Borrowed Light.

Lanterns’ veteran ace Clay Williams (No. 77) peers through the downpour for one last sign at Lantern Field. The lights flickered, the stands emptied, but the old pitcher wouldn’t quit.

Chapter I: The Last Game

The rain started before the anthem finished.

By the second inning, it wasn’t drizzle anymore — it was a curtain. The kind that blurred the lights and made the world feel smaller.

Lantern Field looked like it was breathing. The bulbs overhead flickered in uneven time, the hum crawling through the iron beams. Half the stands were empty, the rest huddled under whatever they could find. The air was heavy with wet dust, oil, and cheap beer.

Clay Williams stood on the mound, head down, a cigarette hanging unlit from the corner of his mouth. The smoke was memory; he hadn’t struck a match in an inning. The smell of sweet tobacco and cedar still clung to him, faint under the rain.

From behind the plate, Cal Merrin lifted his mask.

“Call it, Clay,” he said, voice muffled under the downpour. “Ain’t nobody gonna fine us for quittin’ in a flood.”

Clay didn’t move. He rolled the ball once in his palm, feeling the seams dig against his fingertips like Braille.

“Not yet,” he said.

Cal sighed, crouched again, water dripping from his mask.

“You ever stop to think maybe we’re the only idiots still playin’?”

From the dugout, Doc laughed — one sharp bark that turned into a cough. He was old enough to have coached most of them at some point. His hands never stopped moving — taping, rubbing, fixing something that couldn’t be fixed.

“Boys been idiots their whole lives,” he said. “That’s why they’re still here.”

Hank, the right fielder, leaned against the wall, soaked through. He had a flask hidden in his glove and the kind of smile that didn’t care who saw.

“Hell, I came here to play,” he said. “Rain just makes it dramatic.”

Keys Rutledge sat at the far end of the bench, guitar case propped open beside him.

He wasn’t playing tonight — too much water, too much noise — but his fingers still tapped against his leg, keeping time with the hum of the lights.

“Clay’s right,” he said quietly. “Game’s still got rhythm.”

Nobody answered that, but everyone heard it.

Clay stepped back onto the mound. His hair plastered to his forehead. The field around him looked like an oil painting coming apart in the rain — edges blurring, colors bleeding.

He looked toward home, and everything else fell away — the shouting, the wet, the noise. All that was left was the beat inside the storm.

He saw it in the batter’s shoulders, in Cal’s stance, in the trembling bulbs above right field. It all lined up — perfect, fragile rhythm.

He drew a breath that tasted like copper and mud.

The ball left his hand clean.

CRACK.

The sound ripped through the rain. The ball cut across the plate, dropped, and Cal caught it dead-center. Strike.

No cheer. Just the hiss of rain and the soft echo of leather.

“Still think we should call it?” Clay said without looking up.

Cal pulled his mask off and spat water.

“Next one like that, I’ll play catcher in a thunderstorm.”

From the bench, Doc muttered something about insurance. Hank laughed. Keys tapped his boot in time.

Lantern Field — broken, leaking, half-lit — was alive again.

From the sideline, a press flash fired and burned the moment to paper — Clay Williams, hair soaked, glove at his hip, caught in that rare space between thought and motion.

No one noticed. Not yet.

They were too busy living inside the moment they’d never get back.

Clay turned the ball over in his hand, felt the threads again, and threw once more into the storm.

And under the dying lights of Lantern Field,

something small and eternal burned into film.

Chapter II: The Morning After

He woke to a room that felt borrowed.

The air was thick with last night’s rain and the thin ribbon of cedarwood and sweet tobacco that never left his clothes. The apartment above the little diner was all angles and honest light: a two-burner stove, a chipped enamel sink, a window that looked over East Brookville’s main street and the slanted neon that simply read DINER.

He swung his legs out of bed and planted his feet into yesterday’s socks. The floor held the night’s grit: damp clay, a flake of rosin, a scuffed ball rolling lazy under the chair. He stood and immediately tripped over his glove, half-laced cleats, and a bundle of uniform he’d shed like a skin. He went down hard — shoulder, hip, elbow — the thud loud enough that the ceiling shook crumbs of plaster.

Below, forks paused and someone laughed. Maybe Fanny. Maybe a regular. A moment later the radio swelled to fill the gap, tinny trumpet cutting through the morning.

He lay there and watched dust turn in the window beam, felt the ache settle into the places he knew by name. Then he pushed up, slow, and padded to the sink.

The mirror above it showed a face a few years older than the day before — long hair sticking up at ill-tempered angles, the beard gone uneven where the rain had thought to edit him. He touched the rough along his jaw and the old scar by his temple, the one that disappeared when he smiled, which he didn’t.

The phone sat dumb and silent on the crate by the bed. He didn’t want to touch it yet.

He turned the tap. Pipes coughed, water rattled, then steadied. He scrubbed until the mud bled off and the smell of last night thinned to soap and skin. It didn’t leave entirely. It never did.

By the time he buttoned a clean shirt, the day had taken up its duties. Trucks downshifting on Main. Doors. Voices. The neon hum flattening into the lower register of morning. He slid the scuffed ball into his pocket like a talisman and took the stairs.

The bell over the diner door announced him to the room like a poor man’s trumpeter. Fanny looked up from the register without stopping her hands.

“You all right up there, Clay, or do I need to add structural reinforcement to that ceiling?”

He gave half a smile. “I fell.”

“No kidding,” she said. “Sounded like a sack of potatoes reconsidering its life choices.”

Sarah turned from the coffee urn with a grin already forming, hair tied back with a ribbon that had learned which parts of her it was allowed to tame.

“You knock the teeth out of the floor, Williams?”

“Floor had it coming,” he said, sliding onto his usual stool.

“You want your usual?”

He nodded. “Corned beef hash. Four slices of bacon, thick. Two sausages. Black coffee.”

“Doctor’s orders?”

“Manager’s,” he said. “And don’t tell him I listen.”

She laughed and set a cup in front of him, then a second. “One for you. One for your better half.”

“Who?”

She tipped her chin toward his pocket. “The ball.”

He looked down like he’d forgotten it was there, which he hadn’t. “He ain’t much of a conversationalist.”

“Funny,” she said, leaning on her elbows. “Neither are you.”

He sipped. The heat bit, the bitterness steadied. The diner filled its morning posture: the pipe smoke pretending it had somewhere to be, the paper unfolding at the corner table, the sound of forks like rain on tin.

“Hey,” came a voice from a booth near the window. “Ain’t this him?”

Clay didn’t turn. He watched Sarah watch the room. The man held up a newspaper. The front page was all rain and light: his arm in motion, his eyes narrowed, the blur of a ball caught dead in a square of flash. The headline reached for poetry and missed.

Sarah took the man his refill and returned with the paper. She set it on the counter without ceremony and tapped the photo once with a fingernail.

“Well?” she said.

He looked. And for a second something in his chest loosened.

Not because of fame. Because there he was — seen. Not the show of him, not the noise; the quiet intention lit up in the middle of water and ruin. He’d been this man forever and nobody had known what to call it. Now a stranger with a camera had told the truth by accident.

He let himself smile, small and unguarded. It felt like a stretch he’d needed.

“Darlin’,” he said, and meant nothing cheap by it, “would you look at that.”

“Looks like rain,” Sarah said.

“Looks like a man working,” Fanny said from the register.

“Look at his eyes,” said the old couple at the end, which made him want to put the paper down.

