The Baseball Player

            Jake looked at his son with glazed eyes – ever hopeful, ever wary. If he didn't fuck up in some freak way his path was set. But that was a big if. There were so many things that could go wrong. Pot he wasn't as much worried about —he smoked it himself so he wasn’t ready to act the hypocrite— as cocaine, shrooms, and all those other hypnotics. Jesus christ there were so many. And an STD? That would screw him. Too cute of a kid. Too talented of a kid to be true.

            Nevertheless he picked up his baseball glove and gave his son an encouraging pat on the bottom in the direction of the backyard. They played catch for the rest of the day. His curveball looked real nice. Real damn nice. But the thoughts didn't stop. Every day they were there, taunting him, keeping him on his toes at all times.

            Timothy was a small boy, devoid much muscle mass at all, but that was because he was so young. Puberty had not come yet and when it did it wouldn’t be kind to him. He was already a little bit tall for his age, but scrawny, so he tried not to make many enemies. He didn't do badly in school. In fact he pretty much got straight A's, but it was elementary school so his father saw this as a given. He was a little genius, actually. To his father however, it seemed as if Timothy never spent any time on homework though, even when the report cards came back with A’s written all over. This unnatural cognitive skill went overlooked by Jake, who craved a baseball player for a son more than anything else.

            If anything, Jake’s constant and incessant obsession with Timothy’s baseball career achieved quite an ironic effect. As the years of little league went on and on, Timothy’s performance on the baseball field dwindled. The more Timothy played the more he realized how much he couldn’t play. He wasn’t very athletic, and Jake knew it, but wouldn’t admit it.

            What Timothy did develop, in stark contrast to Jake’s aspirations, was a love for fantasy baseball. His cousin had introduced it to him several years ago when he had just entered middle school. The concept fascinated him. He could own and manage a whole team of perfectly awesome baseball players without having to actually play himself. This new game recaptured Timothy’s interest in baseball, and allowed him to move past his own inability to play. Plus, he was really good at it.

It wasn’t long before Timothy started winning, yet he never found the time to confess his newfound love to Jake. As time went by he kept it that way, as with each passing day he grew even more wary of the inevitable disappointed look in his father’s eyes when he found out his son was indeed a nerd, not a baseball star.

***

            On the twenty-first Monday of the school year Timothy stumbled across an enticing link while searching for fantasy leagues to join for the approaching baseball season. It read: High Stakes Head-To-Head 12 Team Mixed League: $100,000 A Head.

Timothy scoffed at that. Yeah right. How could they make you pay? It’s over the Internet for god sakes. He clicked on the link and when the blue bar disappeared from the URL and the web browser fully loaded, he was prompted to fill out his name and address and a whole slew of information. He had neither a driver’s license nor a personal phone number nor (as he soon found out but couldn’t understand) a social security number – that he knew of – so his father seemed the most logical solution. He tiptoed past the napping Jake who filled the house with his beautiful snores so effectively in fact, that Timothy probably needn’t tiptoe in the first place, and retrieved his wallet which had been tossed carelessly next to a packet of cigarettes on the small cot they shared in the second and final room of the two-room shack Timothy called “home.”

As the school year went on and the baseball season progressed, Timothy stood pat in the middle of the rankings in the fantasy baseball league. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t first place – which was what he loved about the Head-To-Head leagues in contrast to the Rotisserie leagues where your overall stats were boringly compared at the end of the season and there were no playoffs – all that mattered was that he made it to the playoffs.

Once he did make the playoffs, it got interesting. Timothy destroyed his meager competition in the first round, pulling off a lopsided 7-3 win. Then the second round came and Timothy beat out his opponent in a close 5-4-1 week. At last the championship round came, and Timothy was checking his team every day. All his efforts were to no avail, however, when he lost in this final week of the postseason, and saw the league championship slip through his fingers. A message was posted on the league board reminding the players to where and by when the players should send their checks. The next day, Monday morning, a letter came in the mail addressed to his father. The letter reiterated all the previously asserted payment procedures to which Timothy turned a naked shoulder. Timothy snatched it out of the mailbox before his father could find it and tossed it in the trash receptacle beneath the kitchen sink.

            For Timothy, at least, the forty-second Tuesday of the school year was quite exciting. At 8 o'clock the bell rang and he rushed to the seat he had been assigned the day before. Packed in his green backpack was a colorful assortment of folders and binder paper. He opened the backpack's outer pocket and exposed a fist full of erasers. As they fell out, the pencils jammed underneath were dislodged as well and two of them dropped onto the floor making a weird clanging sound with the metallic floor. The floor had deceived him – he thought it was wooden, for it had horizontal stripes and a brown hue. He placed the pencils delicately and perpendicularly on the table in front of him and jammed the erasers in the pocket that now only half closed over them.

            At the end of the day Timothy ran over to the jungle gym to secure a spot on the swing before it got claimed. But he was too late. An evil-grinning first grader had already claimed the swing, so Timothy gave a meager sigh and moseyed on towards the slide.

            An hour passed and his father did not come. An adult can cope with an hour of waiting. He can gauge a problem, assess the various stratagems he might utilize to overcome it, and eventually deal with the situation as a whole by addressing its many underlying roots – all the while keeping his cool. But to a little kid, it's a lifetime. Timothy sat, perched atop the arch of the slide, and no one around to play with. The kid on the swing had long since been picked up by his mother and the others waiting in line had already taken their turns and been picked up by their parents as well. He began to worry.

