I
The frozen blanket of white that for the last three months had held the landscape of Collingston hostage in one amount or another finally started to recede. The brown grass was a pleasant sight, confusing to the eyes that had for so long seen nothing but white. The icicles on tree limbs reduced themselves to wet bark. Roads were now a dry almost foreign surface welcomed by the tires of automobiles. The sun stayed with us longer each day. The children were anxious to reclaim their stomping ground—kick ball and hide and seek sprouted in the neighborhood evenings.
I always believed as a young boy that March got its name because the heroic forces of spring marched against the evil villains of winter. The battle raged on, each force putting a flag on the days it conquered, trading the blows of cold and warmth back and forth. It turns out that I wasn’t that far off—you tend to learn these things when your best friend is a walking encyclopedia—as March was named for the Roman god of war, Mars. It was the original month of the New Year in those long ago days, as well as being the month when the Romans started their war campaigns.
March more than anything was a beacon of hope, something concrete enough to put your faith in. No matter how many days the brigades of winter claimed as their own, you knew the forces of spring would always win out.
It also brought one other thing: the single greatest game ever invented, a game that for the past hundred years no matter who you were affected you in some way, a game that is watched more than presidential debates on TV, a game that dominates the minds of little boys and grown men alike (especially during the days of fall), a game where a man’s name can be etched on the tablets of history by one throw, one simple flick of his wrist, a game that fathers and sons share at million-dollar stadiums but take home to their back yards just by playing catch; the only game where the defense controls the ball. A game with no time limit, no tying, and where hope lives until the last strike of the last out of the last inning.
The fieldhouse we practiced in was a monstrous building. It had a full Olympic-sized track, four basketball courts, and ceilings over seventy feet high.
Nowhere else in the state could you find a high school that even came close to having a place like Collingston’s fieldhouse. I also imagine that nowhere else in the state would you find a facility like this with only one team practicing. Coach Demera had enough pull and enough respect from the higher-ups that for two hours every day, the only team allowed in the fieldhouse was baseball.
On one side you had the sixty-yard dash times going. In the middle, guys were getting ground balls. Returning starters were hitting in the cage in the middle of the field house. On the far end were a group of about twenty guys running nothing but line sprints. That group was there for one reason, to weed themselves out. Coach Demera would take the twenty guys he thought had no chance in hell of making the team and run their guts out. One by one they would drop like flies, gather their shit, and head for the door. After about thirty minutes Coach Demera 273
would take the five or so that were left and let them run the sixty and take ground balls, and if they were still standing after that he would let them hit at the end of practice. I guess he figured that if they were willing to go through all of that maybe they had enough heart to get better and someday help his program. In my three years I still had not seen one kid out of that group make the team.
Johnny the Killer was on one of wooden mounds, and I was a little excited, scared maybe, because our season depended on how the Killer threw. Johnny threw his first pitch right down the middle at eighty-three miles per hour. The next was eighty-five and the next eighty-six. All that Johnny really had to do at this tryout was show up and throw the ball like he gave a shit. Grouse told him to throw the breaking pitch and it broke all right, about five feet in front of the plate.
I did my best to block it but it bounced off the rubbery floor and rolled to the far end, hitting a cart one of the janitors was pushing. The field house was so long that I didn’t recognize the janitor as Roman until the ball stopped at his feet. His dark eyes stared at the ball on the floor, eventually picking it up and lookin’ it over like he was counting the seams. There was something about a ball—it didn’t matter if you were a grandma or just out of diapers—that begged you to throw it.
“You’re supposed to throw it, not read it,” Johnny shouted at the top of his lungs and then laughed.
Johnny yelled so loud everybody stopped. The coaches, the bats, the runners—everything just froze. Roman continued to look at the ball, turning it over and over in his hand. I put my glove up as a cut-off man between me and Johnny. Roman took a small step and threw a rope over my head right to Johnny’s mitt. The ball had no arch and when it popped Johnny’s glove he shook his wrist back and forth because of the sting. I looked at Johnny and then back at Roman who was already starting to push his cart across the field house again.
Coach Grouse looked at me. “Who is this freakin guy?”
“Roman Swivel. I knew he had a hell of an arm but the son of a bitch just won’t come out.”
“Is he a pitcher?”
“Yeah,” I said back.
Coach Grouse motioned for Coach Demera who was watching Sam Peterman hit in the cage before all this happened. Peterman by the way would rock that net like an earthquake, the balls jumping off his bat like thunderbolts, his swing flawless in the cage. There was only one problem: come game time, or anytime there was live pitching, Sam could not make contact. He led the team in strikeouts the previous year and was in danger of becoming the all-time strike out leader in Silver Streak history.
