little. league

i remember matty
from little league who'd
broken his arm from
elbow to wrist
while going after a
sharp grounder to short,
how he wailed in the
dust of the infield while
we players all looked on

i stood absently in left
field watching the chaos
of running grown ups
and seeing the faces
go white as the boy was
carried off the field
by his father, who let
a cigarette dangle between
his lips, the smoke slipping
soundlessly across his son's
pinched face

a week later the cast
was already covered with
the scrawled names of matty's
favorite teammates and girls
from school and it was the color of
dirt and the left field grass where
he'd been relegated

his father
fired obscenities at the
coach as much as the ump
in that game, don't think
he didn't

'for christ's sake paul,
he can still play,
it's his glove hand,
he can squeeze it -
squeeze the glove, matty! -
why is he out there
in the fucking reeds,
paul?' and later, he told the
plate ump he was
a blind piece of shit

matty had replaced me
in left, so now i was
out of the lineup altogether
and that was okay with
me, i couldn't hit
and the coach never
looked at me without a
scowl

so
i sat the bench and watched
the drinking-buddy
fathers of the team's most
favored kids strain the third base
line chain-link fence and
smoke and bark at their boys and
slap the asses of their wives

later
we marched in the
memorial day parade, the
favored boys in a rowdy boast
in the front led by matty while
i hung back, told the shortest always
carries the team banner alone

the baking heat bore down
on the bills of our caps and on
our necks while a gangling high school
senior played taps and my father
took a picture of me with his
instamatic and waved

after the reading of
Flanders Fields and the
jolting fire of the rifles and the
inaudible prayers by clergy we
ate ice cream from round cups while
matty thumped his cast against the
porch railing of the vfw

'it don't hurt,' he said to
us, swinging the arm down
and letting the cast bounce off
'i could hit you in the
head, Turner, and it would only
hurt you, not me at all,' and the other
boys laughed, their faces
turned to see if i would say
anything: mount a defense

that was the defenseless summer
when matty's boys looked at
me and laughed most days
and i did not tell my own father how
i hated baseball, my father who stood
apart, on the first base side, away from
what he called the smoking drunks.
i sat in the dugout ashamed at myself
too much to look at him

'how come he doesn't play
you?' he once asked and i
shrugged. 'would you like
me to say something?'
no
no
god no

at the vfw
i did not say anything and matty
said 'pff' and dismissed me with the
casted arm and the
boys laughed, goaded by
a bloating sun

i walked the mile and a half
home alone in my Norway
Cardinals baseball jersey so that my father
did not have to wait with my mother
in the heat while i had ice cream

and as i walked i wished
i had a harder face turned toward life,
hard as a smoking drunk or a boy
with the bravura of a fearless bull

i wished i had a broken arm in a cast
and not such a broken head