He shook his head. “You still got another glove besides the catcher’s mitt?”

“Yes, but we’re not going to play catch, Randy.”

Five minutes later, he had dug out my old catcher’s mitt, along with my first baseman’s glove. Every catcher has a first baseman’s glove or an outfielder’s glove, because every catcher dreams about the day when the manager sends him out into the field, where he can play standing up, without pads and a mask. We stood forty feet away from each other on the road in front of my cabin, and then he tossed the ball to me.

“Just a couple,” I said. “This is crazy.” When I threw the ball back to him, it felt like something I had never done before in my life.

“Since when do you throw like a girl?” he said.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” I said. “They took one bullet out of my rotator cuff, and the other out of my shoulder blade. You kinda lose a little zip on the ball.”

He threw it back to me. “It feels good, right? Throwing the ball again?”

“No,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it hurts a great deal.” I threw it back, trying to use the turn of my body to take the stress off my arm.

“You just need to warm up,” he said.

“By the fire, with a beer,” I said.

“I tried looking her up,” he said, throwing the ball back to me. “On my computer, I mean. Maria Valeska.”

“Randy, that was her name in 1971.” I threw the ball. The pain was starting to go away. Just a little.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “She could be married now.”

“If she’s married…”

“Alex, I’m not expecting that she’s going to be waiting for me after all these years. I know she’s not sitting up in a tower like Rapunzel or something.”

“Then why-”

“Rapunzel was the one with the hair, right? The long hair?”

We kept throwing the ball.

“Although Rapunzel had blond hair, right?” he said. “Maria’s hair was jet black.”