Jack and Quin catch up

Over supper they caught each other up on the past twenty years. Actually Jack mainly caught Quin up on his life. He talked almost incessantly. He had married almost ten years ago and his wife was expecting their fourth child in December.

“Got to have ‘em in the winter Quin so they don’t interfere with Spring Training.”
Preston peppered Quin with questions about himself, but Quin brushed most of them off with monosyllabic replies. However, he enjoyed listening to Jack rattle on and he had recently begun to take great pleasure in not answering questions about himself. Jack pried out the information that yes Quin had been married, but, no he was not now.

“What happened, you leave or did she?”

Quin only responded by lifting up his palms and shrugging.

Preston laughed, “Quin the Eskimo. Not much of a talker for a professor of literature. Are you Professor?”
Quin laughed a little, “It’s just not that interesting. It was painful to me, but it doesn’t make much of a story. It leads nowhere.”

“OK Quin, I get the hint. I’ll quit prying.”

“It’s just not much of a story, nothing that tragic or passionate. We both just found that being around each other was painful, and eventually I thought I found someone I really loved, but I didn’t I was just trying to escape. Even the affair turned out to not be that interesting, just painful in the end.”

“Well you were a drunk that must have been sort of interesting.”

Quin laughed loudly at Jack’s sincerity, “No eventually I just drank way too much, way too consistently. I would drink to escape and she wouldn’t even get mad, and I wasn’t that interesting of a drunk. That’s when I knew that she wanted me to escape. So every night I would just read while I got loaded on too many gin and tonics.”

“Wow, you are a wild man Holsten.”

Quin sighed and then said in an attempt to change the subject, “No you’re the wild man, Presto, and I’m sure the only story worth telling in these parts is how you are single-handedly turning around the St. Christopher’s Community College baseball team.”

Preston laughed deeply “Now that would be a story, if it were at all true.”

Preston then launched into a long narrative about inadequate funding, players who could not keep their grades up, and the overall lack of talent that he was forced to work with. The whole time he was complaining Quin could tell that Jack loved what he was doing. It made Quin slightly envious, but mostly it made him feel good to be around a man who seemed alive.

Preston was just finishing his lament about the lack of talent on his team, when he became suddenly serious, “I do have one kid though Quin, a pitcher who is bursting with raw talent, but has had almost no coaching so he has a completely unorthodox delivery, which makes him wild, and being wild will make it impossible for him to go any more than an inning at a time. But if I can teach some of the proper mechanics he could really be something.”  Preston paused abruptly to swirl his drink and down the last couple of gulps, and then he looked intently at Quin. Quin immediately had that sinking feeling you get when someone’s about to let you in on the opportunity to distribute Amway. He knew what was coming before the words were out of Preston’s mouth.
Preston put his glass down and said with the seriousness that only a semi-intoxicated person can achieve, “But you know who could really teach him something? You.”  Then he paused as he looked seriously across the table at Quin and pointed at him.  “You had a gift man, both talent and technique. You were an artist.”

Though Preston was gravely serious, Quin burst out laughing, “Jack, I was no artist. An artist creates things of great beauty or at least things that make you stop and pause and think about something besides what you’re going to watch on TV. I didn’t do anything like that. I threw a little white sphere at a fairly high speed with decent accuracy. That made it somewhat difficult for other people, who by the way were also not artists, to make contact with it with there cylindrical clubs.”

“That may be your opinion professor, but I saw you pitch from behind the plate and the games you pitched were masterpieces, especially the state game - one to nothing. A frikkin’ shut out in the state championship is a thing of great beauty.”

In spite of himself Quin felt slightly nostalgic and a little proud, that someone who had made baseball his life thought of him as that much of a talent. So he said as a slight concession to Preston, “That was a good time.”
Preston, simply replied, “The best.”