Page 39 of Unwritten Rules
“Sure.” Though a confused line digs its way between his eyebrows, one that smooths once D’Spara comes over to talk with him. “See you soon, man.”
They don’t announce the roster at the end of the game. Players pack the stuff from their stalls that they’ll transport themselves, leaving the rest for the clubhouse crew, a few of the more marginal guys saying that they hope they’ll see Zach in Oakland, and he says the same.
He shoulders his duffel, prepared to go back to his rental unit and refresh his phone until someone tells him if he should report to Oakland or Nashville, their triple-A affiliate, when he finds Johnson in the parking lot.
Sara Maria’s standing next to him, a travel pack of tissues clutched in her hand. “They told him he was cut.”
“Cut?” Zach asks.
Johnson shakes his head, swiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I’m going to Nashville. But I’m not on the forty-man.”
“Fuck,” Zach says, and then apologizes to Sara Maria. “You know it’s a contract thing, right? Like, that fact that you’re here at all is impressive. Most pitchers never get this much.”
“I know, I know, I’mlucky. But I worked all spring, and I haven’t gotten paid to play ball since last September.”
Sara Maria makes atsking noise before handing Zach the pack of tissues. “I’m gonna go get us a few waters out of my car.”
“If it wasn’t for that homer I gave up,” Johnson says, after she walks away, “they wouldn’t be sending me down.”
Eugenio appears in the doorway to the complex, Johnson’s back to him. And he pauses when he sees them standing there, absorbing whatever spectacle they’re making, the hunch of Johnson’s shoulders, Zach’s attempts to soothe him.
“It’s probably got nothing to do with that,” Zach says, more aware of his volume with Eugenio listening. “Their minds were made up before the game even started.”
Johnson rubs his nose on one of the tissues. “I just can’t live on what they’re gonna pay me.”
“Yeah, it’s a shitty situation for everyone. Sometimes in baseball there aren’t any good choices.” Zach glances at Eugenio as he says it, and Eugenio holds his gaze.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Johnson says.
“Do what the rest of the guys do. Sleep on an air mattress in a crappy apartment, eat a bunch of fast food, get another job, and try to play some baseball in the middle of all of that.”
“Do you think it’s because I said something to ’em about the money?”
“I think it’s probably not any one thing. But, yeah, it might be.” Zach lets out a long breath, the kind he told Johnson to practice during the game. “The thing is that you can’t really know, and they don’t want you to know. There’s stuff you just gotta learn to live with.”
“You ever get sick of that?” Johnson hiccups and then coughs to cover it. “Just having to swallow all this garbage and keep smiling like it’s nothing?”
And he looks young to Zach most of the time but looks especially so now, his eyes red, looking at Zach like Zach has any answers. “Yeah, you get used to it.”
“Seems like I shouldn’t have to. That none of us should have to.”
“This game isn’t aboutshould.” And Eugenio’s still standing there, watching Zach the way Zach watches him when he talks, with the force of his attention. “If you’re thinking it’s gonna be fair somehow—it just isn’t.”
“Yeah, well, everything’s easier to say when you got money.” Johnson wipes his nose again. “Sorry, they just sit in there making up lists of who’s going where and don’t bother to see us as anything more than names on a screen.”
“They don’t, but you going and letting ’em have it won’t do anything,” Zach says. “Sometimes you want something, and you don’t get to have it, and you just have to accept it for what it is.”
And if Zach wasn’t entirely sure if Eugenio heard him, he is now. Because Eugenio is looking directly at him over the breadth of Johnson’s shoulders, his expression defiant. A look that saysBut what if we don’t.
Sara Maria returns with three bottles of water, holding one out to Zach and handing another to Johnson, who cracks it open and splashes some onto his face. She casts a glance at Eugenio, catching him eavesdropping. It’s enough to dislodge him from where he’s standing. He shoulders his bag and heads toward his truck.
Johnson moves similarly, picking up two of his bags that are baking on the parking lot asphalt.
“Here,” Zach says, once Johnson has his head buried in the open hatch of his truck. He pulls out his wallet, extracting a few twenties and handing them to Sara Maria. “Take him to dinner. Tell him it’s to celebrate making triple-A, and don’t tell him I gave it to you.”
She takes the money, depositing it in a slim wallet in her purse, adorned with a few stickers, one of a butterfly, another a red rose. “This stuff is all pretty messed up and could have been handled—” she says, before catching herself. “Thank you for the gift. I’ll make sure we go someplace good.”
“I think that’s all of it,” Johnson says, after he closes the hatch of his truck. “If we don’t play together again—” he extends a hand to Zach, his previous temper soothed, though he looks overheated and young, his eyes damp from the water he splashed on them “—I wanted to say thank you for working with me this spring.”
