1

Adam knocked on the door and Danny opened.

“You got your stuff?”

Danny smiled. He was wearing his Yankees ballcap, his black fro spilling out over his ears. His mom would urge him to get a cut, but he was starting to like how unwieldy his locks were. Like a knuckleball. He picked up his bag off the floor and slung it over his shoulder. “Ma, I’ll be back soon,” he called, shutting the door before she could answer.

Danny grabbed his BMX and joined Adam on the driveway. “So, you finished it this morning?”

Adam only nodded. “It was a bitch for one guy, but yeah.”

“I think you’re right. It’s a part of it. Has to be the same. Has to be like before.”

“And you? Your folks, they alright?”

Danny clenched the handlebars and tested the brakes. “My dad hasn’t told her everything. I think when he does, you’ll know. You’ll feel the earth shake. Worse than anything that’s hit Reedy Creek.” He chuckled. “But my dad…even with everything, his secrets, he’s appreciative of what I did. I went out on a limb.”

“You saved him.”

“I love him,” Danny said. They’d started biking down the street, weaving around parked cars, trying to make the trek exciting, the way they had during the summer. When the world was unfolding before them in one grand adventure. “He gave me something yesterday. I don’t even think appreciate really spells it all out. My dad hit his low, and he’d been low for a long time. I know I haven’t told you why. Adults have their reasons.”

Adam only nodded as they rode across a lawn on the corner of Deer Rise, shocking a squirrel who’d just bounded off the bole of the spruce to check if there were any edibles in the grass.

“He came in my room and handed me this thick acrylic. I’m talking, magnifying glass thick. He didn’t say anything, but he was, well, he was emotional. He is a lot now. My mom probably thinks it’s strange, but he’s home more. I think once he does tell her, she’ll want to leave this place. Nothing is ever permanent—”

“Okay, I get it. What did he hand you?” Adam was laughing.

“’52 Topps, boy. Mickey Mantle. Cherry corners.”

“No shit. No shit. Did you bring it?”

“You kidding, dumbass? That thing’s going in a secret place. So one of you dickheads don’t jack it. If Buddy gets word, I won’t hear the end of it.”

They came to Deermont Arc just off Main and stopped on the sidewalk as they watched two police cruisers drive by. There were a lot of cops in Reedy Creek now. Things still happened. Danny called them the Creek’s hangover. Cause if the town had been drunk off its ass and the Event was its tipping point, there had to be a period of recovery. And no recovery was ever without incident. Despite the news of the school shooting and what was discovered as a result of the E10 council’s outing for their illegal underground operation, there were those collateral events, things like domestic disputes, where a guy might hit his wife during an argument, or the body of a disabled man is found drowned in the tub.

“What about your pops?” Danny asked as they watched the cops drive by. One of the officers only nodded slightly to the boys. “He gonna be okay after what the cops found, what Ned had recorded when he was being held in that basement?”

“I don’t know. I overheard him telling my mom that Cole Moore’s workin’ with him, that all of his research had the council members thinking they were part of a government operation. Like a legit op. I guess my dad has contracts that back what Cole’s telling people. I don’t know. I think my mom, I think she’s worried he’ll go away. So am I. But he’s…he’s okay. And I think…Grimwood will make sure of it. I think my dad made a deal as well. Nothing he told me, no, but I think he wanted to make things right. All I know for sure, my dad’s been writing again. I haven’t seen him sit down at his typewriter in years. He and Cole Moore are writing together. About this. All of this.”

“I thought Pug might beat them to it.”

Adam started pedalling again. “There’s a big story here. Big enough for both of them. Shit, Croak’s been all over the news.”

“Poor bastard. He needs this more than anybody. You think the newshounds will be staked out on his yard?”

“I think that cop, Neidermayer, he’s been pretty good at shooing them.”

