The Heart Does Not Grow Back Page 4

  I took a step out of the batter’s box to breathe. “Get in the box, Sampson. Unless you’re scared,” Clint yelled, throwing the ball into the heel of his glove, impatient.

  “Get him, baby!” Regina said, clapping her sleeve-muffled hands together. Not a peep until he was pitching against me. Nice.

  I dug into the box and heard her again, softer, saying, “Don’t be nervous, Dale. You can do it.”

  Embarrassment ran through me like a loose fire—did she know I tried out only because she was on those bleachers? That I was nervous only because of her sitting behind me, with her boyfriend on the mound?

  I was in the box, but I wasn’t ready to hit. His long windup started. The ball exploded out of his hand. I barely saw it until, once again, it was almost to the plate.

  My grip slid up the barrel. I didn’t jab at the ball. Instead, I “caught” it with the barrel, just like the TV analysts described during Cubs broadcasts. I lofted a soft bunt down the third-base line. Since he threw the fastball with all his gumption, the momentum carried him off the mound toward the first-base line. I ran, kicking up chunks of infield. I made the mistake of slowing down and looking back—Clint had the ball, but he had zero chance of throwing me out. Mack rounded third, a stupid base-running play on his part born of his arrogant need to impress. Being a good ballplayer wasn’t enough for Mack—he had to go beyond the bar he set for himself each and every time. If he hit four homers in a game in five at-bats, he would lament the homer he didn’t hit. If someone fast could score from second on a hit into the outfield, he wanted to score from second on a bunt. Clint, naturally, caught him in a rundown. I rounded first and headed for second, figuring it was too early in the season for rusty players to execute a successful rundown on Mack Tucker.

  As I hit the second-base bag, Clint threw the ball away, scattering Coach Gunther from his ball bucket. Mack scored easily. I headed for third myself, watching the left-fielder sprint to the ball. As he was picking it up, I realized I was going too fast and the infield was too muddy to properly decelerate. I felt too close to slide into third. In fact, I never slid into a base before, it was never part of my practices with Mack, so I just rounded the bag, my own need to score picking up momentum.

  The catcher was gone. He was near first base to back up a possible throw on the bunt, and now he was caught as a spectator. Clint was the pitcher and his job was to cover home plate. What he lacked in athleticism he made up for in execution. He was the kind of player who knew exactly where he was supposed to be in all situations, so even though the attempted rundown had him out of position, he got there in plenty of time, waiting for the ball to beat me home.

  His face gave away the quality of the outfielder’s throw—I saw his eyes get wide, then glide along the sockets, tracking the incoming baseball. I was close, but not close enough. I was toast. A high throw and I could slide under it, but he was already dropping to a knee to block the plate, tipping off a low or one-hop throw.

  Mack wasn’t waving his hands to slide—he was smacking his hand on his shoulder, as if I would consider anything other than a full-speed collision.

  I bashed into Clint, shoulder to shoulder, my higher position driving him into the ground. He crumbled, falling onto his back as the ball skipped to the backstop. I was on top of him, his legs and arms fumbling and thrashing like pissed-off snakes. I took my right hand and smacked the plate with an open palm, like a ref giving a final, definitive count in a wrestling match.

  After scoring, I rolled off and stood up to relish the play. I didn’t get to celebrate—Clint punched me in the base of the neck, sending hot currents of tingle into my fingers and feet. I fell to my knees and collapsed to the ground. He kicked me in the rib cage with the tip of his shoe, the molded pitcher’s toe darting into the soft tissue between my ribs.

  I rolled over and through the blur of my vision, I saw his elbow cocked, fist raised, as if to deliver the deathblow. The sky was cloudless, the color of wet chalk. Coach Gunther was screaming for us to stop. Clint’s face was tight flesh and shadows. The kick burned inside of me and I couldn’t find the breath or strength to stop him. The fist began its descent and in that split second I had come to terms with the fact he was going to punch me and hurt me, and I would just have to keep taking the blows until someone could pull him off. There would be no heroic defeat of Clint Phillips in the presence of Regina Carpenter today.

