announces.
The baseball team
should meet in the gym.
Make a circle, Coach says,
tossing fourteen
dirty, ripped, partially split
baseballs into the center.
Everybody grab a baseball;
we’re going to take a peek inside.
It isn’t easy,
but I pull off the leather cover.
Inside is a layer of thin twine.
Beneath that are layers
and layers of wool yarn
specked with small pieces
of red thread.
Start unraveling, Coach Robeson says.
Roll the ball if that makes it easier.
It’s hard not to laugh
as the yarn unrolls
and the unwrapped baseballs
zoom in every direction.
I’m careful to keep my baseball
away from Rob,
but he isn’t paying attention
to me anyway.
He and some of the other guys
have gotten themselves
all twisted and tangled.
Only my baseball unwinds
in a solitary path
across the gleaming gym floor.
When yards and yards of yarn
are unfurled,
small rubber balls
start bouncing everywhere.
Coach Robeson watches for a while
and then calls for everyone
to settle down in a circle again.
How many of you think
you’ve reached the heart of the ball? he asks.
All fourteen hands
shoot into the air.
You haven’t. Coach Robeson laughs.
If you cut deeper, you’d find
the black rubber piece
is just another protective layer.
Inside that is the heart of the ball,
a small molded core of cork.
Coach Robeson talks about
the baseball’s design and
how it helps us to hit farther.
Sometimes it’s useful
to open things up
and have a closer look.
Sometimes it helps
to understand why things
work the way they do.
I don’t think dissecting
a baseball is going to make
me play better or
understand anything better,
but I put all the broken pieces
in my pocket.
Thursday night,
the elevator feeling
is there again
but fainter this time.
Dad comes home early.
We eat quickly—
no dessert—
so we can arrive on time.
When we get there,
Jeff is standing
in front of the room
talking about oranges.
He is asking everyone
to sign a petition
so the government
will do a study
on vets who ate oranges
and got sick.
Dad whispers in my ear,
Agent Orange is a chemical.
It was used to destroy
forests and crops in Vietnam,
but now
it’s making soldiers sick.
I’m glad no one can read my mind.
Agent Orange,
not regular oranges,
a chemical,
not a fruit that soldiers ate.
I wonder if anyone here
ever sprayed Agent Orange on
any of the plants I touched,
any of the places I walked,
any of the people I loved.
When Jeff finishes talking,
all the vets who can
scrape their chairs into a circle.
The ones who can’t—
who have withered hands
or clumsy wheelchairs
with wheels that won’t turn—
are brought into the circle
by the stronger ones.
No one is left out.
Dad and I push back our chairs,
and Chris uses his good hand
to move his wheelchair next to us.
Then the vets and visitors
go around the circle
spilling stories.
Not everyone talks,
but the ones who do
talk a lot,
like an opened fire hydrant
gushing words and tears
instead of water.
Anybody here figured out a way
to turn it off?
Joe, the guy who is talking,
wears a T-shirt that says
box of rain.
He has a red bandanna
wrapped around his forehead, and
his hair is wild and bushy.
He looks like a caveman in a T-shirt.
He looks like he should have a deep,
booming voice, but instead
he sounds hollow,
like a wounded lamb.
I see their faces everywhere, he says,
I hear their screamin’ and their cryin’,
Help me. I don’t want to die.
His voice gets quiet.
I wiped the blood and grime off his face.
I told him he wasn’t gonna die,
to just hang on ’cause he wasn’t
gonna die. I told him the Dustoff’d
be comin’ soon, even though I knew
no Dustoff was gonna find us
in that mud hole.
He was gonna die
right there in my arms.
I knew it, and he knew it,
but we kept holdin’ on,
pretendin’ we could hold on forever.
He knew he was dying, we both knew.
He was already gone when
I took him in my arms,
but we both kept holdin’ on.
Pretendin’. I’m still pretendin’.
For the rest of my life, I’ll be pretendin’.
How ya doing? they ask,
and I say,
Okay, man,
even though I’m not.
I’m not okay,
and I’m never gonna be okay again.
I just don’t get it, how they don’t see my
insides hangin’ out, when it’s all I can do
to put these feelings into words
because words don’t mean
a thing.
There was a silent pause,
a pausa di breve,
like a caesura,
the railroad mark
on the top line of the staff,
telling us to stop,
to wait,
not to rush through.
Music is soothing.
Music is not like words.
Words are messy.
Words spill out
like splattered blood,
oozing in every direction,
leaving stains
that won’t come out
no matter how hard you scrub.
But not music.
Even when it’s so loud
you can’t hear anything else,
music lulls you to sleep.
Right now,
I need music.
Someone else starts talking,
pulling me out of my mind,
pulling me back to the room
beyond the staircase,
behind the janitor’s closet,
where words are spilling
and splattering in every direction.
If I close my eyes,
I can still smell the stench,
this vet says.
I can still see the children
running toward us,
explosives strapped on their
backs, running toward us,
&nbs
p; and then dropping like
scarecrows.
I can still hear them scream.
His shoulders heave.
Jeff puts his arm around him
but doesn’t say anything.
Nobody says anything,
but the silence is like
a warm blanket
we wrap around him.
That night,
it’s hard to sleep.
I wonder what Jeff
and Joe
and Chris would say
if they knew
my story,
if I broke open
the circle
and told them.
What would Dad say?
And my mother?
Would she still ask
me to watch Tommy
while she made dinner?
Or would she
pick him up
and push me away?
Coach Robeson isn’t at practice
on Monday.
Coach Louis starts us off
with a jog around the field.
Is Coach Robeson coming?
Drew asks.
Everyone laughs.
Drew hates to run.
If Coach Robeson isn’t coming,
he’ll slow his pace.
