The Cards of Unknown Players: Digital Science Fiction Short Story (Ctrl Alt Delight) (2 page)

“Problems at
work?”

Trying to soothe
her fears, I told her that was it exactly – problems at work. A difficult
project, and the department chief, Corbin, ever the demanding asshole.

She nodded feebly
and let it go at that.

For some reason,
I couldn’t tell her that I had been driven to distraction because of a peculiar
baseball card Timothy had purchased yesterday, an “existential,” as the Topps
consumer rep had called it. After all, it was rather a silly problem, not
something that seemed to merit the energy of an entire day. I’d have to deal
with that, find the solution, if one existed, alone. It would remain my secret
until I was able to tell her something credible, some facts that made sense of
the mystery. Otherwise, she might not understand. After all, I didn’t quite
understand it myself.

After swallowing
a last chunk of meatloaf (Beth usually made the best, but tonight, it was dry,
tasteless), I excused myself and, using work as a convenient excuse, returned
to my den. Sitting behind my desk, I smoothed out the scrap of paper on which I
had scribbled the telephone number for James Gleason. Finally, after a sigh, I
dialed it.

“Kevin?” said a
gruff voice. “You’re trying to find Kevin?”

“Yes,” I replied.
“Kevin Gleason. The baseball player.”

“Is this some
kind of sick-ass joke or something?”

“No, sir,” I
said. “Of course not.”

But it was too
late. He had slammed down the receiver, hung up on me.

I immediately
called back. In harsh, no uncertain terms, James Gleason directed me to stop
harassing him or he’d call the police. He didn’t seem to be listening as I
tried to explain that I was calling about the baseball card of a kid named
Kevin Gleason.

“You just leave
us alone,” he said firmly, his voice quaking toward the end, as if close to
tears. “You just stay the hell out of our lives, you – you nutcase.”

That night, I
couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, mangling the sheets between Beth and me. She
woke up in the midst of my distress and tried to console me.

“What’s wrong?” she
pleaded, knowing that something deeper than the stress from work was bothering
me.

I shrugged it
off, trying to pretend that it was nothing, wondering how silly it would sound
if I told her that the source of my pain was a baseball card of an unknown
player.

But she pressed,
demanding to know what was troubling me. Finally, I sighed and confessed.

After hearing me
out, she suddenly laughed, more out of relief than anything.

“A baseball card?”
she said. “That’s what this is all about?”

“Not just any
card,” I insisted. “A weird card. Some kind of counterfeit. A fake card, or
something. Real, yet not. An existential, it’s called.”

As she squinted
at me with a bewildered frown, I finally told her about the odd call with James
Gleason, who, I speculated, must be Kevin’s father.

“So why don’t you
just drive up to Asheville Saturday morning,” she suggested. “See what got this
Gleason fellow so hot and bothered. Why he hung up on you and called you a
nut-case, although right now I probably tend to agree with him.”

She gave me that
cockeyed grin I love so much and I kissed her forehead for suggesting such a
smart idea. Made perfect sense. Just drive the two, two and a half hours or so
it would take to get to Asheville and confront the puzzle head on.

It was already
Friday morning, three a.m. Now, I could get to sleep, satisfied that tomorrow,
perhaps, I would get some answers.

“You and Timothy
want to come?” I asked.

“No,” Beth said
flatly. “This is your mystery. You should try and solve it – alone.”

I nodded,
agreeing with that. Then I pulled her close and fell fast asleep in her bosom.

Asheville is a
quaint, rural hamlet in the middle of some gently rolling hills in central New
York just east of the Finger Lakes, not awfully far from Cooperstown,
ironically, where baseball was born. Surrounding it are family-owned dairy
farms, with dozens of cows idly munching the grass at the side of massive red,
white, or gray barns.

A state highway
long ago split Asheville in two, becoming Main Street after crossing its
eastern and western borders. Main Street is divided into East and West Main
roughly halfway into the village at the intersection of, naturally, North and
South Central Avenue.

Years ago, even
before Main Street had been paved during the slow transition from horse-drawn
buggies to automobiles, a business district had sprung up and had, for the most
part, changed very little in the past seventy-five years. On both sides of Main
running almost the length of the village, were a variety of enduring, family-run
stores in small red or yellow brick buildings, selling furniture, carpets,
jewelry, men’s and women’s clothing and shoes, and hardware with names like Brown’s
Shoes, Needlemen’s Carpets, and Asheville Hardware. There was also the
Asheville Pharmacy, a bank, Joe’s Barber Shop, even a couple of tired-looking
taverns, and at the corner of Main and Central, The Village Diner. The very
existence of these establishments has recently been threatened by the
construction of an immense Wal-Mart at an expressway interchange only a couple
miles west of town.

After pulling off
the expressway and heading into Asheville around two that Saturday afternoon,
the first thing I did was stop at The Village Diner at the corner of Central
Avenue and West Main and, after a trip to the restroom, took a window booth. I
was starving and tired after the long ride and craved a hamburger and a cup of
coffee. This cozy diner seemed the perfect place for that.

For a few
moments, out the window of my booth, I observed the relaxed pace of the few
pedestrians strolling along Main Street. Finally, the lone waitress, a tall,
smoke-skinny, distantly attractive woman in her forties, came over with a pot
of coffee.

“Coffee, sir?”

I nodded and
watched as she filled my cup.

“Business here?”

I took a sip,
black, and looked up at her. I was new in town. A city slicker.

“Not really,” I
told her. After another sip, I added, “Looking for someone.”

She shifted on
one hip, frowning.

“Yeah?” she said,
squinting. “You a process server or something?”

“No,” I said,
smiling. “Nothing like that. Looking for an old friend, actually. Jim Gleason. Know
him?”

