Animals

1.      
He once took me into the woods, the farthest we could hike in a day, and made me touch a dead squirrel stretched out under a tree.  I was terrified, but since it was him, I did it, and I’ll never forget the strange orange fur and the tail, somewhere between soft and bristly.

2.
I lived on Arroyo Drive, and it was a nice enough place to grow up, I guess. A typical neighborhood street. Not too many trees. Wide enough for two cars to pass comfortably on either side of the dotted yellow line. The street gradually wound upward toward the brown, grassy hills behind the houses that used to be ranch pasture. A few people had plum trees in front of their homes, and that added some color to the place. 

This is where I first met Kayje. I was walking home up Arroyo Drive from the local swimming pool, and I was still all wet and smelling of chlorine. That part of the street was flatter, but there was still a noticeable incline, and I was going slowly. The towel around my shoulders seemed unnecessary in the heat, so I took it off and slung it over one shoulder, leaving my neck free for a breeze. I was eight. Just young enough that I neither attempted modesty in walking down the street in my swimsuit nor sought to show off. 

He was walking towards me from up the street, his greyhound pulling the leash in front of him. Kayje’s legs were so long, and he covered so much ground with each step. He was walking downhill, so he was going faster. He looked so old. Not old as in adult old, but old in that, at ten years, he must have seen so much more than I had. His dog was brown, darker than a baseball glove. 

He smiled as he approached.  His dog pulled at his leather leash and strained to get at me.

“Easy, Taco, easy,” he said, as Taco practically strangled himself, his toenails scraping against the sidewalk. 

I was shy, but not as shy as if I’d been with an adult.

“Can I pet your puppy?” I asked.

“Sure!  He’s very friendly.”

I held out my hand, and Taco sniffed me briefly before covering my fingers with kisses which did not stop after I erupted in little girl giggles.  And Kayje just stood there the entire time smiling at his dog making a new friend for him. When I finally continued up the hill covered in Taco’s puppy kisses, Kayje and I knew what schools we went to, who we’d both had for first grade, and that we also liked cats.  

I ran into Kayje many times in the neighborhood as we were growing up. He never said hi if he was with his friends, but instead would wave when they weren’t looking. But if he was alone with Taco, however, he would do anything. He took me to climb trees in the park, and my arms would shake when I tried to climb as high as he did. No matter how far I went, there he’d be, grinning down at me. When we were teenagers, we jumped into people’s pools at night, treading water with only our eyes above the surface like crocodiles until we leaned back, gasping for breath. Then we would float on our backs, water lipping at our shoulders, and he would point up at the sky.

“Look, there’s the Summer Triangle,” he’d say, his arm splashing out of the water. Then the mad, hysterical dash to the fence when the lights were turned on.  

I even remember one time when we were still young, and we went with Taco up into the old ranch trails in the hills above the street. While we were hiking, we saw a deer, the same color as Taco, and almost camouflaged against the hills. Taco didn’t bark, and we stopped and watched until the deer moved slowly away through the tall, breezy grass.

“We should play on the same team when we’re grown up,” he said as we hiked out, and I nodded breathlessly. 

We were never teammates as kids, but we did play in the same league. People never asked Kayje why he played baseball, but they always asked me. I never really knew what to say.  If they had asked Kayje, he would have probably thought they were nuts and answered, “Because I like it? Because it’s fun to be around a bunch of guys who are like my brothers?”   

3.
Our relationship did not change as we grew up, and after playing high school baseball and college club, each separated by a few years, Kayje and I finally ended up being on the same baseball team as adults. When I first joined the local semi-pro North Side Anacondas after college, Kayje was the center fielder and still acted like my big brother. Most of our teammates, including us, were in our twenties and served coffee someplace as a day job. 

Taco was long gone, but Kayje had a new greyhound, Talladega, who he entered in out-of-state races. Occasionally he would bring him to practices and let him run around in the outfield. Once, he had even brought another dog that he was breeding with Talladega, and they romped around near the right field line for a while.

He’d still smile when I scratched behind Talladega’s ears before going out to stretch, and I’d always get a “Hey girl,” or “Hey kid,” and a pat on the back from him.

