"How's that?"
"Tearing up a young guy who didn't do anything to you."
"There's two sides to every story."
"This kid hurt you in some way, Julie?"
"Maybe he keeps bad company."
"Oh, I see. Elrod Sykes gave you a bad time? He's the bad company? You're bothered by a guy who's either drunk or hungover twenty-four hours a day?"
"Read it like you want." He flipped a ball into the air and lined it over second base. "What's your stake in it, Dave?"
"It seems Elrod felt he had to come to my defense with you. I wish he hadn't done that."
"So everybody's sorry."
"Except it bothers me that you seriously hurt a man, maybe because of me."
"Maybe you flatter yourself." He balanced himself on one foot and began tapping the dirt out of his spikes with his bat.
"I don't think so. You've got a big problem with pride, Julie. You always did."
"Because of you? If my memory hasn't failed me, some years ago a colored shoe-shine man was about to pull real hard on your light
chain. I don't remember you minding when I pulled your butt out of the fire that night."
"Yesterday's box score, Feet."
"So don't take everything so serious. There's another glove in the bag."
"The stunt man left town. He's not going to file charges. I guess you already know that."
He rubbed his palm up and down the tapered shank of the bat.
"It was a chicken-shit thing to do," I said.
"Maybe it was. Maybe I got my point of view, too. Maybe like I was with a broad when this fucking wild man starts beating on the side of my trailer."
"He's staying at my house now, Julie. I want you to leave him alone. I don't care if he gets in your face or not."
He flipped another ball in the air and whanged it to the shirtless man deep in left field. Then he took a hard breath through his nostrils.
"All right, I got no plans to bother the guy," he said. "But not because you're out here, Dave. Why would I want to have trouble with the guy who's the star of my picture? You think I like headaches with these people, you think I like losing money? . . . We clear on this now? . . . Why you keep staring at me?"
"A cop over in Lafayette thinks you set me up."
"You mean that shooting in front of Red's Bar? Get serious, will you?" He splintered a shot all the way to the street, then leaned over and picked up another ball, his stomach creasing like elephant hide.
"It's not your style, huh?" I said.
"No, it's not."
"Come on, Julie, fair and square—look back over your own record. Even when we were kids, you always had to get even, you could never let an insult or an injury pass. Remember the time you came down on that kid's ankle with your spikes?"
"Yeah, I remember it. I remember him trying to take my eyes out with his."
The sky had turned almost black now, and the wind was blowing dust across the diamond.