They rode onto Deermont, toward the court where the utility shed sat in the sunlight, its yard still charred by the lightning, its presence still distinct for what it once served. But the magic was gone. What was once a shed would always be a shed. They rode by Bob Arnold’s house on the long stretch of greenbelt where the kids all gathered to look for bloodstains in the grass where the body of Matthew Hodges was found. Childhood was wonder, and childhood was grim. As general manager of the Pure Ethanol plant, Arnold had attempted some negotiations with the growing rioters in the parking lot; he was beaten up pretty badly by a man wearing a Hornets baseball cap, smudged some on its bill by wear, by sweat and grime. Bob’s nose and jaw were broken. When the boys rode by his house, he was sitting up in his bed watching the news on the TV sitting on the dresser while his wife was in the kitchen blending him something to sip through a straw. Still in disbelief that everything he’d helped to build had been so utterly destroyed so quickly; and still in disbelief that the man he trusted, and the council he led, had been spying on him. On everyone. And he wondered if there was video evidence that could implicate him, that could ruin his marriage, if he offered his aid in the prosecution against Paul Holdren. He wondered if he did offer his testimony, what sort of backlash that could trigger, because a man like Paul was certainly prepared. He had to be. Bob’s wife walked into the room and handed him the smoothie. “Don’t dwell on that, Bob,” she said, gesturing to the TV. “This is just a hitch. You can’t stop progress.”

The guys pulled up to Pug’s Tudor on Deermont Road.

“You think he’ll be up to it?”

Danny looked at Adam. “He has to be. It will probably be his last time. Our last time together.” They set down their BMXs in the grass and walked up the front door.

Adam paused before ringing the doorbell. “It’s still so…heavy. All of this. The toll, you know.”

Danny nodded. “It always will be. This isn’t about forgetting, bud. It’s about, shit, it’s about moving on and staying the same. It’s about being who we are. For us.”

“You believe me, right? That, that there was magic. That there still could be.”

“I’ve seen it, Adam. It’s not about belief anymore. I know it’s probably something you didn’t even notice, not at your place, but after everything, after the school, when I went home I went into my parents’ room to pull that camera out of the wall above their bed.”

“And it wasn’t there,” Adam whispered.

“No. It was there. But when I touched it, it just broke. Or crumbled. Couldn’t even find the dust when I checked the carpet. Like it was never really there.”

Adam smiled. “That’s why this will work.” He finally rang the doorbell.

They heard Chels bark excitedly behind the door. Could hear her frantic paw steps on the slate tile. The door opened and Pug struggled to hold Chels back. Adam only reached out and grabbed her scruff behind the ears. The past was the past, and now he loved the girl. He loved her because she was a survivor. Like them. Whatever she was sick with, it was gone now. Because it was tied to what Reedy Creek was going through; the bugs Pug had seen, they were like the cameras, just illusions, a wavering sorcery tied to Grimwood’s presence. When he left, his glamours dissipated like fog burning over a midday lake.

“Pug, you glorious slob!” Danny called. He clapped the boy on the shoulder. What happened between them was forgotten, wasn’t real. It was D-day acting through them like puppets. “Grab your stuff. We’re heading out.”

Pug smiled. The foyer was full of boxes, most of their lids open. Pug’s mom walked by carrying a load of books, and when she set them down inside a box on the floor, its side already inscribed LIVING ROOM with black marker, she smiled at the boys. “Hello guys.”

“Hello Mrs Nelson. It cool if we borrow ol’ Horace here for a bit?” Adam had said this with his most reserved and exaggerated ass-kissing tone.

“Is it, mom? I already have my bag ready. Plus, I’ve packed most of my room.”

“I saw your version of packing, Horace, and what you’ve done isn’t even considered tidying up. Throwing clothes out of your dresser onto your bed, and piling your books on the floor doesn’t really fit the bill.” She was smiling as she spoke. Which usually meant yes, no matter the long-winded excuses thrown as baggage to make a kid feel guilty.

“Please mom…”

“You take Chels with you. She’s so erratic inside the house, it’s hard to get anything done.”

