The Bottom of the 5th

A short story by Edison McDaniels

I had me a son once.

His name was Cooper and he was a special child, all a parent could want. The boy had dark mulatto skin, lighter than mine, and dense black hair that curled naturally into tight little twists close to his scalp. A smart kid, mature for his age, but funny too. And well-liked, with a natural gift for getting on with others. Like our neighbor Sam for instance, a old blind man. Cooper used to take the Sunday paper over to him. He and Robbins — that’s my wife, Robbins with an ‘s’ — would get home from church around 11:30 I guess. Cooper would grab a quick sandwich, then head over to Sam’s place and read to him for a couple of hours. I asked him once if there wasn’t something else he’d rather be doing with his Sunday afternoons.

“Like what?” he asked, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

“I don’t know. Like playing ball or going to a movie maybe.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “Why would I wanna do that? Sam’s got more stories than any old movie and I can play ball anytime.”

I remember that conversation because it was the only time I ever heard Cooper put anything before baseball. He loved the game, was born to it. Spent hours playing it too. The boy couldn’t wait to get home in the afternoons to throw the ball around, even if it was just against the side of the garage. He wore a hole in the stucco there. Twice.

He was a good kid, the best as he once said to me. Truth is, the boy really only had one vice, and even that wasn’t so bad. Not in hindsight anyway. He was a thumbsucker. Did it without even thinking about it I’m sure.

Yeah, he was a good kid.

And then he was gone.

If you’ll sit a spell on the bleacher here alongside me, I’ll tell you about it. Not ‘cause he’s my son either, but because it’s worth hearing. First though, I have to tell you about opening day, about how he quit sucking his thumb.

And about the bottom of the fifth.

***

Cooper turned nine years old that Saturday, opening day. We arrived at the field a bit early, probably on account of him being so excited. Baseball did that to him. The day itself was perfect, like it was made for baseball. The sky was a cloudless deep blue — smog was still a thing of the future back then. Just a bare hint of breeze in the air, enough to carry the ball toward the fences. What you’d call a hitter’s wind I guess.

Roscoe Field the place was called. Built tight against one of those perpetually brown Southern California hillsides, so close the right field was thirty feet shorter than left. To fix that, they put a twenty foot high wall in right field where it dug into the mountain. There aren’t many ten year kids what can hit a ball both that far and that high for a homerun, but I saw it once — a feat I’ll share with you shortly.

The outfield grass that spring day was the greenest I ever remember seeing it. The air was redolent of a just cut lawn, like honeydew and lilac it was. I can’t never smell that now that I don’t go back to that day. The snack bar, just a shack really, had its usual worn coat of paint. Fluorescent yellow, god knows why. The players sat on telephone poles laid in the dirt along first and third. Not fancy, but it worked. The backstop was a patched mess of rusty chicken wire and every time a ball hit it, those of us in the bleachers flinched at the possibility it wouldn’t hold. It always did though, except once. I’ll get to that too, presently.

There was the usual opening day carnival atmosphere, something I always liked but Cooper could have done without I suppose: balloons and firecrackers, a pony ride, the usual fire truck for the baby kids to climb on. Even a few carnival-style games and a kiddy slide. The teams joined up in the outfield and were introduced, followed by a few short but still too long speeches. A recorded version of the star spangled banner hissed over the loudspeakers and the Junior ROTC paraded the American flag across the infield.

When I saw him not long after the ceremony, it was obvious Cooper was bored, though he never woulda said so.

“When do the games start?” he asked.

“Cooper, you know how opening day is. Won’t be long now.”

“I just wanna get playing, to heck with all this other stuff. That’s for kids.”

Watching him standing there with his thumb in his mouth, I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “And what do you suppose you are, champ?”

“A ball player, dad. I’m a ball player is all.” He said this with such conviction he must have thought it obvious to all.

“A ball player? Okay, sure. Tell me something though, Mr. ball player.” I hesitated a moment, perhaps afraid to burst his bubble. “You plan to suck your thumb out there?” I pointed through the chicken wire, out toward the pitcher’s mound.

“Naw, that’s not something ball players do.” But he was doing it then, and when he realized it he took his thumb out and rubbed the slimy digit on his pants. As he did so, I saw it was wrinkled and pristinely clean compared to his other fingers. When he smiled up at me, his teeth bucked out expensively and I could imagine them costing me a fortune some day. He smiled and jogged off toward the carnival games despite himself.