  He never finished the punch. Mack crashed into him with twice the impact and speed I could’ve mustered on the base paths, leaving me free. I turned over, and Mack already had one hand clenched in the center of Clint’s shirt, the other hand unleashing rapid-fire punches, bashing Clint in the cheeks, lips, temples, and hands as he tried to shield himself from the barrage.

  Now dismounted from Clint, Mack stood, his breath coming in short bursts—running base paths couldn’t wind him, but this did. He turned and walked away, heading toward the school, leaving his glove behind.

  I tried to sit up but couldn’t, a band of crippling pain tightening around my lungs and midsection. But I could still let my head lean over, looking back, seeing that the twins were gone.

  I knew I was busted up worse than bumps and bruises, but I wasn’t bleeding like Clint was—his face was ballooning, blowfish-style, with dots of blood leaking from contusions on his cheeks and jaw. His nose bled, spilling red ribbons across his lips.

  I hobbled toward the locker room. Mack was my ride home and he had already stormed inside. The two hundred or so yards to the side door looked like an eternal distance—I couldn’t take a full breath and wheezed with each step, my damaged ribs poking against my lungs. My entire spine was a hot sword, pulsing with each beat of my heart, the base of my neck knotted and hard, making my head feel like it weighed a thousand pounds.

  “Hey, Sampson, you okay over there?” Coach Gunther hollered. He was busy with the blood and bruises of Clint, and I just looked sore. I couldn’t gather the breath to scream back at him, so I just gave him a thumbs-up and kept hobbling toward the school.

  “He shouldn’t have done that.” Regina’s voice. My neck stiff, I turned my shoulders in order to turn my head, and she was walking beside me. “You look hurt,” she added.

  “My ribs,” was all I could muster. At least this time, I had an excuse to not be clever since I could barely talk. A dizziness washed up on me, probably because my blood couldn’t handle the lack of fresh oxygen combined with her sudden appearance.

  “Stop. Let me see.” Just like that, she was pulling up my shirt, the hands of a woman grazing my skin for the first time since the blind-man game, and nothing good or electric came from the touch, just a blazing agony as she found a blue splotch forming around a dent in my rib cage. “I think you’ve got broken ribs,” she said. “You need to go to the hospital.”

  She looked back at the ball diamond. I wish I knew what she was thinking, looking over there. Concern for Clint? Hoping that Gunther would take over the responsibility of helping me?

  “Mack was my ride,” I said with effort. More silence. She looked around, diamond, school, me, the parking lot.

  Finally: “I’ll take you. You can call your mom from the hospital.”

  I shambled the short distance to her Chevy Cavalier. A shitty car—purple, with rashes of rust—but a car all the same. The twins shared a car, which meant Rae was around somewhere, but I wasn’t in a mood to ask who might give her a ride home. Probably Clint, the doting boyfriend, when he finally got his shit together. It was twelve miles to civilization, Grayson, a place with a hospital, gas stations, and two McDonald’s—one on each side of town. A town with a Wal-Mart florist who once made a rose meant for her, picked up by my mother, a difficult feat to afford and coordinate. A rose that failed.

  We spent a long silence in the car. Knowing I had broken ribs, feeling the pins of bone against my lungs, I concentrated on breathing. I had seen in movies where broken ribs could plunge into the lungs themselves and bleed a person out internally. I monitored my breat
h for any rasping or fluid but found no bubbles, which calmed me. Regina looked straight ahead, both hands on the wheel.

  I considered what to say for almost the entire ride, hoping she would speak first. I knew I had to say something, but what? I meant what I said on the phone freshman year, Regina. I wish I could call you again sometime, Regina. I love you, Regina, any other girl would be settling for less. I’m sorry I’m a dork, Regina, but it looks like I can play baseball, so there’s that.

  “Thank you” is what I said, the town blooming in size as we got closer.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “It was … nice … to have you there,” I said, pausing for short gasps of breath.

  “I was surprised to see you,” she said. “Why did you decide to come out for baseball this year?”

  Maybe I was playing up my injury a little too much when I just pointed at her and smiled.

