No Runs, No Hits, No Errors
Chapter 21
On Friday the storm was gone.
The sky was brilliant blue again, and the river birds were boisterous as they
relieved their pent-up tension trying to out-sing each other.
Kathleen with a lump in her
throat and a pain in her stomach stood on Harry's deck and looked across the
St. Dupre valley. The river was brown with mud and was roiling under her feet,
but at least it was back in its banks. The road below Harry's house was washed
out. The flowery meadow where the children had played a week before was
drenched and bedraggled, splotched with pools and caked with debris.
But no matter, Kathleen assured
herself, nature always healed herself. The valley was damaged but in no time at
all there would be new grass in the meadow and Harry's house was as solid as
ever on its rock above the tumult below. The road would be repaired, and life
would go on.
She poured herself a glass of
juice and nibbled at a bagel. She held her cell phone in her hand, and checked
it repeatedly to ensure that it was fully powered and able to receive a signal.
When she hadn't heard from Harry by nine, she called her father. He told her
that Colleen had dropped the kids off and she and Jack were at the police
station trying to locate Harry. Byron wished Kathleen could come down the
mountain and help him with the kids---they were too wild for him. Kathleen told
him to call Lettie if he needed help. The road wasn't passable, at least not
without four wheel drive, so she was stuck at Kenwood for the time being.
She hung up. She didn't mind
being at Kenwood---lately it had seemed like heaven on earth to her, but that was
when Harry was there too. She felt Belle's cold, wet nose on her hand. She
reached down and petted Harry's dog, then she knelt beside her and laid her
cheek on the dog's back and willed herself not to cry.
At ten Kathleen's cell phone
rang. It was Jack. His voice was distant and hollow as he told Kathleen that
the Boulder Sheriff Department had found Harry's car. It had gone off the road
in Clear Creek Canyon, not thirty miles from Juniper Hills. Harry and Maggie
must have been on their way home. Harry's car had skidded down the steep
embankment and had turned upside down in the water. It had come to rest between
two boulders about a hundred yards downstream from where it had slid off the
road. Rocks in the road just before the skid marks told why the car had
swerved. Both doors to the car were open. No bodies were found. Everything in
the car had been washed away. The Sheriffs Department was searching the river,
but it was so high from all the rain...
Kathleen quietly dropped the
phone into the river below her, went into the house, walked upstairs, and
closed herself inside Harry's bedroom clothes closet. She turned off the light
and buried herself in the fabric that was Harry. She felt him and smelled in
the flannel shirts he wore fishing in the fall. She lost herself in the cotton
t-shirts he wore to softball practice and to the gym. She rubbed her hands over
his wool sweaters, scratchy and knobby, and pressed them against her cheek. She
held to her chest the silk pajamas she had gleefully discovered on the second
night they spent together. She cried into his tuxedo and sobbed into his
leather jacket. She made a bed of gabardine and gortex and felt him kiss her
and love her as she stroked his suede and caressed his cashmere. She fell
asleep in the arms of his sweatshirts and basked in his love as she drifted in
and out of consciousness.
A scratching on the door
followed by a meek whimper brought her back to reality and she climbed out of
the tumble of clothes that had shrouded her grief. She was awake and Belle was
hungry.
Kathleen opened the closet door,
and Belle licked her hand again and looked up at Kathleen with mournful eyes.
Kathleen fed her and then she stopped and stupidly looked about the kitchen,
disoriented. She saw Harry's phone by the refrigerator. She picked it up. It
was dead. Of course, it was dead. The storm had knocked out the phone lines .
Only cell phones were still working in the St. Dupre valley.
She looked around for her cell
phone and then dully remembered that she had dropped it into the river. She
wished she had dropped herself into the river along with the phone. She leaned
against the kitchen counter, her stomach churning and her now dry eyes hot and
burning as she stared into an empty future, a world without Harry, a life
without end, an existence without joy. She wanted nothing more than to join the
mad river below the rock that held Harry's house aloft over it and search for
him in the ravines and along the muddy banks of the waters that had claimed
him. She knew that her spirit would find his, would seek his out, and once
together they would travel as one on the currents around the world, and up into
the clouds, and back into the lakes. They would fall as snow. They would be
mist and steam and thunderclouds and showers. They would pelt the rain forests
and drown the forest fires. They would live forever.
She pushed herself away from the
counter and staggered outside onto the deck. She knew that Belle was following
her, nudging her hand, begging for affection, but Kathleen had no room in her
emptiness for Harry's dog. Jack had given Belle to Harry three Christmases ago,
but she had dropped Jack's words into the river. She had hung up on him.
Kathleen wanted to talk to Jack
now. She wanted to tell him how it felt to be dying inside, knowing that he was
dying inside too. She wanted to hold him and feel him shake with grief so that
she could too. She thought about driving down to Jack and Colleen's house and
she started to go inside to find her keys but was stopped by the sight of a
blue heron flying up the valley. It was absolutely beautiful, a question mark
against the sky, an arched, elongated elegant spirit. Harry had told her that
herons were harbingers and river guides and she must look for visitors whenever
one came up the valley.
Kathleen decided to wait for
Jack. She knew he would come and tell her when he had found Harry. And find
Harry Jack would. Jack would never let Search and Rescue leave Harry at the
bottom of Clear Creek, his strong, tanned, beautiful body broken and drowned.
She went in to the bathroom and quietly vomited into the sink. Then she wiped
her mouth and rinsed. She wanted Harry to be proud of her, even like this.