Maybe we’ll run some extra laps
before we practice our batting,
Coach Louis says
and doesn’t even smile.
Coach Robeson isn’t at practice
Tuesday or Wednesday.
When he comes to the field
Thursday, he looks different,
thinner and tired.
He waves us over, and we sit
on the bleachers.
Sorry I haven’t been here, boys.
You know I’d never miss a practice
if I could help it.
He takes a deep breath and coughs
into a big white handkerchief.
I’m afraid I need to take
a break for a while—
Nobody says anything and
Coach takes another deep breath.
He looks at us a long moment,
his tired eyes taking each of us in
and holding us.
I’ve had this cough that just wouldn’t
go away—so I finally had it checked.
He clears his throat.
Turns out I need to have an operation
and then some treatments.
The treatments might
make me sick, so I’ve gotta
give up coaching for a while.
Don’t worry, I’m looking into
getting someone else
to take my place.
Someone you’ll really learn from.
I hope I’ll be back.
I can’t promise you,
but I’m hoping.
Coach coughs
into his handkerchief again
and blots both his eyes.
Continue to play your best because
whether I’m on the field or not,
I’ll be rooting for you.
Before he leaves,
he looks at me and nods.
I hope it’s not good-bye.
At the dinner table,
I ask Dad how a person
can be so sick
and not look sick at all.
Some cancers are sneaky.
They’re silent and invisible.
They creep up on you
and invade so deep on the inside
that no one on the outside
even knows the cancer’s there
until it’s too late.
My mother stirs the soup
and ladles it into my bowl.
Some cancers can be cured
if they’re caught early, she says,
as if cancer were a tossed ball
and if you catch it on a fly,
there’s no chance of death
scoring a run.
Maybe Coach can still
beat it, but it sounds
like the bases
are loaded against him.
What can we do?
All we can do is show him
how much we care, she says.
How about throwing him a dinner
at the Pavilion? I ask.
My mother pauses,
then smiles.
I’ll call Mrs. Brennan.
We’ll see what we can do.
Fire in the darkness
blood
pounding rain
and smoke.
The smell of burning.
I’m sinking in mud.
Help! Someone help me,
please!
Eyes are watching.
Waiting.
I can’t follow,
something binds my legs.
My arms are heavy,
someone groans—
Matt, Matt, wake up.
You’re having a nightmare.
I sit up in bed,
sweaty and scared.
He brings me a glass of cold water.
She touches my face.
Her hands are soft and cool.
I close my eyes
and lie back down.
I listen.
We have found you and we love you.
You will never be alone.
I will sing to you of morning,
I will stay until it’s light.
I will sing to you of laughter
on the other side of night.
Across the street
from Rosie O’s Pizza Planet
is the Pavilion.
The Pavilion is a big,
blue marble building.
Different size rooms
surround a huge indoor fountain.
All the sports dinners
and school graduations,
all the parties and proms
are at the Pavilion.
A lot of business people
go there too.
It’s the fanciest place
in town.
Unless we want to wait,
there’s only one
for Coach Robeson.
We don’t want to wait.
On Friday night, we invite him
to the Pavilion’s Green Room.
At dinner while we
eat our salad,
Rob’s father, Mr. Brennan,
stands at a podium
in the front of the room.
The podium is set up
at the top of three
wide red-carpeted stairs
so everyone can see.
Rob’s father is telling us
how great Coach Robeson is,
what a wonderful role model,
how much we’ll all miss him.
The program won’t be the same
without him, he says.
I pick at the pale lettuce
and red onion circles.
I stack the green peppers
in the middle
like a vegetable volcano.
Why is he talking like
Coach Robeson is
already dead?
Mr. Brennan says
we shouldn’t wait
to thank people
for the good they do.
He doesn’t want
another moment to go by
without thanking Coach Robeson
for all the good
he’s done.
He looks at Coach
and starts to tell a story
about Rob’s brother, but his voice
begins to quaver.
He just stands there
trying to talk and stopping
until Coach gets up
and climbs the stairs to the podium.
Mr. Brennan and Coach Robeson
look at each other a minute,
shake hands, and then
pull ea
ch other into a hug.
Mr. Brennan leaves the podium,
and Mrs. Brennan squeezes
through the tables to meet him.
They lean into each other and
Mrs. Brennan buries her head
in Mr. Brennan’s shoulder.
They walk back to their table
like some lost
two-headed creature.
I look over at Rob.
He’s slouched in his chair,
wiping his eyes
with the sleeve of his shirt.
He glares at me
when he sees me look at him
and straightens up again
when his parents sit down.
Coach Robeson
thanks everyone
for their kind words,
their thoughts,
and their prayers.
Behind the podium
Coach looks smaller
than he ever did
in the gym
or on the field.
It’s like he’s already
disappearing.
I play with
my Russian lava dressing,
hiding the onions
underneath the lettuce,
trying to keep the lava
from oozing out.
Dad taps me on the shoulder
to listen.
Facing cancer
is the toughest thing
I’ve ever done, Coach says.
But it’s not half as tough
as what some of you have faced.
Not half as tough
as sending your kids off to war.
The real role models
are Ray and Chris,
Sam and AJ,
kids who graduated
from high school
and put off going to college
to fight in a war,
especially a war
that’s been so divisive.
Kids who gave up their youth—
and for some, their lives.
Then Coach quickly
changes the subject
and starts talking
about cancer.
Most of the time grown-ups
talk to other grown-ups,
but I can tell that Coach
is talking to us,
to the kids on his team.
I’ll lick this disease if I can,
he says,
but I can’t promise you I will.
Still, you’ve gotta play your best
even if you’re losing.
You’ve always gotta give it
your best shot.