Gary's Glove

A lanky boy in jeans, folded at the cuffs, pumps his shiny red Columbia bike up a North Easton, Massachusetts street in the summer of 1959. The wind ruffles his blonde hair. His mind is filled with thoughts of Fenway Park in Boston and Ted Williams. Number 9.

A huge chrome framed basket is attached with metal clamps to his handlebars and a bulky, gray cloth bag, stuffed with a few stray newspapers, rests inside the basket and is marked in red letters:
BROCKTON ENTERPRISE

He pushes his dusty P.F. Flyers sneakers against the pedals as he heads down Center Street toward O'Conner's News Store in the center of the village. The coins rattle in his wrinkled satchel, the chain cranks, and the spokes spin. His money has been saved from countless weeks delivering newspapers to his customers along the streets near his neighborhood. The brand-new leather glove that he eyed months ago on the store shelf will now be his. He will pass the baseball with his father and his cousin. He understands about baseball. He knows there's something more ...

My car passes the burnished maple and oak trees near North Easton, where I grew up. The words of the midday phone call from last Saturday still whisper in chilling waves over my soul. Gary's dead. Gary's dead. The private arrangements were made and I know I will never see him again. I asked for his baseball glove.

The boy dips his hand into his money bag and places his cache, coin by coin onto the glass counter. All the while he eyes the flawless, tan leather glove. The rigid rawhide is knotted so neatly at the junctions. He can almost smell the leather from six feet back. Behind the counter the red-faced man, puffing a cigar stub, begins counting the money, including the silver certificates. He finally nods his head, gives a passing glance to the boy and casually walks over to the shelf. The man holds the glove in one hand and flicks the cigar ashes onto the warped floorboards. Then he deposits the glove into the boy's outstretched hands.

At first the boy feels as if he were touching an extension of God or Ted Williams. Williams in right field at Fenway Park flashes into his head; not just the black and white picture on his TV set, but the green crispness of the grass under the lights when he and his cousin went into a night game at Fenway with their fathers. He slowly slips his left hand into the glove. It doesn't have much of a pocket because it hasn't been used, but his slightly smaller hand fits snugly against the soft leather inside. Now the leather takes over his senses. He anticipates catching the ball, playing the game and maybe even hears the distant crack of the ball against a wooden Louisville Slugger. He pounds his fist into the glove with a smack loud enough for the guy with the cigar to turn. The boy owns the glove. He marches across the floorboards to his bike outside. He understands about baseball. It is a game passed through the generations. He understands. He knows there's something more ...

My car rumbles along a narrower road, pavement undulating, and leaves scatter in my wake. On this gray, bleak day I cross over the town line. The cemetery stones are lined symmetrically behind the street's wrought iron fence. My mother and father, aunts and uncles, and grandfather and grandmother are buried here. In less than a week Gary's ashes will be interned next to his mother's grave.

Across the driveway his cousin appears a little confused because the glove looks like something used by the Boston Red Sox. His father likes the glove and hurls a ball wrapped with electrical tape into the new mitt. The boy leaps for the ball captures it in the pocket and stops to sniff the rich leather. He is a Little League pitcher for the Easton Huskies. This glove will help him win ball games. It has to.

***

He winds, he pitches, and the ball pops into the catcher's oversized glove. The umpire's call is clear: " Ball." The boy pounds his new glove, but isn't too concerned. This isn't like the back yard games in the field behind his house on Sheridan Street. He looks at the two benches, filled with gum chewing Little Leaguers. Then he scans the wood slatted fence between the forest and the field called " The Plains." He's just glad to be pitching with his new glove.

I slow near the school where Gary taught sixth grade just last week. For twenty-nine years he arrived at his work early and took this game seriously, accumulating over four hundred sick days before he took ill last spring. Inside the stone edifice, capped by a straight slate roof, students are gathering inside, expressing their sorrow at his passing.

I head back to the center of town. Later, I see the brick North Easton Grammar School, Gary's school when he bought his new glove. The news store across the street is now a restaurant. I slow near another school, this one with yellow bricks, where Gary also taught children. Today those kids are grown and have families. The school is closed and the halls where Gary walked between his classes are quiet and dark. Tears well in my eyes, I grip the steering wheel and wonder about Gary's glove.

"Do you wanna pass?" I ask at Gary's front door. Of course he wants to pass. He never refused to pass. His glove, pocket a little more formed, and the leather scuffed in one place, is in his hand. I love running my fingers over the ball's stitching before hurling it into his mitt. But we don't talk about baseball. We pass the ball as an excuse for camaraderie.

Sheridan Street is not a busy street, the tree branches are spread overhead, and we can pass for five or ten minutes before a car rounds the bend. The woods haven't been carved up yet. A huge pine my parents planted when I was born overshadows my little red house. Gary's white house and our neighborhood are set within some kind of idyllic, sylvan dream. It's summer and now John F. Kennedy is President. We keep passing. We understand about baseball. We know there's something more ...

I pull my car under the tall trees, branches amputated away from the telephone and electrical wires. Long ago my pine tree has been sawed down to a flat disk in the dirt. The rings mark the years. My parent's red house is painted bright yellow. Gary's tiny white house hasn't changed. My other cousin, aware I wanted that glove, confirmed yesterday that Gary's glove was in Gary's bedroom. I shut off the engine, step outside and take a full breath of the dank fall air. I smell the leaves. The street is wide and the traffic is continuous. At the front door my older cousin looks drawn ... Gary's dead.

It's 1981 and Gary opens his trunk in the warm summer air outside my apartment in Amherst. I see his baseball glove. Through the weathered, darkened hide I recognize the remnants of the smooth tan leather. Gary is thirty-four years old and I am nearly thirty. He still throws a respectable fast ball and I capture it in my own glove. The sun heats our baseball caps. I let a wild pitch go, but he hauls it down. It's baseball. We understand. We know there's something more ...

His house is small, lonely, and vacant. My cousin motions me inside. For the first time in my life I enter the house and Gary isn't here. I see where he fell dead on Saturday morning. His bed is empty, his books piled erratically on the shelves and his glove is wedged between a stack of yellow lined paper and magazines. In a single motion my cousin deposits the glove into my outstretched hands. I grasp it with a sense of being I don't fully understand and only know I want to keep the glove.

My son is nine years old. It's winter, but we still spend evenings passing the baseball in the cellar. His mind is filled with thoughts of a new Fenway Park in Boston and Nomar Garciaparra. Number 5.

He says he wants to pass as Gary and I passed so many years ago. He's been awaiting the glove he saw me carry gingerly through the side door. I don't think I ever used Gary's glove. The leather is wasted and malformed, and shoestrings have replaced the original rawhide. It will never smell new again. I slip my left hand slowly between the cold, wrinkled leather and bash my hand into the pocket as I grit my teeth. My son produces a grin the size of the cellar wall, nods and unloads the baseball into Gary's glove. Again and again we hurl the tightly wound ball. I have no illusions about the cruelties of life, but I also know something lingers, something endures. My son uses the glove as if it were part of life's odd repertoire. It becomes part of him. He understands about baseball. He knows there's something more ...

1981		1955		1965

I'll miss your laughter and your mind, but most of all I'll miss your passage through life.

Gary Hilmer, 1947-2000

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