Chapter 5: Put Me In
Davon did not plan to speak. He had stood behind that fence for months without speaking, and silence had kept him safe. But on showcase day, with the bases loaded and the Falcons' bullpen empty, silence felt like a different kind of failure. Cody Sullivan stood on the mound with his shoulders slumped, Marcus Bell stood behind the plate waiting for a decision, and Coach Ron Callahan looked around the park as if a pitcher might appear from nowhere.
So Davon stepped forward, until his hands were flat against the chain-link, and he said it clearly enough for the nearest bleacher to hear.
"Coach Callahan? Put me in."
For a second, nothing happened. Then a parent in the second row laughed, a short, surprised sound. Another joined in. Callahan turned, his clipboard halfway raised, and stared at the fence as if he had misheard.
"What's that?" he called.
Davon swallowed. His heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his throat, but his voice, when it came, was steady. "I can pitch, Coach. Put me in, and I can strike out the side."
The laughter spread. It rolled along the bleachers, through the parents with their coolers, and into the dugout, where a couple of Falcons players grinned at each other. Davon felt his face burn, but he did not step back. He had said the truest thing he knew, in the plainest words he had, and taking it back would have been worse than the laughter.
Callahan walked toward the fence, his boots crunching on the warning track dirt. He looked Davon up and down: the dusty T-shirt, the jeans, the work boots caked with grass clippings from the morning's mowing. He looked at the fence between them, and then at the boy behind it, and he laughed too, a big, booming laugh that seemed to fill the whole park.
"Son," he said, "this is a showcase, not a schoolyard. You mow this field. You don't pitch on it."
"I know I mow it," Davon said. "I also know how to throw. I've been watching all season. I know what's wrong with Cody's arm, and I know I can get these hitters out."
That made the laughter falter, just for a moment. A few parents stopped smiling and looked at each other. Cody, on the mound, lifted his head and stared toward the fence, his expression unreadable. Marcus Bell took a step out from behind the plate, his catcher's mask in his hand, and studied Davon with a new kind of attention.
Maya Torres, beside Davon, had her phone up. She did not say anything. She just filmed, her hand steady, her eyes on Davon's face. Davon was grateful for that, and also terrified of it. If this went wrong, it would not just be a bad moment. It would be a recorded one.
Callahan shook his head, still smiling, but the smile had an edge now. "Kid, I appreciate the spirit. I really do. But I've got scouts here, and a game to finish, and I can't put a mower boy on the mound in work boots and hope for the best. That's not coaching. That's a circus."
"I don't need cleats," Davon said. "I need three pitches. That's all I'm asking for. Three pitches, and if I can't throw strikes, I'll go back to mowing and never ask again."
The words hung in the hot afternoon air. Somewhere in the bleachers, a woman whispered to her husband. A boy in a Falcons uniform whispered to his teammate. The visiting team's coach, standing near his dugout, watched with open curiosity, as if he had never seen anything like this at a youth game before.
Davon thought about Rose, at home with her bad knees, and about the tennis ball and the cinder-block wall, and about all the mornings he had thrown in private, getting better where nobody could laugh at him. He thought about the library book, and the diagrams, and the feeling of a ball leaving his hand exactly right. He had never asked for anything like this before. He was asking now, and the asking itself felt like stepping through a gate he had always assumed was locked.
Davon thought about the first time Earl had trusted him with the mower, and how showing up on time had earned that trust. Maybe showing up, right now, was the same kind of thing, only louder and harder.
Callahan looked at the scoreboard, at the bases loaded, at Cody, and then back at Davon. The laughter had mostly died down, replaced by a strange, waiting silence, the kind that falls over a park when everybody knows something unusual is about to happen, even if they do not know what. Davon held his ground, his hands still on the fence, his work boots planted in the dirt, and he waited for the coach to answer.