Manny Gallegos, 53, has spent the better part of the last 18 years driving 40,000 miles a year across the Midwest and South scouting high school and junior college baseball prospects for the Cedar Rapids Kernels. His biggest flaw, one he won’t admit out loud even to the guy he plays pinochle with every Sunday, is that he’s held two grudges so long they’ve started to feel like permanent fixtures in his chest: one against his ex-wife, who left him for his former college roommate eight years prior, and another against Rick Hale, who beat him out for the starting shortstop spot on their 1988 high school state championship team because the coach was Rick’s dad’s hunting buddy. He’s not a bitter guy, not usually, but he doesn’t go out of his way to connect with people either, spends most of his off-season holed up in his one-bedroom rental outside Dayton sorting through the vintage baseball card collection he never lets anyone touch.
He shows up to the VFW fish fry on a frigid late November Tuesday mostly because his fridge is empty and the cod here is crisp, the beer is $2 a bottle, and no one bothers him if he sits in the back booth by the jukebox, which is currently spitting out scratchy Johnny Cash deep cuts someone fed quarters to an hour prior. The place smells like vinegar and old fryer oil and cigarette smoke that’s seeped into the linoleum for 40 years, and it’s the closest thing he’s got to a regular spot when he’s not on the road. He’s three bites into his cod and halfway through his second beer when he fumbles his plastic fork, leans down to grab it off the scuffed tile, and his knuckle brushes the bare ankle of the woman leaning behind the counter wrapping up leftover hushpuppies. He freezes for half a second, then stands, about to apologize, and looks up to see Lena Hale. Rick’s ex-wife.
He knows her immediately, even though he hasn’t seen her since their 20th high school reunion 13 years prior. She’s got the same messy dark braid slung over one shoulder, the same crinkles at the corners of her hazel eyes when she laughs, which she does now, soft, when he stumbles over the apology. “Don’t worry about it,” she says, wiping her hands on the front of her grease-stained flannel shirt, leaning over the counter just far enough that he can smell the vanilla lotion she’s wearing under the fryer grease, the warmth from her arm brushing his wrist when she slides a fresh paper napkin across the Formica to him. “You’re Manny, right? The scout? I heard you were back in town for the off-season.”
He blinks, confused, because he doesn’t think she’s ever said two words to him before. He’s already halfway to making an excuse to leave, the old grudge curling hot in his chest just at the mention of her last name, when she nods at his plate and says, “I brought an extra batch of hushpuppies out ten minutes ago. You always liked the extra crispy ones, right? Used to see you buy three orders after every home game senior year.”
The words knock the air out of him for a second. No one has remembered that, not even his own mom, in 35 years. He nods, slow, and she turns to grab a paper container piled high with the crispy, golden balls, slides them across to him, no charge. She leans against the counter while he eats, and they talk, first about the weather, then about the minor league season, then about the fact that she divorced Rick five years ago, moved back to town to take care of her mom who had a stroke, picked up the part-time cook gig at the VFW to make extra cash. She tells him she always thought he was the better shortstop senior year, that everyone knew the coach only put Rick in because of his dad, and that she’d even yelled at Rick about it once after the championship game because he’d bragged about stealing the spot from Manny.
The old anger he’s carried around for 35 years starts to melt, slow, like the snow starting to stick to the windows outside. He’s conflicted, at first, half convinced this is some kind of trick, that she’s going to ask him for money or try to mess with him the way Rick always used to, but she doesn’t. She just listens when he talks about scouting, about the 17-year-old kid from Florida he found last month who throws a 96 mile an hour fastball and has a curveball that makes batters trip over their own feet, when he mentions his ex-wife offhand, says he hasn’t dated anyone since she left because he doesn’t feel like wasting his time on something that’s just going to fall apart. She nods, says she gets it, that she hasn’t dated anyone since the divorce either, that she got tired of guys who only wanted to talk about Rick or ask her for favors because they thought she still had money from the settlement.
He stays two hours longer than he planned, until the last of the other patrons have left, until she’s mopped the floors and turned off the fryers. The snow is coming down harder when they step outside, the streetlights turning the flakes gold, and she says her car’s in the shop, she lives two blocks away, would he mind walking her home? He hesitates for half a second, the old part of him screaming that this is a bad idea, that he should go home to his empty rental and his baseball cards, but he nods, says sure.
They walk slow, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the snow crunching under their boots, no need to talk. When they get to her front porch, she fumbles with her keys for a second, then turns to him, says her late uncle left her a box of 1990s baseball cards in the attic, no one in her family wants them, would he come in and take a look, maybe take the ones he wants? She says there might be a Jeter rookie in there, she remembers her uncle talking about it once.
He agrees, follows her inside. The house smells like cinnamon and pine, and she leads him to the kitchen, pours him a cup of black coffee while she drags the dusty cardboard box out from the closet under the stairs. They sit at the kitchen table going through the cards for an hour, laughing at the terrible haircuts on the 1993 Topps set, until he finds it, the 1992 Derek Jeter rookie he’s been chasing for 15 years, mint condition, no creases, perfect. He holds it up, stunned, and she laughs, says he can have it, no strings attached, if he agrees to bring her to the first local prospect scrimmage he goes to in the spring, she’s always loved baseball and hasn’t been to a game in years.
He nods, reaches across the table, brushes a fleck of snow that’s still stuck to her cheek off with his thumb, and she doesn’t pull away.
