The Nightcrawler (16 page)

“Hot damn, he’s a pistol,” Jack chirped.

Before Billy could zip up and respond Roger was trotting out to left and settled into the middle of left field. Billy dug into the batter’s box and turned his attention to the team still gathered around the on-deck circle.
 

“Well Jimmy, get out there and pitch me some.”

Jimmy was about thirty with dark hair and eyes and a friendly face. On his back in capital letters was CAT. Roger thought of all the men in uniform on the field Jimmy looked less like a cat than anyone. He was stout with a slight belly hanging over his belt and his legs were as thick as telephone poles.

Jimmy looked out at Roger standing casually all alone in the outfield. “You ready out there?” Jimmy called in a squeaky little voice that didn’t seem to fit his appearance. Roger just waved his glove at Jimmy and settled his hands on his knees in a semi crouched position.
 

Jimmy looped the first pitch to the plate and Billy fouled it back to the fence then walked back to retrieve the ball. He tossed it at the crowd announcing, “Jeb, how ’bout doing some catching here.”
 

Jack told him if he hit the ball in the other direction he wouldn’t need a catcher.
 

Jeb, a muscular kid about eighteen grabbed a ball and threw it to the mound. Jimmy looped another in and Billy launched a shot directly at Roger but deep. Roger turned on his heel but that one caught him by surprise and bounced off the left field fence. Roger picked up the ball and threw it feebly back to Jimmy who had to walk over and pick it up on the base-path between second and third.
 

Roger resumed his position and Billy launched another one to the same spot. This time Roger was ready and pulled it down with his back to the infield. He made two more running catches. One was a diving grab that would have impressed the outfield coaches at Yankee Stadium.

The last fly ball was a gork that may or may not have made it over the head of the short stop. Billy was trotting toward first base glancing over at Jack with a superior look on his face. He had just beaten the smartass. Roger on the other hand charged the ball with unequalled determination. He caught the ball on one hop and fired it at first base. The ball sailed across first on a rope. It crossed the center of the bag two steps before Billy’s foot touched down.

Roger joined Billy and the team at first where Billy was getting ribbed by the team for lollygagging his way up the base line. Billy offered his hand to Roger and welcomed him to the team.

By the time Roger’s fielding clinic had ended, the Double-D boys had started to trickle in. Dan Mandville was the first to greet Billy and the rest.
 

“You ready for another lickin’ this year, Walker?”
 

Dan was tall and thin. He was a fairly good looking guy in a down on the farm sort of way and spoke with just a hint of hick. “How you doin’, Beth? You wanna sit on the winner’s side like last year or are you gonna hang with your brother’s losers?”

Beth flashed him a hand gesture that she would normally not use in the presence of her daddy, then walked over and sat beside Bobbie and Nora who had already taken seats in the first row behind the Three-B’s dugout.

Billy passed possession of the field to Double-D and his team took seats. The Double-D’s began taking batting practice. Roger stared at them with every swing, studying the way they moved and where they hit the ball. Then he noticed that his teammates were chatting and heckling. Not wanting to step on anybody’s toes he quietly made his way over to Billy and suggested he try to get his guys to study the hitting patterns of the other team, since they appeared to be so willing to show everything they had. By the time Billy had made his way across the bench the heckling was replaced with whispers and finger pointing with each crack of the bat.
 

The game started just before six. Beth had run down to the dugout before Roger took the field and kissed him, making sure Dan was watching. Roger figured she had dumped him some time between last year’s game and this year’s rodeo. Not that he cared. If she wanted to use him to make Dan jealous that was fine by him. Dan appeared to be an ass anyway and kissing Beth was definitely a bonus. He watched the gentle sway of Beth’s butt as she made her way to the seats behind the dugout, when his gaze was broken by Jack’s accusatory voice, “Get your head in the game Ronald.”

