The Little Team Nobody Would Take

April and May

The practices went on through April. Some nights it rained and Bob sat in the truck with the window down and called it at six twenty-five, and the parents would wave from their cars. Most nights it did not rain, and he was out there.

He had a way with them I cannot quite explain. He did not fuss. He did not raise his voice once that I heard.

When Henry cried because he struck out on the tee, Bob said “Nobody strikes out in T-ball, son, you just got more practice than everybody,” and Henry hit the next one.

He used the plastic tees the association had in the shed and an old pool noodle he cut into pieces for the little ones to practice swinging at.

He made bases out of carpet squares for the ones who were scared of the real ones. He kept a pocket full of butterscotch candy for after.

On Saturday mornings they played games against the T-ball teams from the next towns over.

Nobody kept score in T-ball, at least not officially, though every parent in the bleachers knew it to the run. Everybody batted every inning, and the inning ended when everybody had gone.

By the end of April the shirts came in, plain red with no sponsor, because the money for the sponsor had run out over the winter.

Red shirts and red caps, fourteen little ones in red, and Bob in his faded red cap among them like a hen with her chicks.

I sat in my lawn chair every practice. I knitted, mostly, or I just watched.

Sometimes when Bob was raking the infield after, he hummed the old hymns under his breath. Great Is Thy Faithfulness, mostly. He does not know he does it.

One evening in late April a young father I did not recognize came and stood by my chair.

He was big and broad and had a feed company logo on his jacket. His daughter was Avery, who threw left-handed and had a cannon for an arm.

“You’re Mrs. Albers,” he said. “I’m Abel. I played for Coach in ninety-eight. Second base.” He shook his head watching Bob. “He made me run laps for throwing my helmet. I’ve never thrown anything since.”

He came every practice after that. He pitched to the kids when Bob wanted them to try hitting off a toss instead of the tee, and he helped Bob up off his knee once or twice without saying a word about it, just a hand under the elbow, and then he went back to the mound.

Craig did not come to the small diamond. Not once in April. He was at the big diamond most nights, standing behind the bench with Tyler, being president.

He could see us from there. I know he could. The two backstops are maybe a hundred and fifty feet apart.

Homer was not on the T-ball team either. He was five and old enough, and he had a glove Bob had bought him for his birthday, but Craig and Etta had not signed him up.

I did not ask why. I did not have to. Some nights I saw Homer sitting in the bleachers at the big diamond with his chin in his hands, watching us.

Etta

Etta came by the house one afternoon in May. It was a Wednesday, sunny and warm, and I was out in the side yard taking the sheets down off the line.

She parked in the drive and walked across the grass to me with her hands in her back pockets.

“Can I help?” she asked, and I handed her one end of a sheet, and we folded it together the way you do, walking toward each other and back, the way my mother did it with me.

“He’s scared, Jean,” she said, when we had the sheet folded. “That’s all it is. He won’t say it, but he wakes up at night. He dreams about the woodpile. I’m not making excuses for him. I just wanted you to know.”

“I know he’s scared,” I said. “I’ve known since March. But scared doesn’t give a man the right to take something from his father that his father’s doctor said he could keep.”

She nodded. She did not argue. Etta is a good girl. She was a nurse’s aide before Homer came, and she knows what a stent is and what it is not.

“Homer asks every day,” she said. “Every single day. Can I go play on Grandpa’s team. And Craig says maybe next year, and Homer goes in his room and shuts the door.”

She took the next sheet off the line herself. “I think Craig’s ashamed to walk over there.”

“Then he’ll have to get over being ashamed,” I said. “Nobody over there is going to make it hard on him. Bob least of all.”

She looked at me. “Has Bob said anything? About Craig?”

“Not one word,” I said, and that was the truth.

In all those weeks Bob had not said one word against our son. Not at the field. Not at the supper table. Not in the dark of our bedroom, where a man says the things he will not say anywhere else.