The Glove

By Gary W. Farris

The baseball glove was a Rawlings. It was brand new, stiff and clean, and it lay on the grass on its face, so that the checkerboard pattern on the back of its pocket was facing upward.
It had lain there — in the grass-needing-mowed — for hours. The sun was now sinking, causing the shadows of the house to creep closer, closer, closer, until the glove was finally engulfed in the slight darkness. It then stayed in the same position as the total darkness of night hid it from all but the most intense gaze.
Here, in its resting place, no street light’s beam shone. Here, in the front yard, no porch light illuminated its edges. Here, in the cooling grass, the glove lay — alone.
It was only the distance an arm could throw it from the bedroom window of the house, but the spirit of the glove lay much further away, lost in the hearts of a child and of a man.

The man had seen the glove only inadvertently. It rested in the window of the gift shop next door to the restaurant. In the restaurant a two-martini lunch awaited and when that was completed, the man left, returning to work. But, passing the gift shop, the glove caught his eye again. It was exactly like the one he once had as a child. He had loved it when he’d gotten it from his father. Now this was the perfect gift to bring the child closer, to atone for the forgotten birthday! Put it on the charge card, take it home tonight. Some wrapping paper, too; his secretary wouldn’t mind.
The glove felt as though it had lost its home as the man carried it out. And the coldness of the spring air almost made it shiver.

“I brought him something.”
“It really should have been yesterday, you know, on his birthday.”
“Doesn’t matter, I brought it tonight. He won’t care.”
The woman shook her head and called for the child. “He does care,” she said, softly.
The child padded into the kitchen, carrying the worn, ragged bear from his bed. He was surprised to see the man standing there, home on time, not drunk. He remembered the night before…

He had been sitting at the kitchen table, staring into a chocolate cake, which was missing two pieces. A paper hat on his head tilted to one side, and frosting dotted his lips.
They had waited. Then waited more. However, finally the woman decided they should start anyway. Her lone voice sang, her two hands alone clapped. The six small flames disappeared into six rising lines of smoke. Six years of waiting and hoping reappeared in two falling lines on her face.
But the child didn’t cry. He ate quietly, sat for a few silent minutes, then found his bear and headed to bed.

The noise in the house woke him with a start.
“What’ya mean he’s in bed? Wake him up!”
“I will not! There’s school tomorrow. Two-thirty A.M. is no time for him to be up.”
“Get him out here. He needs birthday cake with his old man! He can help me celebrate my new contract, too.” The child heard the footsteps on the stairs and in the hall, and his bear moved closer.
“If you wake him up now, I’ll walk out of here tonight!” The woman didn’t usually shout. There was silence outside the child’s door — an eternity it seemed to him.
“I think you mean that.” The man’s voice was softer, defeated. Both voices lowered below the child’s ability to discern words. And finally the footfalls moved away from the door. An hour would pass, mostly in silence, before the house would again sleep, restlessly.

The child remembered all this, and a thousand similar nights, in the instant he saw the man standing there in the kitchen the next morning.
“About time you got in here. I brought you something. Happy Birthday.”
The child looked at the neatly wrapped package that the man held out, then looked up into the face of the woman.
“Go ahead, honey. It’s okay.”
The child placed his bear in a careful sitting position on a chair and took the gaily colored parcel. He cautiously opened the gift, tearing at where the paper was taped together. It fell away and he looked at the large, intricately stitched glove. He looked up at the man and reached out with the glove. The man instinctively took it from the child, then watched in bewilderment as the child silently recovered the stuffed bear and walked out of the room.
“What the hell’s that all about?” the man shouted at the woman.
“He specifically asked you for a new bear. And you promised one. Maybe he’s disappointed.”
“He don’t need no goddam new bear! It’s about time he started throwing those stupid things out.” His face began to redden, his arms waved wildly as he shouted at the woman.
“Please don’t say that,” she said. “The bears are important to him. He sings to them…”
“Singin’ to bears now! Fine influence you are on him. You’re poisoning him against me… Makin’ him a fairy-boy!” The man walked out of the kitchen and up to the bedroom, where the child sat waiting. The woman started to follow, and then changed her mind. She could hear the muffled shouts of the man; what he said she was unsure.

A short time passed before the woman heard the man coming down the stairs. The look on his face was unknown to her. Lost? Angry? She was not certain.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The glove got thrown out the window,” he said, with little emotion.
“Who…?”
The man did not answer, but instead walked past her and took a beer out of the refrigerator. He sat down in the living room, staring at the drone and light of the television.
That night it rained and the glove lay still in the darkness. Sometimes an occasional flash of lightning stabbed the night, and the glove might have jumped at the thunder. But if it did, no one watched.

The man stepped out to leave for work the next day. He thought to pick the glove up from the grass, but just as truly as he didn’t understand the circumstances leading to the glove’s current state had their origins years ago, he was also not the type to make such a gesture. He left.
The glove stayed in the grass that day, and the next two, and the next two–sunshine, wind and rain–and quickly, its newness faded.

On the fifth day the woman came out of the house. It was long after the automobile that slept in the driveway had left on its daily journey. It was long after the feet of the child had walked toward the shape in the grass and then continued on, passing on their trek to school.
She came out into the yard and bending, picked up the now-heavy shape of leather. It was wet inside, too, so she ignored her urge to place a hand inside its body–to ensure that it would be worn at least once in its life.
Into the house they walked, woman and glove. Not into a home, as often she had wished, but merely into a house.
In a plastic bag at the top of a closet, well-hidden from view, she placed the glove and with it the pieces of her life, with the wish that, somehow, both could be made new again.
But with the assured knowledge that they could not.

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