When I caught up with him again a half hour later, his thumb was back in his mouth.

***

I remember that Saturday as if it was yesterday: the luxuriant green of the grass; the chirping of birds in the nearby trees; and the giggling of a couple of little girls sitting behind me in the stands. There was a pair of outside handball courts on the other side of the park, and I can even remember the sound of a rubber ball splotching against the cement walls there over and over again. In the quiet morning air, that sound seemed to echo forever.

I also remember wishing Robbins could be there, but she had volunteered to help out at a pancake breakfast at our church that morning. Robbins was a nurse in those days, and I later found out she saved a life that day, doing CPR when one of the older parishioners collapsed. Turned out she was the only one there what knew how to do it. She saved that man, I mean really saved him. Edelman was his name and he became the poster person for CPR across the Southwest after that. Saving his life probably saved countless others. Considering everything else that happened that day, that thought always comforts me.

Standing out on that field, playing third base as usual, I gotta say Cooper looked like a baseball player. That may sound like a father’s pride talking, but it really ain’t. Back in those days, every kid got a complete uniform: hat, shirt, pants, stirrup socks. He had his pants fixed just so, with the elastic band of the cuffs turned in just below his knees. He wore white socks with blue stirrups layered over them. There was even a batting glove sticking out one of his back pockets. He was very particular about his cap and had shaped and curved the bill of it the way ball players will do. He wore it well up on his forehead, never down over his eyes. His team sported light gray jerseys that buttoned up the front, the word ‘Dodgers’ emblazoned diagonally in the classic script of the big league team. Cooper wore number three, same as Willie Davis, who played center field for LA. The shirt had blue piping that seemed somehow to complete the illusion of greatness each kid longed for.

I can remember that game as if it was played this morning, not twenty-six years ago. I’ve relived every moment of it a thousand times over the last quarter century.

In my mind’s eye, I see them all so clearly: Billy Bishop, our starting pitcher; the coach, a country looking guy we used to call Gomer Pyle ‘cause he looked something like the TV character; Dilly Lansdale, the smallest kid on the team and our second baseman. Our left fielder, Wellington Skeets was his name but of course nobody called him that, used to make like he was chasing bees in the outfield. Skeeter was like that, tended to spend more time with his head in the clouds than his mind in the game. It’s the age I think. A lot of boys are like that at that age. Hell, they haven’t found girls yet, they got to run that energy off somehow I suppose.

By the top of the fourth the score was tied at six apiece. Up to that point, it was a good game but was nothing special. Cooper came up to bat with two outs and a runner on third. It was common knowledge Cooper had been the best hitter in his age group for two years running. As he stepped up to the plate though, a weird thing happened — the whole place got real quiet. Took me a moment to realize it was only a relative quiet, that the constant sound of that handball splotching against the cement wall had stopped. It was surreal though, and it seemed to throw off the rhythm of the day.

Nothing seemed quite right after that.

Cooper struck out, actually took a called third strike. In two years of Little League prior to that day, Cooper had only struck out once — and he’d been coming down with the chicken pox then.

Something else I need to mention here as well. It only makes sense in retrospect, in the context of the rest of that strange afternoon, but I’ll mention it here anyway. Before Cooper struck out, he fouled off a pitch, a crazy zinger what busted through that rusted chicken wire backstop. It hit a little boy name of Charlie Granger in the side of his head, knocked him cold; for a moment it didn’t look too good, like he wasn’t breathing. He was though, and thank god for that. He had a bump on his head and tears in his eyes, but he looked good enough otherwise. Charlie was four that day, he’s a man now, and a hell of a good ball player — maybe the best ever produced around these parts. Plays in the majors you know.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but there’s something else you should know about Charlie Granger. The boy had seizures, epilepsy I guess. And not a mild case either. His mother — Edna was her name and she died just not too long ago — once told me they had pretty much figured his future didn’t promise much. He had a seizure a day, sometimes two Edna said. I witnessed one of them once.

