Nine Inches (9 page)

Once in a while Jason joined us on our Saturday excursions, but usually he was too busy with his plays. He had just
fi
nished his junior year in high school, capping it o
ff
with a starring role in the spring musical,
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
People kept telling me how great he was, and I kept agreeing, embarrassed to confess that I hadn’t seen the show. My son had asked me not to come and I’d respected his wishes.

A year on my own had given me a lot of time to think, to come to terms with what had happened, and to accept my own responsibility for it. It also gave me a lot of time to stew in my anger, to indulge the conviction that I was a victim, too, every bit as much as my wife and son. I wrote Jeanie and my kids a lot of letters trying to outline my complicated position on these matters, but no one ever responded. It was like my side of the story had disappeared into some kind of void.

Th
at’s why I wanted so badly for my family to watch the championship game on cable access. I had e-mailed them all separately, telling them when it would be broadcast, and asking them to please tune in. I called them the day it aired and le
ft
a message reminding them to stick it out all the way to the end.

What I wanted them to see was the top of the sixth and
fi
nal inning, the amazing sequence of events that took place immediately following the beanball
fi
asco, a
ft
er both Carl and Ricky DiSalvo had been ejected from the game, and Happy Chang had been hauled o
ff
to the police station.

Despite the fact that she’d been knocked unconscious just a few minutes earlier, Lori was back on the mound for the Ravens. She insisted that she felt
fi
ne and didn’t seem confused or otherwise impaired. She started out strong, striking out Jeb Partridge and retiring Hiro Tamanaki on an easy in
fi
eld
fl
y. But then something changed. Maybe the blow to the head had a
ff
ected her more that she’d let on, or maybe she’d been traumatized by her father’s arrest. Whatever the reason, she fell apart. With only one out remaining in the game, she walked three straight batters to load the bases.

I’d always admired Lori’s regal detachment, her ability to remain calm and focused no matter what was going on, but now she just looked scared. She cast a desperate glance at the
fi
rst-base dugout, silently pleading with her coach to take her out of the game, but Santelli ignored her. No matter how badly she was pitching, she was still his ace. And besides, the next batter was Mark Diedrich, the Wildcats’ pudgy right
fi
elder, one of the weakest hitters in the league.

“Just settle down,” Santelli told her. “Strike this guy out and we can all go home.”

Lori nodded skeptically and got herself set on the mound. Mark Diedrich greeted me with a polite nod as he stepped into the batter’s box. He was a nice kid, a former preschool classmate of my youngest daughter.

“I wish I was home in bed,” he told me.

Th
e
fi
rst pitch was low.
Th
en came a strike, the liveliest breaking ball Lori had thrown all inning, but it was followed by two outside fastballs (Ricky’s beanball had obviously done the trick; Lori wasn’t throwing anywhere near the inside corner).
Th
e next pitch, low and away, should have been ball four, but inexplicably, Mark lunged for it, barely nicking it foul.

“Oh, Jesus,” he whimpered. “Why did I do that?”

So there we were. Full count, bases loaded, two out. Championship game. A score of 1–0.
Th
e whole season narrowing down to a single pitch. If the circumstances had been a little di
ff
erent, it would have been a beautiful moment, an umpire’s dream.

But for me, the game barely existed. All I could think of just then was the smile on Happy Chang’s dirty face as the cops led him o
ff
the
fi
eld. I was kneeling on the ground trying to comfort Lori when Happy turned in our direction and said something low and gentle in Chinese, maybe asking if she was all right or telling her not to worry. Lori said something back, maybe that she was
fi
ne or that she loved him.

“Easy now,” Santelli called from the dugout. “Right down the middle.”

Lori tugged her shirt down in back and squinted at the catcher. Mark Diedrich’s face was beet red, as if something terribly embarrassing had already happened.

“Please, God,” I heard him mutter as Lori began her windup.

