Not Easily Broken Page 11

  “Now, you don’t have to bat if you don’t want to, Bryson. These guys been hitting since late March. You want to just watch, it’s okay with me. Nobody gon’ say nothin’.”

  “No, I want to try, Coach. I don’t care if I strike out, I still want to try.”

  Dave was falling in love with this kid. “Okay, little bro. You stand up there when it’s your turn, and I’ll give you something to swing at.”

  Dave gathered up as many loose balls as he could carry, grabbed a glove, and went to the mound. Except for the first four batters, the other boys scattered to positions in the field.

  Jaylen was up first and, as usual, he was clowning around in the batter’s box, shaking his booty at the other boys and generally acting like a fool. Dave sent the first pitch just a little inside and high. Jaylen took the dirt and came up sputtering.

  “Say, Coach, you tryin’ to dust me off or what?”

  “Oh, sorry, my man. Guess I turned loose of that one a little too quick, huh? Good thing you were watching, though.”

  He flicked the next one over the fat part of the plate and Jaylen got good wood on it, sending it between short and second; a solid hit in anybody’s ballpark. He threw nine more pitches to Jaylen and the boy tagged three of them, fouled two off, and fanned four.

  “All right, Mr. Jaylen, grab a glove and go take over for Marcus. Marcus, come on in and get ready to take your cuts.”

  He threw to George, then Darius. Next up was Bryson.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dave could see the other boys watching Bryson, sizing him up as he walked toward the plate. A few of them were hiding their smirks behind their hands, thinking Dave didn’t see.

  “Bend those knees, Bryson, awright?” he said. Dave was hoping hard that Bryson would connect with at least a few of the pitches. A kid with a heart that big didn’t need to fail in front of these Eastside kids; they were merciless. And if Dave protected Bryson too much, it would only make things worse. “Keep both eyes on the ball and swing level, okay?” Bryson nodded.

  Dave sent an easy one toward the plate; Bryson stepped almost out of the batter’s box with his left foot and flailed wildly. This could get ugly, Dave thought. He wished he’d been able to talk Bryson out of taking BP.

  “You stepping in the bucket, my man,” he said. “Step into the pitch, not away from it.”

  Bryson nodded again. His jaw was clenched and he was staring at Dave like he meant business. Dave could still hear the muted giggles coming from the other players.

  He gave Bryson another pitch. Bryson stayed in the box with it, but his swing was late and high. “Little behind and over the top that time.” Bryson nodded again.

  Dave’s hope that the third time would be the charm was foiled when Bryson got way around on the pitch and swung so early and so hard that he nearly lost his balance. By now, Dave could easily hear the laughing of the other boys. Brock was behind the plate, though, talking low and steady to Bryson, trying to help.

  Dave brought the next pitch in about belt level. Bryson swung and, wonder of wonders, connected. He caught it a little in toward his hands and the ball was easily fielded by the second baseman, but at least he’d gotten the bat on it. Dave could tell Bryson’s hands were stinging from contacting the ball so low on the bat, but he just put down the bat, rubbed his palm on his pants, and then got ready for the next pitch.

  He managed to foul off the next two pitches, both to the right of first base. “Swinging a little bit late, Bryson,” Dave heard Brock say. “Try to get a little more of a jump on it.”

  Dave made sure the next pitch was medium-speed. He was afraid Bryson would overcompensate and swing way too early, but maybe the boy’s instinctual, athletic sense of timing finally kicked in. Bryson made a nice level swing and nailed the pitch right in the sweet spot, sending the ball on an arc into deep left-center for what would’ve been a stand-up double in anybody’s park.

  “Yeah, baby, that’s what I’m talking about!” Dave called.

  Bryson grinned. “It didn’t sting.”

  “One of the best feelings in the world, isn’t it?” Dave said.

  Bryson made contact with the next three pitches, fouling one off and hitting grounders on the other two. “Okay, Bryson, grab a glove and take Tim’s spot in right. Who’s next? We need a batter.”

