The Bucket Behind the Backstop

“I know it.”

I think my heart stopped. “You knew?”

“I saw the bag,” he said. “I figured it was a gym bag. I decided it was a gym bag.” He looked at his hands. “If I’d asked, you’d have had to tell me. And I didn’t want to be the one who made you say it.”

Twenty-eight years. Two people had carried the same night, and neither had told the other, because each was trying to spare the other the weight.

“I never knew where you were headed,” he said. “I just knew you were at that fence with a bag. So I figured the best thing I could do was bring you a plate.”

I laughed. It came out wet and ragged, and then Verdie laughed, and the whole town let out a long breath.

“I never said it,” I told him. “Thank you. I should have said it in 2000.”

“Don’t,” he said. “You’ll embarrass me.”

“I’m not done.”

“I know you ain’t. That boy’s been standing there ten minutes.”

I turned around. Kyler had come up behind me without a sound. He stood four feet away in his ironed white shirt and his crooked tie, hands in his pockets, with a look on his face I knew from the inside.

Kyler Rowe is the nephew of my shop manager, Cecil. Kyler’s mother is in a recovery program in Macon, and his father was never in the picture. He lives with his grandmother in a small town two hours from my house called Marbury.

Cecil mentioned him in March, at a cookout. The boy was a catcher, a good one, and nobody came to his games. Every other boy on that team had somebody in the stands.

The next Thursday I closed the shop at one o’clock and told Cecil I had business over that way. It is two hours to Marbury. I drove it.

I sat in the cold bleachers alone and watched a skinny fourteen-year-old squat behind home plate. Between innings he looked up into the stands, right at the one man looking at him, and then he looked away fast, the way you do when you have learned not to hope.

After the game I walked to the fence and handed him a plate Marla had packed. Two pimento cheese sandwiches in foil, a pickle, and a slice of pound cake.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Had a customer over this way.”

He did not smile. He did not say thank you. But he took the plate. And because it was the only thing I knew that was worth saying, I told him, “I need a catcher who doesn’t flinch.”

He ate the whole plate standing at the fence.

That was twenty-one games ago. I leave the shop at one o’clock and Cecil locks up. I keep the count on a notepad in the truck, and Marla has started packing two plates, because on the fourth game he asked if there was any more.

I have not asked him a thing about his mother. I figure he will tell me when he has decided who to tell.

I am not his father. I am not even his coach. I am the man who shows up.

Standing in front of Gaylon Tippins with two hundred people watching and an upturned bucket between us, I said so out loud.

“Coach, this is Kyler Rowe. He catches for Marbury. I never could pay you back, so I figured I’d pass it on. I’m on game twenty-one.”