Here’s the thing you’ve got to remember about Kurt’s town.
It’s small, and there are eyes everywhere.
Take the aluminum bleachers— there are ten parents to a row over there. The fathers lean forward. Mothers are pinned with picture buttons the rough shape and weight of screw- off mayo lids, and the round contraptions may as well be a third open eyeball. The makeup on these moms? Scarce or on parade, no exceptions. Siblings peek from beneath the bleachers, their glow- stick necklaces snapped and lunar, so bright that the patriotic tattoos on their faces seem to vibrate, radiate, hum. The grandfathers are . . . less active, but they’re alive and watchful. Their jaws are knobby with what Kurt knows as a fourth grader to be Kodiak straight, perhaps Copenhagen long cut, though Kurt is pretty sure that most men in town prefer their tobacco straight.
It’s a big turnout for the Fourth of July Championship Game. Eyeballs = everywhere, which is why Kurt has to be sly about sizing up the yellow- shirted Presbyterian kid playing first base. The first baseman is far too freakishly large to be ten. Certain girls their age can sprout like that, but boys? No way. Not usually. That is no regular ten-year-old, thinks Kurt Boozel, who is seated on the bench with his maroon squad, scratching a whiny knee with four fingers. That out there at first base is a violation. Potential fraud. The guy’s pants are not Pinto League baseball pants. It’s possible the coach had to borrow the pants from the Minors. As in fifth graders. The pants are long baggy sacks and the kid is flat- out stuffing them. His full round thighs bring to mind Mash’s Meat & Market and the raw exposed meats on polished hooks. It’s insane. The guy is so big and powerful and unmissable.
God, would Kurt like a closer look.
Unfortunately, his teammates do not seem primed for a late- game rally. The bottom of the sixth has snuck up on the maroon Catholic squad. Urgency is lacking. It’s hot out. Pants itch. The boy seated next to Kurt is working a short stable twig against the wet brown cake in his cleats. Teammates spit onto the pelt of seeds that their feet can just barely touch. Kathy’s father helps her wiggle her head into a hard batting helmet. Kurt’s math has them down, ten to nine, and his math is rarely wrong. He pays attention. He is observant in a way that others aren’t, as though his eyes are way above himself, raised on straws, crablike. It’s as though he is already seated at a raised remove in the bleachers, with the adults, who watch as Kurt’s father walks to the mound. The man raises his glove toward the truly bonkers- big first baseman. He is clean- shaven. His father, that is. Kurt is going to launch a real serious investigation into the freakazoid at first and whether the kid is handy with a razor, but as for Kurt’s father, he wears jeans that button high. The man knows how to sit in a chair and fix a leak without a phone call and he has a way of presenting his arms as though they’re tattooed with seething winds of rare color when in fact his arms are as undecorated as the walls in his office at the boys’ juvy. The man is a counselor. He’s actually head of security, but he considers himself more of a counselor to the boys, all of whom refer to the rural state owned correctional facility as “The Rectum.” Kurt’s father calls the place “work.”
In the far top corner of the bleachers, Kurt’s mother claps. She tunnels her hands around her mouth.
“All right, pitcher!”
Her cheeks are neither high nor low. She is buttonless. She gets excited for his games but not their ancient laws and parental customs, nor the sticky perms and bobs surrounding her. Her hazel strands are modest.
His father’s smile, however: it’s far from modest. The man spots his wife yelling, and his sweaty red face flexes into a twisted grin, a mouthy wink. Some deal is struck between them. They communicate so effortlessly. His parents exhibit and reside within a crazy, powerful love, a kind that can durably journey across the earth’s many elements— aluminum, wood, dirt and grass, ground chalk. His mother is so confident in their love that she’s fine being the lone solo spectator there in the bleachers. The rest of the crowd is quite observably partnered. People are draped all over each other, July heat be damned, girls and boys and women and men smushed together.
Love, Kurt feels, isn’t about touching and hand- holding, ick. He looks at his parents and thinks: love = learning. More specifically, love = learning secret communication.
Kurt looks at the first baseman. He flexes his chest. He has the sense that it looks more like his shoulders are performing sign language. What he wants to communicate to the big first baseman is: you’re bigger than the water tower. The big freakish amazing guy is at least twice as big as Bobby Montessero, who churns his cleats inside the batter’s box. The yellow Presbyterians in the field hold their knees, punch their gloves. His father’s first pitch comes in softly and too low for Bobby’s taste.
And now here comes Kurt’s brother, Luke, along the first- base fence line. His hair is neck- length, viceful. His jeans have gone missing at the knee. Threadcicles wag carelessly. In heat the guy’s hair looks even greasier than it does at mass, and at mass the guy looks downright gross. The white altar- server albs have a way of somehow highlighting his brother’s greasiness. Kurt doesn’t get why their parents don’t just let the guy quit the service. He doesn’t get why you have to be in fifth grade to serve. Kurt has been gumming down communion for twenty- seven months and is still patiently waiting for any benefit beyond a wafer. He wants to be involved, to be seen, near the altar. It’s not like he’d do a worse job than his brother.
Look at him, thinks Kurt. The guy’s sneakers don’t have laces.
The girl beside him, though: moly. Her white stretchy shirt is nothing like Kurt’s pants. It stretches the right parts and reveals the right parts. Her shorts consist of more fringe than flat denim. Kurt would bet his Elite Series Rawlings glove that she is here only because someone had just now chased them out of whatever three- walled corridor they’d been hiding in— a pickup or barn, maybe one of the high school’s rear coves. The two of them have clearly been discovered and exiled and have now arrived with 91.66666 percent of the game’s outs already in the bag. Some of Kurt’s earliest memories entail hot evenings watching Luke play at this very field, and yet Luke can’t bother to show up on time to watch his brother in church- league baseball, where there’s a team for Methodists, Catholics, and Baptists. The Presbyterians require multiple squads. Strikeouts are of the merciful sort, where it’s in the best interest for the batter to have a seat after nine or ten futile pitches. Post- game handshake lines mutter a made- up word known only to children: gegame. Most crucially, the team that wins their final game of the season gets a framed picture of their squad. The picture is underscored by a single word: Champs.
Kurt is pretty sure about the Champs thing. He overheard some older kids talking about a plaque. His father will be a Champ, too. Kurt and Dad, no Luke. Only three batters are in the way. It’s a sure thing. In the history of church- league baseball, three straight outs are the rarest of robins. It just doesn’t happen, although his maroon team is still down, ten nine. His father has one or two more throws before it begins to get awkward for Bobby out there. In all honesty, awkward has been achieved. Bobby has swung and missed several times. Yawns dot the bleachers. Glow- stick wattage is high, as is the smell of grills.
The first baseman is high, too. As in tall, visible. He’s huge. Even from the bench Kurt can spot the guy’s cup, a hard inhuman curve that becomes especially visible whenever he straightens. If touched, would it make a wooden or plastic sound? Hollow or dense? Maybe Kurt could run tests in one of Luke’s secret kissing spots. Kurt and the first baseman could graffiti “Luke Sucks” on the bricks, sign their names, the works. They wouldn’t pay for the spray paint. They’d steal it. Heck, they’d walk right out of the hardware with the cans, wave goodbye with them, right in front of the owner and every parent in town. No one could stop them. No one could scold or nag this firstbaseman kid. Power = to be so hugely visible yet walk the world without pushback, a full- bodied ghost.
From Town College City Road by Patrick McGinty. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2025 by Patrick McGinty. All rights reserved.
