TrainWrite

Rally Cap

by Karen E. Sikola

The details, as told to me by someone who matters:

10 p.m.

The Sox are up 3-2 with their two best pitchers on the way. The Rays are losing 7-0 in the 7th.

Over the course of the next hour, the Rays come back. As the Rays tie up their game 7-7, the Sox’ closing pitcher slowly blows the game in the 9th.

The Sox lose the game. On a walk off single.

Three minutes later, the Rays hit a home run. And win.

It was the most painful end to a season ever, he said.

It made sense to me, then, why the seat was left empty on my morning train, next to a man I see almost daily, in the same seat, in the same Baltimore Orioles hat, reading the same worn out copy of a book I can never identify.

I sat next to him anyway, knowing and not knowing, thinking only that his clothes smelled unwashed, like he’d fallen asleep in them and woke up without time to change. Thinking only that I was too tired to stand.

At Kenmore, he closed his book and opened his messenger bag. I prepared myself to let him out, sure that he was getting up, thinking how brave he was to walk Fenway’s streets on a day when the upset was bigger news than any threat of rainfall.

Instead, he merely took out another book, one with a new crisp cover, and continued to read.

Notes

  1. lineforline reblogged this from trainwrite and added:
    Fantastic prose.
  2. fumblingforward reblogged this from trainwrite
  3. This was featured in #Lit
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