“I’ll grab her leash. I’ll see you outside, guys.” Pug dashed off to the backroom. Adam watched him with a mixture of joy and sadness. He knew what was happening to his family. He knew Reedy Creek represented what had broken them, and he knew staying here wouldn’t amend that life. He didn’t like it, but he understood it. He watched Pug’s mom walk back for another load, trying to affront the illusion that everything was okay, that she was okay, but he knew she wasn’t. Pug hadn’t been very forthright about what his father might have done and where he might be. It was none of Adam’s business. What he did know was that Pug would survive. Like his sisters. They would all be okay because the shit had come down hard on them. He saw Wendy peer down at them from the railing and she only smiled. She was probably packing up her room. Hers and Ange’s stuff. Ange was still recovering. A boy named Brad had slit open her throat because she didn’t like him. Or something. He wasn’t sure. What he did know was that Reedy Creek paid Brad back in kind; he was one of the bodies found in the Secondary bathroom. It would take going through his wallet to actually identify him. Whatever had come over Randy, whatever had possessed him, it pushed him to an extreme that Adam would never understand. Probably not Croak either. No matter how much he was pressed by reporters looking for an answer, a reason, Croak would never truly know because he was always protected from ever having to take that plunge. Like Adam, Danny, and Pug were protected.

“Shall we,” Pug exclaimed, hooking Chels’s leash to her collar and leading her out on the porch. “Be back soon, mom.”

“Not too late, Horace! You still have a ton to do.” She stood and watched the boys out the front window as they climbed on their bikes, Chels running alongside Horace as if she’d never been sick, as if Dr Langford had never called her with the damning prognosis, and without absolute reason for making the distinction. Because this town was strange. And because with every strange occurrence, there existed the possibility of miracles. She’d taken the hit with Norm, she had, and figured the trade off was Chelsey’s life. She would never ask Horace where he got that tape of his father, or how he knew Chelsey wasn’t dying of cancer but of something else, something inexplicable. Some things were best left to speculation. Some things were best left to faith.

The boys rode up the street to the house on the corner of the court, the house with the giant willow tree whose branches flayed out over the lawn in abundance, some having broken and splintered during the storm. The cigarette butts in the grass were only a scarred memory of the boy who once stood in the shade. There were discarded coffee cups, residues of the encampments set up by the press, and Adam saw a news van parked across the street, the guy inside asleep at the wheel with the window down. He was from Davenport. Some of the bigger city teams had likely moved on to a different story, something with traction, something with players who actually left the house for a chat.

Pug set his bag on the curb and handed Danny the leash. “It should be me. Just me. I…I want him to know it’s okay. We’re okay.”

Danny nodded. Chels ran up onto the lawn and chased a swirling leaf. He watched Pug walk up to the front stoop.

“Croak needs an outlet. Something outside of this…shit. Something before it,” Adam said. He was looking at the douche asleep at the wheel, the guy who probably hounded Croak if he ever tried to peek outside or get a breath of fresh air. Adam hated him. Hated those like him. He thought it was just another part of the magic that had the guy snoozing, and the rest of the circus off chasing another story. Because this was right. The boys heard sirens in the distance and wondered what else might have happened. If a rioter was arrested. If another guy had gotten the will to pull a gun and exact some revenge on his bully.

“Sometimes before isn’t good either,” Danny said. “Your past had teeth.”

“My past was already broken. My dad was running away from it for so long, stopping to actually face it was the only way to fix it. To…unbreak it.”

They watched Pug ring the doorbell. He stood on the front porch for a moment, just waiting. They knew Croak’s mom was a shadow of herself now. They knew she would never answer the door. Answer the phone. She hadn’t spoken to the press, hadn’t left the house. Will this help her? Will this help her cope and come to terms? Adam didn’t know. He hoped so. For Croak’s sake. He just knew that what they were doing was powerful. It always had been. It’s why they were ever special.

The door opened. Chels yipped on the front lawn indifferently. Somewhere a crow cawed. Or was it a raven?

“Hey Croak.”

“Pug…”

Croak smiled. It felt like the first time.

Nothing else was said. Nothing else was needed.

Because in that moment they were brothers. Real brothers.

2

The boys rode their bikes up the street the moment the guy catching Zs in the Davenport Local 5 news van woke up to spot the Reedy Creek school shooter’s little brother.

