From: "NynaeveSedai" Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 17:04:04 -0400 Subject: NEW: Canadians & Vegetarians (Hitting for the Cylcle) (1/4) Source: xff NOTE: This is the final installment in a series I have been writing, based on "The UnNatural". The first three elements have been posted separately and are about to be reposted along with this one. TITLE: Canadians and Vegetarians by Nynaeve E-MAIL: scully@accessearth.net RATING: G CATEGORY: V, post-ep, implied MSR SPOILERS: The UnNatural KEYWORDS: other character death, Dales POV SUMMARY: Unnecessary. Transformations. Baseball. DISCLAIMER: Yes, I know, they belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and a bunch of other legal entities. DEDICATION: To J, who thought this was a great idea from the start, even when I wasn't so certain. To A, who never fails to ask the right questions. How did I luck out with you two? I must have done something right ... DISTRIBUTION: anywhere, just let me know so I can arrange visitation. Also, I would really appreciate it if you would archive this with its companion pieces: "Trust the Tale", "The Heart of the Mystery", and "To Be a Man". All can be read at my site; URL at bottom of document or e-mail me. Thanks! FEEDBACK: of course! I keep and respond to it all. NOTES: This completes my post - "The UnNatural" series, entitled "Hitting for the Cycle". Thanks to everyone who read and / or responded to any of the first pieces. I've really enjoyed writing these and hope you've enjoyed reading them. Suggested reading order: "Canadians and Vegetarians" - single "The Heart of the Mystery" - double "Trust the Tale" - triple "To Be a Man" - home run "Baseball keeps you young, Agent Mulder." Which is worse, I wonder, a lie or a broken promise? I promised Josh Exley I would tell my children about him, about watching him play baseball. The same day I made that promise, I held him in my arms as he died from a wound inflicted by the entity I came to know as an Alien Bounty Hunter. I broke my promise. Until today, I had never told anyone about watching Ex play. There had never been anyone *to* tell. Today, as afternoon slid away into evening, I fulfilled my long shattered oath. I put to rest the spirit of my friend and picked up one piece of my own broken life. Agent Mulder listened, believed. But I lied to Fox. Oh, not in the telling of the tale, not in the details of Josh Exley's life. All of that was the truth, the God's honest, elusive truth. In Fox Mulder I saw myself - young, idealistic, in love (I may have been in love with baseball but Fox Mulder is in love with his Agent Scully). So, I lied to him, hopefully for his own good. Baseball only keeps you young if it doesn't rip your heart out on a brightly lit cactus beringed field in New Mexico in 1947. Life is funny, the way it pivots on unseen hinges. We all note the obvious moments: marriages, births, deaths. We little note the moments that mark us forever, that change the path we travel, that alter our very personalities. It is only later that we turn around, we look back with the perfect clarity associated with hindsight and we say to ourselves, "Oh, so that's when it happened." If we are lucky, we get to live in those small moments. Most of us are not so lucky; we must live with the knowledge that the moment passed us by and we were unable to make it last. You couldn't live in Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947 without knowing who Josh Exley was. Most folks pretty much let Exley go about his business; lots would even admit, kind of quietly, on the side, that he was pretty darn good and that someday we would all be saying, "We saw him play when..." Still there were some folks weren't too kind about the fact that Exley was black. Comments were made and eventually threats were leveled at him. Once threats materialized I was assigned to protect Josh Exley. It didn't bother me that Exley was a black man; I didn't think much about it one way or the other, in all honesty. In 1947 I was a young man, both in body and spirit. I was in love with all life had to offer and I thought the purest expression of that love was the game of baseball. I could appreciate Exley's immense talent and it angered me that he should be targeted because some people thought his skin color didn't give him the right to his talent and if he didn't have a right to that talent, he should be separated from it by any means necessary. Gladly I accepted the assignment to protect Exley. Gladly I walked through the unseen door that had opened in my life. It was only later that I would come to know this, though, to see how, like Alice through the looking glass, I had entered Ex's world. I didn't know the landscape of Ex's world; it was unfamiliar with demanding and treacherous terrain. I stumbled. My misstep would cost Ex his life and me all that I held dear. Later, when I would stop to tally up my experiences with Ex, I found the small moments, lost among the larger ones. I watched those moments, like Alice drinking from the wrong bottle, grow, become gigantic in my mind. That's the way it is with small moments; they are only small when they occur. When you have missed them, when they have changed your life, they loom over you. It was the small moments that tore what was left of my heart to pieces. Chewing tobacco with Ex and his teammates (and doing a mighty awful job of it, at that) and tasting only the air in my mouth. Listening to Ex sing spirituals and hearing only the silence left behind. Watching Ex's humble pride when yet another home run lifted his team to victory and seeing only a barren field. Shaking his hand in a gesture of friendship and feeling only his blood, slick on my fingers. And the smallest moment of all, the one that has consumed me from that day to this. A phone call. Telling a voice in Macon, Georgia that I was calling from Roswell, New Mexico. Realizing that I brought to Ex his executioner. Tonight I sit outside, in the half light, perched on wooden bleachers. I am still and as I *am* unmoving, I go unnoticed. My mind whirls dizzily. In flashes I see myself fifty years gone, in a place much like this one, watching the finest man I ever knew swat a baseball all around the park. The air is a bit cool; spring has yet to give way to summer in Washington. This afternoon I fulfilled that long ago oath. Tonight I watch its outcome. Poor Boy called me when Mulder tracked him down, asked him to come shag balls at the park. Poor Boy thought I might like to know about it. Smart kid. I watched Mulder, batting alone. I watched the arrival of Agent Scully. I thought to myself, "There's a woman worth shape shifting for!" I listened to them, teasing each other, back and forth. It's an old habit with them, I could tell. I watched as he gave her a batting lesson and as they hit balls, some foul, some fair. I listened to the music of their laughter and could have sworn I heard the rhythms of an old spiritual calling to me. I smile and watch Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, transformed by an unnecessary act, transformed by emotions I doubt either of them express, yet harbor deeply. Tonight they are not seekers of the truth, with a capital T. They are not searching for one of life's bigger moments, hoping to ambush it before it ambushes them. Tonight, they are spinning in the momentum of the smallest of moments. They are keepers of the truth, with a capital T, though they don't even know it yet. Together they make my lie the truth. Baseball keeps you young, Agent Mulder.