“Whatever you say, Jake.” Roger didn’t look to see what Jack’s reply would be. The umpire, if that’s what you could call him, had called the teams to the field. He was wearing a black Harley Davidson ball cap and a black Coors T-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in his left sleeve. He had untidy gray hair that matched the stubble on his face.
 

“Okay, you punks. Most of y’all know me but for those of you who don’t, my name’s Joe Purdy and I’ll be officiatin’ this shindig today. Dan, Billy, git yer asses over here and let’s git this coin toss done.”
 

The team captains stepped up and Joe Purdy flipped the coin in the air to what seemed to be a dozen feet and Dan yelled tails. It was tails and he opted to take the field first. While the Double-D’s ambled to their positions Billy set the batting order. Roger would be batting last. Billy apologized but he would have to work with these guys after Roger had hit the road. Roger sat on the bench and watched his team take some awkward swings. The first guy, Mikey, was all arms and no body rotation, but managed to connect and beat out a weak throw from third. The next guy, Todd, was hitting with all his weight on the front foot and dribbled a soft grounder to first moving Mikey to second on a fielder’s choice. CAT batted third and sent one to the gap. It would have been a triple at least for Mikey, but CAT got into second just in time. Mikey was safely home to start the scoring. Billy batted cleanup and was the cream of this crop as far as Roger could tell. He had a smooth swing and ripped a line shot to left center that was brought down by a lanky guy they called Slinky. Slinky had surprised CAT by catching that one and CAT was doubled up before he could get back to tag up.

Slinky had the leadoff spot for the Double-D’s and sent Roger back to the track making a snow-cone grab over his shoulder. He then returned the ball to the infield on a bounce to Billy who had come out from short to cut off the throw. By the end of the first they had answered the one and tallied two more for good measure.

Roger had cranked out the first round tripper of the game with two out and two on in the second and they took the field three batters later with a two run lead.

The score had see-sawed all night and there was never more than a three run difference. Roger wasn’t accustomed to slow pitch and had never been in a game since t-ball that had this high a score. What made things worse was watching both teams record more errors than runs. By the time they got to the bottom of the ninth the Three-B’s were up by one. This was the first time they ever led in the last inning, and they all looked nervous. Jack sat shifting in his seat with Beth and Bobbi sitting to his right, Nora on his left. Between the heat and the nerve-wracking ninth inning lead he was sweating like a plow horse. The girls seem to be enjoying the fact that their dad, the strongest most self-confident man they new, was currently as nervous as all their dates seemed to be around him. He had been keeping a close watch on Tom Dinkle who also had free flowing sweat on his face.
 

In the stands there were about a hundred people, friends and family of the players and employees from both ranches. Coolers of every color sat perched between them, and cold beer cans on the seats sparkled in the sun, which by the ninth was getting low in the sky but still shone bright and hot. Jack and Tom were the only people present who didn’t seem to be enjoying the game. These men had no money riding on this game. Bragging rights for the next year were the only thing at stake and the score had been much too close all game for either to relax. It started out years before as a friendly game between neighboring ranches, but as the Double-D’s winning streak extended year after year, the friendliness was replaced with animosity. This was bigger than the World Series to these two men and it was game seven.

Roger had been quite bored playing left most of night. The Double-D’s had sent a parade of lefties up who were all pull hitters. Since Slinky’s liner in the first he had fielded a few routine flies and a couple of ground balls that got through the infield but mostly he watched in frustration, as a bunch of hayseeds on both sides of the field booted one easy play after another resulting in a 19 - 18 score to this point. He did enjoy the batting. In addition to the homer in the second, he had two doubles, a triple and an RBI sac fly and he scored three times. All totaled he had contributed to seven of the nineteen runs.

Now they were on the field for what he hoped was the final out. With two out and Slinky at third, Dan stepped to the first base side of the plate with a look of hard determination on his face. All he needed was a single and this thing would be all tied up. CAT lobbed one in and Dan watched it drop for strike one. Roger felt Dan’s eyes burning through him and he expected Dan would be swinging at the next pitch. Roger hoped the lefty was going to the opposite field. He grinned at this, thinking “you bring it on, hayseed.” The pitcher looped one in lower than the last one and Dan scorched a ground ball dead center between Billy and Jeb, who was playing close to third to prevent one going up the line for extra bases.