He folded the front page careful, slid it back over the counter.

“They’ll forget by Friday,” he said.

Sarah’s mouth tugged. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

The bell on the diner door chimed; Doc stepped in like he’d been walking by forever and only now remembered he’d meant to come inside. He had a cough he carried in his pocket and a clipboard he used like a shield.

“Eatin’?” he said.

“Always,” Clay said. “You?”

“Depends on if Fanny’s still charging interest on coffee.”

“Depends on if you’re still writin’ me into the ground,” Fanny said. “Sit. You look like a man who’s been yellin’ at boys.”

Doc looked at the paper, then at Clay. “Nice picture.”

“Not mine,” Clay said.

Doc’s mouth did a thing that wasn’t quite a smile. “Owner’s talkin’ about rebuildin’,” he said like it was nothing but air. “He asked if I thought we had a team worth savin’. I told him we had a team worth feedin’.”

“Same thing?”

“Some days.”

Sarah set a plate down that made the counter sing. “If you two are about to talk business, you’ll do it with your mouths full like civilized people.”

“Thank you,” Clay said. The thank you carried more weight than the plate.

Sarah went light in the cheeks and retreated before anybody had to call it what it was.

Doc sipped and set the cup down. “He’s got investors,” he said. “He’s got plans. He wants to put up new lamps that don’t hum like hornets. He wants a field that doesn’t swallow shoes whole.”

“He want to play the games for us, too?”

Doc shrugged. “He wants to be seen caring. Let him. Maybe we use it.”

Clay watched steam lift off eggs like ghosts. He put down knife and fork when the phone behind the counter rang. Fanny answered, said “Hold,” then thrust the receiver at him like it was late for a train.

“For you,” she said. “Try not to turn it into a sermon.”

He took the call, eyes on the photo sideways in newsprint.

“Williams.”

A voice he’d only ever heard in money said his name like it was an asset. “I’d like you to come down to the office,” it said. “We’re going to do something proper with that field.”

When Clay hung up, Sarah had already poured him another cup. He wrapped his hands around it and let the heat go head-first into his bones.

Outside, the morning had cleared into a flinty brightness that made the puddles look deliberate. He reached for his cap.

“Where’re you off to?” Sarah asked, too casual by half.

“Meeting.”

“Wear a shirt that buttons,” Doc said. “We’ll teach them what respect looks like.”

Clay tipped his hat at Sarah the way men did in old stories when they had no other language for thank you. He stepped into the day with the paper under his arm and the old ball in his pocket and the sense, for once, that something wasn’t ending so much as beginning.

Chapter III: New Lights, Old Shadows

Night fell like it had a job to do.

Clay lay awake, staring at the hairline crack that ran the length of his ceiling, cigarette tip winking orange, the room smelling of smoke and **cedarwood with a trace of sweet tobacco** that never quite left him. Doc’s words kept looping: *new uniforms, new lights, rebuild the field.* Good words. Heavy words. He could taste the paint on them.

He gave up on sleep, pulled on his boots, and took the stairs down to the diner near closing. Chairs were flipped on tables, the radio down low, the neon **DINER** sign buzzing faintly through the window.

Sarah was wiping a counter in slow circles. She didn’t look surprised.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Could, just didn’t.” He tapped ash into the tin by the register. “Doc called. Owner’s buyin’ himself a conscience.”

“That what you call it?” She set the rag down, crossed her arms. “I call it a second chance.”

He tried on a grin, found the edges. “Second chances usually charge interest.”

“Then pay it.” She held his eyes. “You didn’t quit in the rain. Don’t start in the dry.”

He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “You always talk this pretty after midnight?”

“Only to men who pretend they can’t hear.” She leaned in a little. “Clay… folks finally see you. You don’t get to choose when that happens. You only choose what they see next.”

He looked past her at the dark window, his reflection thin around the edges. “I don’t want to be a poster.”

“Good,” she said. “Be the man in the picture.”

He nodded once, like a pitch he’d decided on. “I’ll walk awhile.”

“Take a biscuit,” she said, pushing a paper bag across the counter. “In case the walk talks back.”

He gave her that half-smile that made his eyes look younger. “You’re trouble.”

“Only the good kind.”

He tucked the bag in his jacket and stepped into the warm night.

Lantern Field waited like a place between prayers.

The gate swung with a tired squeal when he pushed through. Bleachers black with rain, the dirt circle on the mound half-collapsed, the outfield a patchwork of shine and shadow. Without the bulbs, the sky felt bigger; stars sat where the old light used to hum.

He climbed the mound and stood with his hat in his hand. No crowd. No noise. The quiet had body to it. He could feel it on his skin.

A baseball lay half-sunk near the rubber, the leather swollen and gray. He picked it up and worked his thumb along the seam until the thread found the groove in his fingers like it always had. He didn’t throw. He just listened—because that’s what the picture had caught, and because listening had gotten him this far.

Wind moved through the fence. Something small skittered under the bleachers. Off in town, a train horn gave two long notes and a short one, the kind of sound that belongs to nights like this.

He put the ball in his jacket pocket, a weight he knew how to carry, and walked home on streets that smelled faintly of oranges and damp dust.

Morning came hot and fast.

East Brookville filled with diesel and talk. Two trucks idled outside the park, men in rolled sleeves unloading lumber and conduit. Clipboards. Chalk lines. Fresh sawhorse legs spread like new colts in the sun.

From his window above the diner, Clay watched the first board come off the old bleachers. It sounded like a tooth pulling—ugly, necessary. Fanny clattered plates below. Sarah laughed at something he couldn’t make out, her voice riding up through the floor like a tune he almost knew.

He lit a cigarette and kept watching until the work sound turned into a rhythm. He could respect a rhythm.

The phone rang. He let it ring once, twice, then caught it.

“Yeah.”

“Doc,” the voice said, warm and impatient at the same time. “Meeting at four. Owner wants the ‘face of the franchise’ to show his.”

Clay squinted at the window. “Whose face is that?”

“Don’t start,” Doc said, chuckling. “Sponsors, schedules, new lamps—men with hats who talk money. Come hear ’em out.”

“They gonna talk baseball?”

“They’ll talk anything you make ’em. Bring the part of you that scares quitters.”

Clay smoothed the edge of the curtain with his thumb. “I’ll be there.”

“And Clay?” Doc paused. “Wear a shirt that buttons. We’re teachin’ them what respect looks like.”

“Then you wear two,” Clay said, and hung up with a small smile.

At four, the office above the hardware store smelled like fresh paper and old wood. The owner had arrived early with a tie that didn’t quite match and a salesman’s shine. Two men from the electric company, one from a feed mill that wanted their name on the outfield sign, a fellow from a radio station out of Santa Paula. Doc sat at the end of the table like a patient judge.

“Clay,” the owner said, pumping his hand like it was a pump that might run dry. “You’ve put us on the map.”

“Never left it,” Clay said, sitting.

“Right, right.” The owner pushed a bundle across the table—cloth with crisp folds. “Sample for next season. Lanterns in script. Clean. Modern.”

Clay unfolded the jersey. It was brighter than anything they’d ever worn, a white that dared the dirt to try. The letters curved like they expected applause. He touched the stitch with a knuckle. The cloth had no memory yet.

The electric men spread a blueprint, tapping boxes where the new lamps would stand. “Even illumination,” one said. “No flicker.”

Doc glanced at Clay. “You hear that?”

Clay did. He missed the hum already and didn’t.