  He pitched to three more hitters. By then his arm was tired. He swapped places with Brock and went behind the plate. When everybody had batted around, they lined the boys up for some closing wind sprints. Bryson’s conditioning showed up when he finished at the front of the pack every time without panting and wheezing like the other boys.

  Then it was time to go. Dave gathered the boys for his little closing pep talk, then released them for the raid on Brock’s ice chest. Bryson stayed back and helped him gather up the bats, catcher’s gear, gloves, and balls.

  “Well, Bryson, what’d you think?” Dave asked, after they were loaded up and headed back to Bryson’s house.

  “I’m not as good at baseball as I am at swimming.”

  “Course not. How could you be? But you made good contact with that one pitch, and your throws from the outfield improved as you went on.”

  “Thanks, Coach. And thanks for letting me give it a try.”

  “Can’t ask a man to do more than try.”

  They rode a while in silence.

  “Coach, I’ve got a meet coming up.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, and I was wondering . . . I don’t guess you’d want to come watch, would you?”

  “You kidding? I’ll be there, my man. Just tell me where and when.”

  “Really? That’s great!”

  The excitement in Bryson’s voice made Dave want to weep—or punch out the lights of the father who didn’t know what an amazing kid he had.

  “Absolutely, Bryson. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  When they got to the house, Bryson ran inside. Dave could hear him yelling. “Mom! Mom! Coach is coming to my next meet!” He smiled as he backed out of the driveway.

  He was about halfway home when his cell phone rang.

  “Dave, it’s Julie.”

  “Hey there.”

  “Dave, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for what you’ve done for my son.”

  He could hear the emotion in her voice. “Hey, he’s a great kid. I want to come see him tear it up at that meet.”

  “Yeah, I know. You don’t know what this means to him.”

  “I think I have some idea.”

  “Or to me.”

  He paused long over his answer. “I think I have some idea,” he said finally.

  “Well . . . okay. The meet’s next Saturday morning at the State Street Y, starting at nine o’clock.” After a few seconds she said, “I’ll save you a seat.”

  “That sounds good to me.”

  She ended the call. Dave switched on his favorite hip-hop station and cranked the volume.

  The next Saturday, Dave and Julie were in the bleachers at the Y when Bryson came out of the dressing room to take his place for the eleven- and twelve-year-old boys’ 50–meter freestyle. He looked up in the stands toward the spot where Julie had told him they’d be and waved. Dave and Julie waved back. Bryson went toward his starting block as the event was called.

  “He looks good,” Dave said.

  “Yeah. I’ve never seen him this nervous before a meet, though. On the way here, he kept talking about wanting to do well. He never does that.”

  “What’s that about?”

  She looked at him. “You really don’t know?”

  “What? Because I’m here? He doesn’t need to do anything to impress me.”

  “Maybe not, but he doesn’t know that.”

  “Now, Julie—”

  “No, I didn’t mean it that way. You’ve become incredibly important to him in a very short time. He talks about you constantly. Today he wants to swim the best he’s ever done—because he wants you to be proud of him.”

/>   Dave swallowed and looked away.

  The boys were all up on their blocks and poised. The starter’s horn blew and they were in the water.

  “He got a little bit of a slow start,” Julie said, a worried look on her face.

  “Come on, Bryson!” Dave yelled. “Go, man!”

  Bryson was up and swimming, but two other boys were actually fighting him for the lead.

  “How many laps in this race?” Dave said.

  “Just one length. It’s a sprint,” Julie said.

  “Come on, Bryson! Come on, baby, you can do it!”

  They were at about thirty meters and it looked like Bryson was starting to pull away, but then another boy put on a burst of speed and moved past him by half a length. Dave was on his feet, pumping his fists in the air and hollering for Bryson to go, go, go, go, go! Bryson pulled even with the other boy with maybe five meters to go and it was neck-and-neck from there to the wall. The touch was too close to call, but somehow Bryson managed to edge his opponent by a couple hundredths of a second. When his name came over the PA as the winner, Dave jumped up and down. Without thinking, he grabbed Julie and hugged her.

