Chapter 64
T HE MEMORIES OF HIS FATHER were always the strongest when Michael Sullivan was with his sons. The bright-white butcher shop, the freezer in the back, the Bone Man who came once a week to pack up meat carcasses, the smells of Irish Carrigaline cheese, and of black-and-white pudding.
“Hey, batta, batta, batta,” Sullivan heard, and it brought him hurtling back to the present ? to the ballfield near where he lived in Maryland.
Then he heard, “This guy can’t hit worth spit! This guy’s nothin’! You own this mutt!”
Seamus and Jimmy were the trash-talkers for the family baseball games. Michael Jr. was as focused as ever. Sullivan saw it in his oldest son’s bright-blue eyes ? a need to strike out the old man once and for all.
His son wound up and let fly. A sharp-breaking curveball, or maybe a hard slider. Sullivan exhaled as he swung ? then heard the smack of the ball as it hit Jimmy’s catcher’s mitt behind him. Son of a bitch had brought some heat!
Something like pandemonium broke out on the otherwise deserted American Legion field where they practiced. Jimmy, the catcher, ran a circle around his father, holding the ball in the air.
Only Michael Jr. stayed calm and cool. He allowed himself a slight grin but didn’t leave the pitching mound, didn’t celebrate with his brothers.
He just bad-eyed his old man, whom he had never struck out before.
He ducked his chin, ready to go into the windup ? but then stopped.
“What’s that?” he asked, looking at his father.
Sullivan looked down and saw something move onto his chest. The red pinpoint of a laser sight.
He dropped to the dirt beside home plate.