Free Dominion by Randy Alcorn Page A

change the world, the next best thing was to judge the world. To become its resident critic in a way that put it at arm’s length, so you could imagine you weren’t part of the problem. Whether you were a political writer, a sportswriter or a movie reviewer, you were first and foremost a judge, a magistrate who adjudicated the mortal multitudes.
Sports had always played an important part in his life. He remembered his first baseball mitt, how Daddy had taught him to oil the leather glove, how he’d worked it in, put a baseball in the middle, drawn it tight with a few lengths of twine to make the best pocket. He remembered how he and Daddy would throw and hit the ball for hours on end. He remembered watching Aaron hit it out of the park and Mays chase down a fly ball. He’d listen to his father’s stories about the old Negro Leagues and wish he’d been able to see his father play. But Obadiah was forty-four when Clarence was born, and Ruby thirty-five. When she had her last child, Dani, she was thirty-nine, worn ragged by the years of sharecropping and the hard life of Jim Crow but with a fire in her eyes her youngest son had inherited. Yes, his parents were old when he was born. Old? His mother had been seven years younger than he was now, his daddy only two years older. How could that be? The notion struck him as too strange.
Clarence had lots of calls to make. He looked up Portland police in his Rolodex for the first and most important one.
“This is Clarence Abernathy at the Trib. I’d like to talk to a homicide detective, first name’s Ollie. Forget his last name. Big guy.”
“Ollie Chandler?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Just a moment.” As he waited, Clarence sorted through three-by-five cards, narrowing down ideas for his next column.
“Ollie Chandler.”
“This is Clarence Abernathy. Dani Rawls is…was my sister.”
“Yeah. I remember meeting you.”
You don’t sound too happy to hear from me.
“I was wondering what’s happening with my sister’s case. Have you guys just given up on it?”
“No, we haven’t.” Chandler sounded defensive.
“Then…what’s happening?”
The detective sighed, then paused. “Tell you what, Mr. Abernathy. Why don’t we get together and discuss it? Have any time tomorrow? Maybe one o’clock?”
“I could be free by one-thirty.”
“One-thirty tomorrow it is. Justice Center. Fourteenth floor.”
“I’ll be there.”
Careful not to look to either side or appear less than busy, Clarence sat quietly in his cubicle, the memories falling upon one another like dominoes. He’d been raised on his daddy’s love for baseball, and when he felt drawn to a career in journalism, the idea of combining sports and writing seemed an incredible dream. Sports was about choosing sides, affirming loyalty to colors. It had the thrill of combat without its fatal consequences. It wasn’t like when men gave their lives to hold up the colors in battle, to be riddled with bullets rather than let the red, white, and blue touch the ground. You could celebrate Packer green and gold, Dolphin turquoise and orange, Forty-niner red and gold, and it didn’t require that anyone die.
That’s what he loved about sports. Great passion without real consequence. You could love your team, cheer them on, rave about them, be disappointed in them, even boo them. You could leave them, but they would never leave you. Of course, with player free agency and especially franchise free agency, it wasn’t like that now. When the Browns left Cleveland it proved even the most loyal fans couldn’t keep the team in town. The players were changing teams year to year. The guy you cheered for last year comes in and you boo him this year. Pretty soon all you were loyal to was jerseys. Cheering for laundry. Rooting for colors.
Between baseball strikes and football franchise moves and basketball scandals, Clarence’s idealism about sports, about the love of the game itself, had been tempered. Maybe it wasn’t