The Eighth Inning

Mark stood in the middle of the pasture, his iPhone vibrating insistantly against his thigh. Sarah's third message glowed on the screen: "We need to talk." Three years of marriage reduced to five notification bytes.

Behind him, the massive black bull snorted, tossing its head. Mark had been running for forty-eight hours straight—not from the animal, but from the conversation waiting in his kitchen. The conference call had ended badly. His partners were calling bullshit on the hedge fund's numbers, and now Sarah was calling bullshit on something far more valuable.

He'd come to his brother's farm outside Tulsa under the pretense of a weekend escape. Instead, he'd spent Saturday afternoon in the middle of a pasture, daring the bull to charge. It was stupid, reckless—the kind of thing he used to do before he started wearing suits and worrying about quarterly returns.

The baseball he'd brought with him sat in the grass. He'd planned to play catch with David, but his brother was busy with harvest. Mark picked it up, the rawhide stitching familiar against his palm. Little League, college, Sundays in the park with Sarah before the promotions and the mortgage and the slow erosion of everything they'd promised each other.

"Bullshit," he said aloud. The bull narrowed its eyes.

His phone vibrated again. Not Sarah this time—his broker. The Asian markets were opening. The running stopped now, whether he wanted it to or not.

Mark gripped the baseball. He could throw it at the bull—startle it, make it charge, feel something visceral and immediate. Or he could answer Sarah. Or he could stand here until the bull or the markets or his marriage decided for him.

The bull pawed the earth. Mark threw the baseball—high and away, arcing perfectly over the animal's head. The bull ignored it completely.

Some things, Mark realized, weren't about whether you could throw a strike. They were about whether you could stop running long enough to face what was coming at you.

He answered the phone.