“Are you serious?” the tall boy asked. He looked at the shorter boy standing next to him and smiled. He looked back at Wade. “All right,” he said. I looked down at Ruby. She’d been watching me the whole time like she was waiting to see how hard I was going to throw the next pitch.
“Come on,” she said. She pointed to the forty-five that was still on the screen. “You can throw harder than that,” she said.
“I don’t want to pitch anymore,” I said. I handed the two balls to Ruby and stepped back.
“You sure?” she asked. I nodded my head. She walked into the cage and stopped at about the same spot where she’d thrown her first five pitches. I turned to my left and faced the beach, and I stood there wishing I could look right through the building across the street so I could see the ocean instead of being able to just barely hear it. Ruby’s first pitch smacked against the curtain, and then a few seconds later I heard the second. I didn’t hear Wade say a word to her once she finished, and I knew he hadn’t been watching her either.
But I turned around as soon as I heard what Wade said next. “Me and my buddy here are going ten more.” Wade held out a five-dollar bill to the fat man on the stool. He took it and fished out his roll of dollars again and started unfastening the rubber band. The tall boy had left his friends and was standing beside Wade in front of the cage. He looked nervous to be standing so close to Wade, but he smiled like he was trying to hide it.
“Come on, Evan,” the other boy said, clapping his hands. He and the two girls were standing in the same spot. The girls looked like they didn’t know quite what to make of what was happening. I didn’t know what to make of it either. Wade gathered up the three baseballs and sat them down by Evan’s feet, and then he picked up one and handed it to him.
“All right,” Wade said. “Five pitches apiece.” He raised his hand and pointed at the two girls. “And whoever throws the hardest gets to take that teddy bear home.” Now I knew why one of the girls didn’t look as excited as her friend and the boy who was standing beside them.
“This is all you, Evan,” the boy said. “You got this.” Evan rolled the baseball around in his hand, and then he turned his cap around to face forward. He squeezed the baseball with both hands like he was trying to make it smaller, and then he moved his head in a circle and rolled his shoulders forward and backward. Then he just stood and stared at the curtain where the catcher squatted with his raised mitt. It wasn’t until he brought the ball to his chest and cupped his left hand to hide his grip that I knew for certain that he’d thrown a pitch before. My heart sank into my stomach, and I think it might’ve sunk even lower after I heard the ball smack that rubber curtain. I looked at the screen: it said sixty-nine.
“There it is,” the short boy said. “That’s what I’m talking about.” Even the girls seemed interested, and they took a step toward the cage to get a better look.
The fat man leaned forward on his stool and took a look at the screen and snorted out a laugh. Then he sat up straight and crossed his arms. “That’s the fastest I’ve seen tonight,” he said, looking at Wade like he was letting him know he didn’t have a chance against this kid. I looked at Wade too, and then I looked at Evan where he was squeezing another ball with both hands, just like he’d done to the first one. He was bigger than Wade, and he actually looked like an athlete; Wade was at least twenty years older and looked like a skinny man with a belly who’d probably never played a single sport in his entire life. Now that he was clean-shaven I could see where the skin sagged under his chin, and I wondered how his body could seem so skinny and soft at the same time.
Evan went through his windup just like he had before, and this pitch smacked the curtain even louder, and it hit the catcher right in the chest. Seventy-one flashed on the screen. He stepped back and looked at Wade, but Wade just stared at the spot where the ball had hit.
“That was a nice pitch,” he said. “You’ve got a good arm.” Evan smiled like he’d already won the bet, and every one of us knew he was right. His next three pitches were just as fast. The last one hit the catcher in the mask and came in at seventy-four. The short boy laughed after he saw where the ball hit the curtain. He and Evan gave each other a high five, and the girl who’d ridden through the haunted house with him went over and put her arm through Evan’s.
I watched them celebrate, but then something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye; it was Wade. He was walking back and forth on the sidewalk, swinging both his arms like helicopter blades. The group of teenagers noticed it too. They stopped talking and watched him.
“What the hell?” Evan said. They all laughed. I looked down at Ruby; she was staring at Wade too. He walked up to the cage and stopped and stared down at the catcher, and then he bent down and picked up one of the baseballs. He rolled it around in his left hand, and then he squeezed it between both hands just like Evan had done. He stood up straight and let his hands hang at his sides, the ball cupped in his left hand. I’d never thought about him being left-handed until then. He brought it up to his chest and cupped his right hand to hide the ball, and then he just froze.
He stood there like a scarecrow in a cartoon, and he looked like a scarecrow too; his shirt and his shorts suddenly looked like they were a size too big for him. The sound of the traffic and the voices of people on the street got quieter the longer he stood there until the only sound was the giggling of the two boys where they stood over on his right side. I couldn’t take my eyes off Wade.
When he started his windup, he looked down at the sidewalk in front of him and brought his right knee up so high that I thought it would touch his forehead, and when he threw himself into the pitch I swear you could see his arms and his legs come loose from his body and freeze in the air for just a second before reattaching themselves. And I swear I heard something too: a sound like an ironing board unfolding or an old, squeaky gate being opened and slammed shut. But looking at it all, I couldn’t tell if Wade’s pitch was going to drop at his feet or bust through the curtain and fly down the street into the night.
As soon as the ball hit the curtain above the catcher’s right shoulder I knew it hadn’t been thrown as hard as any of Evan’s pitches. And I was right; the screen said sixty-four. I saw it before Wade did because he was bent at the waist and staring at the ground like he couldn’t stand up straight because he’d given that pitch all he had. The two boys saw the screen too. Evan just smiled, but the other boy clapped his hands like he was cheering on a batter that wasn’t there. “That’s all he’s got, baby,” he said. “That’s all he’s got.”
Wade stood up straight and massaged his left shoulder with his right hand, and then he shook his left arm like it’d gone to sleep and he was trying to wake it up.
“We can go on home,” the short boy said. “This guy’s done.” Ruby had been watching Wade, but now she whipped her head around and stared at the boys.
“No,” she said. “He’s got four more. Y’all have to wait.” The two boys seemed just as surprised by what Ruby had said to them as I was, and they stood there and stared at her until she turned back around.
“He’s got four more,” the short boy said, making his voice high and squeaky. Ruby acted like she didn’t hear him; she just stared at Wade. Sweat ran down his forehead from his hair, and he narrowed his eyes and wiped it away with his right hand. He looked exhausted after only throwing that one pitch. I wanted to tell him to stop, that he was too old and out of shape to be messing with kids half his age, that most grown men didn’t get a kick out of challenging high schoolers in pitching contests, that he was embarrassing me more than he already had. But then he turned his head and looked at me, and when he did I saw that he wasn’t having fun, that he hadn’t thrown that pitch to try to impress those two boys or show off in front of me or Ruby. He’d thrown it because he knew those two boys were laughing at me, at us. It was the first time in my life that I felt like Wade wanted to be my dad.