The Youngest Hero (24 page)

There had been too many children in my family, too many sons, too many daughters. I felt as if I had slipped through the cracks,
as if I were just one of the kids and not special to my parents. Being one of the youngest, I was convinced my parents had
run out of time and energy for me. I was not a rebel, not a troublemaker, but I was a troubled soul. I desperately needed
and wanted attention, and not being a socialite or a rich kid, I settled for dating the campus heartthrob. That was almost
enough, but it had evolved into a nightmare.

I had read and seen and experienced enough to know what it meant to be a caring parent. I didn’t want to overdo it, but I
compared myself to TV moms, movie moms, even moms of my friends. Few had experiences any different from mine, but I had one
friend whose mother was fun and funny, who listened and seemed to care. This woman didn’t embarrass her kids by trying to
be like them or by trying to impress their friends. She just was who she was, and seemed comfortable with it. Who she was,
was a mother who didn’t spoil her kids or let them run her, but who cared deeply for them—and it showed.

That was the kind of a mother I wanted to be. I had friends and acquaintances in the work world, as I grew older and got married
and divorced, who liked to blame their troubles, and mine, on the way we were raised. We commiserated about neglectful parents,
too harsh parents, too permissive parents, too busy parents. I grew sick of it. I believed in my soul that what happens to
you does not have to be the result of the way you were raised, but rather can be a result of how you responded to the way
you were raised. For a while, especially when I doubted
myself and believed I had brought many of these marital troubles on myself, I believed that my upbringing had a lot to do
with it. Had I become an enabler? Was I making it convenient for Neal to be alcoholic, abusive, self-destructive?

Eventually I separated myself from that kind of thinking. I convinced myself that I would be a good mother and could have
been a good wife, not because of the way I was raised but in spite of it. I told myself that though, yes, perhaps my family
was dysfunctional and never learned to interact properly, I had known all along it was wrong. I never got swept into believing
that this was simply the way things were and the way they should be. I had a brain, I had eyes and ears, I had experience
and years, and it was time to grow up, to take responsibility for my own actions.

I still felt my divorce was not right in the eyes of God. I hadn’t felt good about giving up on the marriage, or giving up
on Neal. But he had bled from me every vestige of energy and dignity. When my reserves were gone I decided that God would
certainly not expect one of His children to live in fear for her life and that of her children, born or unborn. I wasn’t sure
I was right, but I knew I had to take control.

In just seven or eight years I would see my son off to college, and maybe he could help me financially after that. Maybe I
could be open to another relationship. For now, though, I was content to let my guiding principle be to devote myself quietly
and almost secretly—for eleven-year-olds rarely sensed such things—to giving my son a life I would have died for as a child.
I didn’t want to be blind and spoil him; I didn’t want to center my life on him to where I would have nothing to live for
when he was gone. But in my small ways, with my humble financial means, I intended to deny myself—and him in many ways—so
that in the long run he would have the opportunities I never had.

Then, regardless what he did with those opportunities, he would know what I had tried to do. He could have obscenely expensive
athletic shoes and other equipment now, and then have to work and not go to college one day. But I would not do that to him.
I knew the day would come—in fact, I was amazed it
hadn’t already—when his values might not be my values and he might start badgering me to give him what everyone else seemed
to have. Then I would just try to explain things to him. I would tell him about my budget and why we lived beneath our means
on a salary that would be poverty-level for most. Unless I missed my guess, Elgin was one kid who would understand. He may
not like it or agree with it at first, but he would be grateful for me and for my philosophy one day, the day that it counted.
He would not be looking for any ship to come in. He would know the value of love and family and work and diligence, and he
would know that you make your own way in this world. He would become a man of responsibility and discipline. That I prayed
for above all.

Chico came by looking for Elgin one afternoon after I had returned from work. Elgin was in the basement, but I didn’t want
to tell Chico that and make him feel bad that he couldn’t join him.

“I’ll tell him you came by.”

“Tell him we gonna play fastpitch till dark today. First game of the season.”

