Where the seawater burned off under the sun's watch, Michael's skin was weighted and pocked by the thousands of millions of salty micropustules that were the sea's signature.
His regular business was not normally so carefully conducted this close to the shoreline, where gulls circled the cracked and flaking nape of his neck a mile or so above the din of Michael's life. But on this particularly sweltering Sunday, he could not escape the weight of his charge and the responsibility that shackled him under the steaming sun's focus. He longed for the cooling breeze that licked his arms at home, that fed the green pasture on which he spent most his summer months. There he was among a chosen few men whose worth and merits were balanced not by their willingness to chart stars or work ropes, but by their brute strength, sweat-fueled speed and ability to work wood and cork.
A crack pierced this quiet reflection, and Michael's sinews tensed. He could hear a collective breath drawn all around him, as if thousands of watching spirits now focused on his every twitch. His legs responded. They whirled before the rest of his taught body shook into position. Arms pumping, Michael's eyes darted upward, choosing among the circling vulture-gulls a satellite moving unlike the avian ballet above.
Where is the wall? Michael's feet were attuned to every step. Unlike most men his were trained to feel past the rubber soles, past the ground crust and into some tertiary level, where his feet would know when he left the grass. They had to. Their role was critical in the engine of his body, where each part worked independently yet reliably. Arms made their pendulum rhythm opposite the pistons in his legs. Eyes kept locked to their target, impervious to sun and sharp salt sea air. Lungs and heart sang, propelled in a push-and pull match keeping the rhythm of the rest of his parts in lock-step.
The downward arc began. From the sky the object darted to the earth, at lesat to the untrained eye. To Michael it dripped, poured from the heavens into one mark on the perfectly coiffed grass that only he could see. He arrived at the location well before his prey, and his predator body need not stretch to meet it. He stood instead erect, defying the coarse saltwater that rubbed on him, in him. In the air around him it stuck, now taking form, the air vibrating with a hiss and boom meant to cripple Michael and break him under the constant burning thumb of the sun.
He stood and he waited. His run gave his arms a little relief, like the cool river breezes of his native Pittsburgh.
"I hate away games," Michael puffed as he heaved the ball back to the pitcher.
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