Dead Man's Land by Jack Patterson (digital e reader .txt) 📕

it up and stared at it a few minutes before kissing it.

“Miss your family?” asked Hector Suarez, the fleet-footed center fielder from Venezuela.

Prado nodded.

Suarez patted him on the back. “We all do. It doesn’t get any easier, but you learn to cope. You’ll be all right.”

Prado forced a smile and put the picture in his pocket before he finished packing.

Mudcat sauntered up to Prado and put his arm around him.

“Kid, there’s no use stayin’ in the mully grubs.”

Prado looked at him and smiled. He had no idea what his manager meant, but it sounded funny to him.

“That’s the spirit,” Mudcat said, slapping Prado on the chest. “Just put a smile on your face and move on. This is baseball, the greatest game on God’s green earth. It’s like life: You get up each day and determine that you’re going to play better than the day before. And sometimes you do—and sometimes you don’t. And when everything comes together, it’s just so sweet.”

Prado nodded knowingly, though he struggled to understand half of what Mudcat said, much less what he meant. Despite a decent command of the English language, Prado felt it more difficult to grasp the meaning of Mudcat’s soliloquies than it was to hit a 90-mile-an-hour breaking ball.

Mudcat waddled away, leaving Prado to wallow in his own misery, his own loneliness. Nothing his manager could say would help fill the emptiness Prado felt when he went to bed at night, wondering if he’d ever see Isabel again, wondering if he had what it took to make his dream come true. After a week of playing baseball in the United States, he felt lost.

Prado grabbed a to-go box of food in the clubhouse and headed for the bus. He dropped his equipment bag outside the bus along with his suitcase that he’d prepared ahead of time.

“Prado, Alvarez isn’t making the trip, so you’ve got both seats to yourself,” Fred Fuller, the team’s head of operations said before Prado climbed aboard. He patted Prado on the back. “Enjoy because it’ll probably never happen again.”

Another week, another town. It was a rhythm he’d become accustomed to by now. Bouncing around from city to city no longer bothered him, especially since nowhere felt like home to him—not like Cuba. Even as badly as he wanted to escape the island and chase his dreams here, he still missed certain things about it. He especially missed the people. His friends and teammates. His daughter.

He settled into a seat near the back near the Latin contingent. The Seafarers had made a few team trips locally and the bus seating was already established—coaches and personnel up front, American players in the middle, Latin players in the back. Or as Suarez explained the bus seating zones—quiet, contemplative, loud.

Prado slumped into his seat and pulled the picture of Isabel out of his pocket, rubbing his finger over her face. It wasn’t the same as doing it in real life, but it would have to suffice for now. He closed his eyes and recalled her dancing around the living room of Liliana’s house. Even though he felt like he’d made the worst decision of his life and he might never see her again, the mere thought of her shaking her little bottom to Timba rhythms made him smile.

His happy thoughts were interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.

“Excuse me,” said the man. “Is this seat taken?”

Prado shook his head and gestured toward the seat. “Please.”

The man stuck his hand out. “Cal Murphy, sports writer for The Times in Seattle.”

“Vicente Prado,” he answered. “Mucho gusto.”

Cal smiled back at him. “Mucho gusto.”

Mudcat stomped up the steps of the bus and grabbed the microphone. “Okay, gentlemen. It’s off to Boise. Get some good sleep. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day if you don’t.”

The bus driver dimmed the cabin lights as the vehicle lurched forward.

Suarez cranked up the volume on his phone and several of the Latin players near Prado broke out into dancing. Prado didn’t feel like dancing—not tonight anyway. He didn’t feel like much of anything, especially talking to a reporter.

“So, where are you from?” Cal asked.

Prado slowly turned and looked at him. “Cuba.”

“Well, I have quite a few questions for you. Are you willing to talk about it?”

Prado nodded. “It’s a long trip.”

CHAPTER 5

CAL SPENT HIS DAYS talking with people who possessed incredible athletic talent, made far more money than him, and viewed their conversations as part of an athlete’s job. A handful of the players treated talking to the media as if it were sheer drudgery. And Cal couldn’t really blame them. Most of the press corps lacked imagination, not to mention tact, acting as if the superstar athlete’s most important moment of the day was their conversation. He wouldn’t want to talk to them either if they treated him the same way.

Instead, he learned a long time ago that the key to getting stories that no other reporter got was to build a rapport with the person. “After all,” his mentor and former editor Thurston Fink used to say, “athletes are people, too. If you treat them like people, they’ll treat you like people too—with a few exceptions.” Cal had met several of those exceptions, but he didn’t take it personally. They treated everyone like dirt.

As the streetlights flickered past, Cal noticed the small picture Prado clutched in his hand.

“Is that your daughter?” Cal asked.

Prado nodded. “The pride of my life.”

“How old is she?”

“Two. Her name is Isabel.”

Cal smiled. “That’s a pretty name. I’ve got a daughter not much older than her, too.”

Prado sighed and shook his head. “Are you gone from your family much?”

“More than I’d like to be. Is this the first time you’ve been away from her?”

Prado nodded. “I saw her almost every day back home except when we were on a road trip, which usually wasn’t that long.”

“Is she coming over here?”

“Maybe, but I need to make the team—and make a lot more money, too.”

Cal playfully punched him in the arm. “You