Roger broke at the crack of the bat and was fielding the ball in seconds. Tom Dinkle was hopping up and down talking smack over in Jack’s direction and Dan was hopping up and down and skipping toward first base blowing a kiss in Beth’s direction as he passed. He was only half way to first when he noticed that Roger had the ball in his hand in shallow left and was coming up throwing.
 

Nobody in the park but Roger seemed to think this play was possible until they all heard Dan choke out, “Oh shit.”
 

Sammy over at first scrambled to the bag and everyone else watched as Roger unleashed a throw from a cannon attached to his right shoulder. Dan had hit his stride with a vengeance but the ball got to Sam’s glove a full step before Dan got to the bag.

Joe Purdy punched Dan out with exaggerated animation and the Triple-B’s had won for the first time in this game’s history.

Roger hadn’t really felt like a part of this team all night but within seconds of Joe calling that third out the whole team had jumped on him in celebration. That was when he almost wished he wasn’t part of the team. Being buried under twelve sweaty cattle ranchers was not the way he had planned to spend his summer vacation. They hoisted him up onto their shoulders and carried him back to the infield. He could see Tom Dinkle reluctantly congratulating Jack while Dan was shoved and poked by his team for his base running blunder. Someone had knocked his cap to the ground and another of his fair weather friends had nailed him in the back of the head with his ball mitt.
 

Then he saw Beth. He saw Beth standing on the roof of the dugout. Beth looking as beautiful as any woman ever had. Beth pointing at Roger and smiling. That was all it took. He knew that tonight, his efforts to steer clear of an all out summer romance would end. Paige was a memory that happened in another lifetime. Beth was this lifetime and he wanted to live in the present.

Chapter Seventeen

Scott Randall always hated hospitals. When he was a boy his grandfather had had a stroke and his mom would visit every day. She couldn’t afford to get a babysitter so Scott had to go too. He had spent the better part of his summer vacation when he was ten being dragged to the hospital to see Gramps.
 

He was very close to his grandfather but he didn’t want to see him in there. Before the stroke, Scottie was always the first to the car when it was time to visit Gramps. The hospital however was no place to be for little boys with unlimited energy and very little patience. Little Scottie would be okay for the first ten minutes. The eleventh seemed longer than the first ten combined, and the twelfth longer still. By the time Scottie and his mom had been in that place for fifteen minutes he began to ask the question
,
”Is it time to go yet?” Before another five minutes had passed, his mother would be losing her own patience.
 

“Scottie, shush,” she would say. A bit later Mom would announce, “Scottie, we will leave when we leave, now please be quiet.” That would inevitably be followed by, “Scottie, can’t you just sit still for five minutes?”
 

He never got his Gramps back. His grandfather recovered enough to go home but he was never Gramps again. He was an old man who never spoke or laughed. Before the stroke, Gramps always told stories and laughed and laughed. In Scott’s mind the hospital with all the shushes had taken the fun from his grandfather. All that, “don’t bother the sick and dying” quiet had taken the fun out of Gramps.
 

So here he was all grown up and still hating hospitals and the quiet in them. The white walls and cheap watercolor paintings. The antiseptic smell. The staff in their white uniforms or green scrubs all hustling around importantly not seeming to notice the people they passed in the halls. But what he hated most of all was the quiet. It was that
don’t disturb the sick and dying
kind of quiet. A silence that appeared to be annoyed by interruptions. Interruptions like an occasional page: ”Dr. Nobody, please report to Radiology” or “Dr. Anonymous to the ER stat
”.
Christ, what he wanted to hear was ”Scott Randall, please report to the fucking Charger and get the hell out of here
.”
Now that would be a welcome interruption to the quiet. Whether the “hospital-quiet” thought so or not, Scott Randall would love to hear that.