“Alright Johnny, that’s it for today,” Grouse said.
Coach Demera walked over in an annoyed strut, clipboard in hand and his coaching bag over his shoulder. “You seen everybody you want to see?” Demera asked Grouse.
“I want to see this kid that just threw the ball a hundred and eighty feet on a straight line with no crow hop or warm ups,” Coach Grouse replied.
“You mean the fuckin’ janitor?”
“Yeah, the fuckin’ janitor, I wanna see him throw off the mound.”
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“Whatever, it’s your time.”
Coach Grouse ran over to Roman before he made it out of the fieldhouse. I couldn’t hear the conversation but somehow he convinced Roman to take a few pitches off the mound. Coach Grouse rummaged through his coaching bag and produced a glove for Roman. Roman thanked him and walked over beside the mound where Johnny was still standing.
Johnny slammed the ball into Roman’s open mitt as he shook his head and smiled. “This isn’t like scrubbing toilets.”
Roman remained expressionless.
I stood up and took three tosses from Roman.
“I’m ready,” Roman said
“Don’t you want to take a few more?” I suggested back
“I’m ready.” Roman didn’t wake up that morning expecting to pitch. He wanted to get it over with and go back to his all-important cleaning.
I put my mask on and got down in the crouch, not really knowing what to expect—throwing BP at On Deck was a little different than pitching to a catcher in front of radar guns and the eyes of coaches.
Coach Demera’s body language had an ambivalent posture, like he could give a damn if the janitor threw or not. But he didn’t walk away either.
“Alright kid, let’s see what you got,” Couch Grouse said.
Roman’s stance looked good, his torso stretched tall and his feet a little less than shoulder width apart. Roman looked at me and I smacked my mitt with my throwing hand. His wind up started, nice and fluid, as good as mechanics as I had seen. At that moment in the field house, despite the wooden mound and the artificial light overhead, despite that ridiculous gray janitor’s outfit, he was a pitcher. The ball was there in an instant. WHAP. The ball broke the webbed part of my mitt, hit me in the chest, and knocked me on my ass. Coach Grouse spit his gum out onto the floor like someone just gave him the Heimlich maneuver. His radar gun read 92. Coach Demera took his hat off and scratched the top of his head. I picked the ball up, threw it to Roman, and got my spare mitt out of my bag along with a palm pad. I would be feeling the sting in my hand at least until tomorrow. Somehow though, I never felt a pain as good as that one.
I made sure my eyes were wide open on the next pitch. Roman wound up nice and easy and here it came. Still hard to see, but it didn’t matter because I never had to move my mitt. 93 on the gun.
“I’ll be damned,” Coach Grouse mumbled.
“Alright, this is crap, something’s wrong with that gun of yours, coach,”
Demera said. “Let’s try mine.” Coach Demera got his gun out, tuned it, and pointed it at Roman. “Let’s see what he’s got on a real gun.”
Roman wound up and delivered. WHAP! Again I never moved the mitt.
94 on the real gun. Coach Grouse started laughing in delight. Coach Demera reached in his bag but instead of a radar gun this time, he pulled out a black thermos-like cup and took a hard drink.
After tryouts Roman insisted on taking my broken mitt home to fix it. I knew better than to stand in his way.
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II
John Smith stood at his window watching as the nightly eye candy made their way from daytime sleep to the setting sun and the darkness of the sidewalked streets. The church bells rang at St. Thomas Cathedral. Even in the cold nights of March the nightwalkers came out in their fishnet hose and their high heels. Some wore tacky fake fur coats that weren’t long enough to cover their bellies and weren’t buttoned enough to cover the tops of the breasts. They were never out there long enough to get chilled anyway. The constant traffic of factory workers and doctors on their way home from work made sure of it. They were men that opted to forgo candlelight evenings and conversations of character, deciding to have their money catapult them to the finish line. An even trade these days—some would say—when you factor in the cost of drinks, tips, a movie, and all the painful seduction and begging.
John could relate. After his first night in Collingston, he found himself standing in front of the window, masturbating to the walk of the working girls, despite the painful stitches. It was like a parade of skin set up for his own amusement. He could never finish until a brunette came into view. As much as he wanted Max Sheehan to be dead and gone, some things never die easily.
But John Smith was winning. Over the course of the last couple of weeks John had fought off the urges to fantasize about his victims. To relive his hands wrapped around throats and to see eyes almost popping out of heads. After all, it was about the eyes, wasn’t it? Death was just a byproduct. It was about those eyes. Eyes that begged and pleaded for their life—a life that he held in the palms of his hands. What power he had tapped into—the ability to end life or free it.