“Shit, shit,” he muttered, turning on the ignition. He swatted the passenger seat, nearly spilling a half-filled Big Gulp that he assumed was Chet’s piss, to alert the crew in the back. Reyna and Chet awoke from their crumpled naps, kicking aside empty pizza boxes. Reyna scurried to the front, trampling over empty soda cans.

“He and his friends just took off up the street.”

“Christ, Janz will have our asses if we don’t score decent footage.”

The van peeled away from the curb.

The four laughed as they trailed Chels in a full-on trot toward the chute by the utility shed into the belt. Pug turned slightly to watch the blue van squeal into the cul-de-sac; he watched the passenger fumble with the camera on her lap. They’d take the greenbelt and loop south, probably race farther back and take Deer Field toward the Deermont Arc and hit Main. He enjoyed the feel of the wind in his face, the feel of the path under his wheels and the jostle of his bag on his back. He watched Chels race beside them. He’d wrapped her leash around his handlebars and let her go free. He knew the cops would have scolded him if they somehow found the time these days to give a shit about a pup and some kids. He wouldn’t take this for granted. In the future he’d remember this day. They all would. He’d remember the bike ride to Main, the chase with the press as they reversed through the stink of burning rubber and re-traced steps up Deermont Road, trying to peer through yards into the belt to find the boys; he’d remember riding toward the school, plowing through that field and watching the sparkle of cameras winking light back at them from the tall posts. Eyes without a brain. He’d remember seeing a gaggle of journalists still at the school, still conducting onsite reports, trying to make sense of something none of them truly understood, because understanding required a mind willing to sacrifice the accountability of the adult world, of those strictures, for something far crazier. They raced toward Main and followed the road as it bent onto Woodvine, and they traced the ideographic treads imprinted on the asphalt where Robert Wilson made his last drive.

And they came to the pathway under the pine trees.

Adam climbed off his bike and looked at his friends. His best friends.

“I’m Jim Rice. Numero fourteen.”

Danny smiled, adjusting his Yankees cap. “So you’re looking for round two, ol’ timer?”

“And the trash talk’s already started, ladies and gentlemen,” Croak said, imitating Vin Scully, enunciating with that same famous drawl, his voice almost muffled sounding by an invisible radio. “In the last match, Jim Rice took Ron Guidry yard with the Shot that started the Shit.”

Pug chuckled, and then let the torrents flood into full-fledged laughter. The Shot that started the Shit. He liked that. There was no truer way to say it.

“That shit won’t happen again,” Danny said. “Won’t go inside. Rice can’t touch the outside corner. Can ya, pumpkin?”

Adam grinned and then led his BMX down the path, under the defunct cameras wired to the trees, staring down at the boys with blind indifference. The boys followed him, with Chels at Pug’s heel. They walked inline with a certain reverence, like parishioners into a church. And why not? This place had been like their chapel.

Fenway was as it had once been. The grass was cut in swathes of short concentric circles where the weed whacker chewed the overgrowth; there was a 2x4 stud planted and painted white what looked like sixty strides from the base of an old Tee, set beside a row of flowers that had been meticulously placed and arranged like the hometeam’s logo. From the perch under the pines, the boys could see that the flowers, the wild ones they’d each taken from beyond Fenway’s arc at the deadfall, spelled LEW.

“Did you do this?” Pug asked.

“This morning.” Adam nodded. The field was perfect beneath the reddening hue of the autumn sun; a world ready for the throes of playoff baseball. It looked the way Pug had envisioned it when he first came to the clearing. During the best summer of his life.

“It’s beautiful,” Croak whispered. The Scully imitation was gone now. Replaced only by sincerity.

“It’s magic,” Adam said. “Our magic. Because that’s what we are. The four of us. And Chels.” He smiled when the dog barked, staring at him with a strange solemnity. “This place, it’s Life. It’s alive. It was always alive. For us. We made it that way. We made this place life and he…Grimwood made his place death.” Even now, when the boys stared at the trees beyond, the forest that had been so quiet and eerie, a dim stretch of world beyond the imaginary green walls of a Fenway made by the collective efforts of childhood, they could see how real that contrast truly was. How evident. And maybe they should have seen it. Maybe they always should have known.

