The Only Game Read online

  “I am serious, Mom.”

  “You are quitting baseball?” his dad said. “No, you’re not.”

  Not making it sound like an order, like he was telling Jack he had to play baseball or else. It was more like him saying he didn’t believe what Jack was telling him.

  “You’re gonna to have to explain this to me,” his dad said. “To both of us.”

  “Not sure I can.”

  “Try,” his mother said. “You can’t do something like this without a good reason.”

  “Basically I just don’t feel like playing right now,” he said.

  “No,” she said.

  Jack looked back at her. “You don’t believe me?”

  “What I don’t believe is what I’m hearing from across this table.”

  Tim Callahan, his dad, tried to take the lead. “You made a decision like this—and you didn’t even run it by us?”

  “Maybe it was because I knew how you’d react,” Jack said. “Pretty much the way you’re reacting right now.”

  His mom tried to stay cool, but Jack could see the effort it was taking. “This isn’t about our reaction,” she said. “It’s about your decision. One you still haven’t explained very well, I’m afraid.”

  “My heart’s not in it, that’s my explanation,” Jack said. “And haven’t you guys always told me that playing sports is supposed to be up to me?”

  “Looks like you’ve taken it a step further now,” his dad said, “and decided that also applies to not playing, apparently.”

  Jack nodded, looking at the food left on his plate, the hamburger and fries he’d barely touched.

  Gail Callahan said, “But you love baseball, sweetheart. I always hear you and Gus talking about how you might make it all the way to the Little League World Series this year.”

  Jack knew how much she loved him, how much she loved watching him play ball. She talked about that all the time, how it was Jack who’d made her a baseball fan, for the first time in her life.

  Jack also knew this: how much he was going to be letting her down by quitting the Rays, along with letting down everybody else who mattered to him.

  “Have you told Gus yet?” his dad said.

  “No,” Jack said. “I told Coach and now I’m telling you guys. I’m gonna call Gus after we finish dinner. I told Coach not to say anything to the rest of the guys. I guess I’ll have to face them at practice tomorrow.”

  “Plus, you could change your mind by tomorrow,” his mom said, still sounding hopeful that might happen.

  “I’m not changing my mind, Mom.”

  She said, “About the sport you’re best at?”

  “This all started with me knowing that I’m just not ready,” Jack said. “You can at least get that, right?”

  “I’m trying to,” his dad said. “But what I don’t get is how you were ready for football, and then basketball after that. I thought if you were going to take a season off, it would’ve been football, that being so close . . .”

  His dad’s voice drifted away now, the way it did when they got anywhere near talking about last summer.

  “I just thought baseball would be so great for all of us,” his mom said. “You have no idea how much your father and I were looking forward to watching you play.”

  “I do have an idea,” Jack said. “But I have to play for me.”

  She said, “We’ve been waiting . . . all year to be back at those fields.”

  Jack looked at her. “You mean so things could be the way they used to be?”

  He was sorry as soon as his words were in the air between them, even before he saw the hurt look on her face.

  “You know I didn’t mean it that way,” she said.

  “I know, Mom. I’m sorry, I sound like an idiot sometimes.”

  “You’ve never been an idiot for one single day,” she said.

  “Listen, you guys, I already feel like I’m letting the team down. I don’t want to feel like I’m letting you down too.”

  “You’ve never let us down either,” his dad said. “You’ve been more of a champ over the past year than you’ve ever been in sports. You know how proud your mother and I are.”

  “I know you think you’ve thought this through,” his mom said. “But maybe this is a good thing, the talk we’re having right now, the three of us talking it through together.”

  “Not if you think I’m changing my mind,” Jack said.

  There was another long silence now at the table. Jack was used to that kind of silence by now, at this table, in their house, in his life.

  “I might stop playing baseball for good,” he said.

  “You don’t mean that,” his dad said.

  “I do.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Maybe it’s time to try something else for a change, start all over,” he said. “A lot of my friends think I’d be great at lacrosse.”

  His dad said, “You’re a ballplayer.”

  “If I don’t feel like one,” Jack said, “then I’m not one.”

  He had thought about not trying out at all, back in February. Now he wished he hadn’t, because it would’ve all been over now, long over. Gus would know, the whole baseball town of Walton would know.

  But he had to be sure he was doing the right thing. Today had convinced him that he was.

  His dad said, “You know we’re not going to pressure you to do something you don’t want to.”

  “I know.”

  “We trust you, Jack,” his mom said. “You know that, don’t you? We trust you even when we don’t agree with you.”

  He nodded again.

  “But what I’m worried about mostly is all the free time you’re going to have on your hands,” she said. “And it will be free time apart from your best friends. I still think the best thing, for all of us, is to keep busy.”

  “I’ve been keeping pretty busy, Mom.”

  “Not saying you haven’t. But when your dad talked about not putting pressure on yourself . . . don’t you think that because of the player you are, you’re putting more pressure on yourself by not playing?”

  Jack said, “You think I haven’t thought about that?”