Kathleen went back out onto the
deck and looked across the river to the battered road. She looked up at Ruby
Mountain, its forest fresh-washed and glistening in the sun. How could Nature
kill her favorite son? Surely Ruby should be crying that her champion, the one
who loved her best, was no more. How often had Harry climbed the mountain that
rose up out of his front yard---a dozen times or more, at least?
Was Harry up there now, looking
down on her, waiting for her, sending her kisses, and making sure she behaved
herself and wasn't selfish or arrogant or mean or lazy? At the thought, she
collapsed again in tears, and sank to the deck, and lay there bathed in the
warm August sun until Belle came once more and licked her face. Then she sat
up, and this time when she looked across the river and down the road, she saw a
car---a red car---Jack's red Jeep was creeping up the road, picking its way over
the ruts and through the gullies. The time had come. Jack had come to tell her
the worst.
She watched him pull into mud
pit that had been Harry's driveway. She watched him get out of the car and
watched as he ran his fingers through his shock of black hair, making it stand
on end. He looked up at the house and saw her on the deck. He raised his arm and
saluted her in the same friendly, bantering way that Harry had.
For an instant, Kathleen thought that Jack was Harry. They looked so much
alike. The same black hair. The same body. The same steady gaze. She wondered,
watching Jack walk toward her, the grief on his face mirroring that in her
heart, whether they would ever be able to love the sun again. Surely it should
be raining. Surely Harry should be raining down on them. She walked down the
deck stairs and folded Jack in her arms and cradled him as he crumpled in
grief. Colorado Search and Rescue had found his beloved brother, two miles
downriver from where his car had skidded in a rockslide and slid into eternity.
By week's end, Kathleen and Jack
had buried Harry atop Ruby Mountain. Now and forever he would be able to look
down over the valley he loved and watch over his house, the one he had jauntily
built on a rock, cocksure that no river would ever sweep it away.
Kathleen and Bob Martin buried
an urn containing Maggie's ashes under home plate at the Juniper Hills ball
field where Maggie had soared to glory in the Park-n-Rec slow pitch league.
Kathleen wrote to the umpire school in Pensacola explaining that Maggie
wouldn't be fulfilling her dream of becoming a major league official after all,
and she sent a donation on behalf of the K-B-K Trojans for their scholarship
fund.
At the end of August, Kathleen left Juniper Hills for Albuquerque. She took Belle with her as well as her softball glove. She figured that she might hook up with a slow pitch team on campus. She wondered whether there might be someplace in Albuquerque where she could play night golf. She knew that she would need to howl at the moon for years, maybe forever.
Epilogue
Slanting golden light shimmered
as the summer evening lengthened and deepened the soft green shadows of the
ball field. Kathleen sat for a moment in her car and savored the beauty of the
scene. Then a shout went up, rousing Kathleen from her reverie. She hurriedly
grabbed her scorebook and walked over to the stands.
She sat down next to Lettie
Bridges.
"Did I miss much?" she
asked.
"Just the first
inning," Lettie answered, giving Kathleen a quick hug and then turning
back to the game.
The pitcher lofted the ball, and
a little dark-haired batter swung and missed. Kathleen shielded her eyes from
the sun and squinted to see which runners were on base. The girl on second base
waved to her. Kathleen blew her a kiss in reply.
Kathleen and the other parents
watched the little girls valiantly trying to hit, throw, catch, and run.
Between innings, her daughter Kellie, the little girl who had waved from second
base, ran up and out of the dugout and hugged Kathleen, burying her head in
Kathleen's soft blouse.
Connie Martinez joined Kathleen
and Lettie in the stands of the ball field at the Riverdale Boys and Girls
Club. After Harry's funeral, Kathleen had given Connie the money she had raised
for a grassy playground and a gym floor. Connie had named the playground the
Harry Kinsley Memorial Field. Ten years later, the field was pristine. Thick
lush grass now grew where Harry had once coached the Riverdale boys surrounded
by weeds and broken bottles and grime.
Kathleen's husband, Kellie's
father, Gabe Garcia, the man she had ditched because she thought he talked
sports too much, coached their daughter's team. Carly, one of the little girls
to whom Kathleen taught origami in an effort to inspire her and the others to
make their own luck instead of merely watching it dissipate, was on the
Riverdale High softball team. Luis was an intern in the law office where
Kathleen had just made partner, and Manuel was working three jobs trying to
save money for college.
After getting her masters in art
history, Kathleen had gone to Matthew Dixon and demanded his help in getting
into law school so that she could become a children's advocate in the
courtroom. He had been more than happy to continue to have her in his debt, he
had told her with a smile. She asked him if she could join him and Jack for a
little night golf. He told her she didn't need to play night golf to howl at
the moon.
In the third inning, Jack and
Colleen showed up to watch Kellie's game.
"How are they doing so
far?" Jack asked, as they settled into the stands.
"No runs, no hits, no
errors," Lettie replied.
"What does that mean,
anyway," Kathleen asked, turning to her brother-in-law.
"It means nothing's
happened," Jack explained. "Nobody's scored, nobody's gotten on base,
and nobody's made any mistakes. In other words, nothing worth noting has
happened."
"So the game, thus far, has
been a waste of time?" Kathleen commented dryly.
"Oh no, Kathleen, it's playing that matters. Giving it your all. Being out there on the field. Sweating, cheering, getting your knees dirty, coming up fighting. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Runs, hits, errors---they're just bookkeeping. The game really happens between the white spaces on the score card."
The End
©
2004 Copyright held by the author.