The Last One Picked

Every Saturday on Chauncey Street, the game started at ten.

Dontae got there at ten-fifteen. He got there at ten-fifteen because he walked his little brother to the barbershop first, and the barbershop did not open until ten.

By ten-fifteen the teams were already made. Whoever was left over stood by the fence until somebody's arm got tired and a spot opened up.

Dontae stood by that fence a lot.

"They pick me last because I can't hit," he told his brother one morning on the walk. "Everybody knows it."

But here is what Dontae did not count. Two weeks earlier he had hit a ball so far it landed in the bed of Mr. Alston's truck, and Mr. Alston laughed for a full minute before he handed it back. A month before that, he caught a line drive one-handed and the whole block hollered. Kids on Chauncey Street still brought it up.

Bobby, who chose first most Saturdays, had said it out loud once, standing on a milk crate with the bat on his shoulder. "I would take Dontae. He's just never here."

Dontae did not hear that part. He was three blocks away, holding his brother's hand, waiting for a barber to unlock a door.

In November the barbershop changed its hours and opened at nine-thirty. Dontae dropped his brother off and got to Chauncey Street at five minutes to ten, before anybody had chosen anybody.

He was picked second.

Walking home he could not figure out what had changed about his hitting.