The day was mild at last—the long-awaited scent of spring in the air. Over by the chicken pen Rufus looked up briefly and muttered something Nate couldn’t hear.

“You talking to me?” Nate asked, releasing his first pitch, a beauty.

“I take my hat off to you,” he said. “Going out for baseball, especially when you don’t even know where you’ll be living in a few months. I don’t reckon I could be that big of a guy, out there in front of all them people, knowing they’d be talking about me.”

“That’s their problem,” Nate said, setting his mouth into a hard line.

“Like I said, I take my hat off to you. Some people, if they heard the talk in town, would lie low. You’re more like your pa, I guess. Do whatever darn well pleases you, and to heck with what’s happening and what folks say.”

Nate faced his mattress target and tried to concentrate. He threw another pitch, imagining it was Rufus’s face in the center of the strike zone. Bingo.

“I figured you were going to tryouts, on account of my brother was headed to the field this morning too,” Rufus continued. “Our dad’s been working out with him ever since the beginning of March, practicing fly balls. Too bad your dad wasn’t around to do that with you, huh?”

Nate threw another pitch. Pathetic.

“I may or may not make it to tryouts. What with the science fair and all, I’m pretty busy.”

“Oh, right,” Rufus said. “You and your girlfriend there.”

Nate started to correct him, then stopped himself. What made it Rufus’s business to know about Naomi? He threw another ball in the direction of the red circle. It landed in the dirt.

“Don’t worry,” Rufus said, looking at the ground where the ball landed. “There’s worse things in life than getting laughed at, huh?” And he let out a high, thin laugh as he sauntered off.

•  •  •

For another hour, Nate went back and forth, picturing himself on the pitcher’s mound one minute, and the laughing face of Rufus the next. While the minutes ticked away, he saw his father, poised to catch, as the two of them practiced the screwball last summer. He saw Larry and Travis, out on the field without him, laughing over some joke. Maybe about him. He thought about how, that first spring he was old enough for Little League, he’d slept with his glove under the pillow, breathing in the smell of its new leather. He loved baseball, but some of what he loved was being part of a team. Most of all he’d loved that his dad was always there to cheer him on.