Force Out (3 page)

The dream was a release valve for all the horror he kept tucked away in the back drawers of his mind. The horror of life without baseball, life after baseball, the day it would all come to an end. He never wanted it to end. Joey wanted to go on and on, high school, college, the pros, maybe even one of those senior leagues. He couldn't imagine life without playing baseball, but in the dark shadows that specter lurked, and so . . . the dream.

He lay for a long time in the dark, the dinosaurs still glowing, until finally, he turned on the light and cracked his book
The Shortstop Who Knew Too Much
. He yawned, then read until he found himself going over and over the same sentence. The fifth time, he shut off the light and fell back to sleep.

When his clock alarm went off at eight o'clock, it ripped him from a deep slumber. He forced his heavy limbs out of the bed and yawned. Exhaustion weighed him down, and he was miserable at the feeling and dreading the effect it might have on his performance.

He removed his phone from its charger and powered it up, knowing that by now, the field trip either was going on as planned or not and that Zach surely would have texted him. The phone glowed and the screen changed and beeped.

He had a new message and he opened it.

u did it!!!!
☺

u shldv seen Mr K's face

when he finally got there

train was PULLIN OUT

lol!!! c u at the game!

Joey did laugh out loud, and some of his weariness fell away. He texted Zach back.

v for victory!

He brushed his teeth and changed into his uniform. Downstairs, his mother sat at the kitchen table reading the paper while his father made omelets. Even the scent of eggs, onions, ham, and butter cooking in the pan couldn't overcome the permanent smell of glass cleaner and the floor cleaner his mom used to make their kitchen eternally spotless.

“Ham and cheese?” His father pointed at Joey with the spatula. “You look tired.”

“Just no onions, please. Couldn't sleep.” Joey slumped down at the table and sipped the glass of orange juice waiting for him.

Pork Chop, the orange cat, shrieked in the next room and blazed through the kitchen on his way to hide in the laundry room near the stairs. Martin, unseen, giggled uncontrollably.

Joey's mom looked out over the edge of her paper. “No, no, Marty. Leave kitty alone. I'm not gonna tell you again, sweetie pie. Hello, Joey. Ready for the big game?”

Before he could answer, she was back behind the paper.

“Why do you keep telling him you won't tell him again, but you always do? I hope Pork Chop bites him.”

The paper snapped down. “Good things happen to
good
people, Joey.”

Joey hated when she said that. It made him think about sneaking out of the house and Mr. Kratz's clamped fuel line. It hadn't occurred to him before, but now he wondered if he might have committed some kind of a crime. As a police officer, his mother would know, but he wasn't going there. Two years ago, he asked her about a “friend” who had some firecrackers and whether or not setting them off at the bus stop was a crime, and she marched him right up to his room and made him cough them up. She was too smart and too suspicious.

“Guilty conscience?” His mother was staring at him.

Joey forced a laugh and dodged her eyes. “For what?”

“What were you doing last night wandering around?”

“I couldn't sleep. I told you.”

His mother made a noise, nodded her head, and went back to the paper. “The truth always comes out.”

She didn't say it as a threat but as the way you'd observe the color of the sky. Joey looked at the paper and the top of her blond head, just visible above the headline about some baseball player's $250 million contract extension. That's where he wanted to be, the big leagues, the big money. Wasn't what he'd done worth that? One day, maybe he'd look back on today and see it as the beginning of it all, and he could tell some writer from
ESPN The Magazine
that he was inspired by the sports headline his mother was reading at the breakfast table the day he won his first championship game.

“Excuse me, buddy.”

Joey looked up and removed his arms from the table so his father could slide the omelet out of the pan and onto his plate.

“Thanks, Dad.” Joey ate in silence until Martin walked in with a fistful of cat poop dressed in clay chips from the litter box.

“Here, Joey.” Martin slapped the cat poop onto the table next to Joey's orange juice glass and laughed his head off.

