The Summer That Melted Everything(56)

“Yeah, Yellch,” one of the other boys agreed. “Why ya actin’ like a dick?”

“’Cause I don’t want no dick.” The veins in Yellch’s neck popped like long stems. “You hear me, Grand? I don’t want no dick. And I don’t wanna play ball with someone who does.”

Grand looked to be one sweat drip away from disappearing as the team urged Yellch to give further explanation.

Grand tucked his glove under his arm and held up his trembling hands like Yellch had a gun. “C’mon, Yell. Don’t. I’m sorry, okay? Please. Don’t say anything.”

But Yellch had to say it. If he didn’t, what would it mean for him? Would it mean he liked what Grand did to him? If he didn’t yell it out, if he didn’t respond with anger, wouldn’t that be what people thought if they ever found out about the time Grand Bliss kissed him on a bed while Anthony Perkins played on the TV downstairs? Yes, Yellch had to say it, for his own sake. Fuck you, he must’ve thought as he pointed at Grand and said without doubt, “He’s a fag.”

My brother. A fag? It was like seeing American flags impaled on white picket fences. He had been red, he had been white, he had been blue and July Fourth. But now, the mythology of him was over. He who was so handsome, as children all the girls thought they would marry him and leave the earth for the stars.

Yellch’s accusation was a lingering echo. A full-bodied thing, pumping and veering like poison-dipped arrows. It was as if the entire, astonished world was right there on a ball field in Breathed, Ohio. Between teammates and coach, the little things of years began to be added up.

The quick peeks in the locker room, the lingering hugs, the slaps on the rear that went beyond congratulations. That was enough for them to see him coiling with the snake. It was enough for him to become something they could not sweetly accept.

“Grand, I think you should go home.” The coach squinted behind his 1950s glasses.

“Do you mean go home just for today?”

“Grand—”

“I have a right to know if I’m still on the goddamn team. Whatcha gonna do for pitcher, Coach? Hmm? Use Arly?”

“I ain’t so bad,” Arly came to his own defense. “I’ve been layin’ off the sodium. Think I took off the drag.”

“Your arm’s dead, Arly. You see its goddamn funeral every time you pitch. мертвых.”

“Arly will be fine.” In those four words, the coach stripped Grand of the pitcher mound.

I never thought I’d see my brother defeated. He was always so strong. The boy with the durability of linoleum. On that day, I realized the linoleum was just an accessory for effect, and underneath it, he was just as fragile as us all. My brother. The one I thought was marked for eternity, and yet here I am, and where is he? Maybe forever on that ball field. Forever being revealed and they forever stepping back as if he’s sickness between sickness.

It was small use to remind them of how they’d say, I love you, Grand Bliss, in the golden glow of a big win. Even smaller use to say he was once their friend. The buddy who bought them all tickets to the Reds game, and drove all the way to Cincinnati and back. The pal who stayed sober when they got drunk. The one who punched the guy who would’ve punched them.

He was the heart they could all be loved by, and yet not one of them loved him back. I wanted him to shout. To cancel out what they were telling themselves. To deny until he won. To shape back his hero self and put on the cape to become my perfect brother once more. But all he did was squeeze his glove and walk away.

When he saw me at the fence, it was like it was through a microscope against his brow, magnifying me to the point of shocking him into a run that was so fast, I would never have caught up to him had he not stopped to get sick.

“How long were ya by the fence?” He wiped his mouth in one long gesture.

“I just showed up as you were leavin’.” I couldn’t bear for him to know I’d seen it all.

He turned a cheek to his vomit. “Really?”

“Really. I’m stumped why ya left practice so early.”

He looked at me and knew, but the lie offered him a chance. All truth could do then was to tap us on the back. We never turned around.

“Heat’s made me sick. Coach said it was all right for me to go home.” He lifted his cleats, checking his shoelaces to see if any vomit had splashed.

As we walked home, I knew from far away the trees would’ve looked nice, the grass would’ve looked green, and we would’ve looked like just a couple of boys walking home, armed with Midwest love and Bible Belt morals.

But up close, the trees were scorched, the grass was dead, and the boys were on the verge of tears with the belts of those morals tightened around their necks, threatening to hang them if they dared step off the stool of masculinity.

We didn’t speak the whole way. That’s brothers for you. A splintering silence. A lonely cope. A quick pace to the house we shared and the home we hoped would always be there.

And this is where so many of my nightmares begin. Walking up the porch steps and finding the man with the notepad. He’d been talking to Sal. Grand interrupted their conversation by asking, “Who are you, Незнакомец?”

“A journalist from The New York Times,” Sal answered for the man.

Grand gave a fatherly sigh toward Sal. “Whatcha been tellin’ him?”