open road and jamming music summed up exactly how Cory felt. “I love this stretch. Wanna see what this bad boy can do?”

“Not really,” Clay said, holding the handle on the door next to him.

Cory could tell his brother was looking at him, but at this point in the evening he didn’t care.

“Did you drink on the plane?”

Cory laughed as he glanced over at his brother. Then he punched the engine to see how fast they could go.

They flew past a sign saying that Okmulgee was only ten miles away. They were close to the tiny town and the terrible past and those nagging, constant reminders.

Don’t think of them now—just drive.

Cory did just that, trying to outrace the demons following him. The snapshots and the pictures and the running tape and the running figures and the dancing balls and the screaming faces.

Clay shouted something, but Cory didn’t hear the words. He was just thinking about when the levee might break and the past would come gushing out over him like a Gatorade bucket full of hurt and disappointment.

“You coulda been so much more, boy.”

Thanks, Pop.

“I miss you, son.”

But I had to get outta here, Ma.

“You never loved me and never loved us and you left us to fend for ourselves.”

This voice hurt the most, and now Cory drove out of anger.

Mean old memories are just as mean as that levee, aren’t they?

In the blur of the past and the present, Cory saw it but couldn’t react quickly enough. A fastball that he didn’t have time to hit. Like swinging the bat, Cory instantly jammed on the brakes

no no no it’s coming up too quick

as the slow-moving tractor jutted across the highway

going down going down

and he swung and tried to make it but the car shook and veered off and struck a side and smashed and all the while Cory could only think of one thing in the madness of his mind.

Clay