The Diamond We Mowed Into Our Hayfield

State

The boys went to state the next weekend. They won two games and lost two, and they came home in the middle of the bracket, which was the best our town had ever done.

Tracy’s boy hit a double in the second game. He called Rylee from the hotel that night, on his mother’s phone, and told her the pitcher threw nothing like her and he had sat on the fastball.

Rylee told him that was good. Then she asked if the hotel had a pool. That is what eleven-year-olds care about.

I stood in the kitchen doorway listening and I had to turn away so she would not see my face.

The girls finished the season twelve and oh. They lost in the second round of the county tournament to a team from a bigger town with travel players, and they cried in the minivans, and then they were fine.

At the last practice of the year, the dads cooked hot dogs on a grill behind the backstop and everybody brought a dish.

The pastor came and said grace, short, and then he took a turn batting against Rylee.

He struck out. He laughed harder than anybody. He said he had not swung a bat since 1987 and he would be praying for his shoulder on Sunday.

The last Saturday

The park opened back up in August with new sod in left field.

The rec board met the first Tuesday of the month, and Tracy stood up and read out the new field schedule for spring.

Girls’ softball, Tuesdays and Thursdays, six to eight. Boys’ baseball, Mondays and Wednesdays. She read it plain, without any comment, and she sat down, and nobody said a word about it.

I believe it.

That is not an easy thing to stand up and do in front of a town that knows exactly why you are doing it.

Dustin has decided to leave the diamond in the hayfield. He says he will mow around it every year.

He says forty bales is not too much to pay for a place for girls to throw a ball.

The cattle panels are still standing behind home plate. A little more rust on the bottom wires.

Rylee goes out there most evenings with her bucket of balls and throws until supper is on the table.

On the last Saturday morning in August, I looked out the kitchen window and saw Hosea walking the first base line with his crooked liner, bent over at the waist, putting the lime down straight and bright.

There was nobody scheduled to play. He just wanted it done right. Rylee was out in the circle already, in her red T-shirt, warming up against the panels.

And then I saw Tracy’s truck pull onto the shoulder by our mailbox.

She got out and lifted something heavy out of the bed, and started across the stubble toward the diamond.

I put down my coffee and went to the back door to see. It was Tracy, carrying a bucket of balls out to the hayfield.