My uncle told me my greatness would be wound up in my ability to take a hit. The one who hopped a fence at tee-ball to break the ump’s arm with an aluminum bat. A cracking sound louder than any home run. Legally, he couldn’t attend a single game of mine after that, but his words would follow me around, standing idly by at every first base. In a AAA exhibition, I played catcher as the Grim Reaper pitched from the mound. He threw ferociously, and I swear I saw his eye sockets tighten and crack, all giddy each time the ball popped my glove. After the game, he shot the breeze with my coach — mentioning that I would go on to do great things and that he was a big fan of the Cubs up until they won the World Series. When I played in my own bid for a Major League pennant, a batter walked up to home plate as that song hauled ass through the crowd. You know the song. Probably Crazy Train, something that didn’t take death too seriously, and it felt a little tacky for what was about to happen. A square-jawed pitcher threw a knuckleball, stabbing right past the scrawny rookie at bat. Hit me dead center in the torso. Sent a cracking sound through my whole body. And as they carried me off the field on a stretcher, I saw myself in the stands. He was a kid, his first game ever, and he’d just moved forward a few rows because the rain made another family abandon their seats and a box of Everlasting Gobstoppers. He was popping them into his mouth, the candy bleeding its color down his knuckles in the downpour. Rattling the Gobstoppers along his teeth. Little sugar spheres like nothingness. The Reaper sat beside him, lost in his skull, scrawling something across his scout book, drinking a tallboy without even really taking his sockets off the page. He was frustrated. The rain’s washing away his notes and he couldn’t out-write the storm. But, he’s got another tall boy up his sleeve, and he’s throwing this one back even faster than the first until — finally, no more of this shit — he throws his book into the dugout and crushes the beer can against his skull. That’s when I feel it again. The cracking sound inside me. And that’s it, I guess.
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Caleb Bethea is an MFA at UofSC, studying fiction by night. By day, he works as a copywriter. But, the best of his time is spent with his wife and two goblins by the ocean. You can read his work in HAD, Maudlin House, hex, Twin Pies, Bear Creek, autofocus, and elsewhere. He tweets at @caleb_bethea_
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image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 