  She smiled too, and then looked straight ahead again. We stayed quiet until we got to the hospital. I tried to soak up those final moments in the front seat of her car, the CD cases neatly lined up in her console, Wallflowers, Jewel, Pearl Jam. The scent of clean and cinnamon, a dust-free dash, a hairbrush stuffed into the side pocket of the door. The pain in my neck and back turned to ice, freezing my hunched posture.

  She bypassed the ER doors, gliding into the parking lot.

  “You could have just dropped me off,” I said.

  “Someone should stay until the doctor takes you or your mom gets here. We’ll have to call her.”

  “Clint’s hurt too,” I said, testing the waters.

  She looked at me with haughty disappointment, as if I’d underestimated her—that cheerful, scolding look reserved for boyfriends or spouses, a look I never truly forgot.

  “It’s a silly nosebleed, and he had it coming for what he did.”

  “I know,” I said, opening the door. “He’s an asshole, and you deserve more than that.”

  She didn’t answer, and helped me through the sliding doors. The triage nurse asked me a bunch of questions and called my mother at work. Regina sat in a chair and waited, not even picking up a magazine.

  “My mom’s coming,” I said. “I’ll see a doctor soon, I think. You can go if you want to.”

  “Do you want me to?” she asked, the tilt of her head and hair in such a way to make her celestial, the kind of pose you see in a shampoo commercial when the girl’s looking casual with her fantastic new hair. What was she fishing for? She knew I liked her. She knew I didn’t want her to go. Why did she want to hear it?

  “I’ve never hurt worse, but I’ve never felt better,” I said.

  She patted me twice on the thigh. “I’ll see you at school. Get well soon.” If only I saw who was really sitting next to me in that moment, all of her, not just her face, everything twisting me into a mistake that cost so many of us everything. She left through the automatic double doors and the sun died all around her as she looked back to wave one more time.

  * * *

  I got fitted with a torso belt for my broken ribs and a hard collar for the neck sprain, a collar I was to wear for eight weeks, except for in the shower. The doctor’s hands were tough and he told me that broken ribs hurt and heal slow, urging me to keep the belt on for support and protection. I got a prescription for pain medicine we couldn’t afford to fill, and before we left, I filled out paperwork to get free medical care because we were poor and had no health insurance.

  Mom was quiet during the drive home. Parts of me felt good and high, and parts of me hurt, and looking at Mom during that car ride, well, that punched me in places I didn’t know existed. She looked nothing like the mother I pictured in my mind when I thought of her. I figured age had done the fading—slivers of her hair had gone white, stark against the slick, black strands I was accustomed to. Her makeup looked brighter, but not on purpose—her skin was somehow bleaching, looking like candle wax, revealing blush and mascara in greater relief. Her eyes looked closer to her brain than her eyelids, like something about her had shrunk.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, a strange reversal of that particular question, considering her near-hysterical concern when she arrived at the hospital.

  Her eyes turned glassy and she tried to act surprised by the question. “A son always knows, I guess. I’m just not feeling good.”

  If I had pushed her, if I had listened to her, if all the dominos fell just so, maybe I could have saved her. It’s one of those things where you blame yourself no matter what anyone says, because not blaming yourself would just hurt worse.

  We got home and she heated up two cans of chicken-noodle soup, then put me to bed. We were both in bad shape, but here she was, bringing my covers to my chin like I was a little boy again, kissing my forehead with a tenderness I had long forgotten. Any self-respecting teenager would wave her off with a “Jeez, Mom,” but she looked so happy to be taking care of me, I just told her I loved her and asked her to turn off the light.

  I lay in the dark, the hard collar digging into the back of my head, making sleep feel impossible. The slow onset of sleep gave me a satisfactory warmth, a distance between my body and mind.