“We can’t change anything,” Pug said.

“We’re not here to change anything,” Danny said. “We’re here to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Adam’s right, this place, our place, it was like a shield. It protected Reedy Creek. And I think that’s why we were drawn away from it. Because we had to break for this town to fall. We’ve fallen enough.” He turned and looked at the camera pointed toward them. It only cast back a beaded reflection of light. “We play for the hits we took. For grampa. For Randy. For Ange.”

“My mom,” Croak choked out before turning away for a moment. Pug only took his friend’s shoulder and squeezed it.

“We play for us. For the way we are now,” Adam finished.

The boys went out onto the field. Adam had lined up rice sacks as bases, pacing them at 90-feet or so after cutting the grass. Chels ran through the clippings, and Pug pulled out a ball from his bag and tossed it to Danny. Danny checked his fingers on the seams, snapping his wrist as he belted out a curveball in a long sweep to Adam, who caught it between his legs; Adam tossed it to Croak, who leaped and made a snag above his head, before turning to mock a double-play back to Pug with a quick flick, listening to the thwap of the ball in Pug’s mitt.

“We got Rice and Guidry. Who’re you two?” Adam asked.

“If I’m behind the plate, Mike Scioscia. If Guidry here gives me a chance at the rubber, Hershiser. Might as well show the Jew what a Dodger can do that a Yankee can’t.”

“Fuck you, Stump,” Danny jibed. He caught the ball and threw it across to Croak.

“I’m calling as Scully. And fielding as Andre Dawson. It’s only right. That’s who I was when Rice took one over the Monster.”

And introduced us to another.

Croak didn’t say this. He couldn’t. Not now. Because this wasn’t about the past. It was about them. The present. Because the future was so uncertain.

Above them a host of sparrows flew over the field toward the woods; their birdsong was idyllic, the soundtrack of the boys’ greatest memories, of waking up on summer mornings to the unburdened idea of limitless choices, of unlimited adventures. Soon more birds would follow, and though the boys would not see them, several deer and squirrels would venture into the dark woods to forage. To lay roots. To re-claim.

The forest was theirs again.

“Okay, Rice. You couldn’t do it in ’75 when the Red Machine made Fisk’s foul pole shot a bittersweet footnote, you ain’t gonna do it today either.”

Adam tapped the plate with his bat and doffed the bill of his Sox cap. “Won’t be seeing you in October this year, benchwarmer.”

“Guidry rears his ostrich leg in a kick and flings that ball like a Warner Bros. cartoon,” Croak called in Vin’s likeness.

Adam watched the ball hit wide of the outside corner, listening to the muffled thud of it inside Pug’s mitt.

“Ball,” Pug said and Danny spit in frustration.

“That hit the corner.”

“Maybe if you’d aimed a few inches inside,” Pug shot back.

“Get your eyes checked, fat boy!”

“Fix your talent, Christ-Killer.”

“Some interesting back and forth here, folks, not fit for this broadcast with young viewers,” Scully called with a chuckle.

“Okay, Guidry. You know I ain’t looking for the outside shit. Challenge me inside.” Adam tapped the plate again and then knocked his sneakers with the barrel of the bat.

Danny wound up and threw again. Adam clenched and swung. Danny closed his eyes when he heard the contact. Because you could hear it. Every time. A pitcher just knew. He threw down his glove against his thigh as Croak watched that ball arc up.

“It’s going, it’s going…”

Pug shielded his eyes to watch as Adam started trotting up the basepath. Childhood was about these moments. About pretending a field was Fenway. About pretending you were actually Jim Rice or Ron Guidry. About seeing the possibilities. Soon that world would fade. And the boys all knew it. Soon childhood would disappear to maturity; it would happen gradually, and without mercy, and as it did the boys would remember only the briefest glimpses of what made them so special. But they would always remember the summer of baseball. They would always remember the field they’d turned into something more. They would always remember grampa, and they would always remember each other. Even when life pulled them apart. Because this place, Reedy Creek, made them magic while they were still willing to believe. In the end that made all the difference.

“Forget it.”

THE END

February 15, 2017