Some Kinds of Love: Stories

Mila Joins the Game

246J Mila Joins the Game Mila Handrillill was possibly the greatest slow-pitch softball player in Lawry City. That’s because Mila was a seer. Mila experienced every moment as a blur. About an hour’s worth of sensations—sight, sound, smell, touch—all rushed in on him every second. It was normally the hour he was about to experience with some shadings of coming hours, but Mila did not see it that way. When Mila watched a scene without concentrating , say the street in front of his house on a sunny day, the world, its colors and sounds and motions, all shifted and slid around as if he were watching them through a windshield in a very hard rainstorm. From this blur, he wrenched out those seconds he really needed, then acted on them. For example, in a softball game he could sit on the bench, dig his nails into the wood and within the dizzying swirls of grass smells, dusty pantlegs, a Cessna flying over, a short argument at second base, and the eventual hot air inside the cab of his truck he could find the first good pitch he would get. Then he’d stand, grind his teeth, and take the swing he knew was right. He was usually good for a triple, at least a double. Mila never spoke of his ability to anyone. He figured everyone mila joins the game K247 saw the world in pretty much the same way: a blur that had to be focused. How could he feel any differently? He was forty years old, and the world had appeared this way to him every day. That’s why Mila was always amazed when people struck out or tripped over bases or got thrown out at home plate. “If you’d only concentrate,” he said to them. “It’s just been there right in front of your face.” Mila’s teeth were usually clenched, so whenever he spoke, he sounded upset. Mila found that people were always eager to have him on their softball teams, but his teammates often said things he could not understand. “Lighten up,” they said, or “Look, Mila, this is just a softball game.” Mila shuffled his feet at this, or rubbed his palms against his thighs. He’d seen their shoulders shift, seen his teammates turn to him over and over again with bunched brows and shaking heads before they actually did turn, but still he could not sort out how to answer them. “Yeah,” he managed, through his clenched teeth, after which he knew the teammate he was speaking to would rise slowly and sit further down the bench from him or leave to get a drink. On the morning of the Pinard Hollow U-triple-S-A all-night tournament, Mila woke up with a bad feeling. Mila always woke up after dreaming of waking up for an hour or so, but he hardly ever woke up with a bad feeling. The morning of the all-night tournament he woke up, and the blur that was everything had a stuffy, clogged quality to it. He checked his thermostat, but that was not it. He strained to remember what he had eaten the night before, but could not. Eventually he gave up on trying to understand this cramped feeling and decided just to tackle what he could see. He carefully stirred his instant breakfast and drank it in the silence of his house. Mila loved instant breakfast. Instant breakfast demanded almost no attention. It never suddenly stuck something out at you like a toaster. When Mila used a toaster, he could not help 248J mila joins the game watching it slam the bread upwards again and again before it finished. Toasters made Mila nervous and jittery. With instant breakfast, Mila could stir the milk and powder, and breakfast just quietly appeared. Above the clinking of his spoon, there arose a sound as if a tiny man were furiously pounding a bell with a hammer. Mila quit stirring his breakfast. The little man rested, then battered the bell again. The telephone, which rarely moved this early, shuddered. Mila held the spoon so tight it trembled. Mila’s boss and team manager, Gary Lazelle Junior, would be on the line, and his first question was, “How’re you feeling?” While the phone continued to ring, Mila thought of telling Gary...