  I promised myself I would try out next year, which made me feel a little better. So with that settled, I let myself fantasize about Regina, about the ways our ride to the hospital could have gone differently. In my mind, it ended with me leaning in to kiss her. Strangely, she wouldn’t let me kiss her in the fantasy, not without seducing her a bit first. She insisted on hearing me recite all the reasons I cared for her and wanted to kiss her and only her. My reasons were terrible. Everyone called her pretty or smart, fantasy-Regina said. She wanted to know why she first caught my eye. But she didn’t—Mack had pointed her out to me, and I just gravitated to the hope of someone liking me.

  I couldn’t come up with any reasons fantasy-Regina wanted, not even without the pressure of her being there, not even with all the time in the world to dream them up. So in my fantasy, we didn’t kiss, skipping straight to the hot sex as a clumsy virgin might imagine it, the ghost of her enjoying my first time more than any real Regina ever would, and me beating off to it, feeling like I was cheating on the girl who drove me to the hospital.

  I fell asleep in my collar and rib belt and salty-wet underpants, dreaming of baseball fields and blood while Mom died a little bit more in the other room.

  FIVE

  Later that year, the baseball team lost in the conference championship game and Mack didn’t come to school for three days. Clint loved asking, “Where’s the great Mack Tucker? He still trying to get out of the fourth inning?” He said it in the hallways, the gymnasium, the parking lot. A few times he tried to get my attention in the hallway with his catcalls, but I would just turn away and bury my nose in my locker.

  We might have won that game—and probably a few more during that 11–5 season—if Clint had been eligible to play. He was a damn good left-handed hitter, but he didn’t play thanks to my injuries, which were serious enough to compel Principal Turnbull to wipe out his season via suspension. The broken ribs were my first broken bones. Up to that point, I had the usual cuts and scrapes—a skinned knee here and there, a constellation of bruises from falling out of a tree that looked ripe for climbing—but never anything serious, nothing that tipped me off to the full breadth of my healing prowess. The doctor told me the ribs would heal in one to two months, with a dull ache that might last even longer than that. I felt one hundred percent in three days and chalked it up to good fortune.

  After the suspension was handed down to Clint, the hallways and locker rooms weren’t easy. I endured Clint’s lingering glares and tried to keep my distance.

  On the third day of Mack’s absence, Clint must have figured his chance to isolate me from Mack’s defense was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. I stuffed a geometry book into my locker, closed the door, and a hand shoved me face-first into the metal. The ridges of the locker’s vent dug into my forehead. Before I hit the ground, I knew it was Clint. He
must have been waiting behind me, coiled and ready to strike. I wonder how many students watched and waited without warning me so they could see a good old-fashioned ass whipping. The kicks came again, aiming for my just-recovered ribs. I balled up to protect myself, but one kick caught me in the temple, twisting my neck. My hard collar had been gone for weeks now and my neck felt perfect, but the kick pushed fresh numbness through me, flushing my nervous system with acidic heat, ending with an icy tingle in my toes.

  The chatter of students was blunted in my ears. I could see sneakers gathered around me, shins covered with jeans as a circle of people formed to watch the beating.

  I fought back, trying to time his kicks so that I could catch his leg and drop him, like I’d seen in the movies. Turns out kicks are much faster in real life—I opened up to welcome his leg and catch it, and his toe hit me right in the chest. I smelled the rubber of his shoe as the blow gonged through me. Looking straight up, I saw the haze of fluorescent lights, random faces, and Clint, his arms now held by Principal Turnbull and Mr. Gilbert, the agriculture teacher. They were about to drag him away when I saw the shadow of Clint’s rising foot and the black outline of his heel coming down like a falling eclipse, stomping into my face, crushing my nose and smashing the back of my head against the floor.

  The darkness didn’t leave me until much later, when I woke in a hospital bed. Mack was asleep in the corner chair. The clock above him said it was seven at night. My nostrils were gritty with blood, and my head and neck were pounding, a percussion section with chaotic rhythm.

  “Yo,” I whispered loudly. “Mack, hey.”

  He bolted upright.

  He got up and stretched. “We gotta call your mom. She wanted us—”

  “What the fuck did you do?” I asked before he could finish. He looked worse off than me, both eyes blackened, a rash-bruise around his forearm. He walked toward the hospital bed with a limp, then smiled through blood-crusted lips.