Blue-collar fathers shouted encouragement to boys in dirty uniforms. Worn cleats bit into dusty earth.
And then came the single echo the pitcher wanted to hear: the musical voice of a cheerleader begging him to put one over the fence.
It was not a bat that he held in his big hands, but in his mind he imagined that it was.
The crack of the bat. He wanted to hear it.
The roar of the crowd. He could hear it still.
April was here, asleep in the ground.
And it was opening day.
1:12 A.M.
Marvis Hanks, Junior, climbed the stairs that led from the basement to the foyer of his house. His long fingers were interlocked so that his hands made a shelf at crotch level; a stack of videotapes was scissored between his hands and the point of his chin, and consequently his eyes were trained on the ceiling instead of the stairs. Normally Marvis would have eschewed such daredevil activity, but he had been climbing these stairs for thirty-four of his thirty-five years. Each step was completely familiar.
He breathed a short sigh of relief as he left the staircase. The heels of his expensive Bally loafers clacked smartly against the white pine floor in the foyer. Marvis had lived alone since the death of his parents, both of whom had succumbed while he was in college, so the whisper of his sigh and the tapping of his heels were the only sounds in the house.
The only sounds, until he passed the living room.
A subdued giggle jolted Marvis mid-step. The crowning tape in his carefully balanced stack twisted under his chin. The videos toppled from his grasp like so many oversized dominos and clattered to the floor.
The giggling sound came again. Moonlight washed the living room from an Anderson bay window, the sash bars casting a dark net over the brass-and-mahogany pool table that dominated the room.
And lying on the pool table…something, or someone.
Marvis squinted. His green eyes zeroed in on a tangle of crisp blonde hair framed by a square of black shadow. The giggles spilled into full laughter. A pair of lips were trapped in the black shadow frame.
But these lips couldn’t laugh. It was impossible.
Stiff fingers entered the shadow-frame and caressed the waiting lips, twisting them into a dull purple smile. Marvis didn’t breathe. The girl’s long legs were beautiful, her fingers slim and eager, her skin as pale as a winter moon. A naked foot traveled her smooth calf as her fingers danced. Two perfect knees came together, then parted. And then she laughed again, her firm belly shuddering as she sat up. Straight, long hair swept a face that seemed nothing more than shadow. But Marvis didn’t need to see this face to recognize it. It was locked in his memory.
Blonde cobweb strands tickled her hardening nipples. The net of shadows embraced her, slicing her arms and legs at the joints, turning her torso into a complex jigsaw. The shadows were only a trick of moonlight and window sashes. Marvis knew that, just as he knew that the shadows had transformed the girl into something both obscene and pathetic-a living, breathing butcher’s diagram.
But she wasn’t living. Not this girl. She wasn’t breathing.
Her face was nothing more than a shadow.
He was seeing-
Her laughter was the only thing that lurked in the shadows.
He was hearing-
She was a ghost.
Somehow, Marvis managed to choke back his scream. But it stayed with him, a secret locked in his chest, even when she turned on the lights.
She closed the drapes, still laughing. “Well, it’s what you get for leaving your front door unlocked. Anybody could have wandered in.”
Something witty. Marvis knew that he was supposed to say something witty. That was the game. But he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“You should have seen yourself,” she said.
He was still frightened. She wasn’t a ghost. That’s what he kept telling himself. She wasn’t a dead girl. She was only Shelly Desmond, a fifteen-year-old piece of meat who stood naked in his living room, thinking that she was funny.
“I mean it, Marvis.” She giggled. “Oh, man, the look on your face.”
He glanced away sharply. At the ebony videocassettes on the white pine floor. At his whiteboy loafers, his faded black jeans. At his black hands hanging there before him, long fingers still trembling.
Negro hands. African-American hands.
No. Not quite. His hands were the sweet color of butterscotch. Come August, any redneck had darker skin than his.
“And your eyes.” Shelly wiped away tears of laughter. “Your eyes were as big as saucers.”
Marvis glared at the girl. “As big as saucers.” The words were ice on his tongue. “Like a spook butler in some old movie. Is that what you mean. Shelly?”
She crossed her arms over her breasts, as if exasperated. “I didn’t mean… Geez, Marvis, why do you say things like that? It’s the nineties. Wake up. All that stuff happened a long time ago. Do you think I’d even be here if I was like that?”
“There’s the money.”
“That hurts, Marvis.”
She pouted, and, of course, that made her a magnet. Marvis came to her. His fingers encircled her tiny wrists. Gently, he moved her arms to her sides, forced her hands against the cold brass rail of the pool table. “You can’t imagine, Shelly.”
She didn’t look away, and that struck him as particularly brave. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what color-”
His grip tightened. “But you like my color, don’t you. Shell? You’re the one who told me that I’m the man with the sweet butterscotch skin.” She giggled, and for a moment her arms relaxed. “But what if my skin was darker? And what if my eyes weren’t green? What if they were as brown as dirt? What if my skin was black as unsweetened chocolate? Would you still want a taste of me?”
The muscles in Shelly’s arms became knots of nervous tension. The pool table shuddered, and Marvis caught sight of the eight ball teetering on the edge of the corner pocket nearest him.
Teetering there, on the edge of a pit of shadow. An ebony sphere on the brink of a pit. A bottomless pit like the shadow-face he’d imagined seeing earlier…
No, that face belonged to Shelly. Shelly, and a few shadows. And now the shadows were gone and Shelly wasn’t so frightening. Or brave. She looked away-not daring to struggle, actually blushing if that could be believed-and it was Marvis’s turn to laugh. He released her wrists and stroked her rosy cheeks with his sweet butterscotch fingers.
“You’re red, Shell,” he said. “You’re a little Indian.”
“A little Native American,” she corrected, and they both laughed.
His fingers left her cheeks, traveling more familiar territory.
“Don’t you want to get the camera?” she asked.
“Maybe we’ll do this just for us.”