I had been on the Anacondas for about two months when I became aware of a change.  Buoyed with confidence from my supportive teammates, I had been playing well. But that day in that particular inning, I charged in for a short fly ball, got my foot caught in a hole in right field, tripped, and dropped it. My ankle got twisted a little bit, not enough to completely wrench it, but enough that I was limping right after the play. I thought it was pretty obvious what had happened; I’d just stepped in a weird spot, and by the time the inning was over, I was able to jog off the field with hardly any discomfort. I was greeted in the dugout by a few of my teammates with, “You’re ok,” and “No harm done.”

I was just about to put my glove on the bench when I heard Kayje saying to some other guys at the end of the dugout, “Oh man, it’s time to get a new right fielder.”

There was an appreciative chuckle that followed from the guys who’d been listening. I couldn’t move for a second as my heart beat faster and my skin seemed to shake. I managed to put my glove down and turn around to face the field, putting my elbows on the chest-high fence of the dugout and putting all my weight on it. I looked at Kayje out of the corner of my eye. He was still his loose, loping self as he looked around for a batting helmet and pulled his batting gloves out of his bag. He walked behind me to the door of the dugout without saying anything and without even looking at me. My shoulders still hadn’t relaxed when we next took the field.

After that, I could feel his eyes on me, checking everything, my positioning, my stance.  Two innings later, I misjudged a ball, and that one was my fault. When the next batter stepped in the box, I looked over at Kayje in center, and he was staring at me.

The next game was the same. Kayje started shading way over towards right field, and I found myself gritting my teeth every time the ball was thrown to the plate. I missed two more over my head, and when I went home that night, I crawled under the blankets on my bed into the fetal position. I went between barely able to breathe and being mired in confusion, all while fighting off chains of nausea.

Next practice, my manager approached me.

“Today during practice, why don’t you take some reps in left.”

My head jerked around to Kayje, who was quickly walking away and calling to someone else on the team.

“I mean, I’ll play wherever you want. Did Kayje want me moved out of right?”

My manager held up his hand and shook his head.  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “And don’t let him get to you.”

“He used to be like my brother,” I almost mumbled, but stayed quiet and jogged to left. 

I tried to remember the guy who would rub my head before going up to bat for good luck, but somehow I wasn’t sure if I wanted Kayje doing that anymore.

I didn’t mind the switch to left, only the way it had happened. A new position was like seeing the field with new eyes. Kayje had not degraded me in left—I did not see him hovering in my peripheral while I was trying to see the ball off the bat. I was fine after that.

But I did start noticing other things.  Like how if a ball went over Kayje’s head, he’d say we needed more pitching. 

“You can’t just leave the ball up in the strike zone like that!”

Or if he struck out, he’d blame the manager for not switching us to an amateur league where the pitching would be easier.  “He doesn’t know what he’s doing!” 

I felt my forehead crinkling a lot more often in practice when I listened to him. I was having an animated, hilarious disagreement with our second baseman about whether the A’s should bat a new acquisition second, because he’d been hitting to the right side well with his previous team.

“Think about it. Leadoff gets on, steals second, Rookie gets him to third. All day.” 

“Only because his hands are slower than my dead grandpa.” 

We were laughing and giving each other a hard time when Kayje walked by and said,

“That is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of.”

The second baseman raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything, and I was completely nonplussed.

Kayje paused a beat, then put his arm around me like when we were kids. “I’m just kidding,” he said, and then walked away laughing.

That night, when I looked in the mirror, the lines on my forehead hadn’t gone away.   

And it started seeming like every time I opened my mouth in the dugout, he’d cut me off.  When we’d come back in to rally after getting behind, I’d be in the middle of saying, “Bear down guys, we’ve got to dig deep,” and he would scream over me, “We’ve got to get those fucking runs back!” before I’d even finished.

The change I saw in him made me suddenly watchful of my other teammates. Our third baseman came back into the dugout after sliding into home, and he realized he’d ripped his pants.

“Oh look,” he showed me, “They’re absolutely shredded.”

