Free Flights by Jim Shepard Page B

hands and spun away from him and up, his father arcing by overhead and clearing the driveway completely, coming down with a crash that neighbors three full blocks away later claimed to have heard.
    And three days after that, when his father was just beginning to lose his limp and Biddy was sitting in the front yard playing dice baseball, he sent Lady out into the street, just because she was bothering him, and got her killed.
    He had just rolled into a double play and Lady in her exuberance had run right across the page, demanding attention, and he’d yelled and shoved her rear, splaying it out to the side as she went by, and, spooked, she’d continued into the street and he’d seen it as he’d see it again and again, the dog trying to turn out of the way and ducking, her eyes closed and muzzle turned from the impact. There was the inanimate sound of someone dropping a large bag of flour to the pavement and she’d flown forward and rolled, finishing on her side in some gravel.
    She was quiet, twitching, when he reached her. He squatted near disbelieving, touching her, thinking he should get her tongue out of the sand. He started crying and Mr. Fraser crouched beside him with a stick, prodding her with it until, satisfied, he took her by the loose skin of her neck and rear and dragged her out of the road and into the grass. Biddy followed, dimly aware of the occupants of the car, a young girl and her boyfriend. “I feel just awful,” the girl said.
    Mr. Fraser disappeared and returned with his pickup. He lowered the tailgate and dropped Lady in like a sack.
    When he’d driven away Biddy had sprinted back to the house, past his mother running the opposite way, ignoring her questions. He’d run up the stairs and had climbed into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain closed behind him and lay, face down, crying into the hard surface of the porcelain.
    They didn’t find him. No one looked. There was an uproar when his father came home, slammed doors, a glass smashed against the back of the garage. His father had gone up and down the street barefoot and talking to himself. He’d finally gone into the garage and rolled the door shut to sit in the dark. And until very late that night that was the way the Sieberts had remained, Kristi and Judy in the kitchen, Walter in the garage, and Biddy upstairs in the bathroom.
    He was hapless, an unspoken embarrassment. He was batting 1000. He had not reached base. And yet he was still there, still digging in, still unwilling to give up. He leaned in against Goose Gossage, clearly hearing over the crowd DeCinces’s admonition to wait him out. Gossage stood erect and slit-eyed on the mound. Behind him Bumbry edged crablike off second, alert. Protect the plate, he thought. But don’t go for a bad pitch. Gossage reared, growing larger as he uncoiled toward Biddy, and the ball was on him and he lashed at it way too late and struck out, staying where his swing had left him, the roar of the crowd filling his ears. Gossage walked free from the mound in one direction, Bumbry from second in another.
    On the bench he was given undeserved support and encouragement. Don’t go for anything on the corners, DeCinces told him. Make him work for it. What’re you going to do with Gossage out there? Know what you can and can’t do. In this situation the best you can hope for is to draw the walk. They shifted, watching Murray bat. Patience. That ball was tailing away even before it broke in on you.
    Biddy relived it and closed his eyes, trying to learn.
    Ah, it’s easy for me to talk, DeCinces said. You’re scared. It’s a lot to face. Yankee Stadium, Goose Gossage, and the whole bit. But you’re gonna have to hang on because you’re not going to hit him. Not now anyway. You’re going to have to hang on because things don’t always work out that easy.
    In the ninth Bumbry tripled and Singleton was intentionally walked and