I should have been watching the ball, but instead I was thinking about Happy Chang and everything he must have been going through at the police station, the
fi
ngerprinting, the mug shot, the tiny holding cell. But mainly it was the look on his face that haunted me, the proud and de
fi
ant smile of a man at peace with what he’d done and willing to accept the consequences.

Th
e ball smacked into the catcher’s mitt, waking me from my reverie. Mark hadn’t swung. As far as I could determine a
ft
er the fact, the pitch appeared to have crossed the plate near the outside corner, though possibly a bit on the high side.

I guess I could have lied. I could have called strike three and given the game to the Ravens, to Lori Chang and Ray Santelli. I could have sent Mark Diedrich sobbing back to the dugout, probably scarred for life. But instead I pulled o
ff
my mask.

“Jack?” Tim was standing between
fi
rst and second with his palms open to the sky. “You gonna call it?”

“I can’t,” I told him. “I didn’t see it.”

Th
ere was a freedom in admitting it that I hadn’t anticipated, and I dropped my mask to the ground.
Th
en I slipped my arms through the straps of my chest protector and let that fall, too.

“What happened?” Mark Diedrich asked in a quavery voice. “Did I strike out?”

“I don’t know,” I told him.

Boos and angry cries rose from the bleachers as I made my way toward the pitcher’s mound. I wanted to tell Lori Chang that I envied her father, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t understand. She seemed relieved when I walked past her without saying a word. Mikey Fellner was out of the dugout and videotaping me as I walked past second base and onto the grass. He followed me all the way across center
fi
eld, until I climbed the fence over the ad for the Prima Ballerina School of Dance and le
ft
the ballpark.

Th
at’s what I wanted my ex-wife and children to see — an umpire walking away from a baseball game, a man who had the courage to admit that he’d failed, who understood that there were times when you had no right to judge, had responsibilities you were no longer quali
fi
ed to exercise. I hoped they might learn something new about me, something I hadn’t been able to make clear to them in my letters and phone calls.

But of course I was disappointed. What’s in your heart sometimes remains hidden, even when you most desperately want it to be revealed. I remembered my long walk across the out
fi
eld as a digni
fi
ed, silent journey, but on TV I seem almost to be jogging. I look sweaty and confused, a little out of breath as I mumble a string of barely audible excuses and apologies for my strange behavior. If Jeanie and the kids had been watching, all they would have seen was an unhappy man they already knew too well,
fl
eeing from the latest mess he’d made: just me, still trying to explain.

KIDDIE POOL

IN A LIGHT RAIN, AT A LITTLE AFTER THREE IN THE
morning, Gus Ketchell stood on his back stoop in slippers and shorty pajamas, holding a bulky cardboard box and staring uncertainly at his next-door neighbors’ garage.

Come on,
he told himself.
You can do this.

No one would ever know.
Th
e Simmonses’ house was dark, the old air conditioner wheezing away in the second-
fl
oor bedroom window. He pictured Peggy alone on the bed, snoring heavily, nearly comatose from the industrial-strength sleeping pills she’d been taking since Lonny’s sudden death a month ago. Gus could probably break down the front door with a sledgehammer, turn on every light in the house, and make himself a ham sandwich without disturbing her.

Gus’s own wife, Martha, was also asleep, but even awake she wouldn’t have registered his absence at this ungodly hour; aside from the occasional hotel room, they hadn’t shared a bed in years.
Th
ere were no longer any dogs in the immediate neighborhood to sound an alarm, either, not since Fred DiMello had been forced to put down his ancient, slobbering basset hound last October. Fred had buried Sadsack in his backyard, and Gus o
ft
en saw him staring forlornly at the circle of rocks he’d placed in the ground to mark the gravesite.

So the coast was clear. But still Gus hesitated.

