The Adored Read Free

championship?”
    “Did you think the Red Sox would win last year?”
    “Sure, Dad, we always think they’re going to win.”
    “I feel the same way about our team. I think if we get the players we want, we’re going to win.”
    “All right!” CJ yelled in delight.
    “But it’s going to take a lot of work.”
    “Don’t take the fun out of everything, Dad,” CJ smiled at his father.
    “Good night, son.”
    - - - - -
    “Dad, Dad,” Parker Barnes yelled in a state of excitement running into his father’s library. “Mr. Strong, my baseball coach, was killed yesterday,” the boy concluded, seeking some explanation from his father.
    Jonathan Barnes, alarmed, asked, “What happened, Parker?”
    “Right there, Dad, in the newspaper, look, “One dead, one seriously injured in accidental shooting by police at Westside pool hall.”
    “I saw the story, but I did not notice the name.”
    “Look, Curtis Strong Sr., see Dad, it’s Mr. Strong.”
    “That’s terrible, son. Obviously Mr. Strong should not have been at a place like that,” Barnes concluded with his usual judgmental aplomb.
    “What do you mean, Dad; it says it was the cop’s fault.”
    “What I mean,” the elder Barnes started firmly, “is that in a place like that you can only expect trouble. Look, son, it says right here, ‘illegal drinking and drug use regularly occurred,’ and there was a fight going on when the police walked in.”
    “Mr. Curtis was no dope head,” young Parker protested, noting his father’s distance, as usual. “He wouldn’t start a fight with anyone; he wouldn’t.”
    “Perhaps he was just an innocent bystander, son, but that is the wrong place for a married man with children to be.”
    “Child, Dad,” Parker said firmly, “he didn’t have children, only CJ,” and after a moment he continued, “Can we go to the funeral on Monday?”
    “No, son, we’ll be out of place there. Now you go off and play with your friends. Don’t worry about it.”
    Parker remembered Curtis Strong in his prayers that night. Mr. Strong. Coach.
    He could see his smiling, cajoling face. He also prayed for CJ.

 
    Chapter 4
     
    The unique, sociological phenomena of multimillionaire contractor’s son and poor black laborer’s son being on the same baseball team developed from their geographic proximity to each other. The west branch of Stamford harbor was all that divided the rich on the Shippan peninsula from the poor in Waterside. As years passed CJ Strong and Parker Barnes grew to realize that more than water separated their lives. Parker was isolated by his family’s wealth, and Curtis was being swallowed by the poverty and crime around him.
    In the spring of his seventeenth year, CJ Strong became a man. The event that cloaked itself in manhood occurred as CJ went to a West Main Street corner to meet his best friend, his cousin Billy Stevens. The families became even closer after Curtis Sr.’s death with Willie Stevens acting as a surrogate father to CJ and Mrs. Stevens, Louise Strong’s sister, looking out for CJ after school as CJ’s mother, Louise, worked to support the two of them.
    This night was dark, and as CJ approached the corner of West Main St. and Green Avenue, he saw Billy Stevens up ahead of him. Billy pushed the person beside him into the alley next to the corner store. Curtis called out to Billy and jogged to the alley. Looking into the shadows cast from the street light he heard a desperate yell and saw a figure slump to the ground. The other figure, maybe two people, ran out the back of the alley and hopped over a five-foot fence. CJ ran in and leaned over the body on the ground. It wasn’t Billy. It was a man who appeared to be about twenty-five years old. He looked up at CJ and said, “Please help me; he stabbed me.” CJ looked at the man’s hands; they were covered in blood flowing from the puncture wound from the knife sticking out of his stomach.
    A voice above called out. “What the hell you