The Last Inning

The baseball diamond had gone to seed, dandelions cracking through the baseline like so many abandoned dreams. Elias stood there with his son Marcus's old glove, the leather still imprinted with the boy's hand shape, and wondered how he'd become this person—fifty-two, divorced, shuffling through each workday like some office zombie, dead behind the eyes but still walking, still filing reports.

Marcus was gone now. Not dead—just gone to California with his mother, eighteen and choosing silence over reconciliation. Elias had bought a goldfish after they left, something alive in the apartment that wouldn't leave him. The fish, which he'd named Calvin after his own absent father, swam endless circles in its bowl, and Elias found himself jealous of its small contained world, its perfect lack of expectation.

He'd come here every evening since Marcus left. The diamond where they'd played catch for ten years. Where he'd taught his boy to swing, to throw, to be something better than Elias had become. Tonight, the sun was dropping behind the backstop, throwing long shadows across the overgrown infield.

"You gonna stand there all night?"

Elias turned. An old woman pushing a shopping cart full of aluminum cans.

"Just remembering," he said.

She nodded, like this was the most natural thing in the world. "My boy played here too. Back in the nineties. He's dead now. Overdose."

The words hit Elias like a fastball to the chest. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." She studied him, eyes surprisingly sharp. "Your boy still alive?"

"Yes. But he won't talk to me."

"Then get in the goddamn car." She kept walking, but called back over her shoulder. "The fish'll keep."

Elias stood motionless, Calvin's bowl waiting at home, the zombie routine of tomorrow morning already pulling at him. But then he gripped the baseball in his pocket, felt the stitching, and for the first time in years, thought: maybe it wasn't too late to take a swing.