He just didn’t like the idea of trespassing — breaking and entering, to be precise — even in a place so close to home, where he’d once been welcome. It would have been so much easier — so much more
civilized
— if he could just have rung the Simmonses’ doorbell in the morning and said,
Hey, Peg, sorry to bother you, but I need a favor.
And Peggy would have said,
Sure, Gus, you name it. But why don’t you sit down and have a cup of co
ff
ee
fi
rst?

Once upon a time, the Ketchells and the Simmonses had been those kinds of neighbors, back when everyone was young and their kids moved between the two yards as if they were all part of one big family. Lonny Simmons sometimes borrowed Gus’s wheelbarrow and extension ladder without asking; Gus did the same with Lonny’s ratchet set and Weedwacker.
Th
e Ketchells had an open invitation to swim in the Simmonses’ built-in pool, a bona
fi
de luxury when it was installed in the early seventies, one of maybe a half dozen in the whole town.
Th
e two families barbecued together, went on camping trips, swapped babysitting, and took turns shoveling each other’s sidewalk when it snowed.

Somewhere along the way, though, it all went sour.
Th
e kids grew up and went away. Lonny
fi
lled his swimming pool with concrete, said the damn thing was too much trouble. Peggy got fat and haughty; she made some remarks that Martha hadn’t appreciated.
Th
ere were grievances — a missing drill bit, a motion light that shined into a bedroom window. Gus and Lonny fell out of the habit of shouting jocular greetings to each other when they were both out in their yards. A
ft
er a while, they stopped waving.

Nonetheless, relations between the two households had remained reasonably civil until about three years ago, when the Simmonses got a bee in their bonnet about the old oak tree in the Ketchells’ yard, which overhung both properties. Lonny and Peggy thought it was diseased and demanded that it be cut down before falling limbs damaged their precious garage. A
ft
er a couple of tense discussions, Gus and Martha reluctantly agreed to get some estimates.
Th
ey hadn’t even had time to make their initial calls when the mail carrier arrived with a registered letter containing vague threats of legal action if the tree was not cut down “with all due dispatch.”

A registered letter! From their next-door neighbors! Gus went ballistic. He scribbled a choice obscenity on the envelope and shoved it under the Simmonses’ front door, right back where it came from. From then on, it was War.

OF ALL
the unpleasant memories, one particular episode still rankled. Last July, Gus’s three-year-old twin granddaughters had come for a visit during a wicked heat wave, the worst of the summer. Knowing how hard it was to entertain three-year-olds in the best of circumstances, he had purchased an in
fl
atable kiddie pool from Costco, the biggest one they had. It came with something called a “high-volume hand pump,” which Gus had been assured was “extremely e
ffi
cient.”

With an air of grandfatherly self-assurance, he removed the heavy vinyl liner from the box and spread it out on the grass. Squatting in the merciless sun, he pumped without making any visible headway, until his right hand was too raw to continue, then switched to his le
ft
. When that gave out — the pool still lay as
fl
at as a rug on the parched grass, billowing slightly at its edges — he had no choice but to continue blowing up the damn thing with his mouth, while two whiny, pink-cheeked girls in swim diapers and bikini tops looked on with increasing impatience, criticizing his technique and questioning his competence.

At some point in the midst of this
fi
asco, Gus became aware of Lonny watching him from his own backyard.
Th
e cocky bastard was reclining shirtless on a lounge chair in the shade of a dogwood — unlike Gus, Lonny had retained a lean, youthful physique well into his golden years, and he liked showing it o
ff
— sipping a cold beer and casting sly glances in the direction of his garage, where he kept an air compressor that could have in
fl
ated the pool in seconds. Gus had used it numerous times in the past, e
ff
ortlessly pumping up basketballs, bike tires, air mattresses, whatever. But he was damned if he was going to ask Lonny for help, and Lonny was damned if he was going to o
ff
er it. So Gus just kept on hu
ffi
ng and pu
ffi
ng and sweating, mentally cursing his neighbor the whole time. Finally, more than two hours a
ft
er he’d begun, he turned on the hose and began
fi
lling the pool with water.