The Catch
Todd Cantrell
I sat on the beach with my pants rolled up watching a thunderstorm blow in over the dull green water. I had walked a mile from the motel but my loafers were inadequate for the task and I had blisters on my heels. I walked for the exercise, or at least this is what I told myself, but the truth was that my sight was rapidly deteriorating and I feared a car wreck. There was a man in this town, far south of my own, who worked miracles with eyes.
Raindrops pelted the sand. A thin young woman with a large bag over her shoulder carried a baby in her arms. She walked into the wind but made little progress, like that old mime routine, and it appeared she was having trouble holding onto her baby, but I could not be sure, because the center of my vision was distorted and warped and the dark edges were closing in. Though I could not trust what I saw, I had to assume it was true, because I could not take the risk of the baby breaking free of his mother’s hold.
I stood and followed a few paces behind her, not too close as to make her nervous, but just far enough away that I could conceal my intentions, while still positioned properly to make the catch. I took note of the wind velocity and direction and our relative heights—mine and the mother’s—to estimate how fast the baby might travel and where it would go once airborne. I had scored poorly in mathematics and science during my school days, making all this mere guesswork.
I recalled my last catch of any significance. Twelve years old, playing center field. A routine fly ball hit my glove and bounced onto the grass and the winning run scored, and before I had walked back to the dugout, everyone was gone, even my father, who sat in his idling car at the other end of the empty parking lot.
As I grew more nervous at the thought of dropping or missing the baby, he looked at me with a pained expression. Was it hunger or gas or did the baby have a sense of its precarious situation, its potential blowing away? A baby should not experience this level of stress and anxiety at such a formative time and I imagined the baby as a grown man unable to sustain loving relationships, lacking clear and achievable goals, suffering from weight and abandonment issues and serious health problems caused by an undiagnosed condition.
The young mother picked up her pace when she glanced over her shoulder and saw me with my arms extended. I was more alert and ready than I had ever been. I wished my father could have been here to see this, to see me make a catch that really mattered, when a life was on the line, rather than some meaningless child’s game. This time, I would remember to use two hands, just like he showed me.
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Todd Cantrell lives in Atlanta. His fiction has appeared in The Collagist, Hobart, The Legendary, and Pif Magazine.