“What about the field itself?” he asked.

“New sod’s down,” said the feed-mill man, surprised he knew the term. “Clay’s been re-packed, edges squared. She’ll play smooth as glass come August.”

Smooth as glass. The phrase sat wrong.

He pictured the way the old field used to grab at your cleats, how the dirt dusted up in sunlight, how you could tell the day’s story by the stains on your uniform. Now the ground would be soft, green, spongy underfoot. The new clay would stick to your soles, not let go. The bats gleamed, straight from the crate, lacquer still smelling of pine. The gloves were stiff, oiled with cedar, their leather too perfect to bend. Everything clean. Everything foreign.

He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the ball in his pocket, feeling the old hide against his skin. That was what he knew—rough seams, mud under the nails, the sound of dry dirt turning to dust.

Now the field looked like money trying to pretend it was baseball.

The radio fellow leaned in. “We’d like you on a weekly spot. *Around the Horn with Clay Williams.* Five minutes. Folks want to hear the grit from the horse’s mouth.”

“I ain’t a horse,” Clay said. “And grit ain’t radio.”

The room stiffened, then softened when Doc half-smiled, like he’d been waiting for him to say it.

“Look,” the owner said, hands up. “Tell it how you like. Be yourself.”

Clay turned the jersey in his hands. “That’s all I’ve been.”

The sponsors jotted down their notes. Agreements edged closer to completion. Doc concluded with the composure of someone who had bandaged countless ankles and wasn't easily stirred by assurances. When it ended, the owner attempted to capture a photo using a borrowed camera—Clay gave a single shake of his head, and the notion quietly faded away.

Outside, the air smelled of sawdust and sun-warmed metal. He stood at the curb, the sample jersey folded under his arm, and watched a crew stretch string across the new infield. A roller pressed the sod flat, dark green under the late light.

Sarah found him there, a bit out of breath, hair pulled back with a ribbon that didn’t know it was working. “You look like someone just changed your favorite song.”

“They’re changing the record,” he said.

“That bad?”

He shook his head. “Just different.”

She nodded like she understood more than he’d said. “You comin’ by tonight? Fanny’s makin’ meatloaf like a sermon.”

“I thought sermons were Sunday.”

“Then call it practice,” she said. “Clay… if they ask you to talk on the radio—”

“They did.”

“Good. Say yes.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You wanna hear me mumble on the air?”

“I hear you just fine,” she said. “Maybe they finally will, too.”

He looked down at the folded jersey, the clean script catching sun, then at the bulge of the old, waterlogged baseball in his jacket pocket. The contrast made a see-saw out of his chest.

“You’re not a poster,” she said quietly. “But you are a story. Don’t let someone else tell it for you.”

He let that sit. “You always this bossy?”

“Only with the stubborn ones.” She nudged his arm. “Come eat.”

“In a bit,” he said. “Gonna walk.”

“Bring back the plate,” she called as she left. “Fanny says we don’t run a charity for bachelors.”

He almost laughed. It came out something steadier.

He cut back toward Lantern Field at dusk. The crews had quit, the trucks gone. New braces stood against the sky like tall, clean bones. He crossed the grass, climbed the mound, and took out both things—the bright jersey and the ruined baseball. One in each hand.

The evening wind slipped under his shirt. Somewhere on the far side of town, a radio drifted through static, a song he didn’t know, voice full of the future. Here, the dirt still knew his weight. He squeezed the old ball until the seam found him again, set the jersey across the rubber, and looked toward home plate.

“Even illumination,” he said into the empty park, trying the words on. “No flicker.”

He listened. The field didn’t answer. It never did. But across the silence he felt it—the faint pulse that had carried him through the rain. Not louder. Not gone. *Changed.*

He slid the ball back into his pocket, folded the jersey over his arm, and stepped off the mound.

On the walk home, the town smelled like cut wood, wet earth, and hot wires. He climbed the stairs to his apartment, and before he reached the top, he heard it through the floor—the clatter of plates, Fanny’s dry bark, and Sarah’s laugh threading through them both like a line you could follow anywhere.

He paused on the landing, let that sound settle him, then went in and hung the jersey on the back of a chair. Sat. Took the ball from his pocket and rolled it in his palm until the seam found its place.

Between the old leather and the clean cloth, he could feel the life he’d had and the one he hadn’t met yet. He didn’t know which one weighed more. He only knew he could hold both, for now.

He leaned back, eyes on the window darkening to a mirror, and let the quiet come.

Tomorrow, they’d bolt the first lamp in for good.

Tonight, he kept the hum.

Chapter IV: Under the Perfect Lights

By late afternoon, Lantern Field looked like it had been ironed.

Fresh sod lay tight and green, the infield clay dark and tacky, chalk lines clean enough to shave with. The new lamps burned before the sun was gone—white, steady, no hum—turning the grass the color of a postcard. The air carried sawdust, hot wire, cedar oil, and a faint sweetness from the river.

Clay stood near the dugout rail, hat low, watching the field breathe wrong.

Three kids went through stretches on the outfield line—**Benny Cross**, tall and wiry; **Will Moreno**, shoulders like a doorframe; **Charlie Tate**, quick hands and quicker grin. Their uniforms were so new they made a sound when they moved.

“Feels like playin’ inside a dentist’s dream,” Keys muttered beside him, tapping a dead rhythm on the wood.

Clay didn’t answer. He watched Benny snap a throw too hard, Will adjust his cap like the brim owed him money, Charlie hum a tune from the radio.

Doc came up the steps with his clipboard. “They’re colts,” he said. “Gotta see ’em run.”

“They run fine,” Clay said. “We’ll see if they listen.”

Sarah’s voice reached him before she did. He turned as she stepped to the dugout rail with a brown paper bag folded neat at the top.

“In case the biscuits at the diner get jealous,” she said, smiling.

“Thoughtful crime,” he said, taking it. “Accessory before the fact.”

Doc’s mouth twitched. He nodded toward Sarah, low enough it was meant for Clay alone. “Son, if that woman looked at me like that, I’d marry her before first pitch.”

Clay blinked. “Like what?”

Doc laughed under his breath. “Exactly like that.”

“She’s just kind,” Clay said, honest as stone.

Sarah tilted her head. “You boys talkin’ strategy or secrets?”

“Both,” Doc said. “He’s startin’ the fifth to keep you nervous.”

“I was nervous first time I poured him coffee,” she said. “Go win something.” She squeezed Clay’s forearm—quick, familiar—and was gone.

Clay watched the field again. The lamps made everything too clear. No place for the night to hide.

They took the pregame in a sound that wasn’t theirs. Bats too bright. Gloves too stiff—cedar oil heavy in the air. New balls white as teeth. Clay stood on the bullpen slope and rolled a scuffed one in his palm—his own—until the seam found the groove that knew him back.

Benny crossed the foul line and stopped like he’d reached a border. “Sir,” he said to Clay, and it made Keys look away so no one would see him smile.

“I work for a living,” Clay said. “Don’t ‘sir’ me. Show me your grip.”

Benny did. It was textbook. It was also dead.

“Don’t strangle it,” Clay said, moving two fingers a breath’s width. “Ball ain’t a burglar.”

Will asked, “That old glove still work?”

“Only if you listen to it,” Clay said. They laughed, not hearing the instruction inside the joke.

Doc clapped once, cutting the air in two. “Let’s play a ballgame.”

