Brittle Innings

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After pursuing him a week (half my annual vacation from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer), I caught up with Danny Boles on a blustery day in early April at a high school in eastern Alabama. I knew I’d found him because his fabled motor home-he called it Kit Carson, a sly allusion to his job-was parked on the asphalt above the school’s ram-shackle athletic complex.

I pulled in next to the RV, climbed out, and peered through the driver’s-side window. An empty fast-food sack and an old ruled notebook lay on the front seat. I tried the door. It was locked. From the ball field came the faint chatter of two or three players and a coach’s blistering shout, “Come on, you guys, talk it up!”

Although not quite five in the afternoon, a twilight chill had begun to creep over the tilled red clay beyond the collapsing rail of the center-field fence. A red-shouldered hawk, hungry or curious, sailed above the clay. I watched it as I heel-walked down the slope looking for Boles.

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