That was the past though. Now he was just ordinary wood working John Smith, who at first started pleasuring himself to the show outside, then invited the show in, and was now paying for it on a nightly basis.
It was more than he hoped for. They did things to him, and let him do things to them, that John only thought possible if one was threatened with death. If he told her not talk she shut up. If he wanted her naked, she was naked. If he wanted her ass, her legs wrapped around her head, her nipples bit, objects inserted—all was granted. It was still power.
But something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the real deal, just an act put on by performers who were good at taking your money and making you believe in Neverland. The minute John became bored he could feel him—Max stirring in the bowels of his stomach, begging to be let out, whispering ideas into his mind.
Now in John Smith’s dark apartment is a young brunette, no more than sixteen, naked and arms handcuffed to the respective columns on the end of John Smith’s bed. She is breathing heavy. Tears are in her eyes. But those tears aren’t real. She agreed to play his little game thinking all the while that she had played much worse. What she doesn’t know is that there is another person in the room trapped in the body of Mr. Smith.
John is on her and in her now, pushing to make it hurt. He can hear her moans and feel her chest as she breathes. He opens his eyes and sees tears in hers.
But they’re not real. She is after all not an actress, but only a hooker. He can feel Max’s rage in his head, as if the dark soul is pulling his brain apart with his 276
fingernails. Her moans are even, too even. Her eyes are not afraid. This is only work to her. Max is too strong. He needs to show her. He needs to do what he does.
Max pulls out; ripping the condom off that John Smith agreed to wear. It flies through the air and sticks to the wall. Max is back in her now and at once she knows something is terribly wrong. Her fake moans become screams but are vanquished with the palm of Max’s thick hand. Now she is crying. Her arms are flailing like a flag in the wind, jolted back every time by the handcuffs. He takes his hand from her mouth but continues. This time her one scream is cut short by both of his hands around her neck. Her eyes bulge. Veins are apparent in her forehead. Her body flutters under him, squirming for life. Her eyes are begging for freedom. Now he can finish.
There’s another way for us. John Smith says from a distant place in his head.
“There’s no other way,” Max says out loud.
Can’t you hear it?
“I don’t hear anything.”
Listen, in the distance. I know you can hear it.
It was the church bells of St. Thomas, a beautiful sound that for a moment made Max feel human. The grip on her neck loosened as the chimes rang. She lay motionless. Was it too late? Please don’t let it be too late. John jumped off, knelt by the bed, and put his ear to her heart. It was slow but beating. He tilted her head back and blew into her mouth. After several times she started to awaken. John unlocked the cuffs and went to the bathroom for a glass of water. When he returned she was dazed, but already dressed. She took a sip of the water, and when her throat wouldn’t swallow, she threw it in his face and ran for the door.
Max Sheehan tried to grab her.
John Smith stopped him.
III
The water felt good. The shower wasn’t the best John had ever been in; but then again Freddy’s apartment was nowhere near as luxurious as his house in San Diego. What a beautiful home it had been, except for the basement of course.
How good it had made him feel when he finally restored it. How human he had felt. Could he feel that way all the time? Could he always have the songs of the bells at St. Thomas in his ears?
His new boss’s complex was ahead of schedule and would likely be completed in the next month. John had never been in charge of so many. They were good workers for the most part and respected him as their leader. He felt like one of them, out in the cold air, cutting lumber, measuring beams, having jokes told to him over sandwich pails at lunch. Carlos had even asked him over for supper one night, but John declined when he found out of his sixteen-year-old daughter.
Was the monster in him finally dying? For the first time since he started his blood-soaked career, this was the first time he could not finish her off. Was Jesus calling to him? He’d never been too much of anywhere as a child least of all 277
to church. He couldn’t recall one instance in which his mother actually took him somewhere. He rode the bus to school alone. He played in the yard alone. He read his comics in the bedroom alone. He tucked himself in at night and woke up the same way.
Was he to be human after all, and walk with his brothers as a man? Maybe someday he would have a wife, and she would give him a son. And he would kiss him and hug him and take him to the park and play catch and ride bikes with him.
Were such things impossible to dream?
IV
John Smith’s journey to join the human race started with a visit to St.
Thomas Cathedral. To become a man he had to kill the monster, and the only way to do that was confront it head on. He wouldn’t do it alone. Jesus would help him, just as he called to him through the church bells as Max tried to choke the life out of another victim.
John didn’t know Jesus. He’d heard of him yes; flipping through the channels on the tube, there was always a brief stop of curiosity on the Christian channel, or overhearing saved men and women proclaim their joy in the booth behind him on Sunday evening dinners at restaurants. Jesus would save him. John believed this, not out of faith, but out of despair.
