Rick is down for the count

I make the turn and run back to first. Across the diamond is a huddle of some sort going on; I don’t see Rick, but I see teammates and coaches and some other folks who aren’t in uniform. I hit the bag again and look over at the first baseman—Karl Addair is his name, I remember. “What’s going on?” I ask him.

He looks back at me. “You put him out of the game,” he says calmly, like it doesn’t even bother him.

My jaw drops. “What?!” I ask stupidly. “How—? I didn’t mean—”

“I know, dude, rest easy. He was askin’ for it.” He chuckles at the expression on my face, then sobers up. “Look, after the first inning, could you hear the little dustup in our dugout?” I nod. “That was Woody tearing into Zack.”

“I bet he doesn’t like being called Woody,” I can’t help interjecting.

Addair grins. “Nope. That’s why no one on the team calls him anything else. Anyway, he was screaming at Zack for going inside on you. He said he knew you and you weren’t all that and if Zack hadn’t thrown you a meatball you wouldn’t have done anything, and if Zack had just stayed outside, he—Woody—would have thrown you out, and if Zack had stuck to the plan, everything would have been fine, and on and on and fucking la-di-da.”

A light goes on. “So that’s why he threw me eight straight pitches on the outside edge! I didn’t think it made any sense.”

Addair nods. “Yep. Bronko”—he’s their catcher—“didn’t like it, but Zack was in a bit of a snit. Can’t say as I blame him too much; he wanted to make Woody put up or shut up.

“And then you tagged that ball—dude, you scorched that fucker—and he didn’t react in time. If he’d been on the ball, so to speak, he could have made the play, but he was slow, sluggish. I suspect he was so sure you were going to give him an easy out, it took him a split second to realize he had a rocket coming right at him. Somehow—maybe he overcorrected, not sure—he ended up with the ball hitting him on the wrist, then caroming off into his forehead. He went down like he’d been shot. I had to guess, I’d say he has a broken wrist and, at the least, a concussion. Probably a severe concussion, possibly some sort of fracture in the skull.”

I feel sick—probably not as sick as if I’d done it to anyone else, but still . . . “Man, I’m sorry.” I open my mouth to say more, then close it again; I can’t think of anything more to say.

“Don’t be, dude,” Addair says calmly. “Yeah, it sucks for the team to lose a starter, but personally, I won’t miss the bastard. He’s a pretty good player for a frosh, but he’s not all that and a bag of chips, and he doesn’t know it. From the first day, he walked into the dugout like he owned the place. Would you believe he’s still pissed he’s playing third instead of short? Mark Maddox is our best player—well, aside from Zack, but before Zack started coming on, he was—he’s a good shortstop and our #5 hitter, and you know he won’t be coming back for his senior year; he won’t go as high as Zack, but this time next year he’ll be in Arizona or Florida, and maybe on the major-league fields with an NRI. No way Ken’s going to move him off short for some punk freshman, even if said punk freshman were a better fielder—and I don’t concede that.

“Besides, the kid opened his big fat mouth; it’s only his fault you stuffed his jock down his throat.” I grin; he grins back. “He screamed at Zack, he bragged—he set himself up, and if he couldn’t handle it, that’s on him, not you. Little prick got what he had coming.”

Addair looks surprised when I laugh, so I answer the question in his eyes. “I have it on, ahh, good authority that he actually does have a little prick.”

He laughs a little. “Can’t say as I’ve looked. How would you know?”

“We were high school classmates, and my girlfriend dated him a few years back,” I tell him.

Understanding dawns in Addair’s face. “Oh, so that’s why he was so down on you—you took his girl.”

He doesn’t understand as much as he thinks he does, so I start to explain. I tell him how Rick tormented me from all the way back in elementary school—I was his favorite nerd punching bag—and that when he started dating Heather, he was jealous of me because I was her best friend. That brings a quizzical look, so I explain that we were best friends but she would never date me, and tell him I don’t really want to go into it. He nods briefly, and I continue.

“I wasn’t the reason they broke up,” I say. “He was having sex with Heather one day and decided to start **** her; maybe he’d seen it in porn, I don’t know. She struggled, and he slapped her face—twice—hard. She screamed at him to get off her and stop fucking her, but he wouldn’t. She called him a ****, but he just fucked her harder until he got off.

“I picked up the pieces. Heather came to me and cried on my shoulder; I sat there with her for hours. I tried to convince her to press charges, but she felt too much at fault. ‘I knew what he was like,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have been there at all; I shouldn’t have been with him.’ I tried, but she wouldn’t do it.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. I probably shouldn’t be talking about it. But we ran into him outside the stadium before the game, and he was coming on to Heather, smarmily; she put him down hard—by bragging about me, which was rather embarrassing—and we left him in a fury. Then when I came to the plate the first time, I don’t think he’d ever imagined I was on the team; it shouldn’t have, but I think it took him completely by surprise.”

All this time, Addair’s face has been getting darker and darker and bleaker and bleaker. “So the reason he screamed at Zack that way was—all that history?” I nod. He looks absolutely thunderous, but gets himself under control. “Look, dude,” he says, “I know why you told me all that.” He must be able to read my surprise on my face, because he gives me a crooked half-smile. “Believe it or not, I’m a fucking psych major.” His smile widens (and gets even more crooked) at my obvious disbelief. “Yeah, I know, professional behavior and all that. Classic bedside manner, not my strong suit. Doesn’t bother me, I’m not going for a classic sort of career. But anyway, it really is obvious. You have a lot of powerful negative emotions tied up with this guy, which got all stirred up right before the game; then you pick up a bat and put him in the hospital.” He nods grimly at my start of shock.

“Yeah, you did. You know as well as I do, that’s where he’s going, and he may not be out right away, either; and I suspect your brain really hasn’t caught up with the idea that you’re capable of that. More to the point, though, there’s a part of you that’s looking at that and going, ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.’ There’s a part of you that thinks he deserved it and is glad you did it—which horrifies the rest of you even more than the fact that you did do it. After all, you didn’t do it on purpose; but part of you would have, gladly, and you’re having a hard time with that.” I nod thoughtfully; what he’s saying makes sense.

“So, yeah, your emotions are on a rolling boil, and here you are standing out here with me cooling your heels until they can get the little prick out of here and restart the game, and you need to talk—and I am a good listener, however, shall we say, unconventional I might be about it. And you figure, after this series, I leave; it’s not like you’re telling someone who’ll be seeing you and your girlfriend all the time.” I nod again.

“And dude, I want to thank you for telling me.” Addair’s voice is utterly serious now, and a little cold. “There have been a couple rumors going around campus about the little prick; I don’t know who all heard them, but they were pretty vague, and you never know what to make of rumors. From what you’ve just told me, though, I think someone needs to dig into them. It sounds like there might be a pattern here.”

And isn’t that a cheerful thought . . .