Baseball Stories (12)

. . . it's so very quiet here in the locker room.  He had never paid much attention to the quiet in the silence of the locker room after everybody has gone.  It wasn't as though he had waited around to notice in the past.  In those days if it wasn't a party, it was another game, it was something somewhere.  Somewhere.  But now, it is as if life itself had ended.  The cheering and laughing softly leaving unexpectedly through the cracks in the floor to find him just there.  Alone, with just the softest whisper of quiet to quench his senses.

These are new days.  Unexpected days.  The wealth of this busy day now reduced to a moment in time.

The afternoon breeze whips past the curtain and caresses his cheek.  He slaps at it as one would to send a mosquito on its way.  He is too absorbed in the quiet to notice that she has moved him.  An unattended side door slams shut on her way out.  Startled, he shrugs his shoulders and heads for the car . . .