  “Did you see that? Did you see that? That other boy took him on and Bryson just put it right back in his eye, I’m telling you!”

  She smiled at him. “Calm down, Coach. That was just the first heat.”

  “Say what?”

  “That was a qualifying heat. There’ll be two more, and the top finishers will compete in the final.”

  “Oh, Lord have mercy. You mean I got to sit through this again?”

  “’Fraid so, Coach.”

  “I can’t take this. Swimming is too intense for me.”

  “Just wait until the relays.”

  After his relatively shaky beginning, Bryson seemed to settle down. He won his final for the 50-free by a handy margin, beating the other swimmers—including the boy who had challenged him so closely in the first heat—by a full body length.

  “Man, that boy can swim,” Dave said, shaking his head when the race was over.

  “Yeah, that was the normal Bryson you saw that time,” Julie said. “When he’s on, most kids in his age group can’t stay with him.”

  “I heard that. When do the relays come up?”

  “Well, he’s swimming with an older team, so they’ll probably be after lunch sometime.”

  “You want to go grab something? Can Bryson come with us?”

  “Yeah, that’d be good. He won’t need to eat much, though, and what he does eat will need to be high-carb.”

  “Do I hear somebody saying pasta?”

  She grinned. “Let’s go ask his coach when he needs to be back here.”

  The three of them went to a nearby mom-and-pop Italian place Dave knew about. In fact, he felt a little twinge when they walked in. He’d brought Clarice here on their first date. But right now, for reasons he didn’t want to admit to himself, he didn’t want to think about that.

  Julie ordered fettucine Alfredo and Bryson wanted spaghetti and meatballs. Dave asked for his favorite, lasagna. The waitress brought iced tea for Dave and Julie and water for Bryson.

  “Man, Bryson, you just dominated that final,” Dave said. “You owned that pool.”

  Bryson grinned and ducked his head. “Thanks, Coach.”

  “Seriously, man, you are gifted. You could get a scholarship somewhere. Go to the Olympics.”

  “That’s what his swim coach says,” Julie said, as she tore a packet of sweetener and poured it in her tea. “I wouldn’t mind a scholarship to, say, UCLA or USC. That way I could go visit my kid in Southern California.”

  Dave nodded. “Yeah, that could happen. Or Pepperdine. I hear they got a pretty nice layout.”

  “Hey, guys, I’m only in sixth grade,” Bryson said. “Don’t book your tickets yet, okay?”

  They laughed.

  “So, tell me about this relay team you’re on,” Dave said.

  Bryson told him about how the coach asked him to think about swimming with some older kids “to stretch his competitive muscles.” They’d won the last three meets they’d competed in. Bryson was swimming the leadoff leg, but his coach was thinking about giving him the anchor.

  “Anchor leg? No kidding? I don’t know much about swimming, but I ran track in college and the anchor leg was where it all came down to the ground, you know what I’m saying?”

  Bryson nodded. “Coach thinks I can handle it.”

  “Well, from what I’ve seen so far, I’d say your coach was right. You are one awesome brother in the water, my man.”

  With her chin propped in her hand, Julie watched them talking. Bryson was almost visibly blooming under Dave’s approval and encouragement; the sight made her throat tighten with gratitude.

  Dave Johnson was one of the kindest, most decent men she’d ever met. It was clear to her that he genuinely cared for Bryson, as she was sure he did for all the boys on his Little League team.

  “. . . Mom? Can I?”

  Julie snapped back to the present. “Sorry, bud. What did you say?”

  “I said, can I get a smoothie? They have them here, Coach says.”

  “If you don’t think he’ll get too full for his next race,” Dave said.

  “Well, sport, they haven’t even brought your spaghetti and meatballs yet, so . . .”

  “Mom. The race isn’t until two o’clock. It’s barely twelve-thirty.”

  “Okay, sure. Just don’t drown, okay?”