“Oh my gosh! Mom!” Joey leaped away from the table, choking and gagging vomit back down.

His mom spoke in the happy singsong voice of a children's TV show host. “No, no, Marty. Poopy is dirty. Let's wash your handsies.”

She took Martin by the wrist. “Come on, we're going upstairs to change your clothesies. Joey, clean that up, okay? No, no litter box, Marty. Litter box no, no. Kitty poop bad.”

Martin let their mom lead him by the wrist but not without looking back to wave at Joey with his pooped-up hand. Joey had to work hard not to gag as he pinched the poop in a napkin and buried it in the garbage can under the sink. Joey's father held his nose and looked away, also squeamish over poop on the table. His father attacked the table with a spray cleaner, paper towels, and rubber gloves.

Joey washed his hands thoroughly and returned to his seat. He looked down at his omelet, not hungry, and thinking that no sleep and no breakfast was a terrible combination for winning a championship. He forced himself to cut off a bite and chew it, then swallow. Steam curled up from the melted cheese, and a pink corner of ham poked free from the egg, which somehow mildly disgusted him. It went down, but not easily. He managed three more bites before giving up and putting his plate in the sink.

His father looked up from the egg-white spinach omelet he was cooking for Joey's mom and watched his creation hit the trash. “Don't worry. I understand. I'm not hungry now either.”

“I swear, he's a mental case.” Joey spoke low in case his mom came back into the kitchen.

“He does act a little like your uncle.”

“Is that why mom babies him so much?”

Martin was named after his mom's dead brother, and the similarities between them often generated remarks and—in his mom's case—tears. Although, from what Joey could tell, his uncle Martin—whom he'd never known—was a kind and timid soul and his little brother was nothing of the sort. But the red hair, big round face, and bright blue eyes reminded his mother of the much younger brother she adored.

“I think she babies him because he's the baby.”

“I thought when I was three I was already helping clear the table.”

His father set the spatula down on the counter and gave Joey's shoulder a soft punch. “You've always been ahead of your age. Look at how you play baseball.”

Joey felt a hot bun of pride in his chest.

The sound of his mother's voice chilled it quickly.

“Joey. Do you want to tell me about this?”

Joey turned to see his mom standing in the entrance to the kitchen, arms folded, and a serious scowl on her face.

His mother spoke in her singsong voice. “I said to myself, ‘This medicine cabinet was closed, now it's open. Who'd open it? What did he want?'”

She unfolded her arms and revealed a small prescription pill bottle that he knew came from the left side of the medicine chest. He recognized it, because he'd been into it. It was the secret ingredient he'd crushed up into the meatballs he'd fed Daisy, feeling entirely clever.

“Don't look at me that way.” A storm brewed in her icy blue eyes and her long blond hair made her look like some woman Viking warrior. “I had five; now there's only
four
. You better tell me right this second, Joseph.

“Did you take one of my pills?”

There was a time to bend the truth, and even a time to lie when you really had to. Now was the time for bending. He had to fall on his sword and give her something to react to. A denial would be the most foolish thing on the planet. A full confession? That just wasn't going to happen. And, while he might have been too stupid to remember whether he'd found the cabinet door slightly ajar or tightly shut, he wasn't stupid enough to spill the beans and give her the whole story.

He took a quick breath, kept his chin up and, with his mind still processing the information and sifting through the possibilities, he said, “I took one.”

“You
took
one? You just took one?” Her face twisted in disbelief. “My medicine for a migraine, a prescription drug, and you
took
one?”

“I'm sorry.”

His mom threw a fierce glance at Joey's father, as if he were somehow part of the problem. “Of course you're sorry. Who wouldn't be sorry for committing a crime?”

The answer came to him. It wasn't perfect, but it just might save him. “Mom, I couldn't sleep. I had to get to sleep. Today's the championship.”

The $250 million headline ran through his mind, but that was a stretch too far to get into now. He knew he had to be short, to the point, and convincing, because his mom would give him a chance to explain—she was a fair person—but he better make it good because she was also a cop.