The one time he actually attended church was one Christmas Eve as a child. Mother already went to bed of course; holidays were no exception to the rule of early to bed and early to rise. Maybe that’s why he could never sleep—she slept enough during the hours of her life for both of them. John, out of boredom more than religion, trucked the harsh journey through winter and snow to the warm chapel a couple miles down Grape Orchard Road. They sang “Silent Night” and the candles were lit. Even in the darkness he knew they were staring and pointing.
He could almost hear their thoughts, “that’s that Sheehan boy,” “his mother sure isn’t very friendly,” “he doesn’t have a father you know”. The feeling of warmth and acceptance he felt at the beginning of the service were frozen solid by the time he left.
Now it was different. He wasn’t a boy anymore with fragile feelings—
feeling was non-existent. It only mattered what Jesus and he thought.
John couldn’t help but admire the fine architecture of the cathedral—the Stations of the Cross handcrafted on both sides of the interior, the high arching ceilings, the hand-stained pews, the large alter with the Last Supper engraving. He paused for a moment in awe—wasn’t this the point he was supposed to make the sign of his new master?
He would learn as he went. John entered the confessional. It was time to remove the darkness from his soul once and for all.
In the small chamber the air was dry and musty, the confines tight and uncomfortable. A small square hole covered with crisscrossed balsa wood divided him from the holy man on the other side, a fixture John remembered seeing on the bottom of porches or as a divider in a garden. He stood because he knew not what to do next.
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“Please sit my son,” the voice came from behind the divider. “Beautiful day for March isn’t it, the sun and the birds.”
“Yes.” That was the only word that would fly. A long silence—long for John Smith anyway—followed to the point of painfulness. This is a bad idea. Just before the point of leaving the voice spoke again.
“What brings you to our Father’s house today?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not Catholic.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” the priest said and laughed.
“I think I’ve made a mistake.” John stood up.
“Please don’t go. I did not mean to be trivial, only to make you feel more comfortable.”
“I’m not sure how this works, what I’m supposed to do. Am I to pray?”
“If you would like. This is the house of the Lord and He receives all acts that are given to His glory. He shed His blood for you on the cross, and wants only your faith in return.”
“I’m not sure he made the right choice if he died for me.”
“None of us are worthy of his grace, all of us have fallen short, all are sinners. What troubles you?”
“I think I’ve fallen shorter than most. A part of me is so dark that I don’t think it can be saved.” John paused, trying to choose the right words. “I’ve committed so many violent acts toward women that I can’t even count or remember them all.”
“And are you sorry for these sins?”
John paused again partly because of the priest’s abrupt response, as if the confession did not surprise him in the least, and also because he didn’t know the answer. Was he sorry? Did he really have any remorse for the girls? Was wanting to stop the same thing as sorry?
“I am sorry,” John said.
“Then pray with me son, for the road to heaven is paved with forgiveness.”
John spent an hour in that booth. Not reliving the murders—that was the past—but finding out how exactly you traveled the road to heaven.
V
“So anyway, you’re gonna be at tryouts tonight, right?”
“No,” Roman responded throwing my re-strung catcher’s mitt across the table.
“Do you realize you’re the missing link to our state title? You’re the guy Coach Demera’s been waiting the last ten years for. We need you man.”
“I haven’t even played baseball since Little League. There’s no way the balance of your season rests on me. You only saw me throw ten pitches. I’m not that good.”
“You hit ninety-four on the gun. Ninety-fucking four. There aren't too many people that can do that. That’s draft velocity. And who knows, you get your arm in shape you might throw even harder. We’ll dominate teams with you on the mound.”
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Roman ate a mouthful of spinach. But instead of that blank stare—the look I so often got with our conversations at lunch—I could see something in his eyes.
It wasn’t excitement, maybe not even hunger, but no matter what words were coming out of his mouth, and no matter what look he was trying to give me, I had him thinking. Maybe even wishing. Maybe that small boy back in Iowa was telling him how great it was to dream of being a big league ball player, of how it sounded when the leather popped in the catcher’s mitt sixty feet away, of how good it felt when you struck the guy out looking.
“There’s no way I could work and play baseball. It’s just not possible for me to juggle both schedules.”
“You’ve got your whole life to work, man.”
Roman only continued to eat. I wanted to tell him again how fuckin’ stupid he was for a genius. But I didn’t. My only hope—the Collingston Silver Streak’s only hope—was a young Iowa farm boy who hadn’t spoken to anyone for years.
