Excerpt #2 from SEAVIEW ROAD

© Copyright 2020 by Brian McMahon

Book available for you to order here.

This is the second excerpt I have shared from SEAVIEW ROAD. You can read the other one here. I hope these two sections give you a taste of the story, the setting, and the characters. Thanks for reading.

“Where’s this kid play, Ry?” Kevin’s question came as the pitcher dropped a toss from his man behind the plate.  

     “Louisville. He’s a beast. Should be a first-round pick next year.” Ryan held a program that listed each player’s height, weight, age, and school but didn’t need to check it.  

     “Seems like he’s throwing a lot harder than the starter was.” 

     “Oh, yeah. I think he tops out at ninety-seven. I’m sure he doesn’t want to overdo it this summer.” 

     The four Murrays sat eight rows up behind home plate in mostly filled bleachers, watching the Monomo Whalers lose to the Chatham Anglers. It was only the fourth inning, but the Anglers had effectively ended the game with a seven-run second, leaving the Whalers to work their way through a bullpen that, according to Ryan’s analysis, lacked depth. The crowd didn’t mind. Save for a handful of player relatives and year-rounder diehards, most of whom sat in the first two rows or behind the dugouts, the fans were there to relax on a picturesque summer evening. The unhumid air was free from nagging bugs, the obedient sun loitered even as the field lights warmed up, and the only sounds disrupting the stillness of the Rockwellian night were those for which they had come: the crack of bat on ball and the satisfying thump of ninety-seven miles per hour into the catcher’s mitt.  

     “God, that must hurt the poor catcher’s hand.” 

     “Mom, he’s prepared. Trust me. They’re used to it.” Ryan was familiar with her points of concern.  

     Beth was mostly uninterested in the Whalers and the sport they played, but she enjoyed a couple of trips per summer to Hutchinson Park, which stood a quarter mile from Main Street, near the point where the Monomos came together. She tended to wrangle Katie to her side when she looked for a reason not to attend a game or to leave one early. Katie was happy to appease her mother by simulating disinterest, but she actually liked the sport and sucking up Ryan’s expertise. Kevin was knowledgeable, too, but not as knowledgeable as his propensity for emitting facts, strategies, and opinions would have one believe.  

     “Is Monomo supposed to be good this summer?” Katie understood the game well enough to be unimpressed with their adopted hometown’s performance. 

     “Nothing special. They’ve played well, but Chatham and Cotuit are the favorites. Because of guys like this, I guess.” 

     Ryan pointed to the mound and, on cue, the Louisville product struck out another Whaler, who didn’t look that surprised to be walking back to his dugout, in which morale was low and the college minds were elsewhere. 

     The Whalers represented both Monomos and had been in the Cape Cod Baseball League, the country’s premier summer league for top college players, for almost two decades but were yet to win a title, though they had showcased a cadre of players who later went on to MLB stardom (in a couple of cases) or longevity (more than a couple but not that many). Teams like Chatham and Harwich and Yarmouth-Dennis had more success and name recognition than Monomo, as it went with the towns themselves. Consequently, the Whalers’ stadium and fanbase fell somewhere in the middle of the league’s ranks: cozy and polite, respectively.  

     A kid in the row in front of the Murrays ate fried dough and knocked over his sister’s drink. His parents sent him to the concession stand, a brick structure behind the first-base dugout, operated by volunteers, that smelled like hot dogs and microwaved cheese. 

     As with the other clubs, Monomo players usually lived with residents during their time on the team. The Murrays had never housed one, but some neighbors had on multiple occasions, in one case leading to a fling between Amelia Clarke and a Whaler, a fling that Ryan was quick to compare to Summer Catch in the years after it occurred. He assured his sister that both the real-life and onscreen renderings were largely forgettable. The player, a center fielder with a sweet left-handed swing, did go on to get drafted and even spent most of one season with the Baltimore Orioles, but a shoulder injury and his relative lack of talent left him toiling in the minors for the remainder of what ended up being a brief career. No one had the full story, and no one dared joke about the matter around Amelia or Nate—they were not full-on dating at the time but by most accounts had established some level of an exclusive relationship before the outfielder began to, as it were, play ball—but she babysat for the Murrays several times that summer, when Ryan was old enough to piece together why the young man joined them on several ice cream trips.  

     Another neighbor had run into some problems when her husband of thirteen years discovered her in bed with a Whaler. Upon hearing the gossip, Ryan had offered to his parents that she had good taste, having picked the team’s top starter who boasted, at the very least, a live arm, but his commentary garnered a death glare from his mother and suppressed amusement from his father. The player had been quickly and diplomatically sent home, and the team did everything in their power to end the scandal and prevent future issues. Some fans argued it was the best press they’d had since the team’s inception.

     Hutchinson Field shared its parking lot with Monomo Regional, the high school that served both Monomos and their neighbor to the west. Most of the school building was visible through the lot that sat behind the fence in right-center. A few cars had been hit over the years, but the wood bats of the CCBL limited the players’ capacity for inflicting such damage. The Regional team used the field, but the Whaler organization, small though it was, dolled it up and maintained it better in the summer. It wasn’t terribly difficult to make the park look good under pink-orange skies like the one into which a ball now flew.  

     “Has a chance!” Kevin half-stood to follow the flight of the ball down the right field line. The crowd’s roar caught in a collective throat as it hooked foul and carried over the fence, bouncing toward a playground occupied by a few sets of parents and kids with soft serve on their shirts and faces.  

