Call Me by My Name Read Online Free Page B

that.”
    Coach Doucet didn’t have an answer, but at least he’d distracted the man, and Tater was able to finish his swings.
    â€œWhat a bunch of garbage,” I said as Tater walked past me.
    He leaned his bat against the fence and walked into the dugout for his glove. “Let it go, Rodney.”
    â€œYou didn’t hear the name that dude was calling you?”
    He shook his head. “Let it go,” he said again.

    Coach Doucet and the coach for the Steers met with the umpires at home plate and exchanged lineup cards, and I drifted out past first base, looking for Pops. He wasn’t in his usual spot, and I couldn’t locate him on the other side of the field either. “Here, Rodney,” I finally heard him call out. And I spotted him with Angie and Mama in the bleachers behind the backstop.
    It really did something to me, seeing my family there, Mama especially. She was wearing a straw hat and big, square-frame sunglasses, and she’d brought a fan to help with the heat. The lupus alone should’ve kept her home and out of the sun, but I also knew she was ashamed of her weight and dreaded bumping into people who might remind her that she was a beauty in high school and the first runner-up in the 1949 Yambilee Queen pageant.
    I had Curly to worry about, so I didn’t let myself dwell on Mama for long. He was only about half my size, but he was so intense that kids in the park said he belonged in Pineville, a town in the central part of the state where there was a big hospital for mental patients. His father ran a bar on the parish line, and nobody but her customers ever saw his mother anymore. Curly might’ve been white trash, but he could really make you look stupid, and I looked extra stupid my first two times at bat when I didn’t even get the bat off my shoulder and watched one fastball after another run past me.
    Tater didn’t do any better. He popped up to the first baseman and struck out, his first strikeout of the year, and now he was coming up again in the bottom of the last inning with two outs and the Steers leading 4–3. With the win so close at hand, Curly was throwing even harder than he had to start the game, and his junk pitches were working better than ever too. Tater swung and missed at two curveballs, and then Curly followed up with three errant fastballs, all of them high and away, making the count full. The next pitch was identical to the first two, and Tater did a surprising thing. Just as the ball was leaving Curly’s hand, he stepped up to the front of the batter’s box and squared off to bunt. The ball met his bat and dribbled toward third, and he outran the throw to first.
    I was next. I walked out to booing and stood outside the batter’s box and looked over to where Mama and Pops and Angie were sitting.
    â€œYou can do it, Rodney,” I heard Tater call out, his voice clear to me even though hundreds of other people were yelling for me to fail.
    I set up deep in the box, choked up high on the bat’s handle, and shifted my weight to my back foot. I’d decided to forgo any titanic roundhouse swings this time and to simply try to make contact with the ball. Tater took a three-step lead, and Curly looked him back one, and now the ball was coming toward me. As soon as it left Curly’s hand, I picked up the rotation, or lack of one. It was a knuckleball, widely advertised as the toughest pitch there was to hit. But this one didn’t move or bounce around much, and the reason was probably because it was the first knuckler Curly had thrown all day. From where I stood, the ball looked as big as a dinner plate, and without being conscious of what I was doing I strode forward and met the pitch the moment it crossed the plate. It didn’t feel like I’d hit it hard, and I thought I’d just lost the game with a pop-up to the infield.
    But then I saw Tater leap in the air as he broke for second, and I looked