Laurence "Woody" Woodruff // D10 // [FIN]

I was named after my great grandfather, a man who was supposed to have died years ago. But if you walk the long lane that twists and winds through a wheat field just over the bridge past my house, you’ll find the 94 year old man sitting on his rickety porch looking out over the amber waves of grain. He looks like any other old guy in District 10 dressed in overalls and work boots, his skin wrinkled and tanned after many long years in the fields. But instead of sporting the traditional cowboy hat, he sports a baseball cap.

Sun-bleached and tattered, a faded emblem on the front and everytime I visit the old coot he tells me it was a gift from his grandfather. (“This here hat was from before all this Games nonsense!”) Sometimes I’m certain he has lost his mind, telling me stories about sports that existed before the blood sport we all know today was written into the law. (“My grandfather was a legend, boy. He hit them homers like no other.”) He’ll go on all day like that; he don’t give two shits if anyone is listening.

Mom said he was doing that even before his mind got all batty. She said even when she was a little girl he would go on and on about baseball. It rubbed off on her father, and in turn, rubbed off on her. Even when she doesn’t mean to she’ll make reference to a specific game from before she was born. She shake her head and apologize and get back to swishing her sickle through the wheat, whistling the same tune she whistled to me as a squealing baby boy.

I’ve had a glove on my hand and a ball being tossed to me since the day I could walk. The equipment is old; the padding in the glove is essentially gone and the stitches on the ball are unraveling, but almost everyday after work in the fields I would be asking Mom to toss the ball with me. She’s never said no; I regret every day I never asked.

I never knew my grandpa. And I've never met my father, a man who walked out on us when I was two; I never cared to ask about him. Mom says I looked identical to the both of them (so I some tattoos and piercings to look a little less the part of her hard-ass father of her jerk of a ex-husband). My dark hair, dark skin, freckles, and big brown eyes remind her of everything she loved about her father and my dad. I try as best as I can to act as little like them as I can. And every time Mom ever mentioned me looking like my father, I got another tattoo.

Still, Mom would mention my grandpa often, speaking both angrily, mournfully, and happily all at the same time as if even after all these years she still can’t decide if she loved or hated the man. Once when I was younger I heard her talking to great grandpa on his porch. She’d tell him how she missed him then almost immediately recall all the times he had retorted that he wished he had a son instead of just some stupid girl.

(“He never liked me. No matter how hard I tried to be the son he wanted, he always hated me.”)

Great ole’ Laury only said one thing. (“Sorry, sweety.”) Then he looked her in the eye, kissed her on the forehead, and told me I needed to come out from my hiding spot so he could take a look at me. All I can remember is blushing fiercely and getting a new glove slapped on my head. Ripred only knows how he had afforded that, but I was probably the happiest kid in the whole world when Mom gave me a brand new ball to go with it.

One fall evening when the sun was setting and all the wheat had been tied and stacked into shocks, Mom set out bases in front of Grandpa Laury’s house. Of course I had only tossed a ball around before then, but it was like I already knew what to do. Great Grandpa would explain how it felt to play under the bright lights with the thousands of cheering fans and sweaty glory --- of course those were only stories from his own grandfather reiterated after years of sitting stagnant in his own mind. But neither my mother nor I were about to break the spell.

As far as my little mind was concerned, it was the bottom of the 9th, there were 2 outs, and the home team needed a run to win it. My heart beat steadily in my chest as Mom stood a few feet away from me, looking at me over the top of her mitt. I set my cowboy hat back further on my head, brushed the sweat out of my eyes with my shoulder, and got in the stance Mom had always taught me. I let out a deep breath, simply imagining myself swinging the solid wood bat into the ball my Mom kept hidden in her glove.

She stood up straight and turned her shoulder to me and I knew it was coming. I was standing in an empty wheatfield but I could hear the crowd roaring. I dug the toe of my boot deeper into the dirt, tightened my grip on the bat. She looked over her shoulder, looking for the steal that would never come. She raised her knee, threw back her arm, and swung it around so fast and so hard I knew then I was lucky she had never decided to smack me over the head.

But the ball only inched toward me, slowly, sort of dangling in the air just for me. Simply waiting for me to launch it straight into the sky.

So I did.

My peers were all impressed to say the least. Some of the local children would come stand in the field after work just to see how far I could hit it. Eventually I let a few borrow my glove and run out into the field to see if they could catch it. Some of them got the hang of it. But none were ever as good as my Mom was at any of it. I was pretty sure that if she had been born in a different time and a different place she would be the legend that great grandfather is always going on about. I was just good at hitting a ball.

Almost everyday it would be like that. Just me, my bat, my glove, and my baseball out amongst the wheat. I’d hit the ball as hard as I could one way, trot through the field, and swing the bat again to send the ball back the other way. Soon enough I had a dream.

But it was a dream that would only ever travel as far as I could hit the ball. And though I once dreamt I hit a ball to the moon, I had never truly hit one farther than Grandpa Laury’s wheat field.

(“You think you’re so tough, that’s it, ain’t it?”)

When I was 14 I threw the glove and the ball in a barrel and struck a match. It was silly of me to think burning the baseball would take the love of the game out of me. (“You can take the boy out of the game, but you can’t take the game out of the boy.”)

“Hey, it’s all bout the Games now, Grandpa Laury. It’s stupid for y’all to shove my head full’a dreams like ya done my whole life!”

I hadn’t cared to listen to his response then. (“Baseball was, is and always will be the best game in the world, boy. You’ll figure it out eventually.”) But when my Mom got sick - too sick to have one last game of catch with me before her eyes didn’t open one morning - I figured it out. It was too late by then, but I figured out.

She threw that ball to me everyday not because she loved the game, but because she loved sharing it with me.

I hit her old ball as far into the clouds as I can each and every day hoping that one day it won’t come down. That’s how I’ll know she’s up there somewhere. She’d never let a ball hit the ground.