They ran out under lights that didn’t flicker. The crowd sounded higher, cleaner. The old men still chewed, the kids still climbed, but the noise echoed now—like it couldn’t find the boards it used to hit.

First inning, Benny roped a single and smiled toward the box seats where the owner sat glowing. Will took a hard turn on a fly he didn’t have to run for and made it look like something. Charlie flashed the leather and tipped his cap to nobody in particular.

Clay watched the angles. Good mechanics. No rhythm.

In the fifth, Doc jerked his chin. “Loosen.”

Clay nodded once. He didn’t feel nerves. He felt distance.

He climbed the mound and the new clay tried to keep his shoes. He dug a heel, won the argument, and set his fingers. The first pitch went where it should. So did the second. The third bit the corner and came back clean. The crowd cheered like they’d been taught how.

He put the next one down and felt nothing inside it.

Between innings, he sat at the end of the bench. Keys drifted over, hands quiet for once.

“You’re throwin’ right,” Keys said.

“Feels like I’m playin’ a record at the wrong speed,” Clay said.

Doc squatted in front of him, elbows on knees. “Don’t fight the lights. Let ’em find you.”

“Lights don’t find,” Clay said. “They erase.”

Doc’s eyes softened. “Then draw harder.”

Clay went back out and drew a different line. He leaned into the catcher’s fingers like the old photo had frozen him doing, trusted the count, trusted the breath. A grounder right, a lazy fly, a slow curve that lost interest at the letters. Out, out, out. It still felt clean and wrong.

They won on the new grass. Pop of flashbulbs. The owner shook hands like the mayor of a holiday. Reporters learned the rookies’ names first. Benny said something charming, Will laughed like a radio man, Charlie tossed a ball to a boy over the rail. The noise loved them easy.

Clay wiped his hands on a rag that smelled faintly of cedar and last year. Doc touched his shoulder.

“You don’t have to like it,” he said. “You only have to be true through it.”

“I am,” Clay said. “I just don’t see myself in the shine.”

“Shine ain’t the point,” Doc said. “Game is.”

Keys stood on the dugout step, eyes on the field. “You ever feel it hummin’ without you?”

“As long as it hums,” Clay said, “it’s alive.”

Keys snorted. “Not our tune.”

“Maybe not tonight.”

They trickled out. The lamps still burned—white, perfect, relentless. Clay walked to the mound alone. He looked up until the light pushed water into his eyes, then down at the grass that didn’t dare stain.

He scuffed his heel once, slow and deliberate, until the brown clay showed through. He held the mark with his foot and whispered, not to be heard, “Good. Still bleeds.”

He killed the lamps on his way out, one bank at a time. The field fell back into honest shadow. Crickets took the innings back. Somewhere past the outfield, a radio cracked through static into a love song that didn’t know who it was for.

He headed down Main, the night warm, sawdust and orange peel in the air. Fanny’s **DINER** sign buzzed steady. Through the boards under his feet, he heard plates, Fanny’s dry bark, and Sarah’s laugh threading them together like the stitch that keeps leather true.

Doc caught him at the corner, hat tilted back, smoke curling sideways.

“They like you on the radio,” Doc said. “Owner wants five minutes every Thursday.”

“Grit ain’t radio,” Clay said.

“Then make it a lesson. Folks ain’t heard the truth in so long they might call it poetry.”

Clay half-grinned. “You write my lines?”

Doc shook his head. “Boy, the lines write you.” He took a last draw, ground the butt under heel. “And Clay—about Sarah—”

“What about her?”

Doc looked straight at him. “You don’t see it.”

Clay frowned, honest confusion. “See what?”

Doc laughed without humor. “Exactly,” he said, and clapped him twice on the back. “Go eat. You look like a sermon that forgot the amen.”

Clay stepped into the diner’s light. Sarah saw him and didn’t make a scene, just lifted a plate from the pass like she’d been holding it for the last ten minutes.

“Meatloaf like a promise,” she said.

He took the stool. “Hope it keeps its word.”

“It will,” she said, and the way she said it could’ve meant dinner or a life.

He didn’t catch it. He just smiled, small and real, and ate while the town hummed around them under lights that finally, mercifully, were off.

Chapter V: The Rhythm Returns

By July the heat sat on East Brookville like a sleeping dog.

Lantern Field woke to it early—dew lifting off the new sod in a shimmer, clay dark and tacky, chalk dust scratching at the air. Clay Williams unlocked the service gate before the grounds crew and set to work without speaking. Rake, drag, tamp; a slow, stubborn gospel. He moved the mound back toward honest, heel carving out the bite the rollers kept smoothing flat. Sweat ran under his shirt. The day smelled of dirt warming, pine tar, and the faint **cedarwood-and-sweet-tobacco** that clung to him no matter the weather.

From the top bench, Keys tapped a soft pattern on his guitar, barely more than breath—three notes that felt like a pulse. He was early too, hat pulled low, boot heel setting tempo on the plank. When Clay paused to listen, Keys slid into a melody he’d been sketching for weeks. He called it *Lantern’s Light*, though he never said so out loud.

“Keep playin’,” Clay said, raking a clean circle around the rubber. “Field sounds better when it’s got a heartbeat.”

Keys smiled without looking up. “Thought you didn’t care for music.”

“I care for rhythm,” Clay said. “You just tune it so folks can hear.”

Doc wandered in with a paper cup of coffee and a pencil behind his ear. He watched a moment while Clay tamped the front slope with the flat of his palm, testing give and memory. “You gonna charge the city for that labor, son?”

Clay stood, dusting his hands. “Send ’em the bill in runs.”

By nine the kids were there—**Benny Cross** with a sloppy grin and a fast arm, **Will Moreno** built like a barn with quick feet, **Charlie Tate** whistling a radio hook through his teeth. Their uniforms no longer squeaked when they moved; the season had roughed them just enough. They horseplayed to the dugout, each trying not to look at Clay while looking anyway.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Doc said. “Try acting like you’ve been someplace.”

“We’re tryin’,” Charlie said, rolling his shoulders.

“Try quieter,” Doc said.

Cal Merrin came last, knees creaking, mask dangling from two fingers. He swung over the rail and set the mask on the bench like a delicate thing he didn’t trust to survive without supervision. His eyes skated the diamond and then found Clay.

“You fixed her slope,” Cal said.

“Fixed what they broke,” Clay answered.

Cal grunted, which in his language meant *thank you*, *good morning*, and *I knew you would*.

Warmups began in heat that had no intention of going anywhere. Keys’s tune threaded under it all—just loud enough to set a walk, not enough to show off. Benny fired one over Will’s head and laughed; the ball smacked the boards and came back sullen.

“Again,” Clay said, not raising his voice.

Benny threw again. Cleaner. Then once more.

“Don’t strangle it,” Clay said when he reached him. He set two fingers on Benny’s wrist, barely pressure at all. “Ball ain’t a burglar.”

Benny nodded like a man shown a door he’d been pushing for years. “Yessir—sorry. Yes, Clay.”

Will adjusted his cap. “How do you make it look easy?”

Clay squinted into the light. “I don’t. I make it look like work.”

Charlie, who’d been about to wisecrack, shut his mouth and listened.

By first pitch the stands had filled to a noise that didn’t echo anymore. The perfect light wasn’t so blinding in July; dust and heat managed to dirty it honest. Fanny was somewhere up the third-base line selling lemonade from a wooden stand she called an “experiment in commerce.” Sarah flitted between rows with a tray—team scrip pinned to her apron, hair tied back with a ribbon that caught the sun whenever she laughed.

