By the ninth inning or the final period, the young ones would be too
tired to play, and they'd come and lean heavily against Alan, like a bag
of lead pressing on him, eyes half open, and Alan would put an arm
around them and feel at one with the universe.
It snowed on the afternoon of the season opener for the town softball
league that year, fat white wet flakes that kissed your cheeks and
melted away in an instant, so soft that you weren't sure they'd be there
at all. Bradley caught up with Alan on their lunch break, at the
cafeteria in the high school two blocks from the elementary school. He
had his mitt with him and a huge grin.
"You planning on playing through the snow?" Alan said, as he set down
his cheeseburger and stared out the window at the diffuse white radiance
of the April noontime bouncing off the flakes.
"It'll be gone by tonight. Gonna be *warm*," Bradley said, and nodded at
his jock buddies sitting at their long table, sucking down Cokes and
staring at the girls. "Gonna be a good game. I know it."
Bradley knew. He knew when they were getting shorted at the assayers'
when they brought in the golems' gold, just as he knew that showing up
for lunch with a brown bag full of dried squirrel jerky and mushrooms
and lemongrass was a surefire way to end up social roadkill in the high
school hierarchy, as was dressing like someone who'd been caught in an
explosion at the Salvation Army, and so he had money and he had burgers
and he had a pair of narrow-leg jeans from the Gap and a Roots
sweatshirt and a Stussy baseball hat and Reebok sneakers and he looked,
basically, like a real person.
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