Charlie’s older brother played ball, wasn’t bad but he was no Charlie as it turned out, and the year before Charlie got hit by Cooper’s foul ball I saw the boy have one of his fits behind that fluorescent snack bar during one of his brother’s games. Scared the hell of me. One moment he was standing there licking an ice cream cone, the next he was on the ground writhing back and forth, making weird guttural noises. The ice cream had somehow landed on his chest and his right arm kept jerking back and forth through it, smearing it across his body. I got up close, Edna was there as well and she looked completely used to it. I watched Charlie’s trousers turn dark between his legs. I thought then about how he might swallow his tongue, but Edna seemed to know what she was doing and she didn’t go nowhere near his mouth. She held him close and whispered something in his ear. I don’t know what it was, but the boy stopped shaking a moment later. The whole thing lasted maybe sixty seconds, a minute straight out of the pages of hell you ask me. I couldn’t imagine watching my kid go through that kind of agony every day.

The thing is though, they didn’t have to. By the time Cooper’s foul ball struck him, Charlie had had a fit a day for about two years running. I guess that’s over seven hundred seizures, more than twelve hours of spells if each lasted just a minute. After he was struck that day, Charlie never seized again. Not once.

Edna called that ball a miracle.

Maybe, but considering what happened later, I don’t think the ball had much to do with it.

***

Cooper and Billy Bishop switched places in the bottom of the fourth, with Billy moving over to third and Cooper taking the mound. Coop loved to pitch. He threw hard and when he was on he was maybe the best pitcher in his age group.

Nonetheless, the Yankees came out slugging and got a run to take a 7–6 lead. The final out was a sharp come backer to the mound, a line drive that was the second hardest hit ball I ever saw. It nearly took Cooper’s head off. He wasn’t the best fielder — it was perhaps his weakest part of the game — and that he fielded it cleanly was near a miracle.

As he walked from the pitcher’s mound to the bench after making that play, Cooper looked to be searching the crowd with his eyes. I thought he was looking for me and I put my hand up, but when we made eye contact, he nodded and moved right on past. Maybe he’d forgotten his mother wasn’t going to be there and was looking for her, but I doubt it. Robbins later told me it had been Cooper’s idea she work the pancake breakfast that morning, said he was pretty sure she would be needed more at that breakfast than at his game.

“He said ‘pretty sure?’” I asked her sometime later, when she finally felt like talking.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what he said. It was like he knew I needed to be at that breakfast,” Robbins answered. “As if he knew there wasn’t going to be anyone else to save that man’s life.”

I now believe that Cooper was looking for something else — or somebody else — in the crowd that day. As I recall it now, the look on his face as he moved from the pitcher’s mound to that telephone pole bench was as much plaintive as it was searching. I guess I didn’t think much about it at the time, if I had I might have asked him about it. As it turned out, I never got the chance and I still have no idea why he stared past me and into the crowd that day. I have my thoughts on it though.

I like to think he was looking for an angel.

***

By the top of the fifth inning, it was hot. The wind had died down to a dead stillness, and the air just hung there, the kind of dry, suffocating heat Southern Cal gets sometimes. Stifling.

We quickly managed to get two runners on with no outs. Dilly Lansdale doubled and stole third. A kid named Ryan walked. The next batter popped out and then Skeeter, the eager kid that I always picture as chasing bees in left field, came up. Skeeter always seemed to be wound too tight, always in motion. Anyway, he stepped up and swung at this impossibly high pitch. I mean it was so far over his head he’d have had to be standing on a ladder to hit the thing. The ball went sailing to the backstop, and Ryan, over at first base, just stood there like he was dead or something. Gomer Pyle was hollering at him and we all started screaming, “Go go go go!” Dilly came halfway down the line to the plate then and the pitcher came running into home to cover home. The catcher, he had flung his mask off the moment he saw that ball arcing into orbit, ran to the backstop to retrieve it. The catcher picked up the ball and threw it down to third, but Dilly, rushing back, slid in under the tag by a hair’s breadth. About this time Ryan finally woke up on first and took off toward second. Seeing this, the third baseman fired the ball over to the second baseman. For some reason, Ryan hesitated when he saw the ball coming and then just stopped halfway between first and second, in no man’s land. The quick thinking second baseman shot the ball over to first and Ryan was suddenly caught in a pickle between the two. We were all screaming our fool heads off at Dilly on third as this was going on. He ran down the line and slid into home, a head first slide that wasn’t necessary but it sure looked good, while the first and second baseman played catch with Ryan between them. Just when we knew it was over though, the ball went sailing over the first baseman’s head and Ryan escaped down to second.

