The Tournament I Called Behind the Plate

“That’s okay,” Hayden said, very serious, eleven years old and giving his dad a pass. “Coach Pete says even the big-league blues miss one sometimes.”

“Coach Pete is right,” I said, and I had to look out at the outfield for a second so my boy would not see my face.

He stayed the whole day that Saturday. He kept the book for me between innings and brought me a fresh Gatorade from my mother’s cooler when I came off a game.

Once, when a coach got loud with me over a check-swing, Hayden stood up in the lawn chair like he was going to come defend his dad until my mother put a hand on his arm.

I waved them both off and finished the game. But I saw it. My boy standing up for me behind a chain-link fence. I carry that one around with me.

He did not know about the bill. He did not know his mother had mailed a shaming note to his grandmother, and he was never going to know, not from me.

All he knew was that his dad put on a chest protector every Saturday, and his grandma clapped from a lawn chair, and that was a thing that belonged to the two of them now.

The Last Payment

It took me five Saturdays. Five Saturdays and twenty games, mostly behind the plate because Earl saw I did not mind the heat and the little ones liked me.

I kept the cash in a coffee can on top of my refrigerator, and on a Thursday in the middle of June I counted it out and it came to four hundred and seventy dollars.

I counted it on the kitchen table in ones and fives and the odd twenty, the sweat of five Saturdays in a coffee can, and I will tell you it looked like more money sitting there in a pile than it ever does in a bank.

My mother happened to call while I was counting, and I told her where it was going.

“You keep twenty of that for yourself,” she said. “Buy yourself a decent supper for once.”

“I ate fine, Mom,” I said, which was a small lie, and she knew it, and she let it go.

I did not hand it to Crystal in cash. I know her, and I know how she tells a story, and I was not going to give her a scene to tell about me showing up with a coffee can like some cartoon.

I went to the credit union and I paid the Bandits directly, my half of Hayden’s fee, four hundred and fifty dollars, and I asked the lady at the desk to note on the account that it came from Ross, the father.