Doc set his lineup and looked it over like a man counting inventory on a store he loved. “Let’s play a ballgame,” he said, and it was a benediction.

The kids ran like they belonged. Will cut off a liner in the gap with feet that forgot they were heavy. Charlie turned a throw so smooth it looked planned by the ground. Benny took the hill to start, and when his first pitch sailed high, Clay stood by the rail and touched two fingers to his own thumb like a reminder. The next one bit the corner; the third came back with dust in it. Keys’s riff kept steady under the chatter, the bench tapping time without knowing they were.

In the fourth a batter crowded Cal. It turned into a small war nobody named. Cal gave a target that promised consequences; the pitch came in on the hands with enough truth to convince. The pop fly after it rose slow as a prayer. Will drifted under, grinning ahead of the catch like a boy who’d found the ocean.

Fifth inning, Doc jerked his chin. “Loosen.”

Clay jogged to the pen, worked the scuffed ball in his pocket, and let the seam find him like an old friend finding a crowded room. When he took the mound, the new clay tried to keep his shoes again. He set his heel deeper, won the argument, and waited for Cal’s signal. One finger. Then two. He leaned in like in the photograph that had followed him everywhere, and the lights—perfect, even—stayed out of the way for once.

First batter, three pitches. Second, a grounder to short that Will ate like breakfast. Third, a curve that lost interest at the letters and came back home with its hat in its hand. He felt it then—not the clean wrongness of April, but a faint click, like something settling into its place in a drawer.

Between innings, Cal smudged a stripe of rosin across his pants and looked at Clay a long time. “You’re smilin’ under there, you bastard.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Clay said. “They’ll raise my taxes.”

Keys cackled, and Benny nearly dropped his cup.

They won that day, not pretty and not lucky—just solid. No flashbulbs. No speeches. Kids on the fence yelling names with hoarse voices. Fanny clapping like she’d invented applause. Doc shook hands without looking impressed. The field breathed in and out and didn’t argue.

After, the team did what it had started to do since the heat came: they went to Fanny’s. They crammed two tables together and sat in whatever order tired men fall into—young beside old, gloves on the backs of chairs, caps hooked on knees. Keys slid his guitar under the table like a dog; he’d play later if scolded into it. The room smelled of onions and coffee and a mercy you could eat.

Sarah moved through them like someone carrying light. She kept Clay’s cup full without asking, dropped her hand to his shoulder when she reached past, quick as a sparrow and just as certain. If he noticed, he didn’t show it.

They thinned out as the plates emptied. Doc paid light, promised to make it up when the owner remembered what gratitude looked like in dollars. Keys left last of the group, tipping an invisible hat toward the guitar no one had heard.

Then only two were left at the counter.

Sarah wiped the same circle of Formica twice, then set the towel down. The diner had gone quiet enough to hear the ceiling fan think.

“Clay,” she said.

He looked up. “Mm?”

“I love you.”

She didn’t throw it like a plate. She put it down like a cup she meant him to drink from.

He didn’t answer right away. He was a man who read patterns in shoulders and breath, the lies people told with their fingers. All that skill, and somehow he’d managed to miss the most obvious sign in the room.

“You sure that ain’t the coffee talkin’?” he said, not to deflect but because kindness was the only language he trusted not to break.

“No,” she said, eyes bright and steady. “That’s all me. Coffee just makes me braver.”

He set his palm on the counter beside hers. Not touching yet, but close enough to feel the heat of it. The lights hummed. The town moved outside like it had somewhere to be.

“Guess I finally saw it,” he said softly.

She let out a breath that trembled the way a held note does when you stop pretending it’s easy. Then she smiled. “Good. ’Bout time.”

He turned his hand over, awkward and honest, and she slid her fingers into his. The fit surprised them both with how little it asked.

Fanny came from the kitchen, took one look, and snorted. “Mercy. You two want pie or do I need to throw rice?”

Sarah laughed, a sound that chased the last of the storm from the room. “Pie, Fanny.”

“Two slices,” Clay said. “Doctor’s orders.”

Fanny rolled her eyes. “Your doctor’s a fool, but he’s my kind of fool.”

They ate in a silence that wasn’t empty.

Later, Clay walked alone past Lantern Field. The lamps were off, but the new bulbs held a ghost of daylight in their glass. The sod lay dark and clean; somewhere a sprinkler clicked like a clock nobody wound. From an open window down the block, Keys’s tune floated out of a cheap radio—*Lantern’s Light*, slower now, and truer.

Clay leaned on the fence, cigarette low, smoke rising thin. He could smell the river and the clay and a trace of cedar that might’ve been him or might’ve been memory.

“Still breathes,” he said to the diamond, to the town, to the part of himself that had started to wake.

Behind him, the diner door opened and closed, laughter spilling to the street before the night took it back. He smiled—not wide, not showy, just enough to be real—and started home, the seam of the old ball finding his thumb in his pocket like it always had, like it always would.

Chapter VI: The Season of Light

July rolled into August and didn’t bother to knock.

Heat lay over East Brookville like a pressed hand, and Lantern Field rose into it every afternoon—new sod darkening under sprinklers, infield clay tacky and rich, chalk lines bright as promise. The lamps came on before sunset now, not out of need but habit, and the light felt less like a glare than a hush. The place had learned how to breathe again.

Clay Williams kept to his pattern. Early in, last out. He still raked the mound himself—one slow circle with the flat of the rake, one firm tamp with his palm until the front slope remembered what a footfall was for. The smell from his hands never changed: **cedarwood and sweet tobacco**, sweat and dust. Folks started saying you could tell if he’d been in the park without seeing him—just breathe in and listen.

Keys’s melody, the one that had started as a sketch, had a name now. Nobody said it, but they all knew: *Lantern’s Light.* He played it soft on the top bench before games, a slow pulse that steadied hands without asking. Sometimes the rookies joined in by accident, their feet tapping a beat they didn’t know they knew. Doc would arrive with his pencil and his coffee and say, “That’s enough church,” and the day would begin.

The kids kept turning into ballplayers. Benny Cross learned to save his smile for after the throw, not before. Will Moreno wore the outfield like it had been built around him, a big man moving light, cutting routes with a cutter’s patience. Charlie Tate, once all edges and jokes, found the quiet to go with his quickness; he made the middle infield look like a decision the ball had made on its own.

Cal Merrin, knees creaking like old gates, caught everything with the economy of a man who’d tried waste and found it too expensive. He was Clay’s mirror—no speeches, no flourishes, just signals like small prayers. Between innings he muttered the truth like it was gum he’d already chewed dry.

“Curve’s alive today,” he’d say.

Clay would nod. “So am I.”

They started winning in ways that didn’t require apology. Not fireworks—weight. A two-run fifth that held, a pickoff that turned a rally into a rumor, a squeeze that looked accidental until you noticed the way Cal had set his stance three pitches earlier. The town’s noise changed. It wasn’t dazzled anymore. It was invested.

Radio men came from Santa Paula and Oxnard with bright voices and dull questions. Thursdays, Clay sat on a folding chair by the dugout for five minutes of *“Around the Horn.”* He didn’t perform. He told the truth in words that didn’t jingle.

“What’s the secret to this run, Clay?”

“Same as losing,” he said. “You show up.”

“You’ve been called the heart of this team.”

“I’m a pitcher,” he said. “Hearts don’t throw strikes. Arms do.”