“Well, I’m not sewing them for you,” I snapped at him. 

He looked startled before bursting out laughing.  “I wouldn’t have asked,” he said. 

Kayje and I still lived near each other (I was in my old room, and he was in his parents’ basement), and we still gave each other rides home sometimes. Increasingly, though, I often didn’t know what to say to him in the car, even with his dogs making a ruckus in the backseat. 

Once, as I drove us to our neighborhood after a loss, to break the silence, I said, “You know, I really just think we need to be more patient at the plate…”

“We need to be more patient, we need to stay calmer in the field; it’s a bunch of things.”

He went on in this vein until I dropped him off, and I didn’t say another word. The next practice, he greeted me with a hug and said, “Why aren’t you smiling, honey?”

4.
By the end of the summer, it had gotten hot, almost as hot as the summer I met Kayje. Despite the heat, it was unusual for any of the guys to take off their shirts after practice, but Kayje started stripping his shirt off almost every time we were at the field. I had never cared if guys did this. I’d accidentally walked in on guys putting on their jockstraps, so a bare chest was no big deal, but Kayje seemed always to walk up right in front of me and stick his nipples in my face.

“How do you like my pecs?” he’d ask. “Want to touch them? 

There had been one time when Kayje and I were teenagers, and we’d climbed to the roof of the snack shack at the youth field. We lay on our backs on the slanted roof, and Kayje said that the star below Orion’s belt wasn’t his sword, and I laughed, but I couldn’t figure out why that was ok and this wasn’t.

That time on the roof, those times jumping into pools, the hikes into the old ranch land seemed now to be from another world.

It was getting harder and harder to imagine the old Kayje. I tried to picture a scenario where we’d be on the way home from practice. Maybe it would be almost dark. He’d turn to me in the front seat and say, “Let’s climb up there.” 

So we’d climb up on the roof of the old snack shack and watch the stars coming out again. 

“There’s Orion,” he’d say, like waving to a friend.

“Off to hunt rabbits or something.”

“No, nothing that sinister,” Kayje would say, pointing out five-sided Auriga. “He’s just stepping up to the plate.” 

But I had to shake myself whenever I started thinking like this. 

Kayje would now only exist like this in my imagination. If he suggested we climb up to a roof, I didn’t think I would say yes. And Orion wasn’t even visible this time of year. 

5.
When Kayje jammed his shoulder making a diving catch in the outfield, I horrified myself because I was relieved. He couldn’t play the last game of the season, and I was astonished at my light feeling leading up to that game. I talked more in practice. I could, because my other teammates let me finish my sentences.

When I asked one of them what he thought was up with Kayje, he said, “Don’t worry about him, he’s just becoming a man.”

This did nothing to reduce the lines on my forehead. 

“There’s almost no point talking to him,” I said, “He always thinks he’s right.” 

My teammate grimaced and shrugged. 

I was in right again for the last game of the season, and with Kayje absent, the change was decidedly conspicuous. I was happy, though, and I felt great. It was like coming home to an old friend.

In the second inning, however, I glanced into the stands and saw Kayje sitting there with Talladega and another greyhound. I looked back at the field as my throat seemed to widen and my stomach dropped. I had the horrible feeling that he was glaring at me.

The next inning, we had a one run lead, got in a jam with one out, and had runners on second and third. One guy hit a slicer to me, and I dove and trapped it near the line. The tying run scored, but I was able to get the ball back in to prevent the go-ahead run.

My teammates were shouting encouragement from all over the field, “Way to stop one!” and “Let’s finish this now!”

But Kayje was furious. I could see him out of the corner of my eye pacing back and forth in the bleachers. The next batter had stepped in the box, but the umpires had to call time because the other greyhound had run onto the field. Leaving Talladega behind, Kayje sprinted out of the bleachers and ran after her. She gamboled right past me, tongue lolling out and frisking into center field, and Kayje followed her, the corners of his mouth tightened in rage, spitting, “Bitch! Bitch!” 

Lauren McNulty has coached baseball (hardball) at the high school level for 12 years. Her work has appeared in The Twin Bill and Aethlon.