After Chico left, I hurried to the basement to give Elgin the news. He was picking up golf balls and sweating.

“I think I’m ready for a little fastpitch,” he said. “I’m not ready to pitch, though. Chico always wants to pitch. I’ll get
on his team.”

An hour later, just after dark, I heard Elgin on the stairs from a couple of floors below. He was the only person in the building
who could run up that many flights. He rarely did it at the end of the day, though. Usually, especially after playing hard
and long, he took the elevator. He must, I decided, have news.

Did he ever.

I
was sure it was Elgin banging on the door, but the rapping was so insistent that I peeked through the peephole just to be
safe.

“C’mon, Momma! Open up!”

I removed the chain and twisted both dead bolts. Elgin had already turned the knob and the door swept in at me. I stepped
back just in time to miss being slammed in the nose.

“Elgin! What’s wrong?”

Nothing was wrong. I could see that from his face, but I wanted to send him a message. Nothing but an emergency should require
that kind of enthusiasm at this time of the day.

“Momma, you’ve got to come with me right now. Chico is waiting.”

“Why? What?”

“Please, Momma, get your coat.”

“Dinner’s on the stove, El.”

“Turn it down, turn it off, put it in the oven. Just come on.”

“No, you gotta tell me first.”

“You just have to see this, Momma, what I can do in fastpitch. You will not believe it. Chico promised to throw his hardest
and to do whatever he could to get me out, but you gotta watch.”

“It’s after dark! You can hardly see the ball now!”

“It didn’t make any difference when the sun went down. I could still see. I mean I see it leave his hand and—”

“I thought Chico was pitching on your team.”

“He was, but we won so big because of my hitting that the other guys finally left. Chico said he thought the other pitcher
must have been throwing me candy pitches, because he sure couldn’t hit the guy. Momma, I must’ve made only three outs in an
hour, and there were only two guys on our team, just Chico and me.”

“Just three outs?”

I could see there would be no bargaining on this. I put the pans in the oven and turned it on low, then grabbed my coat. We
hurried a couple of blocks, and sure enough, there sat Chico.

“I try to get him out, ma’am, I really do. I pitch after dark, my best, my fastest. I can’t even see the ball after the pitch,
but he hits it and then I see it, very high.”

“I’m watching,” I said. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. If I hadn’t been there myself, I would not have believed it.
It wasn’t that Elgin was one to stretch the truth, but this would have been hard to swallow. He stood up to the chalked-in
plate.

“Tell her what happened first, man,” Chico said, grinning.

“Oh, yeah, that,” Elgin said, laughing. “Well, when we first got here, nobody else was here, so we pitched to each other.”

“You weren’t going to throw in this weather,” I scolded.

“Oh, I was just lobbing it.”

“Yeah, he was, ma’am. In fact, I was hitting him pretty good!”

“But then when I tried to get some practice hitting against Chico, I couldn’t hit a thing. The bat seemed so light I couldn’t
control it, and I was way out ahead of everything. He started throwing harder and harder, and just before the other guys showed
up, I got used to it.”

“Yeah,” Chico said, “and then—well, watch this!”

Chico wound and fired, a high fastball, outside. Elgin turned and smacked the ball high off the eighth or ninth floor of the
twenty-story building across the street. Chico chased the ball by listening for the bounce, then both boys looked to me.

“What’s a home run again?” I asked.

“Anything over the fifth story, ma’am,” Chico said, grinning and pointing.

I raised my eyebrows and nodded.

“That’s nothing,” Elgin said. “I can’t miss!”

Chico fired again, hard and low. Elgin golfed the shot from his ankles, another fastpitch homer. Chico changed speeds. Elgin
was way ahead of it.

“Strike one, man!” the pitcher yelled.

The next pitch nearly hit Elgin in the knee before he hit it for a homer.

“Watch this!” Chico said.

He bounced the ball to Elgin as hard as he could. Elgin hit it for a homer.

Chico threw sidearm, then submarine, then an overhand pitch that dropped through the strike zone. Elgin hit them all out.

