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j o h n
s h e a
PROTECTING THE PLATE
Untitled by Jerry C. Smith © 2014 tanding by the yellow kitchen telephone, cradling the receiver precariously between her jaw and shoulder, Anita gazed through the window onto the back alley. She was drying a pair of forks while watching her husband Stuart and their six-year-old son Brendan play ball. “Of course we’re going,” she was saying, making her words ring with conviction. “Stuart wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She smiled. It was an attractive smile, the smile of a woman halfway between thirty and forty who has retained her youthful good looks. “Sometimes I think he loves playing softball more than anything else. . . . It would take more than Old Billy-Boy’s hypocritical bleating to keep him away.” A yell drew her attention back to the alley, where Brendan
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was hurrying, flailing arm and legs, toward a makeshift first base. But before he got there, Stuart swooped down and tagged him with the plastic Wiffle ball. “Out!” “What? Oh, a casserole, I suppose,” said Anita, turning away from the window. She was not pleased to see her husband take the little practice game with such apparent seriousness. “I hope Mrs. Billy-Boy brings her key lime pie; it’s the only thing Stuart has ever mentioned kindly about that family.” She heard her husband’s voice drowning out Brendan’s protests. She frowned. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said into the receiver, a bit vague about what she had just heard. “See you, then. And tell Joe to oil his glove tonight. We don’t want any excuses.” After hanging up the phone, she rested both hands on the windowsill and
stared out at Stuart and Brendan. With his oversized red plastic bat, the boy cut a comical figure. He stood leaning over slightly, the bat upright and still. (“No extra motion! No wasted energy!” her husband would say.) His face was solemn. Then, when Stuart delivered the pitch, he would take one graceful step, whip the bat around, and send a line drive up the middle. At least, that was the ideal. As she watched, Brendan swung at a pitch in on the hands and popped it up only a few yards from the plate. “Brendan, was that a decent pitch? Was it?” The boy merely shrugged and looked at his feet. “All right. Watch the ball, okay? If it’s not any good, lay off, right? A walk’s as good as a hit, remember.” “A walk’s as good as a hit,” murmured Anita, shaking her head. She had lost
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