  “Yeah, right,” Bryson said.

  Driving back to the Y, Dave switched on the oldies station. The music faded in and it was Lionel Ritchie and the Commodores doing “Three Times a Lady.” Almost without thinking, he switched off the radio.

  “What’s wrong?” Julie said. “I like that song.”

  “I just remembered I need to make a call real quick.” Dave fished out his cell phone and pushed the speed dial code for his office, which, he knew, was vacant on Saturday. He let it ring through until the voice mail picked up, then ended the call.

  “Nobody there,” he said. “Say, reach up over your visor and pick out a CD, all right?”

  They got back to the Y a little after one o’clock and Bryson left them to go get back into his swimsuit. Dave and Julie walked toward the stands and he could feel her knuckles tapping against his as they went. He had to fight the urge to take her hand. Way over the line, homeboy, way over the line.

  But he didn’t let go of the thought—not quite. He kept it in his pocket and took it out every so often to look at it again.

  They watched several girls’ events while waiting for the boys’ 4 x 50 relay. Finally, at a quarter after two, Bryson and three older boys came out of the dressing rooms, along with the other teams competing in the event. Bryson was talking and laughing with the older boys in a way that told Dave they regarded him as an equal.

  Dave tried to imagine one of the kids on his ball team—Jaylen, for example—showing up at one of Bryson’s swim practices. How would he feel? Would he even be willing to get in the water? There were some differences, of course: Bryson had been training since he was a little guy, and swimming was a slightly rarer skill than throwing a ball or swinging a bat. And yet, Bryson had come out to the diamond and taken his cuts along with everyone else, even though he didn’t know anyone there except Dave and Brock. He’d been willing to try. Bryson had more guts than most adults Dave knew, he decided.

  The officials whistled them to their places and Bryson stepped onto the block. He was swinging his arms and shaking out his hands, getting loose for the race. He glanced up in the stands at his mom and Dave, gave them a quick thumbs-up, then refocused his attention on his lane, the other end of the pool, and on what he needed to do.

  Bryson’s team had one of the center lanes. The boys on either side of him were taller and more developed through the chest and shoulders. To Dave, Bryson looked thin, pale, and overmatched. But he doesn’t look worried.

  “He’s loose this time,” Julie
said, echoing Dave’s thoughts. “I bet he gets a good start.”

  The boys went to their marks and the horn blew. The leadoff legs went into the water, submerging briefly before coming to the top. Bryson’s arms arced into the water with clean, even motions; his head swiveled smoothly with each stroke. As Dave watched, he pulled steadily ahead of the older boys. By the time he touched and his teammate launched himself toward the other end of the pool, Bryson had given his team perhaps a full-meter lead.

  The second leg didn’t fare so well. As far as Dave could tell, Bryson’s teammate was swimming well enough, but a kid in the lane at the edge of the pool farthest from where they sat swam a heroic lap, taking away the lead Bryson had established and edging his team in front by half a meter or so. The third leg for Bryson’s team didn’t lose any ground, but he didn’t gain much, either. As the racers neared the end of the pool and the anchor legs got ready to go, Julie was looking worried.

  “Our anchor swimmer hasn’t done too well the last couple of times out,” she said. “It used to be that they pretty much kept whatever lead Bryson gave them and just counted on the other three legs to maintain, but we’re behind today.”

  The noise built as the anchor legs went into the water. The team on the far side still held a slight lead over everyone else, but now at least two other teams besides Bryson’s were within striking distance. Eight swimmers sprinted for the home end of the pool, lashing the water furiously as each tried to pull himself past the others. The crowd noise rose to an indistinguishable roar; they were all on their feet. Dave felt himself straining toward the finish, as if his effort might somehow aid his swimmer’s progress. With ten meters to go, it looked like a three-way dead heat. A couple of strokes later, the team in lane eight appeared to have a hand’s-breadth edge. With five meters left, Bryson’s teammate might have just pulled ahead. Three meters, two, one . . .