One out, Ryan on second, a run in. 7–7, tied.

After that wild pitch, the Yankees changed pitchers and there was a break in the action. I looked over at the bench, and once again Coop was staring up at the stands. This time he was looking for me and motioned me over. When I got there, he stepped aside the bench and asked for a stick of gum.

“I’m not going to suck my thumb anymore,” he said as he opened the gum.

“Alright.” I thought how that was an odd thing to say just then. “How’s your arm?”

“It feels better than ever, like I could pitch the World Series.”

“You do that, champ. You need something to drink?” Despite the heat though, he didn’t look hot.

“Naw, Dilly’s mom brought a big cooler of ice water.”

“Well, all right. You best get back to the game.”

“Okay. Hey Dad?”

I had half turned back to the stands, now I turned back to him again.

“I’m glad you’re my father.”

I was stunned to silence. Cooper was a pretty self sufficient kid, not one to get emotional. He looked at me with what seemed big puppy dog eyes just then. No tears, and he didn’t go all blubbery or anything. But it was a damn odd thing for him to say. “You all right, champ?”

“The best, Dad.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re my son.”

He smiled at me for a few more seconds, not nearly long enough in the overall scheme of things. Somewhere in the background of the moment, the umpire hollered “Balls in!” and Cooper went back to his seat on that bench that was a poor excuse for a dugout. At the same time, I went back to my place in the bleachers. I couldn’t help but look over at Cooper between every pitch after that. He seemed, I dunno, settled — even content. He just sat there chewing his gum, sipping ice water from a paper cup, and staring off into the field. I’ve often wondered whether or not he saw the same game as the rest of us.

When play resumed, Skeeter grounded out on the first pitch for the second out of the inning. Stretch Mulligan, our center fielder, stepped up to bat. Tall and lanky, Stretch looked a bit ungainly at the plate. He had this odd crouching stance that made him look like he was practically folded over at the waist. He was a decent, not great, hitter. I never once saw him hit the long ball, except that day. Stretch took the first pitch for a called strike, fouled the second one over the chicken wire, then sent the third one high and far into right field. It cleared the twenty foot monster of a wall there by mere inches, but that was enough. Stretch Mulligan was the only kid what ever homered over that barricade, and, as far as I know, it was the only homerun he ever hit in Little League.

It was a two run shot and it gave us the lead. All of the kids piled off our bench to congratulate him. Everyone, that is, except Cooper. He watched the whole thing from his seat, didn’t even stand. He smiled though, I could see that much. If he hadn’t, maybe I woulda gone over to him.

But he smiled and I just sat there looking at him.

***

Cooper’s wind-up wasn’t pretty to watch. For starters, it began with him sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth, almost always the right side. That was followed by a crazy, even clumsy combination of twisting at the waist, kicking his right leg impossibly high in the air, and bringing his left arm around from the side instead of up over the shoulder. Cooper only had two pitches, which I guess was one more than most kids his age. He threw left-handed and most of the time his arm would seem to snap like a whip at the end of its motion, just as his hand released the ball. But when he tried to throw a curve ball, this would be maybe every third or fourth pitch, his arm seemed to snake its way around his body. I used to cringe with those curve balls, imagining his rubber arm would fly apart before the ball flew off his hand. It never did though.

By the bottom of the fifth, the kids’ uniforms, were smeared with dirt and grass stains; sweat ringed their collars. Cooper took the mound with a 9–7 lead to protect. The game’s two hour limit was approaching, so this was it. The Yankees needed three runs to win — we wouldn’t have another at bat. Cooper looked as determined as I ever saw him.

The first person he faced was a pasty complexioned kid named Solomon Jones. I had never seen Solomon before that day, but I got to know him and his family well in the years after that. He was a pale, thin boy. In retrospect, I suppose you’d have called him sickly, but I’m sure that only came to my mind after the fact. When he approached the plate as the first batter in the bottom of the fifth, he looked like a stiff wind would blow him away as easily as a dry leaf gets tossed in a storm.

