'You are?' She smiled to herself. 'How good?'
It was his one piece of currency, he knew then and remembered now, his only one, and he had never used it before, at least not in this way, with someone from well outside his world, and he didn't know if she would find it valuable or even know what it meant.
'Well,' he began, 'I got signed by the Yankees.'
'The New York City Yankees?'
'Yes, the New York Yankees is the name. Their farm system, I mean.'
'The baseball team.'
'Yeah,' he said, a little frustrated, 'the Yankees.'
'They signed you up, then?'
'I play on their farm team first, then you eventually get your shot at the majors.'
She had edged even closer, dragging her tennis racquet in the green clay. 'Will you make it?'
He waited. 'I don't know.'
'What do you think?'
'I think I will. Yes.'
And this twenty-year-old British girl, who later Jay was to discover had already enjoyed a number of lovers, ranging from an Oxford don to a banker colleague of her father's, saw in Jay, I suspect, what was really there. Strength and decency and confidence and pure talent. It was not just his size and animal health, it was the openness of his face, and enough of this had survived to attract Allison Sparks years later, I realized. She was embittered and amused and skeptical, but she still saw it in him. As I had, too. He had been, standing in the sun on that tennis court, a beautiful boy-man. Eliza Carmody had known such men before, but he was pure and this intrigued her. It was new.
'I think,' Eliza Carmody said a little more softly, 'that you should pick me up here tonight at seven o'clock.'
'Okay,' he said.
'You do want to, don't you?'
'Yes,' he'd answered, and his look went through her. It had been simple between them five minutes prior but it was no longer.
Now Jay lifted the oxygen mask from its holder, fitted it against his mouth, and closed his eyes. The pulsometer atop the flow regulator blinked. I saw him inhale. He let the mask fall away.
'We had two weeks together. I was over there every night. I knew she was going to leave and I knew I was going to report to the farm team. Basically we just spent every night together. I was nineteen years old, man, I was at the top of my game, I was in love.'
And then, he said. Their last night. Eliza called his house to say that her parents had decided to leave the next day, a change of plans. She had to see him that night, he had to sneak over. It was not far and he decided to run it, to keep in shape. His mother's car was an embarrassing little subcompact that only advertised how poor they were, and his father drove battered farm trucks and was possessive about them. So, better to run, and he did, slipping in past the tennis court, meeting her on the beach. She was ready with blankets and a picnic basket. They spent most of the night on the beach, and not for a moment did I not remember what it was like to be that age, to be torn by love and grief and desire, so I did not belittle this, I did not see it as any lesser than what happens to men and women later in their lives, which is heavier and filled with an awareness that one is not young anymore. Jay told me about that night and when I think of him with this young woman, I see them kiss agonizingly and then Jay force himself away. It's late. There's sunrise in a few hours. He must get home. He doesn't have a car, but no matter. His mind is full of the girl, and he feels strong. He knows he is strong enough to run the few miles from her house, after the sex and weeping and terrible parting. He knows this about himself without having to think about it. He is all arms and legs and lungs and he enjoys the sweat building on him, for he can walk the last quarter mile to his house and cool down. He pounds along the main road, enjoying the shadows, a bug catching in his mouth that he spits out, then turns the corner, nearing his father's field. He knows all the turns and dirt side roads, every one, and he sees the light of his house far across the field and wonders if he might be in trouble. Yes, he is probably in trouble. His father is expecting him to be up early, at 6 a.m., in fact. It's already well past two. Maybe he can get a few hours of sleep. So he will take a shortcut, striding over the rows of potato plants to save a few minutes, go directly. He feels the strength in his arms and legs, a pleasant cramp in his side, nothing he hasn't felt many times before during football practice, or running wind sprints on the basketball court. And the Yankees farm system coaches made him run for the physical, made him run the bases, run the outfield, and then a treadmill. They made him stand in against a practice pitcher throwing in the low nineties, they made him throw from a crouch from third to first to test his pure arm strength. He wants to play second base. Cal Ripken Jr. revolutionized the