  He shook his head now, hard, and said, “I’m just not ready.”

  “How about you do this?” his dad said. “How about I call Coach and tell him you want a couple of days to just think this through? A week even. Just to make sure that you’re sure.”

  It just came out of Jack then, because he couldn’t help himself. This wasn’t the night to avoid the subject.

  “Baseball won’t bring my brother back,” he said, knowing his voice was way too loud.

  Then he asked to be excused.

  THREE

  His brother Brad, full name Bradley Jackson Callahan, had died in August of the previous summer, riding dirt bikes with his friends one night in an empty field next to Walton Country Club, part of the land that was going to make up a new nine holes for the club.

  It wasn’t dark yet when it happened. Brad and his boys were riding in that gray time between day and night when you had to stop playing ball, because you could no longer see the ball.

  They had never ridden their bikes there before. There were NO TRESPASSING signs all over the place.

  But those had never stopped Brad Callahan. He always thought the “no” in any sign meant no for everybody else and “no problem” for him.

  “You know me, little bro,” he’d say to Jack. “I’m like those guys in Top Gun.”

  It was one of Brad’s all-time favorite old movies, and Jack would always know what was coming next, but he’d just wait for it.

  “I feel the need for speed!” his brother would yell.

  It wasn’t even Brad’s own bike. He didn’t have one of his own—he hadn’t even turned sixteen yet. The one he was riding belonged to his friend Spence, who was sixteen the night it happened and had a garage full of dirt bikes. Spence’s family had a lot of money, and he already was driving around Walton in the
brand-new car he’d gotten as soon as he got his driver’s license.

  Brad had always hung around with older kids.

  Spence and the other two guys riding that night said Brad never saw the drop coming, because of the sketchy light; the color of the ground was the color of the sky, everything blending together. But Brad was the one in the lead, of course. He had to be first, like life was one big race. Jack went one time to see where it had happened. The drop was so steep he imagined his brother having gone over a cliff.

  “The lead dog,” Brad had called himself.

  He was going too fast. Of course he was going too fast. Then suddenly he was flying into space. Jack imagined him chasing the night and finally catching it. Somehow the other boys stopped in time, their bikes skidding on their sides.

  Not Brad.

  The police and the doctors on the scene said that when he landed at the base of the tree, it was the same as if he’d hit that tree with a speeding car.

  A month away from his sixteenth birthday, Jack’s older brother was gone. He had always been a risk taker. He kept getting into trouble for that, for being Brad. He’d come home sometimes and race upstairs—going fast even when he was only racing against himself—and brag to Jack about taking his skateboard into town and holding on to the back of a bus, until a town cop spotted him one day and brought him home in a blue-and-white Walton Police Department car, and Brad ended up grounded for a solid month.

  Grounded again.

  That night Jack said to his brother, “Was it worth it?”

  And Brad had said, “Oh yeah.”

  Jack said, “Mom and Dad were really mad this time.”

  “Can’t help myself, little bro. I’m always gonna be that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy having too much fun.”

  “I heard Dad from up here telling you that you can have too much fun sometimes.”

  “Not possible, little bro. Not possible.”

  Until too much fun got him killed a few weeks before he was supposed to start tenth grade.

  He’d never been as good as Jack in sports, any sport, certainly not baseball. Maybe that was why Brad kept making up his own sports, his own competitions, on water skis or Jet Skis or surfing or snowboarding in the winter. Jack had always thought of his big brother as one of those freestyle skiers on ESPN’s X Games. One of those crazy high-flying dudes.

  It was their dad who had taught Jack baseball, Jack thinking it was almost like he’d inherited the right genes and right temperament and right attitude from his dad. Brad hadn’t. “Too slow,” he’d say. “Too boring. The games go way too long.” Still, somehow Brad always found time to play ball with Jack when their dad was working, or traveling.

  He’d find ways to make baseball even more fun for his little bro—he always called Jack that, even though by last summer they were practically the same height—as if he liked baseball more in the backyard with Jack than he liked any other games. Brad had quit playing games for real after Little League.

  “The only difference between us that I can see,” Brad would tell Jack, “is that you’re crazy about baseball and I’m just plain old crazy.”

  So Jack played baseball and his other old-school sports and never got into trouble. Brad was always getting into—and out of—trouble, mostly because nobody, starting with their parents, could ever stay mad at Brad Callahan for long.

  It wasn’t just the fun in him, their mom would say. It was all the life in him.

  Only now he was dead. All that fun taken out of their family, out of their lives, for good.

  • • •

  Jack went upstairs to his bedroom, past the closed door to Brad’s old room, and turned on the TV set he was allowed to have in there now to watch Monday Night Baseball on ESPN, Red Sox against the Orioles. He always liked watching Pedroia play, just because he did everything in baseball, the little things and the big things, exactly right.

  Jack had gotten the new flat-screen TV at the beginning of the school year. Even at twelve, he was smart enough to see what was happening now that Brad was gone: This was going to be the year of getting stuff.