The rest of the stragglers made their way to the table. The lunch hour talk turned to a ration of bitching about the sprints Coach Demera made us run, about sore legs and butts and arms, about how hard it was to go from your chair to standing, or walk up stairs, or turn your steering wheel. I smiled at all of it. And although I was a little sorer than I let on, I took great pleasure in telling them they should have worked out more in the off-season like I did.
Sally and Frenchy were regular members of the round table now, putting on a daily display of affection for one another—it seemed every lunch period Jacques was reciting some cheesy-ass poem he’d written about her—with the kissing and staring it was enough to dampen, if not destroy my appetite. The difference between those two dumb asses compared to Heather and Roman was the genuineness. If you took away Heather’s looks and Roman’s smarts, I still think they’d be just as into each other.
Sally on the other hand was not in love with French boy. She might have thought she was, but I think it was more the idea of being in love. The idea of a foreign guy who wrote poetry and obeyed her every command. I’m a realist and maybe that’s why I can never stay with anyone longer than a couple of months. I speak the truth and the truth was, Sally, like most women, loved to hear how wonderful she was. And she was a cool girl; I’ll give her that—a smokin’ hot body and fun to be around—but Helen of Troy she was not. The armies of the world were not going to fight over her, much less two guys in a cafeteria. And while Jacques’s so-called enlightened European mind spat out anti-American jabs from time to time, I promised myself I’d keep my mouth shut. I promised I wouldn’t go to war.
Pick Bryant lay with his head on the table, foregoing lunch for sleep, adding a welcomed lack of volume to our lunch group. Jack still talked the entire time, but at least their voices weren’t converging over our lunch table like pots and pans clanging together. Sam Peterman just finished telling us what a mistake he made the night before—rubbing down his sore leg muscles with Icy Hot and accidentally misplacing some of it on his genitals. I felt for him. No matter how careful you were with the stuff, it always seemed to make its way up your legs, and 280
the family jewels would inevitably swing themselves into it. It gave knew meaning to the term “burning sensation.”
Jacques laughed at this as if he were one of the guys. I felt the thermometer of fury rise in the back of my head. I’d bet a good portion of my poker winnings over the years that Jacques very seldom had sore legs and probably never used anything like Icy Hot.
“You Americans make me laugh,” he said. “Always torturing your bodies for the most frivolous reasons. Always obsessed with the way you look and what people think of you. A product of your society.”
“I didn’t run fifty sprints last night because I thought it would make me look better,” Sam responded. “I did it because it’ll make me a better ball player.”
Sam’s words didn’t make it to Jacques’s ears. The exchange student continued to ramble in that thick-tongued French accent. “Materialistic I think is the word. Idolaters worshipping athletes and actors, putting your money above all else.”
“What does any of that have to do with baseball?” Sam asked.
“Baseball, what a silly sport. How many hours do you spend preparing?
Two? Three? So you can hit the little white ball farther, and run the bags faster.
At least soccer is graceful, even tennis has an artistic sense, but baseball is bulky and crude. I guess it fits with your culture.”
That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. “And what would you know of it, Frenchy. I’d like to see you swing a bat or throw a ball.”
“Anthony, Anthony, I have no wish to play your silly game. In France we speak of art and love, and are intelligent enough to appreciate true beauty, that which occurs in nature, and rests in all people.” Jacques picked up Sally’s hand and kissed it, staring at her with the bedroom eyes.
“Call me Anthony one more time and I’ll…”
“And you’ll what? Attack me with violence? Just like your Presidents.
Always wanting to go to war instead of talk peacefully.”
I found myself standing now, feeling the blood rush in my head with every heartbeat. My fists were clenched. All I had to do was reach across the table and strangle the scrawny Frenchman by the neck. Don’t prove his point. Don’t go to war with him. No matter what, it’ll look like it was over Sally. I sat back down.
“Ya know Jacques,” I made an extra effort to role the “J”. “I bet your dirty French grandpas and uncles don’t feel the same way you do.”
“What do you mean? Why do you call my ancestors dirty?”
“While they were busy laying down their weapons so Hitler’s boys could march right in and take over, back here in the good ole US of A we were planning how to bail your sorry French asses out. And that’s exactly what we did. So you could appreciate your beauty, and speak your language of love, not take baths for a week at a time, and bitch and moan about every move this country makes.”
Jacques flew up from his seat, pointing and yelling at me in French. I’m sure I could hear the word cocksucker in there somewhere. Sally collected him and walked him away from the table. Sam, Pick, and boys started clapping of course.
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“Are you Roman Swivel?” A student worker was standing next to Roman with a piece of paper in her hand.
“Yes.”
“Here you go.”
Roman opened the call slip.