position. Ripken was six foot four. Second used to be for wiry little guys, now it can be big guys. He knows, however, that they might try to make him into a catcher. They've already told him this. He's got the size, especially in the legs. They put him on the leg press and he could stack seven hundred pounds and they said that's enough, you're still getting stronger, we know you played high school football, that's plenty enough, in fact. Pleased by it, writing the number down on their sheets. And they took him outside so he could put on the catcher's equipment and make the throw to second and he nailed it only two times out of ten. Not great. Sometimes the speed but not the accuracy, sometimes the accuracy but not the speed. Keep the arm up, come over the shoulder. Fucking bad habits, the old sidearm. And the equipment bothered him, the catcher's mask the most. The coaches didn't seem too worried. They knew he'd never played catcher, except back in Pony League. He had the size, they knew it. So he would agree to catcher but try to get some action at second. It occurred to him that he was thinking about baseball even though he'd just left her, which was a good sign. I think I'm in love with her but if I have baseball I can stand it, can stand missing her. They'd talked about him visiting her in London in the fall. Yes, she would wait. He worried that she would sleep with other men. He had already been with enough girls to know which ones were like that. But she had liked him, he could tell. And not too many other men would be playing pro baseball. At least there was that. Which did he love more? Baseball or Eliza? It was a stupid question. No it wasn't. They were different but they could be thought of in the same way. That was the thing. He saw it. His thing for her was as big as his thing for baseball. He needed both now. He thought it was just baseball but now it was her, too. Maybe she would come see him play. He would make the fucking team and send her a schedule, maybe a few clippings. Rainey goes 8 for 13 in three-game home stand. Fucking British with their cricket bats. She'd come over here and see American baseball. He pictured her in the stands. What's a fly ball? Why do they call it 'fly'? That musical accent he loved. All those questions. He looked forward to the bus rides and the motel rooms. Of course it was tiring but it was exciting too. The best guys he'd ever played against and with. The best coaching, the best fields. Well, some of the university fields were pretty good. But the farm teams had their regular fans, the whole deal. It was good, good, good. A world away from the farm, from his parents. His father was a fucking bastard and his mother responded with open hatred, and Jay could escape them both by playing baseball. That was the beauty of it. The better he played, the farther away he would be. He kept the pace up as he turned onto his family's land. There'd be girls along the way. He didn't have to be faithful to Eliza yet. He loved her but there would be other girls. There had to be. It was too good. They'd done it twice that night, the second time much longer. He didn't worry about coming too soon. He'd learned to hold it. She'd been wet the first time and sort of sticky the second time, then got wet again as he was doing it. He reached down into his shorts and rubbed his finger against his groin, then brought it to his nose. That smell. You had to learn to like it and then you liked it a lot. He felt good. Stride was smooth, his shadow on the road rippling and synchronized, arm, leg, arm, leg, right through the rows of potatoes. The stitch in his side was gone. He had a tendency toward tightness in the calves but tonight they felt good, warm and loose.
And as he thinks this, he smells something, a metallic tingle in his nose, then his eyes sting. Blinking, suddenly tearing up. He slows his speed to rub his eyes; then he cannot breathe. He slows to a walk, then stops, leaning over. A sledgehammer is pounding his chest. His eyes burn. He lowers his head, realizing he smells herbicide. Someone left the paraquat sprayer on. He falls to the ground and crawls. Which way is the wind blowing? he thinks. Usually it comes out of the southwest. But it can wheel around. Am I going farther into it or out the other side? He can't open his eyes. He is coughing terribly. His lungs feel swollen, heavy. He had the whole night sky in his lungs one moment and then the next he's sucking life through a flaming straw. He can feel his head getting stupid. I'm going to run as hard as I can in one direction, that's my only chance. And so he does, somehow forcing himself to his feet and then, eyes closed, mouth tight, lungs burning, he runs through the night, stumbling and staggering over the low potato plants. Perhaps he runs fifteen seconds, thirty, no more. No one can run with lungs
