Chapter 7: Louder
Coach Callahan did not like being corrected in front of a crowd, and he liked it even less when the correction came from behind a fence. For a moment after Marcus Bell spoke up, Callahan's face went through several expressions at once: surprise, embarrassment, and then a loud, defensive pride that Davon recognised as the sound of a man trying to get control of a room again.
"All right, all right," Callahan said, raising his voice so the whole park could hear him. "We've all had our little lesson in pitching mechanics from the mower boy. Very impressive. Very educational. Now let's get back to baseball, before the scouts think we run a classroom out here."
He turned toward the dugout, as if the conversation were over, but the park did not cooperate. A parent in the bleachers called out, "Let him throw, Ron! What's the harm?" Another shouted, "Three pitches, you said you'd listen!" The voices were not unkind, exactly, but they were insistent, and Callahan's smile tightened.
He turned back, and this time his voice was at full volume, the coaching voice that carried across all four diamonds. "You want me to put a kid in work boots on the mound at a showcase? In front of real scouts? Son, do you even own a glove? Do you own cleats? Have you ever faced a live batter in your life, or just that wall you keep talking about?"
The questions landed like pitches, one after another, and Davon felt each one. He did not own a glove. He did not own cleats. He had never faced a live batter. All of that was true, and Callahan knew it was true, and saying it loudly made the truth sound like a joke. A few people in the bleachers laughed again, and this time the laughter was louder, because Callahan was leading it.
Then a man's voice cut through from the third row, sharp and mean in a way the other laughter had not been. "Look at his boots! He mows lawns! Go back to mowing, kid!"
Davon flinched. He could not help it. His work boots, dusty and scuffed, suddenly felt like the most visible thing about him, and he wanted, for one hot second, to step back from the fence and disappear behind the equipment shed. But Maya Torres, beside him, did not lower her phone. She kept filming, her jaw set, and her steadiness steadied him. If she could keep watching, he could keep standing.
Beasley, at the dugout steps, stayed silent. Davon looked toward him, hoping, without quite admitting he was hoping, that the assistant coach would say something. Beasley did not. His arms were folded, his expression unreadable, and Davon felt a small, cold disappointment settle in his chest. The quiet coach was still quiet, and quiet, in that moment, felt a lot like agreement with the loud one.
Delaney, near the backstop, was writing again, but slowly now, as if he were choosing his words. Sarah Kim watched Callahan with a frown that was not quite disapproval and not quite professional distance. They were scouts, not referees, Davon reminded himself. They were there to watch baseball, not to rescue mower boys. He could not expect them to intervene.
Callahan, encouraged by the laughter, went further. "Folks, this is a showcase. Scouts come here to see travel-ball players, players who've put in the work, paid the fees, earned the uniform. I can't just open the gate to anybody who shouts from the fence, or next week I'll have the whole neighbourhood out here asking for a turn."
It was a reasonable point, delivered unreasonably loudly, and Davon knew it. He also knew that reasonable points could still be unfair, and that closed gates stayed closed for reasons that sounded sensible until you were the one outside them. He thought about Rose, and about the forty dollars in the jar on the refrigerator, and about the fee of two thousand eight hundred dollars that stood between him and a uniform. He had never resented it before. He resented it now, just a little, and the resentment scared him, because it felt like it might turn into bitterness if he let it.
"I'm not asking for a uniform," Davon said, and his voice, though quieter than Callahan's, carried in the sudden lull. "I'm asking for three pitches. If I fail, you were right, and everybody saw it. If I don't fail, then maybe the gate isn't the only way to tell who can pitch."
The park went quiet again, a different kind of quiet this time. Not laughter, but listening, the kind that falls when somebody says something simple and true. Callahan looked at Davon, at the bleachers, at the scouts, at Cody, and Davon saw the calculation behind his eyes: the risk of looking foolish if he refused, against the risk if he agreed. Either way, the crowd was watching, Maya's phone was still recording, and Callahan could no longer pretend the mower boy had never spoken.