The Might Have Been

CHAPTER Thirty-two





When he got to the high school for the first home game after the long road trip, Edward Everett found that someone had put duct tape over the latch bolt, preventing it from locking. “Hello?” he called, stepping tentatively into the locker room. From the darkness, he heard something clatter, someone say “Shit,” and then bare feet slapping on cement. He wondered if he should get out, call the police. But he flicked on the light switch next to the door. “Hello,” he said again, walking cautiously across the locker room. In the equipment cage, a silhouette of a man pressed into the back corner, wedged between the wall and a stack of boxes.

“Nelson?” Edward Everett said when he recognized him.

“I’m sorry, Skip,” Nelson said, still hiding in the corner.

“Come on out, Nels,” he said gently.

Nelson hesitated, then stepped out of the corner, blinking in the light. He looked terrible—pale and unshaven, wearing boxers and a ripped Houston Astros T-shirt.

“Jesus. You look like crap,” Edward Everett said, not meaning to.

“I don’t know what to do,” Nelson said, working a finger into a hole in his shirt.

“The first thing is to take a shower.” Edward Everett went back to where he had dropped his equipment bag, took out the towel he had meant for his own shower after the game and brought it to Nelson, who regarded it suspiciously. “It’s a towel,” Edward Everett said. “You use it to dry yourself after a shower.”

While Nelson showered, Edward Everett sat at the small desk in the corner of the locker room and began transferring the data from his game log cards into the spreadsheet. After Nelson finished, Edward Everett became conscious of him sitting on a bench behind him, watching him type the figures into the Excel sheets and make notes about what he wanted to highlight in his email to Johansen in his attempt to improve more of his players’ chances at surviving the cuts the team was planning, if it wasn’t too late.

“Is that what done me in?” Nelson said, his voice small.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Edward Everett said.

“The numbers,” Nelson said.

“It’s complicated,” Edward Everett said.

“Complicated,” Nelson said. “That’s the kind of shit someone says when they don’t want to tell you the truth. Like when Cindy said she was going to stay with her folks. ‘Why are you going?’ I asked her. ‘It’s complicated,’ she said.”

“Nelson,” Edward Everett said, turning to face him, weighing whether to tell him Cindy and her brother had come to see him. Nelson didn’t look much better than he did before he showered; the only noticeable difference was that his hair was wet and he had pulled on a pair of jeans. “Why aren’t you home?”

Nelson laughed. “I don’t have a home. Got to have a job to have a home.”

“Well, what about …” He hesitated, not wanting to do something as intimate as saying Cindy’s name. “… your wife and kids. I think they miss you.”

“Jesus f*cking Christ!” Nelson bellowed. “Haven’t you been listening? She’s gone back to her folks.”

“I only meant that you could go there, too,” Edward Everett said, quietly hoping his tone would defuse Nelson’s anger.

“Right,” Nelson said. “Go knock on her daddy’s door. ‘Here is little loser boy.’ ”

“Ross,” he said.

“I don’t know what to do besides this,” Nelson said, patting the bench he sat on.

“But you’re not really doing this.”

Nelson was silent, clearly thinking. “All I’ve ever done is baseball,” he said finally. “Cindy says I took my shot and … Christ almighty, Skip. ‘I took my shot’—like it’s a f*cking carnival game and either you win the doll or you don’t.”

“Look at yourself,” Edward Everett said. “You’re sleeping in a locker room in a closed-down school, and when’s the last time you ate anything?”

“I eat,” Nelson said defensively.

“What? What do you eat?”

“Food. What the f*ck do you think I eat?”

Edward Everett knew he would regret doing it but he reached into his hip pocket and brought out his wallet, fingering first a ten and then the ten and a twenty. Nelson might be crazy but he had to eat. “Here,” he said, holding out the thirty dollars to him.

The outside door to the locker room squealed open. Because whoever came in was backlit by the sun and the locker room was dim, all Edward Everett could make out was a silhouette. “Oh, f*ck, Nelson,” the figure said—Tanner. Nelson looked at the money that Edward Everett held out, perhaps weighing his empty belly against his need for pride. He swiped at the bills, grabbing the twenty but dropping the ten, and dashed out of the locker room, shoving Tanner aside as he went through the door.

“Shit, Skip,” Tanner said, coming in, rubbing his shoulder where it had banged against the steel doorjamb. “You should call the cops or something.”

“Tanner …” That’s you maybe in a month, he wanted to say but didn’t. What was the point? They all thought they were invincible; that it would go on forever and ever, amen. “Just cut Nelson some slack, all right?” He picked up the bill Nelson had dropped.

“He belongs in a psycho ward. Someone said they saw him going through a dumpster last week.”

“Who needs a psycho ward?” Martinez said, coming into the locker room.

“Oh, shit,” Tanner said. “We was just talking about you.”

“F*ck you, Tanner,” Martinez said.

And then Nelson was gone and Edward Everett did not see him again until the last day of the season.

For half a day on the last Sunday of the home stand, they were tied for first when they won their third in a row from Peoria, one they almost lost save for what was most likely a gift from the field umpire, the final out coming with the bases loaded when the Peoria hitter lined a shot up the middle that Rausch snagged, diving, hitting the turf hard enough to knock the wind out of himself, the umpire throwing up his right thumb, signaling the out and the end of the game. The Peoria manager burst off the bench and onto the field, protesting that Rausch had trapped the ball, not caught it. “You weren’t in position to see for sure that he did,” he shouted.

“You got no proof he didn’t,” the umpire said in a slow drawl, taking a stick of Big Red gum out of his pants pocket, unwrapping it, folding it into his mouth, where he already had half a dozen pieces, and then strolled off the field. The Peoria manager kicked at the dirt but said no more; Perabo City had come back from a long way down in the standings, two weeks to play and all even.