Cooper’s wind-up always began with his tongue poking out the side of his mouth, almost always the right side as I’ve mentioned. I might be the only person who noticed his tongue didn’t poke out on that first pitch. It seems a silly detail, but isn’t that what life is all about, silly details?

I like to think Solomon owes his life to such silly details.

Cooper’s first pitch of the bottom of the fifth was a fast ball that struck Solomon squarely on his left shin, about five inches below his knee. The boy fell to the dirt like gravity had suddenly doubled, writhing around in agony and grabbing at his leg. He howled and his face contorted in pain. His coaches and then his parents, James and Connie, were at his side a moment later. After a long five minutes they carried him to the bench. Connie wanted to take him to the hospital, and eventually they did, but Solomon refused to leave before the end of the game. He somehow convinced his parents it didn’t hurt quite so much sitting on the bench.

Cooper was more than apologetic. He kept saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and paced back and forth beside the pitcher’s mound. He went over to make sure Solomon was okay, and the two spoke a few seconds. I later learned they didn’t know each other before that day.

When I asked Solomon what Cooper had said, he remarked how Coop had told him “be sure you see a doctor ‘bout that leg.” Solomon claimed Coop said how it ‘didn’t look right to him.’ I suppose Solomon could be embellishing a little, but I doubt it. When he saw a doctor later that day, they took xrays. There was a hairline crack in one of the leg bones. Worse though, much worse, there was a tumor growing dead center of where the seam of that ball had imprinted itself. The tumor had been there a while the doctors said, maybe six months. Turned out to be malignant — cancer — and Solomon lost his leg. If not for being hit by Cooper’s pitch, Solomon would’ve lost his life.

None of us knew any of this then, of course. None of us except perhaps Cooper. The angels were shining down on Solomon that day, and they used Cooper as their instrument. Those may sound like the words of a crazy old man, but it’s an old man’s prerogative to sound crazy. Besides, considering what happened next, that thought’s the only thing that’s kept me sane all these years.

The Yankees sent a pinch runner to first and a new batter to the plate. He was a disheveled appearing kid who looked like he would rather be anywhere but there just then. Small wonder. Cooper was in rare form from that moment on, throwing fire balls instead of fast balls. His first pitch was right down the middle, but the batter jumped back like it would have taken his head off otherwise.

“STEEEEERIKE!” the umpire bellowed.

The kid stepped out of the batter’s box and looked over to the Yankee bench, as if pleading with the coach. He stepped back in and Cooper threw another one straight down the middle. It was as if somebody else was guiding his arm, as if he was throwing bullets.

“STEEEEERIKE!” the umpire bellowed again.

There was something close to terror on that kid’s face as he stepped into the batter’s box a third time. His bat was shaking like he was shivering. It was ninety degrees in the shade. He wasn’t shivering.

He wasn’t swinging either.

“STEEEEERIIIIKE THREEEEE!” the umpire hollered as his right arm cut the air beside him, three fingers clearly visible.

One out.

Cooper eyed the runner at first base. The next batter looked a little more sure of himself. There was nothing tentative about the way he walked the several steps from the on deck circle. He stepped in and tapped the opposite corner of home plate with his bat, then pointed out to center field like he was Babe Ruth or somebody. I think he was taunting Cooper.

Coop threw an inside fast ball, whether or not he was intending to brush him back I can’t say, and for just a moment I thought there was going to be a fight. But these were little kids, not the majors, and after a tense moment where both the batter and the umpire stared hard at Coop, the batter stepped back in and the umpire stooped back down. Coop’s next pitch was another perfect bull’s eye.

I don’t know how fast he was throwing, but it had to be some kind of record for a nine year old. I could hardly see the ball. I heard it though, I mean really heard it. It made an ominous humming sound as it sailed between pitcher’s mound and home, then a hard plop in the catcher’s glove. If you ain’t never heard that, it’s a beautiful sound.

The batter managed to get a piece of the next pitch. When that bat hit that ball moving at maybe seventy or eighty miles an hour, it made a hefty ‘craaaack’ sound and the ball literally shot foul along first. I remember thinking if anybody ever did hit the ball square on, they’d hit a homerun.

