It was a dizzying midsummer day with a flickering heat haze.
I was a substitute on the town baseball team and stepped up to the batter's box to pinch-hit for someone who had collapsed from dehydration.
I then hit a game-winning home run, leading the team to victory.
For the first time in my life, I felt true happiness as someone lifted my tall but slender body with ease.
Excited, I picked up my bat and headed home.
I wanted to tell my mother right away that I had become a hero.
Before I reached the house, I saw a smartly dressed, neat-looking man coming out of the front door.
I slowed my pace and cautiously approached the man. He looked at me with a grimace before running away.
Hearing noises in the house, I rushed in to find things scattered everywhere and my mother screaming from the bedroom.
"N-no, stop it, you..."
"Oh? Do you really like young men so much? You fooled around with me while I was sleeping!"
My father was choking my mother.
His teeth were bared and my mother was foaming at the mouth.
I roared and swung the metal bat I was holding and hit my father on the head.
It made a dull sound.
Blood splattered, staining the sheets red.
I had stained the sheets my mother always washed and the floor she kept so clean.
Still, as if possessed, I swung the bat down again.
My mother had fainted.
Coming to my senses, I stroked her shoulders and tried to comfort her.
When my mother awoke, her tangled hair was wet with sweat and tears.
"Oh, Will... why..."
I trembled as I clung to her shoulders.
We stood there for a while, frozen, staring at my father's bleeding body.
Time passed mercilessly.
The grandfather clock struck cruelly, echoing in the silence.
My mother stroked my cheeks with both hands and said, "Will... let's bury this man in the mountain."
I tried to calm her.
"I'm so sorry, Mom..."
"It is not your fault. I'm sure it's not Dad's fault either. It's my fault."
"Why? Mom is not to blame!"
"Maybe not, but that's the way the world works. Look, it was an accident. You were protecting Mom, right?"
My mother went to the barn unseen and brought back a large burlap sack used to store potatoes.
She comforted me and said there was no other way.
We wrapped my father's body in a blood-soaked sheet and stuffed it into the sack.
We rinsed the floor, wiped it with a rag, and put everything, including the bat, in the back seat of the car.
As night fell, my mother drove to a remote, deserted mountain.
My hands and lips trembled all the way.
"Why... why did Dad think Mom was unfaithful?" I asked.
"Dad... jumped to conclusions. He had asked the farm cooperative to help him with the work, but... he misunderstood."
At the foot of the mountain, in a place rarely visited, we dug a hole and buried my father.
"Will, you have to keep quiet about this, absolutely. Dad died in an accident. You have to live. If you want to make amends... you have to live, and live for your father's sake. That's the only way."
Covered in mud and tears, my mother hugged me tightly.
----
A few days later, my mother came down with a high fever and collapsed at home.
She was taken to the hospital but died of pneumonia.
I lost the only person who gave birth to me and loved me unconditionally.
I was sobbing and trembling.
My grandmother, my mother's mother, came to the funeral and embraced me.
That was the last time I saw my brothers, who returned briefly for the funeral.
No one paid any attention to my father, who was an orphan. His disappearance was not questioned and I was left in the care of my grandmother.
---
I lived with my grandmother, who had poor eyesight, for several years.
She was kind and often made me cappuccinos.
Although she did not know the truth, she always talked about how hard life must have been for me.
Eventually, my grandmother grew old and passed away.
Now alone, I was conscripted and sent to the battlefield.
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