Page 58 of Hunter's Hidden Camera
“Again,” I say.
I observe carefully, as he swings once more.
I take the tube from him. “You know, I think you’ve got the strength, got the power, to hit the ball really hard. I think the problem is simple. It’s just the angle that you’re coming at the ball. You start out in the right position, but you don’t follow through correctly.”
He watches me closely.
“You’re swinging like this.” I demonstrate. “See how the bat, at the last moment, curves down? If you put as much attention on the end of the swing as much as the beginning of the swing, you’ll do great. Now show me.”
I hand the tube back to him. He swings.
“That’s great!” I say. I mean it. “See how that feels? Feels different, right?”
Carter T. Douglass keeps swinging. He smiles. He nods. “Indeed. It’s quite different. I didn’t completely know every part of my swing before. Now I understand what to pay attention to.”
I say, “You do it like that, and you’re gonna get some real power there.”
“Thank you, Hunter. Perhaps I might start impressing people on the softball field.”
“A skill like that,” I say. “It’s not just for softball. You adjust it some, and then you can chop wood, you can build things, you can do all kinds of stuff. Hell, if you get into trouble with somebody one day, you can give them a good whack over the head.”
“May I never be that unfortunate,” saysCarter T. Douglass.
“We’ll be back in like a half hour,” I say.
Oscar and I head out, as Carter T. Douglass continues to practice his swing.
26
Cracked
While Oscar changes clothes in his bedroom, I’m sitting at the table in his kitchen, talking to his mother, who’s in her mid-thirties. She’s in the middle of cooking traditional Cuban rice and beans with fried plantains.
It smells so good in here, especially since I haven’t eaten much all day, except for some trail mix that was in my glove compartment.
Cuban pop music plays on her phone.
“Isn’t the water cold at the beach?” she asks, referencing my swimwear.
“Yeah. But we didn’t swim or anything.”
“No? You two were just sitting on the sand?”
“Yes.” I hate lying to Oscar’s mother like this. She’s so nice.
“I guess it’s better than those video games you boys always play. I don’t understand what’s so fun about shooting people, even if they aren’t real.”
“It’s like an escape,” I say.
“That’s not an escape,” she says. “Dancing toSalsa Cubana: nowthat’san escape.”
She turns up the music on her phone and starts dancing, all while monitoring the plantains in the fry pan with a spatula. She looks so full of joy.
Oscar walks into the kitchen, now wearing jeans and a short-sleeved button-up shirt with a sailboat pattern on it.
“Echa ahora, mami!“ Oscar raises his hands and dances with his mother.
It’s really sweet. But more so, it’s so foreign to me, this closeness between parent and child.