Not this guy though. That piece was all he got. He struck out on the next pitch, which seemed to be thrown faster still. He just stood there, the bat lying on the ground halfway to third. He’d lost it as he swung and that’s where it landed. He had a look of incredulity on his face, like he’d just seen the world’s greatest magic act.

Maybe he had. Two outs.

The runner on first was all but forgotten now, though with him on base the guy at the plate represented the tying run. The final batter of that game, the last baseball game I watched for a long time, was a big kid. In the confusion of the moment, I never got his name. I thought about asking later, but it didn’t seem to matter by then. Nothing mattered for a long time after that.

The kid was a lefty, and I know that used to bother Cooper. He always said how he found it easier to pitch to right-handed hitters. Maybe that simple fact threw him off, I dunno. Anyway, Cooper’s first pitch to the guy was, up until then, the hardest I’d ever seen him throw. He stuck his tongue out — to the right as always — then went into that crazy wind-up of his and whipped his arm around like he was Sandy Koufax, or Nolan Ryan if you prefer. At the same time, the hitter brought that bat around and the two objects collided above the plate. There was a tremendous sound of wood splintering and the ball exploded down the left field line. The bat skittered the opposite way, across the Dodgers’ bench and into the gaggle of kids there. The big kid started to move toward first, all the while watching the ball. It sailed as far over the fence as I ever saw at that field.

“FOUUUUL BAAAALL!” the ump yelled.

There was a collective sigh as everybody on our side of the field started breathing again. I glanced at Cooper just then, he was facing away from me. He bent at the waist and picked up the rosin bag, wiping his hands with it before turning around. Maybe the stifling heat was finally getting to him. After getting a new ball, he slid his mitt off and rubbed the fresh cowhide between the palm of both hands for a few moments. Then he took a couple of deep breaths, replaced his mitt on his hand, and stepped back up on the pitcher’s rubber. I swear it looked as if he had fire in his eyes as well as his arm at that point.

How it was possible, I don’t know, but the next pitch he threw was even faster than the one before it. The batter swung — a heavy lumbering swing that looked like his very life depended on it — but he missed the ball and nearly fell down. We were all on our feet by then, and there wasn’t a sound in the place except the hum of that ball, the plop as it hit the glove, and the umpire screaming “STEEEERIIIIIKE!”

So there we were, ahead in a 9–7 game, two outs, the tying run at the plate with an 0–2 count. Cooper was throwing like he was from someplace not of this world, yet the batter had proved himself up to the challenge. Every person at the Roscoe was standing. We all knew the next pitch would be the deciding one. It was do or die for both of them.

I knew it was going to be bad the moment I saw that tongue come out on the wrong side. The wind-up was still there, and his arm still whipped around with impossible rubber-like agility and speed, but the whole rhythm was thrown off by that damn tongue coming out the wrong way. The distance between the pitcher’s rubber and home plate is just forty-five feet for kids, not sixty feet and change like in the pros. In the instant it took the ball to travel that abbreviated span, I remember thinking that maybe thumb sucking wasn’t so bad after all. I have no idea why that sentiment suddenly came to me then, but it did.

There was a sound something like a repeating rifle — two sharp reports one after the other that I’ll never forget as long as I live. The first was an ear splitting crack of the bat — like a gunshot going off inside a room it was so loud — followed almost immediately by a hideous glop sound that was one part dull thud and two parts bone popping. That sickening thud still echoes in my head even after all this time; it sounded something like a hand slapping raw beef, like when Sylvester Stallone punched out those hanging beef carcasses in Rocky, only it was more vibrant — think of glass shattering in addition to Rocky, but that’s not quite right either. It all happened so fast, yet played out in slow motion with some kind of horrible inevitability.

Fielding was never one of Cooper’s strong points. When that bat came around and made contact with that pitch, a ball thrown as if by the devil himself, the result was a sizzling line drive right back at Coop. The ball moved so fast that if Cooper blinked just once, he would have had no time to react. Well, I suppose Cooper blinked. The ball struck him in the center of his chest; the bone that popped, literally came apart I guess, was Cooper’s breastplate.

That damn piece of cowhide wrapped cork ruptured my son’s heart I found out later.