     “He hammered that, didn’t he?” 

     Ryan was impressed but not wowed. “Ball goes a long way when the guy throws ninety-seven.”  

     It didn’t go a long way on the next pitch or the one after that. As the Whalers took the field for the top of the sixth, the PA announcer reminded fans of the Fourth of July festivities taking place at the field before and after the holiday game against Orleans, as well as the parade, which would run from North to South Monomo the morning of the Fourth and include some of the players on what was a “float” in name only.  

     “Have you two made plans for the Fourth yet? I’m sure there’s a lot going on for the third because it’s a Saturday, but the Clarkes are having everyone over for food, fireworks, passing out on the beach, the works on Sunday.” 

     “Yeah, Mom, isn’t that the same deal every year?” Everyone tensed at the sound of Katie’s attitude. 

     “Ryan and I are working both days, or at least I am. There’s a tournament in the morning. Might even wear something low-cut for the tips.” 

     “Katie, don’t even joke about that. You’ll give your father a heart attack.” 

     Kevin had been studying something on the left side of the infield but grunted at the mention, cardiac muscles intact. 

     “That being said, working the Fourth’s a good idea. You two keep it up and you’ll have a fortune saved up by the end of the summer.”  

     “Working on the Fourth? Seems a little unpatriotic.” Kevin winked at the kids, well within Beth’s range of sight.  

     “Kevin, let’s not encourage them to slack off. Hard work never h—” 

     “Beth, come on. I didn’t say anything about slacking off.” 

     Katie rolled her eyes at the bickering that ensued. This debate was new to the Whaler grandstands but not to the family. Since well before either child reached a legal working age, Beth had seized every opportunity to instill in them the work ethic she believed had carried her to heights not reached or conceived of by either of her parents. Nothing Katie had ever done suggested she was lacking in determination, and parental fears regarding Ryan’s future were overblown. Nevertheless, their mother stressed over it and found fury in her husband’s attitude, or in her perception of it.  

     His upbringing differed greatly from hers but was not as cushy as she mythologized, and he resented the implication that his worldview was essentially inferior to Beth’s. Boiled down, his opinion was that there was more to life than work, a not-so-radical position that his wife had, at some point in their earliest days, shared. He feared that his children and many of his students were aware of the philosophy but not taking it to heart, or were in some cases having it drilled out of their brains by adults not so different from the woman whose leg was now pressed against his below the wooden bench. She wasn’t the worst offender and wasn’t very similar to whoever was, but every time their bedtime routine included a thinly veiled accusation of laziness in one or both of his children he wanted to scream. He pitied the man or woman falling asleep next to the worst offender. 

     He knew that she knew that he didn’t want lazy kids, and they both understood that they didn’t have any. Their disagreements, in this and all arenas, rarely led to anything that could be classified as a fight, with one recent exception a few months earlier.  

     On that night, with the house to themselves, both dozed off in the family room watching television, and Beth discovered her second wind in time to catch a news segment on the college admissions process, twice conquered by the Murray family but still grounds for her to rouse Kevin and spark a conversation on the topic. It went on far longer than their ballpark spat, culminating in Kevin’s monologue that the people who thought working and working and working until one felt accomplished and content was the way to live were misguided and unable to comprehend their own feelings, seeing as what they viewed as a combination of relaxation and contentedness was really just fatigue, bone-deep and long-developing, a hindrance to any change of course until it was far too late. Beth didn’t take this well, viewing it as an attack on her mindset and belief system. Kevin assured her it wasn’t, at least not a conscious one.  

     The week following this incident would have been tense had their schedules not limited the time they were forced to spend in each other’s presence. As the fight diminished into a memory alongside its few siblings, they both sort of reveled in it but said nothing, each happy to be reminded that the marriage would endure as it had always endured because of—and not in spite of—their asymmetrical intelligences. 

Four boys stood on the last row of bleachers but sat down when their “LET’S GO WHALERS” chant failed to pick up steam.  

     “Ryan, why aren’t they bunting here? Isn’t this the nine-hitter? He’s tiny.” 

     Kevin reclined into the row behind them and smiled at Katie’s question, for which her brother lacked a good answer. The weak-hitting second baseman from St. John’s vindicated her approach quickly with a two-hopper to the shortstop. The Anglers turned the double play with time to spare.  

     The game had been decided for an hour and would drag on for another, but the Murrays would stay until the end, as would most of the spectators. They knew better than to abandon their perches prematurely. Life would draw them down out of the benches too soon, back toward the highway or the water or somewhere in between.  

     By the eighth inning, the tall, glaring lights were necessary, and the field glowed beneath them. Even on the Whalers’ myriad harmless pop-ups, the ball floated starkly white against a sky that was almost dark enough to conceal its thin, staggered clouds. A volunteer hawking popcorn and peanuts paced on the walkway below the fans, but most had already indulged. Draped over the outfield fence were banners for local stores and restaurants, for which these spectators needed no reminders. The fabrics flapped in the corners where they weren’t secured.

     Chatham added a few runs in the top of the ninth, but no one booed or groaned, happy to have fifteen more minutes in air that refused to cool even as the breeze picked up and held, blowing out toward the sea. 

     “I could coach this team.” Kevin spoke to no one in particular, but Ryan guessed the words were meant for him.  

     “It’d be nice if someone did.”