The announcer laughed like it was a joke. It wasn’t. But it was kind.

Sarah listened from the diner with the radio near the register, ink pencil tucked behind her ear, apron catching flour and sunlight. When he finished, she’d walk to the fence with a paper bag folded neat—one biscuit, one apple, and once in a while a note he pretended not to expect: *Keep the heartbeat steady.* He’d look at it too long, then tuck it in his pocket like a small, necessary tool.

Doc watched all of it with a patience that looked like pride and felt like weather. He coughed some afternoons—once into his fist, twice into his elbow, then not at all when anyone was counting. Clay noticed the way Doc’s hand shook after the third inning when he wrote the next day’s rotation. He said nothing, because Doc said nothing. That was their language. But he stood closer when the dugout steps were slick, and he started bringing two coffees in the morning, not one.

August wore the team down and sharpened them at the same time. The lights stopped feeling like perfection and started acting like a stage: bright enough to see your mistakes, steady enough to fix them. Clay gave the fifth and sixth like a craftsman—no struggle for show, just choices. A high fastball that said *not today.* A bending thing that lost interest right when it should. Cal’s glove barely had to move.

Between games they became something you could call a family without getting laughed out of the room. Fanny fed them as though that counted on the scoreboard. Keys tuned by ear while the rookies shucked their jokes like husks. Sarah figured out where each man kept his tired and left cups there—water, coffee, a slice of pie when the day had been cruel. She and Clay learned a new kind of talking that lived between sentences—half-smiles, glances that held just long enough to mean *I understand,* fingers grazing when she passed a plate and he didn’t quite move out of the way.

One evening, after a game that had the shape of patience—a 3–1 thing built on grounders and breath—Doc found Clay on the mound with the rake balanced across his shoulder.

“Owner wants daily papers from L.A. to pick us up,” Doc said. “Says we’re a story.”

“We’re ballgames,” Clay said.

“Sometimes they’re the same thing.” Doc rolled his pencil between thumb and forefinger. “You doing okay with the noise?”

Clay tipped his head at the stands, emptying of hats and wrappers and the slow end of daylight. “Noise don’t last,” he said. “Rhythm does.”

Doc smiled into his cough, or maybe the cough hid the smile. “Keep the rhythm, son. I can coach the rest.”

Clay didn’t say, *You look tired.* He said, “Coffee tomorrow’s on me.”

“I’ll take the cup and the company.”

They walked off together. The lamps hummed the way bees would if they knew how to keep a box score.

The next week stretched tight and sweet. Benny won a one-run start and didn’t grin until Keys elbowed him into it. Will climbed a fence to steal a home run and landed like he’d meant to live on that wall. Charlie turned two with a wrist-flick that made Clay’s teeth ache with satisfaction. Sarah came to the fence in the eighth of a close one and said, “Breathe,” and Clay did, and the inning did what it was told.

Cal caught a foul tip off the mask and stayed down on one knee for a count nobody admitted. He stood without help, patted the ump with the back of his glove like he was reassuring a horse, and told Clay, “You ain’t done listening, are you?”

“Not while you’re talkin’,” Clay said.

“That’s the trick,” Cal said. “I talk less when we win.”

“Then hush,” Clay said, and Cal’s grin flashed like a boy’s, gone as soon as it arrived.

On Saturdays, after the late games, the town spilled from the stands to the diner. It was loud in a way that made the lamps seem quiet. Kids pressed noses to glass bakery domes; old men argued about bunting; young women asked for autographs they’d never sell. Clay signed as *Clay*, not *Mr. Williams,* and he drew the tail on the y too long when Sarah was watching. Fanny told him he made a mess of the counter. He apologized to the counter and meant it.

Doc sat at the end of the line and ate slow. When he coughed too hard, he put his napkin down and waited until he had his wind again. Clay kept his seat on the edge where he could see the kitchen door and the street and Doc’s hands. He slept light on those nights and woke easy.

August blurred into September and tightened its belt. The standings started showing up in chalk on the back wall of the hardware store. Men adjusted their afternoons around innings. Sunday hats migrated to weekday seats. There were whispers about October in a town that didn’t usually whisper. The word *pennant* made the air change temperature.

Late in the month, after a game that had no business being won and was, the owner lined the boys up for a photograph with a man from a city paper. He tried to put Clay in the middle. Clay stepped to the left, next to Keys, who held the guitar like proof. Sarah watched from the sidewalk, apron floured, hair ribboned, pride in her face that could light a winter.

The flash popped white. Everyone blinked. Clay didn’t; he’d learned how to look through light.

The reporter asked him what had changed since spring.

“Nothing,” Clay said. “Everything.”

“Can you be more specific?” the man asked, pen hovering.

“We remembered how to listen.”

“To the crowd?”

“To the game.”

The man looked disappointed. He wanted a slogan. Clay didn’t have one to sell.

That night, alone on the field after the lamps went off, Clay walked the basepaths with the old ball in his pocket—the scuffed one he worked with his thumb when words got in the way. He stopped at second and looked home. The moon did the rest of the lighting. The grass smelled green enough to forgive a man. The clay held his print where he’d set it all summer. He thought about Doc’s hands, Cal’s eyes, Keys’s tune that always found the downbeat, Benny’s grin stuck sideways, Will’s big stride, Charlie’s fast wrist, Sarah’s laugh threading through the floorboards like a stitch you trust because it never lets go.

He said it to the empty stands because empty stands keep secrets. “We’re close.”

The season answered in crickets.

He walked back to the mound and raked the front slope smooth, just once. It was habit. It was faith. It was the way you tell tomorrow you’ll be ready when it comes.

On Main, the **DINER** sign buzzed a slow pulse. Fanny counted the till. Sarah locked the door and leaned her forehead to the glass a second, smiling at something only she could see. Clay stood across the street and didn’t call out. He knew mornings were for words. Nights were for keeping watch.

September would end. October would come with whatever it had been saving. The town would hold its breath again, and the lamps would prove whether even light could keep from blinding you at the last.

For now, the season held him like a glove that had finally broken in. He fit. The rhythm was there. And when he reached the top of the stairs, the scent that met him through the door was the same as always—**cedarwood and sweet tobacco**, steady as a heartbeat, honest as a promise.

Chapter VII: The Fall

The heat broke overnight.

East Brookville woke to air that smelled like wet pennies and wood smoke, and the sky sat low, the color of tired metal.

Lantern Field felt smaller in that weather, its new paint already dulled by dust, its fences humming with wind.

Clay Williams came early anyway.

He stood at the mound before sunrise, watching his breath ghost over the dirt. The new sod squished under his boots—spongy, false. He missed the old ground that bit back. The ball felt clean, too clean; he turned it in his hand until the stitches bit.

Doc’s clipboard lay on the bench, open to yesterday’s lineup, half a note written before the cough stopped him. Clay touched the pencil mark with one finger, then looked up when the gate latch clicked.

“Morning,” Keys said. He had his guitar, but didn’t play it. “Doc’s not coming in today. Doctor says he ought to rest.”

Clay nodded once. “He’ll hate that.”

Keys smiled without humor. “He already does.”

They worked in silence—Keys tightening strings that didn’t need it, Clay rubbing rosin that wouldn’t stick. The sky never brightened; it just gave up pretending.

By afternoon, the crowd filled half the stands. Word had spread that the Lanterns were three wins from the pennant, but the buzz felt off-key. The owner sat behind home plate in a city suit, talking loud about ticket prices and new investors. Cameras lined the dugout like metal vultures.

