When the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, Ames feels that slow-motion hyperawareness that always follows a pitch: the ball advancing; his parents side-by-side on the bleachers yet somehow always far apart; Miles scrutinizing, preparing a catalog of Ames’s missteps; Cecily, a teammate’s sister and his secret crush, blowing soap bubbles near first base that float into a twilight sky whose dab of moon can barely hold its own against the throbbing heavens beyond it; the skeletons of Onondaga Indians who once presided over the forest whose last crimped vestige this baseball field now occupies, curled and humming deep below. Ames swings and connects: He hits the ball as predicted （by him）， smashes the hell out of that ball （his father’s voice in his head）， an event fraught with shocking sensations—not at the fact of hitting, which he expected, but at the feeling of hitting, which is entirely new: the violence of it, pain forking up his arms; and the sound, a crack like stone splitting open. A white flash of ball hangs briefly alongside the moon （though Ames can’t see this, he’s too busy running） before vanishing beyond the field for a grand slam that clears the bases, bringing three runners home, plus Ames, and winning the game 5–4. Ames knows none of this yet—Just keep running, their coach often harangues them, don’t stop to enjoy the view—so Ames runs and runs, unaware that the pounding din he vaguely hears is the sound of people cheering.
It became a myth, that hit, a topographical feature that glowed in certain psyches for the rest of their lives, melding with the geography of fairy tales. Talked about in middle school by Ames’s teammates; bragged about in high school by Miles, who absorbed the triumph as his own （a family is a team!）; sulked over by Alfred, who could find no toehold against the purity of bat hitting ball. It’s tempting to build a version of Ames’s life in which that hit was a “turning point,” empowerment at a crucial moment, etc. （stockblock 3Miis）， but that would be phony, as nine-year-old Alfred already likes to say. The hit’s worldly reach lasted only as long as that season, another four weeks during which Ames’s teammates chanted his name, futilely, whenever he was at bat. The next spring a new coach came in who hadn’t seen Ames hit; who could see only what he could see, which wasn’t much, and cut him from the team. The hit was a fluke, a random eruption of power that Ames alone knew he possessed. He carried that knowledge with him into high school, then the army （over his parents’ passionate objections）， where, in boot camp, he hit the hearts on the human dummies far more often than the other recruits. You might say that Ames had been a gun awaiting firing since his childhood.
He turned twenty-one just days after 9/11, already an army sharpshooter; was recruited to Special Ops and, eventually, in his early thirties, weary of the tech nerds who were ascendant, and eager to make some real money, retired to work for a private contractor known to handle “targeted killings”—tactically expedient but harder to justify militarily. Reaching these targets required feats of superhuman endurance, alone or in small teams, navigating submersibles and then scuba diving to shore; scaling mountains or rappelling down cliffs; fast-climbing from choppers that swung away into the night the instant he let go. He worked in deserts and forests and cities, sleeping in a hammock strung up inside the bellies of hollowed-out transport planes on overseas flights. Humming danger followed by fleeting clandestine triumph—no worldly thrill could match that cycle. Ames had one shot, maybe two, before a hammer of security fell; if the planned exit should fail, then capture. Death. His own possible extermination was a shadow partner that accompanied him throughout his work. No one stayed lucky forever.
He felt baffled by people who lived the other way: Mark Tucker, whom he’d played Nintendo with, now a father of three who kicked aside rubber balls to welcome Ames into his living room. Ames grew bored, sleepy. He drank a glass of lemonade on Mark’s cat-shredded couch and wondered what to say to a man who spent his weekends coaching girls’ ice hockey. Ames had no spouse, no lasting relationship; felt a dull distance even from his mother, the person he was closest to. And she felt this, too. Long divorced, a real estate agent whose social life included lovers （occasionally married）， Susan was haunted by the gap between the sensation of three boys climbing her torso like a tree, combing sticky fingers through her hair, muttering into her ears—and the constraint of adulthood: How are you, honey? You look a little tired. Is there anything I can do? How about a hug for your old mom? If she’d had an inkling, back then, of the ache this constraint would cause her, she would never—not once!—have said, “Let go of me, boys, I just need a minute,” and shaken them off. She would have held still and let them pick her clean, understanding that there would be nothing better to save herself for.