She nodded and
seems momentarily distracted, sad. As she absently freshened my coffee, I
asked: “Is his son still playing baseball?”

That stood her
straight up. Holding the pot of coffee to one side, her expression told me that
the question had thrown her for a loop.

“His son?” she
asked. “Kevin?”

“Yeah,” I
answered, energized. “That’s him – Kevin. Kevin Gleason.” My heart was thumping
with this sudden, unexpected verification of his existence.

She set the pot
of coffee near the edge of the table and swallowed.

“How long’s it
been since you seen Jim?” she asked.

“Few years,” I
lied. “Why?”

“His son,” she
said, swallowing. “Kevin – he’s, he’s dead.”

Now I was the one
thrown for a loop. It felt as if a jackhammer was pummeling my chest.

“W-what?” I
stammered.

“The boy was
killed a couple years ago,” she said. “Just after his eighteenth birthday. Coming
home from baseball practice for the Legion team. Terrible accident just outside
town on Route 286. Some other kid out joyriding ran a stop sign, hit him
broadside.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, in an instant, both were
gone.”

The waitress
shook her head.

“Kevin had been
some ballplayer, too,” she continued. “Star of the high school team. All state
or something. Everyone says he would have made it to the big leagues.”

“Jim,” I said
after a time, trying to swallow, “he must have been devastated.”

The waitress
nodded glumly.

“Sure was,” she
said. “Took the soul out of that poor man. Never got over it. His grief.” She
shook her head again just thinking about it.

“To this day,” she
added after a moment, looking up, “he goes down to the boy’s grave after dinner
every night. Stands there staring at it until the sun goes down.” She shivered.
“Breaks your heart to think of poor Jimmy grieving there every single night.”

I frowned.

“Every night?”

“Every night,” she
said. “In the rain. In the snow. No matter what, he’s out there. Staring at
that grave.”

She let out a
long, deep sigh. Frowning suddenly, she asked: “You ready to order something,
Mister? My shift’s almost up.”

I ordered the
hamburger plate. Waiting for my food, I took out Kevin Gleason’s baseball card
and pondered what kind of magic had called into existence the card of a
ballplayer killed before he could have ever made it to the big leagues.

An existential, I
said to myself. Whatever that meant.

It was almost
four by the time I left The Village Diner and ambled out into the yellow
sunlight of that warm, lazy Saturday afternoon. Main Street was mostly deserted
both ways, east and west. The local folk must have been home watering lawns,
stoking up barbecues, or lazing on hammocks in backyards listening to the buzz
of flies and bees and the twang of some country song or a ballgame on their
radios.

I decided not to
try and find the Gleason house just yet. The waitress had told me the Gleason’s
didn’t live too far away, just a short walk west on Main until you started up a
hill and came to Elm Street. Turn right, keep going up about a hundred feet or
so until you came to Pleasant Avenue. That’s where the Gleasons live, at 92
Pleasant, in a small, nicely kept cape, Jim and Gladys. Jim, a strapping
hard-working, honest man, and Gladys, his quietly suffering wife of thirty
years.

Instead of
barging in unannounced and shocking them with the mysterious card depicting, in
full life, a photograph of their tragically lost son, I drove to a quiet, clean
motel at the edge of town, the Asheville Inn, near the new Wal-Mart, and
checked in.

After filling out
the registration card, I told the desk clerk, a gaunt, weary looking fellow,
that I was going to take a nap and needed a wake up call about dinner-time. Say,
six o’clock.

The clerk nodded
glumly. Seemingly, he understood.

“Sure,” he said.
“Six o’clock.”

Before plopping
across the double-sized bed, which took up most of the room, I called Beth. Hearing
my voice, she let out a sigh of relief.

 “So,” she asked,
“solve your mystery yet?”

I immediately
told her my astonishing news – that the kid on the card, Kevin Gleason, had
died three years ago. Killed in a stupid car wreck.

Beth didn’t
respond right away. I sensed that this was becoming a mystery of equal
importance for her. She had seen the card herself. She knew I wasn’t making it
up.

“He’s dead?” she
asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I sighed.
“Dead.”

“Then, how in the
world–”

“I don’t know,” I
told her. “I just don’t know.”

I described Jim
Gleason’s daily vigil at the poor boy’s grave and my plan to interrupt him that
evening.

“Oh, God!” she
said. “Won’t that be difficult.” She drew in a breath. “Good luck. And, David,
I love you.”

“I love you, too,”
I told her, meaning it this time. Thinking of Jim Gleason standing at the grave
of his dead son, I added, “And please give my love to Timothy. And a big hug
from Dad.”

“I will,” she
said.

“What’s he doing?”
I asked.

“What else,” she
laughed. “Watching a baseball game.”

Immediately after
hanging up, I plopped across the soft mattress of the double-sized bed and fell
instantly asleep.

Suddenly, at six,
the phone rang.

The cemetery was
at the other end of Asheville, just outside the village, a hidden place up some
gently sloping, well-shaded hills. To get to it, you had to turn off the state
highway and travel perhaps half a mile along a narrow road aptly named,
Cemetery Hill Road, whose berm on both sides was overgrown with trees and
bushes.

At the entrance
to the cemetery, I was struck by the sheer isolation of the place, the utter,
reclusive quiet. Stopping the car, I rolled down the window and, for a time,
simply enjoyed the silence while a warm breeze rattled the leaves of the tall
oak trees which seem appointed to protect the solitude of the place.

After a time,
remembering my purpose, I drove along the narrow roads winding around the
sections of graves, looking for Jim Gleason. At first, I saw no one and
wondered if the waitress’ information had been bogus, exaggerated. Every day? No
man could grieve so much, not even for a lost boy.