  And it was more than that—it was the year of his mom worrying about him more than she ever had before his brother’s accident, just about every time he went out of the house. Jack could see her trying to be casual about it. But even when he’d ride his bike the few blocks to Highland Park, or the few blocks to Gus’s house in the other direction, she’d say something like, “Hey, shoot me a text when you get there, big guy.”

  One time Jack had said, “Maybe you should put one of those tracking devices on me, Mom.”

  And she’d grinned and said, “Okay.”

  He kept waiting for his mom now, sure the bedroom door was going to open any minute, either she or his dad wanting to talk a little more about him quitting the Rays.

  They surprised him this time. The door didn’t open. Maybe they were both going to be cool about his decision. They were cool, his mom and dad, despite what had happened to them; to all of them.

  They were trying to do something that Jack, even at his age, knew was impossible: make their world back into what it was before Brad snuck off and went dirt-biking that night.

  It was eight thirty now.

  Jack knew he couldn’t put off calling Gus any longer.

  So he punched out his number.

  “What’s good?” Gus said when he answered.

  “You,” Jack said.

  The way they began all their phone conversations.

  “Not as good as you,” Gus said.

  Because he always said that.

  “Actually,” Jack said, “I gotta tell you something that is not good. That stinks.”

  Before he lost his nerve, he told Gus what he’d told Coach, and what he’d told his parents at dinner.

  Told his best friend he was quitting the team.

  Gus didn’t say anything at first, maybe the longest he’d ever gone without talking in any conversation, to the point where Jack started to think his best friend had hung up on him.

  But finally Gus said, “Are you joking?”

  “It’s no joke, trust me.”

  “You can’t do this to me. You can’t do this to us.”

  “I have to.”

  “You’re too good. We’re too good. Not just the Rays. You and me. We’re a team, remember?”

  Jack closed his eyes. He’d known Gus wouldn’t make things easy for him.

  “Gus, it’s like I told Coach—”

  “Is this about your brother?”

  “It’s not about any one thing.”

  It was as if Gus hadn’t heard him. “This is because of your brother now?”

  Gus never talked around things. It was one of the things Jack loved about him: He came right at you.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “Maybe.”

  “C’mon, dude. Maybe’s not good enough, not for something this important.”

  “Maybe it was always more important to you than it was to me.”

  “No way,” Gus said. “No way. All we’ve been talking about for the past two years is what it was gonna be like when we were twelve. How many nights did we watch the Little League World Series on television and you’d say, ‘Someday that’s gonna be us.’ Well, this is someday. This is the year. Not my year. Our year.”

  “It’s still your year,” Jack said. “Even if the Rays don’t win, you’ll get picked for All-Stars, no problem, and you can still end up in Williamsport.”

  “I don’t want to do it without you.”

  “You’re gonna have to.”

  In a quiet voice Jack could barely hear, Gus said, “You’re my best friend. Please don’t do this to me.”

  “You make it sound like I’m leaving town,” Jack said.

  “It’s gonna feel that way.”

  “Gus, you know I’m still gonna be your friend.”

  Gus paused again, then said, “This is your idea of being my friend?”
<
br />   “Gus, this isn’t about you.”

  He laughed. “Now you are joking. Of course it’s about me.”

  Jack heard him laugh then, as if trying to make things the way they usually were between them, not like they had been tonight. Like it was the old Jack and the old Gus. “Isn’t everything about me?” Gus said.

  Then he said again, “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

  “What, you want me to make it easy for you? You drop this on me without even talking to me about it and now you want me to feel sorry for you? Well, sor-ry.”

  Jack said, “I’m just not feeling it right now with baseball. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  “I saw you on that field today,” Gus said. “I know you’ve always been listening to me when I told you what baseball was like in the Dominican for my father and his friends. Most people don’t understand. You always understood.”

  “This isn’t about that.”

  Gus Morales didn’t let things go, ever. He said, “And nobody understands you better than I do. I saw you on that field. And you were feeling it.”

  Jack said, “I was faking it,” knowing how small his voice must sound in that moment. As small as he felt.

  He waited for Gus to say something else.

  Finally Jack said, “Gus? You still there?”

  He wasn’t. Jack was talking to himself by then. He’d been doing that a lot lately, just not out loud.

  He knew how much he was going to miss baseball. He was missing it already, just watching the Red Sox play the Orioles on television. Now he wondered how much he was going to have to miss his best friend, too.

  But maybe you could get better at missing things—and people—with enough practice.

  FOUR

  The next day at school, the girl saved him.

  At least Gus had spared Jack the trouble of telling the team himself; by the time Jack got to the cafeteria for lunch, it wasn’t just the guys on the team who knew Jack had quit—it seemed like the whole school knew.

  And maybe the whole town.

  Jack could tell that no one else wanted to rough him up about his decision the way Gus had on the phone, whether they liked it or not. But that was the way it had been the whole school year, everybody careful with what they said to Jack because of Brad. Everybody careful with how they treated him, mostly his friends talking around what had happened to his brother, afraid that something might come out wrong.