Page 70 of Chasing Headlines
“I swear your shirt should say: powered by pancakes. Although my dad always said pancakes fueled excellent baserunning.” Her laugh echoed in my ears.
“I'm sorry, son, I don't know what else to do.” Dad buried his face in his hands. “I can't keep going like this.”
Lead weighted my stomach. I didn't want to be here anymore. Mom's picture on the mantle. Our family photo on the wall. “So, what’ll you do?” I knotted my hands together and twisted to the point of pain.
“What?”
“If you sell it. Where will you live? What will you do?”
“That's what—” He looked up from his hands and stared at me like I'd turned green or something. “You're not gonna come home and help out?”
“What?”
“It's supposed to be yours someday. And you'd just walk away?” His recliner slammed shut.
“I told you, I'vebeentelling you.”
“I always figured . . .”
“You figured what?” I found myself on my feet, towering over him. “That if you guilted me enough I'd come home and fix shit for you? Or is it what you've said so many times over the years—that I'd eventually burn out on baseball?”
He squinted up at me. “It's a game.”
“Right, just a game. So all that business about me going pro, you always 'figured' I wouldn't really have a shot. That it?”
He rose to his feet, slowly, like he had to uncoil every muscle. “Don't give me that tone.” He snarled through clenched teeth.
“What're you going to do? I'm not some punk kid you can take your belt to, anymore. I can hold my own.” Heat sloshed and ate away at my insides. “The day you want a piece of?—”
The slap across my face sent me reeling like whiplash. For a broken-down old man, or so went the story he told me day in and day out—he still moved surprisingly quick. The red and purple tint to his cheeks, was the most life I'd seen in him in seven long months.
“I'm your father.” His eyes narrowed into a hard glare. “Show me some respect.”
“I don't have to be here. Hell, I don't even want to be here.” And I wasn't going to be here a second longer. I moved toward my room to pack my shit.
“The farm was something you could have.” He tailed after me. “A future, a?—”
“And you never listened to me. Never believed in me.” I crammed a random hoody in my duffel. The room pulsed with a red haze. “Not really. Not enough!”
“Baseball doesn't last. It's only there while you're young and healthy. You're a single torn ligament or rotator cuff, or some other career-ending injury away from having no scholarship, no college, no future.” He gestured wildly, his whole body raged with him. “Your mother didn't want that for you, but you're so God-damned hard-headed.”
“You can't stand that I don't need you. That I'm not going to follow in your footsteps like you're some kind of hero.” I spat. “My dad, the great farmer.”
“Farming and ranching put food on the table and afforded you all your fuckin baseball lessons. Private schools, uniforms, your damned tournaments.” His eyes widened and he straightened. “You ungrateful sonofabitch.”
I elbowed past him, escaping into the hall. He followed.
“And it paid for her cancer treatments and whatever I could afford of your God-damned legal shitstorm! All the hell you put me through.”
I kept moving. I couldn’t deal with this, unbelievable shit.
“You stop and listen to me, dammit.”
I paused in the entryway, gritting my teeth as the room pulsed and wavered like some freakish nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
“I was a mess and had to keep this place going. Help you keep your baseball shit together.Yourprecious backup plan.Yourlost dreams.”
I threw aside the front door and stormed out onto the deck. He helped me keepmyshit together?