I think I knew he was dead by the way he fell. The dead seem to gain weight, and when you die standing up, the proof of gravity can’t be far behind. He took a step or two forward, then fell the way a tree falls when you saw through its base. He teetered a moment, then went down hard, falling backward onto the mound, his head on the pitcher’s rubber. We all just stood there for the longest time, the wind no longer blowing, the birds not chirping anymore. The place was absolutely still. I’m sure the dust must have risen around him, but that’s not how I remember it. In my memory, even the dust refused to rise.

I felt like a gawker at the edge of life, peering over that edge and into the chasm of death, waiting for some signal from the other side.

I think I knew he was dead by the way he fell. I said that already, and I think it’s true — except he wasn’t dead. Not in the everyday sense anyway. As we all stood looking through that damn rusted chicken wire backstop, Cooper lay sprawled across the mound, as if a part of some still life photo. Then he began to move. It wasn’t anything normal, mind you, not like he lifted an arm or suddenly sat up. No sir, he began to really move, to shake — Cooper was gripped by a fit every bit as much as Charlie Granger had been behind that flourescent snack bar the year before.

I’m sure I screamed then, even as I struggled to get down from those bleachers and out on that field. By the time I got to him there was a whole mess of confusion going on. At the center of it all was Cooper, lying on the ground and shaking all hibbidy-gibbidy like. His arms and legs kept tensing then relaxing, tensing then relaxing — like he was a puppet and the devil had the strings. His back arched and his head flopped from side to side. I had an image just then of a fish flopping about for water to breathe — that’s the only way I know to describe it.

God, it was awful.

I had to touch him. I had the strongest need to just hold him at that moment. I suppose I was thinking something about Robbins, but I can’t remember what it was. I plopped down in the infield dirt and Cooper wet himself as I lifted his head onto my lap. I smelled urine and was afraid he’d swallow his tongue at the same time.

I began to cry then, or at least that’s when I noticed I was crying.

Suddenly, I realized Edna Granger was kneeling beside me. I guess she’s as kind a woman as I ever knew and she looked me in the eyes and told me it would be okay. Then she reached down and stroked Cooper’s forehead and whispered something in his ear. I never thought to ask her what it was, but Cooper stopped seizing, just like Charlie had behind that florescent snack bar.

All I could think of was Robbins and how I had to hold Coop until she arrived, like if I didn’t he might cross over that edge and fall into that chasm. There was a tiny trickle of blood from the left corner of his mouth. I remember thinking that it was coming from the wrong side. I tried repeatedly to wipe it away, as if to do so might make everything okay.

Someone had gone to the church to get Robbins and when she arrived she was white as a sheet, like she’d seen a ghost. Coop’s eyes were open by then, but I don’t know that he was seeing much. They had a far off, glassy look to them. Lifeless, even…soulless.

Even in that heat, those eyes chilled me.

I guessed Robbins must have picked up Coop’s cap because I saw it in her hand when she bent down. She lifted his head and tried to put his cap on it, then wiped her fingers at the same trickle of blood I’d wiped at. She started asking all these hysterical questions over and over again.

“Oh Cooper, what’d you do?”

“Where’d you go?”

“Come back to me, Cooper.”

“What’d you do?”

“Please, take your hat back, baby.”

“Don’t you have a game next week?”

“Cooper!”

All the while she kept adjusting that cap on his head, trying to get it to look just right I guess. She wouldn’t leave him, not even for the ambulance ride to the hospital.

The surgeons operated on him immediately of course. They repaired his heart, it truly had ruptured they told us. They said it was a freak accident and a few days later, when he still wasn’t waking up, they told us Cooper’s brain had pretty much died that day, too long without oxygen as his heart flopped around with a big hole in it while he lay on that damn baseball field. Anoxic encephalopathy they called it, the same thing you get if you drown. Or more properly, nearly drown, since if you drown you don’t survive. And Cooper survived I suppose, though I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t call it living.

One other thing. The whole time Cooper was lying out there, his head was higher than his heart because he was inclined on that mound. If he’d fallen the other way, with his head lower than his heart so the blood had only to flow downhill — something even his damaged heart could have handled — he might have been okay.

Instead, my son drowned — or nearly drowned if you prefer — in the middle of a baseball field surrounded by a hundred people on opening day.

Yeah, I guess you’d call that a freak accident.