Cal crouched behind the plate, chin lifted. “You all right, Clay?”

“Never better,” Clay said. It was almost true.

He threw six innings of workman’s fire. No flash, no art—just control. Each pitch was a statement, each out a piece of proof that rhythm could still beat noise. But the seventh came heavy. His arm ached where the scar from last year’s slide still hid under his sleeve.

When the inning ended, he sat on the bench, breathing through his teeth. Doc’s seat was empty. The space beside it looked like a missing word.

That night the rain returned. Not the curtain from months ago—just a restless drizzle that whispered in the windows of the diner. Sarah poured his coffee herself.

“You’re quieter than usual,” she said.

He half-smiled. “Didn’t know that was possible.”

She folded her arms. “They say you’re the backbone of this town.”

“Backbones don’t talk much,” he said.

She laughed, soft. “Maybe they should.”

He didn’t answer. The laughter warmed him and hurt him all at once.

Fanny came from the kitchen with a towel over her shoulder. “If you two are done inventing poetry, I got dishes stacking higher than a wedding cake.”

Clay saluted her with his coffee. Sarah’s eyes stayed on him a second too long.

The next morning, Doc wasn’t in the dugout again. Keys said the cough had “turned mean.” Nobody said hospital.

The team played tight. The rookies pressed; the bats sounded wrong. In the fourth, Cal called time and walked to the mound.

“Doc’d tell you to loosen up,” he said.

“Doc ain’t here.”

“That why you’re carrying the whole damn infield on your shoulders?”

Clay stared at him. “You hearing yourself right now?”

Cal grinned through the mask. “Always. You should try it.”

Then he dropped the mask, crouched, and the game went on.

They won, barely. The scoreboard looked good; everything else looked fragile.

Two days later, the phone in Clay’s apartment rang just after dawn.

He sat up to the smell of cedarwood and sweet tobacco—the scent that never washed out, even now.

“Williams,” he said.

Keys’s voice on the line: “Doc’s in county hospital. He’s askin’ for you.”

The world shrank to the size of that wire.

Clay dressed without thinking—old jeans, flannel, cap low. By the time he reached the ward, the nurse had the look people wear when they don’t want to say the word *late*.

Doc was propped on pillows, eyes sharp but small. “You throwin’ today?”

“Double-header.”

“Then don’t miss the first one.”

Clay sat down. “Team needs you.”

“Team’s got you.” The cough came; he swallowed it. “Don’t let ‘em sell this place off to neon and concrete.”

“I can’t stop money.”

Doc smiled thin. “No. But you can play louder than it.”

Clay stayed until the nurse made him leave.

That evening, the field waited under low clouds. The owner wasn’t there; the cameras were. Clay threw the first pitch high on purpose, just to hear it hit the backstop and make a sound big enough for Doc to catch in his sleep.

They won both games. The rookies stopped smiling halfway through because winning felt sacred, not fun.

After the last out, Clay walked alone to the mound, touched the dirt, and whispered something no one caught. The rain began again—light, steady, respectful.

Sarah waited by the fence with an umbrella she didn’t open.

He walked past her on his way out, shoulders heavy, and she said, “You can’t fix everything, you know.”

He stopped. “I’m not tryin’ to.”

“Then what are you doin’?”

He looked at her, water tracing lines down his face. “Rememberin’ how.”

She nodded, and that was enough.

When he got home, the phone was ringing again. He knew before he picked it up. Keys’s voice was rough.

“Doc’s gone.”

Clay sat on the floor, the receiver still to his ear, listening to the dial tone like it was the ocean. The lights from the diner below flickered once, then steadied.

He didn’t cry. He just sat there until the smell of coffee drifted up through the floorboards and reminded him the world still moved.

Outside, Lantern Field slept under its perfect lights.

Inside, Clay traced the stitching of a baseball until dawn.

The rhythm was still there, but now it carried an echo—a gap where a friend used to keep time.

Tomorrow would bring another game, and he would pitch it.

Not for the cameras. Not for the owner. Not even for the town.

For the man who taught him that showing up was a kind of prayer.

The season wasn’t over yet.

But the fall had begun.

Chapter VIII: The Final Game

Rain had been threatening all day.

The clouds hung low and swollen over East Brookville, and the air carried that sharp, metallic smell right before a storm.

Lantern Field glowed anyway — a defiant kind of light.

Fresh banners whipped in the wind, the stands packed full.

Nobody said it out loud, but everyone knew what this meant: the Lanterns were one game from the championship, one game from proving they were still alive.

Clay Williams stood near the dugout rail, glove under his arm, watching the field breathe.

The new sod was springy under his boots — too young, too soft.

He preferred the old clay that cracked like bone when it was dry, the kind you had to earn every inch of.

He looked toward the bullpen where the rookies warmed up, nervous and grinning, throwing too hard like they could out-muscle the moment.

He knew better.

Moments like this had to be met, not fought.

He rubbed his thumb along the glove seam and breathed the way Doc had taught him — in through the nose, slow, hold, release.

The smell of rain and leather hit like memory.

By the third inning, the first drops fell, darkening the infield.

The crowd didn’t move; nobody in East Brookville ran from rain.

Cal jogged to the mound, mask pushed up.

“You all right?”

Clay gave a half-smile. “Rain’s honest. Let it fall.”

Cal nodded. “Doc would’ve said that.”

“Doc said a lot of things.”

“Yeah,” Cal muttered, stepping back, “and he meant most of ’em.”

Clay’s next pitch cut straight through the wet air — perfect, clean, effortless.

For a second, he thought he saw Doc’s shape in the dugout, that old cap tilted low, clipboard resting on his knees.

Maybe it was the light.

Maybe it was the rhythm finally catching up to him.

By the eighth, the storm had opened.

Thunder rolled far off.

The new lights hummed steady above, but the rain softened their edges until everything shimmered.

Clay could barely see through the downpour, but he didn’t need to.

He knew where the plate was.

He always had.

Every throw was a heartbeat.

Every breath, a drum.

The game wasn’t a contest anymore — it was communion.

He wasn’t fighting time or pain or memory.

He was carrying them all together, the way Doc used to say a man carried the game: *in silence, but never alone.*

When the last out came, it didn’t sound like victory.

It sounded like release.

The crowd roared, but Clay just stood there, drenched, blinking rain from his lashes, watching the field fade behind the curtain of weather.

He raised his glove once toward the sky, not as a salute — more like a thank-you.

Then he walked off the mound for the last time that night.

He got home late.

The streets of East Brookville were slick, shining like mercury under the streetlights.

His apartment above the diner smelled faintly of grease and coffee — and underneath it, cedarwood and sweet tobacco, always.

He kicked off his cleats, dropped the glove on the counter, and stood for a long moment staring out the window at the faint glow of Lantern Field beyond the rooftops.

Doc’s words drifted back, low and gravelly, as if the man were still sitting beside him.

*Don’t fight the rhythm, Clay. Just keep time with it.*

He ran the tap and waited for the pipes to moan themselves warm.

Steam rose, clouding the mirror.

When he finally stepped into the tub, the water bit first, then wrapped him in heat that reached the ache in his bones.

He leaned back, eyes closed, hands floating at the surface.

The water smelled faintly of rain and soap — that clean, impossible scent that comes only after everything’s been burned out of you.

His breath slowed.

For the first time in years, he didn’t feel the need to brace for anything.

He thought of Doc.

Of Sarah’s laugh downstairs.

