Wrapped in Rain(51)
Miss Ella walked out of the kitchen, into the barn, and leaned against the door, drying her hands. She told me, years later, that was when she realized I had one talent greater than all others, including swinging a baseball bat. The ability to see and read light.
The space inside the barn was small, angles awkward, and the photographer was snapping frames but growing more confused and frustrated. He looked like a guy trying to get comfortable in his favorite chair, but his boxers had hiked up, making comfort impossible. I had seen the solution thirty minutes prior, but I didn't know I had so I didn't say a word. When he grew really frustrated, I climbed through the rafters, slid over to one corner, looked down, and said, "What about right here?" The guy waved me off like a mosquito and then looked up and scratched his head. When the spread appeared in the July edition, my perspective was the lead picture in the article. That's when Miss Ella went to the pawnshop. She brought home a worn Canon A-I, an owner's manual, and six rolls of film. She didn't know the first thing about cameras, but she said, "Here, use this up and I'll get you some more." My life soon revolved around two activities: swinging the bat and squeezing the shutter button.
By the end of my sophomore year in high school, I was seldom without a baseball bat in one hand and a camera in the other. If I could find someone to throw the ball, I would hit from the moment school let out to the moment she rang the dinner bell and then after. Miss Ella had long since gotten tired of chasing baseballs, so seeing I wasn't about to give up, she mail-ordered a batting machine and paid for it with her grocery allowance. Mutt opened the box and set it up down the center aisle of the barn.
We backed home plate out of the center of the barn and put it at the other end, opposite what we were by then calling the Holy Wall. Mutt uninstalled some spotlights from the side of Waverly and reinstalled them in the barn. Now, I could hit as long as I was willing to collect the balls and feed them into the bucket above the machine. It was not uncommon to find Miss Ella watching from the comfort of that five-gallon bucket with her dress hiked up on her knees and her knee-highs pushed down around her ankles. "Tuck," she'd say, shaking her head, "you're stepping in the bucket. Step toward the pitcher," "Keep that head down, child. You can't hit the ball if you don't look at it," and "Don't swat at it. Swing that bat, boy. If you're gonna stand up there, swing! I need to hear you grunting and feel the breeze."
Miss Ella loved to sit on that bucket, beat it with a stick like a drum, and watch me hit a baseball. Many a night found the three of us in the barn under the spotlights, playing another imaginary World Series or home-run derby against the greatest in the game. If Waverly was our prison, the barn was our empty tomb. And every time we flung open the doors, we rolled away the stone.
During the summer between my junior and senior years, I found my swing. I had been dancing around it for about six months, but between practicing in the barn, mucking the stalls, mending fences, tending the orchard, and a host of odd jobs, my wrists, arms, back, and hips had gotten a good bit stronger. Add to that the gift of fast hands and it meant more broken boards. Miss Ella was sitting on the bucket in the heat of August, and I hit a line drive over the machine. The ball hit the cypress boards that made up the back wall of the barn and blew them entirely off the framing. Miss Ella stood up off the bucket, straightened her dress and apron, and smiled. That was it and we both knew it. I turned and smiled. She nodded, leaned back against the door, and started picking at her teeth with a piece of hay.
My high school coach told the scouts I was a natural. The summer before I left for Atlanta, we hung a net in front of the back side of the barn. My freshman year at Tech, I finally started growing. At six feet two and 205 pounds, I was hitting balls out at will. That's when baseball got fun.
By my sophomore year, I was batting fourth, had already hit several balls over 430 feet, and was headed to Omaha for the College World Series. Miss Ella and Mutt flew out and made every game of the series. When I took a slider deep over the left-center fence to put us up by three in the seventh game, I rounded the bases, stepped on home plate, and looked up to see Miss Ella, spotlighted by a bright red hat, hands in the air, and smiling one of the biggest smiles I had ever seen. After the game, I gave her the ball.
That summer, I was swinging in the cage surrounded by pro scouts. I wasn't doing anything differently. Just swinging like I had ten thousand times before. I felt it pop just below my belt line and felt a sharp pain in the center of my back. Two more swings and it had traveled down my right leg. A few more and it had wrapped around the right side of my waist. By the time I got back to my dorm, I was limping and barely able to walk. I got in bed and told myself I had just pulled a muscle, but I knew better. The next morning, it took six aspirin to get me out of bed, and I knew then and there that I would not play majorleague baseball.
The team doctor took a series of twelve x-rays and then an MRI. When he walked back in with the pictures, his face was somber and his head shook from side to side. I don't remember everything he said, but I do remember him saying, "You'll never swing another bat."
It's funny, I still remember the smell of his office. It smelled like popcorn, and in the background, one of his office assistants was talking about her date the night before. I walked back across campus, packed my bags, stopped in the coach's office, and then drove away. I made one stop at the Varsity for a Sprite and then drove south on 1-75, growing more numb with every mile. At midnight, I was standing on Miss Ella's porch and couldn't feel my face.