No Man’s Land

[Erratum]

I closed my eyes and swung, leaving success to the dumb luck of round wood meeting round ball. It traveled untouched, just the right arc over Rodney’s outstretched mitt at second base, ending in the weeds between second and right center.

I was, and this was my only hit in two years of Little League, that purgatory of faded flannel handed down through the ages with names like Giants and Yankees and Braves stitched across our chests, corners of the letters picked away by years of bored fielders.

Rodney still farms land across the valley, digging a living out of upstate hills. His fields are just as plentiful, the milk just as rich, as that day we faced each other across the thin grass infield, scratching out runs from walks and errors. Today, bovine milking factories cast large shadows from other valleys,

and my faded line drive still falls just outside Rod’s reach, his feet inches off the dusty baseline, the victim of blind circumstance on a fenced field carved out of the valley.