Of Keys’ guitar string humming long after the song ended.

Of the game, and what it had taken — and what it had given back.

“Still here,” he whispered.

Not to anyone.

Just to the rhythm itself.

Then he slid lower, until the water covered his ears, and the world went quiet except for the pulse of his own heart.

Outside, the storm broke apart over the hills, leaving behind only the steady sound of rain.

He stayed there until the heat faded.

When he finally stood, the mirror had fogged over completely — no reflection, just a shape moving through steam.

He toweled off slow, the ache in his shoulders deep but clean, the kind of pain that proves you’ve lived.

The apartment was dim and warm, carrying that same scent of cedarwood and sweet tobacco that had followed him for years.

He left the window cracked open; the rain’s whisper folded in with the hum of the diner below.

Sarah’s laughter floated up once, faint as memory.

Clay sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on a clean shirt, staring at the glove resting on the chair across the room.

He reached over, brushed his fingers along the worn leather, then laid back, eyes tracing the ceiling fan’s slow turn.

“Tomorrow,” he murmured, voice almost lost to the rain.

Not a promise — just a rhythm.

The sound of the storm softened, the air cooled, and his breathing matched the slow heartbeat of the town beneath him.

Somewhere between one blink and the next, the weight in his chest eased.

He closed his eyes.

And for the first time in a long time, sleep came easy.

Chapter IX: When He Wakes

The phone was ringing.

Clay surfaced from sleep like a diver breaking through dark water.

For a second, he didn’t know where he was.

The window was cracked to the soft light of dawn.

No crowd.

No rain.

Only morning and the smell of coffee drifting up from the diner below.

The phone kept at it—shrill, alive.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, feet meeting cool floorboards, and picked up the receiver.

“Williams,” he croaked.

“’Bout time you answered,” came a voice that stopped his breath cold.

He froze. “ … Doc?”

“What, you forget my voice already?” The chuckle on the line was pure gravel and smoke. “Listen, kid—you really kicked the hornet’s nest last night.”

Clay’s pulse hammered. “Doc… no, wait—Doc? *Doc?*”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“You’re—you’re alive.”

“Last I checked,” Doc said dryly. “Now quit talkin’ crazy. The owner’s been on my tail all morning. Papers are printing your picture like you walked on water. Says he wants to meet us today—talk new uniforms, talk investment, talk future.”

Clay rubbed his face, trying to piece time together. The walls looked sharper than they should have, the light too bright.

“Doc,” he said again, half laughing, half afraid, “what day is it?”

“Thursday. Day after you pitched us into the front page. You sleep through the whole town knockin’ on your door?”

Clay sat there, the phone pressed hard against his ear, staring at the glove on the chair.

The seams looked exactly like the ones from the dream.

He could still feel the rain on his arms, the mud on his cleats.

But the world was dry, clean, new.

Doc’s voice softened. “You did good, Clay. Real good. We’re alive again.”

Then the line clicked, leaving only a hum in the receiver and the echo of a heartbeat that wasn’t his own.

He stood another moment, the receiver dangling, until it hit him.

Doc was alive.

The field was alive.

And so was he.

The first name that came to mind wasn’t the owner’s.

It was *Sarah.*

He threw on his shirt, still half buttoned, boots unlaced, and tore down the stairs two at a time.

The bell above the diner door clanged loud enough to turn every head.

The breakfast crowd paused, spoons midair.

Sarah was behind the counter, pouring coffee.

Her eyes widened when she saw him—mud still on his cuffs, hair wild, face bright with something that looked halfway between shock and joy.

“Clay?” she said. “You all right?”

He didn’t answer.

He crossed the floor in three strides, leaned across the counter, and said, loud enough for everyone to hear:

“I love you.”

The whole diner went still.

A fork hit a plate somewhere in the back.

Sarah blinked once, then that slow, crooked smile of hers broke through.

“Well,” she said, voice light, teasing, “you pickin’ breakfast or proposin’?”

Before Clay could speak, Fanny burst out from the kitchen, waving a towel.

“If you two start kissin’, I’m throwin’ rice instead of pancakes!”

The room erupted—laughter, clapping, the hiss of the griddle kicking back to life.

Clay laughed too, shaking his head, and Sarah just leaned across the counter, eyes bright with something softer than the morning sun.

“About time,” she said.

Outside, East Brookville gleamed pristine after the storm, with streets glistening from the remaining rain. In the distance, the hum of Lantern Field’s new lights filled the air.

To Clay, it resembled a rhythm—steady, timeless, and alert.

Epilogue: Borrowed Light

The photograph still hangs behind the counter at Fanny’s.

Same cracked frame. Same glare of rain.

You can barely see the crowd through the streaks,

but the light caught him perfectly — the look in his eyes,

that half-second before the throw.

It’s been twenty years since that night.

The field’s different now.

The new sod’s gone through a dozen seasons,

the bleachers repainted, the lights humming stronger than ever.

They call it “Williams Field” now,

though Clay never asked for that.

Most mornings, he still comes down the same steps,

still orders the same breakfast —

corned beef hash, four slices of bacon, two sausage, black coffee.

Sarah runs the place these days.

She’s got the same laugh, the one that can cut through a bad day like sunlight through smoke.

When she brushes past him with a plate, he still catches the scent of cedarwood and sweet tobacco,

and it’s enough to make the years fall away.

He never got used to fame.

The interviews faded, the newspaper clippings yellowed,

and eventually, the world moved on.

But not East Brookville.

Here, under the same humming lights,

the rhythm stayed — the slow, steady pulse of something honest.

Kids still play ball on that dirt.

Their uniforms are cleaner,

their gloves smell like new leather instead of oil and grit,

but they still chase the same kind of magic.

Every once in a while, Clay wanders out to the mound,

just to feel the ground give under his boots.

When the wind shifts right, he swears he can still hear Doc’s laugh

and the old guitar strumming from Keys by the dugout.

Behind the diner counter, there’s a small shelf now —

handmade soaps Sarah started selling years back.

Each one wrapped in brown paper, each stamped with a single name.

One bar, near the register, reads **Borrowed Light**.

Cedarwood. Sweet tobacco. A trace of rain.

When someone asks about it, Sarah just smiles.

“Smells like the night East Brookville woke up,” she says.

Sometimes Clay hears her say that and just shakes his head,

a grin playing at the corner of his mouth.

He doesn’t correct her.

He just sits there, watching the morning crowd,

feeling the warmth of the cup between his hands,

and thinking how strange it is —

how some things fade,

and others keep burning quietly forever.

Author’s Note — Behind-the-Scenes Reflection

I created *Borrowed Light* from the quiet that lingers between storms — the kind that questions our true nature when no one is observing.

Clay Williams is a man of few words, having witnessed too much, yet he continues to show up, work, and strive to maintain something good. That’s all any of us can do.

This narrative inspired a soap with the same name — featuring warm cedarwood, sweet tobacco, and rain. It embodies the scent of perseverance, the essence of staying put even when the world moves on. *Releasing in December*

— *Chris Dempsey*

Author’s Note — Outro

Some men shine brilliantly for a moment and then vanish.

Others manage to sustain the light for a bit longer — even if it isn't originally theirs.

That's the essence of *Borrowed Light*: the enduring rhythm, the lingering fragrance after the rain, the silent moments that persist beyond the applause.

You can still sense it — cedar, tobacco, storm — the aroma of a man who remained.

d.

— *Chris Dempsey*