***

Cooper survived another sixteen years: eyes open, always staring off into the distance, seeing god knows what. He never woke up, never once showed he knew we were there. He never even sucked his thumb. Robbins insisted on keeping him home with us and so that’s what we did. Every morning she would get up and put that Dodgers cap on his head, fumbling with it until it was just right. Every evening she would take it off and carefully set it on his bedside table, like the game was over and he was retiring for the night.

I bathed him and read to him frequently. And sometimes, like when Solomon Jones or Charlie Granger came to visit, we’d sit in his room and talk baseball. Both those guys felt they pretty much owed everything they had to Cooper.

Everything.

When he finally died, I wanted to bury him with his cap but Robbins said no. She refused to even consider the thought. She became distraught and had to be sedated, even spent a few days in the hospital.

In the end, I buried Cooper without Robbins help. I buried him in a robe she’d made for him and I put his old Dodger uniform, minus the cap, in the coffin beside him. It had never been cleaned and I could still see the dirt of that pitcher’s mound on it. I kissed him goodbye and buried him under a tree so the sun wouldn’t be so hot on him.

A while later, when she could listen, Robbins wanted to know again about that last day, about Cooper’s last game. She loved hearing that story and always listened hard, almost like she was trying to hear something more than I was saying, something in the background maybe. Anyway, I told her what I could for maybe the fiftieth time, a lot of the stuff I’ve just told you. She seemed better after that, even told me about her morning that day at the pancake breakfast, about Mr. Edelman, the man she’d saved. But that was all…

Until two weeks ago, when she asked me to tell the story of that day again. When I was finished, she told me something else about that day, something you’re going to find hard to believe.

She told me about Cooper’s final moments on that Saturday twenty-six years ago.

***

She was at the pancake breakfast, in a storeroom just off the church’s kitchen she said. She was alone with her back to the door and when she stood and turned, Cooper was standing in the room a few feet in front of her. Robbins said she was startled but not afraid, not then anyway. She thought the game had ended early. She said Cooper seemed happy, that he was wearing his baseball uniform and looked like he’d played a hell of a game. There was a lot of dirt smeared across the front, his face was smudged and his hat was slightly askew. She reached over to reset it, but he gently intercepted her hand and kissed it.

He told her he had to go away, but that it would be okay. She asked what he meant by that and he just smiled and stepped forward. That’s when she saw the blood — not a lot, but of course there shouldn’t have been any. It was trickling from the left side of his mouth. That’s when she got scared. Maybe Cooper realized that, because he removed his Dodger cap and gave it to her. He said he would get it back from her one day, that she should hold it for him until then. She took the cap and looked down at it — there was a tiny thumbprint of blood on the bill — and when she looked up again…

He was gone.

About that time the door to the storeroom opened and a couple of parents from the field entered. They told her as best they could what had happened. A few minutes later she arrived at the field, white as a sheet.

You know the rest.

***

It’s been twenty-six years since that terrible day, ten years since Cooper’s death. Robbins died last week. She’d been sick for several months and we knew the end was near.

For years she kept Cooper’s cap on the nightstand beside our bed. She never washed it and you could still see that thumbprint of blood on the bill. I always thought it was just her way of coping and tried to move it once, but she put it right back and I never moved it again.

When she found out she was dying, she made me promise she could die at home, that I would put that cap in her hand when her time got close. A few hours before she died, I kept that promise. I put Cooper’s cap in her hand and she seemed to relax a bit after that. She mumbled a few things I couldn’t understand during those last few hours. At the end though, with what I suppose was her last breath, I heard her clearly say, “Cooper, there’s no thumb sucking in baseball.”

And then she slipped away from me.

After Robbins died, I reached over to retrieve Cooper’s cap. I had an idea I’d put it in the coffin with her. Only…it wasn’t in her hand anymore. I looked on the floor beside the bed as well as under the bed itself, then I checked beneath the blanket covering her. I even looked under her when the undertaker arrived.

I never did find that cap.

But that’s okay.

I guess I have a pretty good idea where it is.

About The Author

Edison McDaniels is a practicing surgeon & wordsmith, who writes short stories, novellas, and novels when he’s not incising skin. Read more about him at www.surgeonwriter.com and look for his fine & intense works of fiction at the Amazon Kindle store.

His latest novel, Not One Among Them Whole, is available for the Kindle and as a trade paperback from Northampton House Press.

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