Breaking the Fall by Michael Cadnum Page A

better, but I was happy to be back in this diminished—duller but more real, and safer—game.
    The aluminum bat made that sour boink . The machine was set for eighty miles an hour and finally I was lining into the cage, making the steel poles hum. But too many of the pitches still kissed the bat and sprang upward, or spun at my feet.
    The label on the bat said that it was made of aircraft-quality aluminum. The machine made that whine, that tick , and fired another ball out of its cannon. Eighty miles an hour. Fast, but not incredible.
    Far away, Jared was sitting on the stands, a tiny figure. I let the head of the bat drop to the dirt. I flexed my shoulders. Let him watch, I thought.
    Let him sit there watching all he wants. I don’t care anymore.
    A ball hummed past me, unchallenged.
    I opened my stance just a little, whipped my bat out to meet the cannon fire, and the next couple of pitches sang on a straight line.
    Other players were waiting, and Tu was there, hands on his hips, too big for baseball, too easygoing to play any sport, but right where he belonged.
    â€œHit it with the bat, Stanley,” called Tu, and none of the other players joined Tu in mocking me. They all understood that something had changed. I belonged, somehow, to Tu, and he had the right, in a subtle way that cost me no further effort, to tease me and at the same time would step in to protest any catcall from anyone else. “Hit the ball with the bat,” he called.
    The scuffed grass was covered with old baseballs, scratched, gouged. Too many of them lay behind me, untouched. The aluminum shaft had grown heavy, and my grip was clammy. I could feel the cigarettes, too, a tightness in my chest.
    The coach arrived and hung on the chain-link the way a gibbon might, all arm and torso. I could tell by the way he watched that my swing was not what it should be.
    I chopped at a pitch from the machine and the ball hummed, springing against the cage behind me.
    I knew it was coming. “North,” the coach said. “Get out of there.” But only after he had assessed me for a while, only after I had done well with some pitches, and not so well with others.
    The coach and I walked into center field. Jared was a speck, unmoving. Looking on.
    â€œEat more, North. Jesus. You’re getting skinnier every day.”
    I knew this was impossible, but I did not respond.
    â€œIt’s not a matter of desire.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. He wouldn’t look at me. “Desire is not the issue.”
    â€œA lot of shortstops aren’t that muscular.” I said this in a rotten little voice, with a catch in it. I gritted my teeth.
    He looked at the ground, at the toe of his shoe. He looked out at the stands, where no one was sitting this late in the day, except for one distant figure. “Sure,” he said at last, as though answering a question that had taken all his powers of memory and calculation. Then he looked at me. “Heart,” he said. “You used to have a lot of that, before you got hurt. I think that torn ligament took more out of you than you think.”
    I stared at him, and had one of those moments when you really see someone. Beloved Coach Peoples, who had been on television when he retired, had left the baseball program with the best record in northern California. A combination of weird weather—it never rained this late in the spring—and beginner’s bad luck had shaken this new coach, who was really a biology teacher.
    He continued, “Some people, the first time they get hurt, it really changes them. Sometimes the change isn’t to the good.”
    He got extra money for standing here like this, but he had dandruff in his black hair and wrinkles under his eyes, just a little puffiness, as though he drank or couldn’t sleep or both. Every racial and ethnic group on campus had wanted a coach who would represent their own group. Coach O’Brien was