“If we win, Mom, Coach Barrett gets to name two players to the all-star team—it's automatic.” He spoke fast, using his hands for emphasis. “If we win today, Zach and me will both get spots on the all-star team. Then we'll get to try out for the Center State select team. I know we will. We're the best players around. Mom, if I make that, I get to travel around the entire world this summer. Europe, Asia, Australia, even South America, and you know you always say that traveling and seeing other places and people is such an important part of education and you always talk about how you traveled with the national volleyball team and all those stories and . . .”

That was it. His time was up and he knew it by her look. Now she'd think about it and make a decision. It was one of those cruel moments in life where so many good things could go his way if only another person would make a small, harmless decision in his favor. He thought about everything he'd done, the clever and even a little dangerous plan of sabotaging Mr. Kratz's pickup and how the plan had actually worked! And now, because he had left the medicine cabinet open half an inch, she might take it all away. It was awful, and he tried in vain to read her face.

Finally, she took a breath and let it out through her nose. That meant nothing either way to him, but she opened her mouth and he knew he was about to get the verdict.

She spoke calmly, maybe a good sign, but he wasn't sure. “Joey, travel and different experiences and people are wonderful opportunities if they come our way, and I know how important this game and the all-stars and that select team are to you . . . but taking someone else's medicine is just wrong. You do that, you have to pay the price. Every action has its consequences, good and bad.”

Joey's stomach flopped and he felt like he was falling through space.

“Up to your room. No baseball game today.”

Joey looked at his dad, begging with his eyes, then to his mom. “Mom,
please
.”

She shook her head. Martin appeared and even he knew better than to speak, so he just held her leg like a tree trunk and stuck a thumb in his mouth.

Like an angel from heaven, Joey's father cleared his throat. “Marsha.”

She held up a hand to stop that traffic. “Don't Marsha me.”

“I think you need to hear what I have to say before you make any final decisions. Joey makes a point, but he didn't make the most important point.”

Joey's mom glared at his dad. They stood about the same height, and even though Joey's dad played the big three in high school, he didn't have much of a size advantage on her, if any, when it came to his arms and shoulders, and he certainly wasn't as intimidating. He was simply too calm and quiet. Still, he was no pushover.

“I told you from the start I wasn't going to marry someone who spent his time helping the bad guys I put in jail to go free. I meant it then, and I mean it now,” his mother said.

Joey knew the story. His father had been a criminal defense lawyer for a legal clinic when he met Joey's mom, and he really did leave the clinic and take a job at a law firm doing real estate closings in order to win her over. Sometimes Joey wondered if his father regretted it, although he never would ask.

“This is our son we're talking about,” his father said, putting on a scowl of his own, “and he deserves some justice.”

“Justice? He took a
Valium
. That's a
crime
. Are you kidding me, Jim? Justice?”

Joey's father held up a hand of his own but stayed calm. “Don't raise your voice. I know you're the judge and the jury. Just let me speak my piece and I'll support your verdict, whether I like it or not.”

Joey's mom eyed him suspiciously. Her hand strayed down to stroke Martin's head. “Okay, if you agree my decision is final, go ahead.”

Joey's dad turned to him. “Joey, did you ever take a Valium before?”

“No, Dad.” Joey was horrified. His father was supposed to be helping him.

“Think.”

“Dad.” Joey was nearly in tears. “I don't use drugs.”

“Well, we all use drugs. The question here is whether it was authorized or not, and whether or not there's a precedent.”

“Precedent?” Joey's mom rolled her eyes. “Be serious, Jim.”

“I am being serious.” His father's face softened. “Honey, do you remember when we flew to Hawaii?”

“What's vacation got to do with—” Joey's mom stopped short, then shook her head. “Oh no, no you don't, Jim Riordan. That was completely different. I gave him
half
a pill and
I
gave it to him, his mother.”