“If he don’t quit this, ain’t nobody gonna want him to play fastpitch anymore!”

“Okay, Chico,” Elgin said, “let’s show her the biggie.”

I couldn’t believe there could be more.

Chico said, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Come here.”

Chico cut the pitching distance almost in half. He was now throwing from about twenty feet away. His first couple of pitches
were over Elgin’s head. I could not imagine how the boy could see them. They bounced off the wall behind him and almost all
the way back to Chico. I heard the slap against the wall and then several echoes. From the sound of it, Elgin’s friend was
throwing as hard as he could.

“Be careful of your arm,” I cautioned.

“No problem.”

He finally found the range at the new distance. Of the next ten pitches, nine were hittable. Three were lined right past Chico
for doubles low on the wall. One was slightly higher for a triple. The rest were homers.

“Momma, usually I at least have a strike or two before I get a hit. This is unbelievable!”

“It sure is,” I said. “It most surely is.”

Elgin was still wound up on the brisk walk home. I tried to slow him down, trudging along with my hands deep in my pockets.

“How do you account for this, El?” I said.

“I don’t know! I just think it’s fantastic!”

“Now, hold on. Wait a minute. You can’t tell me, baseball mind that you are, that you haven’t tried to figure this out.”

“I don’t want to think about it. I just want to do it.”

“Think about it, El. Tell me. What’s happening?”

I stopped under a street lamp. Elgin leaned back against a building.

“Well,” he began, “I’ve been doing a lot more swinging with a heavier bat since the last time I played fastpitch. So I’m getting
the broomstick bat around a lot faster.”

“But you’re hittin fastballs pitched close up in the dark.”

“I know. I guess that’s from hitting in the basement with the low light and the golf balls coming so much faster than the
tennis ball. You know, the pitching machine must be throwing two or three times faster than Chico and the other guys.”

“But you could see it almost in the dark! How?”

“I wasn’t really seeing it all the way, Momma. It was strange. You know I’ve always had good eyes. That school doctor told
you that.”

“Yeah, better than twenty-twenty, he said, which I didn’t even know was possible.”

“I know I can see things far away that other people can’t see.”

“But how were you picking up that tennis ball in the light of a street lamp a half block away?”

“I saw just enough of it as it came out of his hand that I could judge the speed and where it was going to be. I don’t know
how I do it, I just do. I guess trying so hard to watch the golf balls makes this easy.”

“It looked easy,” I said. “You made it look like you were tossin those balls up and hitting them yourself.”

He nodded. “I felt like I could hit anything I could reach, and I could smack it anywhere I wanted. The ball looked huge
and slow to me.”

I signaled with a nod that it was time to keep moving.

“Do you think this is gonna affect how the golf balls look to you tomorrow?”

“I hope not. I’m gonna do both every day and see if I can get used to that.”

“What if nobody can get you out in fastpitch? You won’t like that, will you?”

“I’ll probably get tired of it. But I love it. When I first tried to play this game I couldn’t even hit a foul ball. Now it
seems like in one day I’m hitting better than even the best kids. I’ve never seen anybody hit like this. After about ten homers
in a row, the guys were laughing because I seemed so lucky. They’d change pitchers and move closer, which isn’t even fair—but
nobody cared, not even me—and I just kept hitting them. It got scary after a while. The other guys finally went home shaking
their heads. Even if I never do this again, they’ll be talking about it for years.”

It was all I could do to get Elgin settled down enough for bed that night. All he wanted to do was talk about his feats. I
could hardly blame him. I lectured him on humility and steered the conversation to something else. As usual, it came back
to baseball.

“They say Willie Mays learned to hit playing stickball. They used a ball made out of rolled-up tape, so it was small and moved
a lot, but he got to where he could hit it hard no matter where it was pitched or how hard or what it was doing.”

Three days later Elgin came home early from fastpitch, looking glum.

“Have you lost it?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Maybe I should. Couple of the guys told me it really wasn’t fair anymore, that my home runs could count
but they would also be outs. Otherwise, whatever team I’m on stays up too long.”