            Timothy looked around for an adult and saw a lanky woman across the courtyard whom he presumed to be a teacher. He cried out, “Hello?” and she stopped to search for the source of the voice. He slid down the slide but lost his balance towards the end and promptly fell into the wood chip floor. His knee hit the edge of the slide as he fell, and like a tidal wave the pain coursed all throughout his body. He started to cry, but reminded himself he was in middle school now, and summed up the courage to fight his tears back. The woman heard his whimper, and saw him, and started walking towards him. As she came closer he noticed that she didn't have that teacher look. Her skirt was cut short at her knees, quite unlike the long, humble, and billowing skirts the teachers around the school so often wore. She wore a hat as well. It was white with a big old maple leaf. Glasses covered her eyes so darkly he couldn't see through them, couldn't catch even a hint of what was underneath. Her jacket was black, with gold buttons, loosely covering a pink shirt. The pink was really bright.

            As she neared a couple of feet the woman knelt beside Timothy and formed a smile across thin lips.

            “Hello Timothy,” she said.

            Her smile quivered at his bowed head, lining her hollow jaw with an exquisite crease.

            Timothy kept his head down, his nose pointing to his feet as he caressed his aching knee with his hands. “Hi,” he whimpered, summoning all his willpower to fight back his demeaning tears.

            “Are you okay?”

            “Yeah…”

            “Aww, lemme help you. You want a band-aid?”

Quite magically the woman procured an Elmo-embroidered band-aid from her jacket pocket and with the delicacy of a surgeon applied it softly to his slight cut. Her fingers were gentle, inviting, and made Timothy forget about her intimidating smile. He lifted his head and their faces were a foot apart.

            As the woman sat there Timothy had a chance to give her a good look. Now he could see she wasn’t as young as her clothing had sneakily professed from afar. Wrinkles made their way like waves across her forehead, and creases worked their way like bananas around her distinguished cheekbone. Her lips were much thinner than he thought. They were pursed, but as she fixed Timothy with a quizzical gaze in preparation to pop a question, naturally she opened her mouth, and like a frightened gopher in February her lips peeled back to expose her yellow molars and disgusting tooth decay. The gopher came out of its hole and for the first time he saw it for what it was. Where her hands touched his he grew goose bumps and he cringed away from her overpowering and inconceivable shades as they bore holes through his own unprotected, quavering eyes.

            “Timothy, is your dad running late today?”

            “I dunno…”

            “Well, come with me and we’ll go find your dad, okay?”

***

            Jake turned up The Bone and rolled down his window as his Toyota Corolla coughed and wheezed and lurched forward. He usually drove with his left hand, resting his right on the gearshift. But today was different. The fall season brought color to the neighborhood and it was beautiful outside, so Jake drove with his right hand. His left clutched a spliff, resting weightlessly outside the window and wallowing in the spring air as if it were a leaf itself being blown about the air. A particular billow of wind picked up a pile of leaves as the Corolla drove by, sending the leaves high into the air in acrobatic fashion. Jake sighed and cranked The Bone up further still as the THC seeped through his blood stream and caked his fat cells.

            He seemed to remember having some chore to do but it was a fleeting thought and as he turned right onto Toronto Blvd he flicked the spliff out into the cool fall breeze. His car pulled into the driveway, but not without the usual drama. As he took his key from the ignition a nice black cloud of something exploded out from the exhaust pipe and settled on the dirty concrete floor. But he was too high to think about his exhaust pipe today. There was division baseball to watch.

            Jake kicked off his shoes and ripped off his socks and opened a beer and sat on his couch. He flipped the television remote to ESPN2 on Channel 39 and as the alcohol slowly merged with the THC inside his blood cells his brain began to atrophy. The screen of the television finally materialized amidst the static and a baseball game suddenly appeared in front of him. His favorite team – the Baltimore Orioles – was playing some stupid team decked in blue.

            The serene atmosphere was suddenly ruined as a gentle rasping broke his unconscious concentration on the image of the lanky pitcher atop the mound. It’s fucking 3 and 2 this better be good goddamnit.

            Jake ripped his half-asleep ass off the couch and limped to the front door. He tore the door open and it slammed into the wall so hard it stayed there. Two menacing metal tubes were shoved in his face and around them he caught a glimpse of his son Timothy.

            “Fuck Tim, jesus christ I forrr…” he greeted his son, and the weed rushed through his head in a most overpowering way. As he came to, the metal tubes were lowered to his chest and he saw they belonged to a massive double-barreled shotgun. A woman in front of him was skinny and slight in figure, but the shotgun put her opinion into a whole different perspective. Jake, however, frankly had no idea what the hell she wanted.

            “What?”

            “Where’s the money Jake? You were supposed to send the fucking money!”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about? What money?”

He turned to his son and raised a hand but the woman’s shrill voice rattled his skull and as the weed rushed through his head he couldn’t compose himself nearly quickly enough.

“The fucking hundred large you owe me! You lost Jake! Where’s my fucking money?”

“Oh jesus christ I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about but I swear to god I don’t have the money! I’m broke! LOOK!”

He shoved his hand in the direction of his pocket but it didn’t respond in the way he wanted. His thumb caught the inside of his pocket but the rest of his hand was caught painfully outside of the pocket.

“I don’t give a FUCK about YOUR problems. I need a fucking hundred large in my pocket right NOW you stupid FUCK!”

The weed rushed to his head and Jake collapsed onto his doorstep. His head smashed against the door handle and his vision was blinded as his eyes filled up with fluid. He tilted his head back, holding it with both hands, and opened his eyes enough to catch a glimpse of the woman’s face as it contorted behind a nasty snarl. But his eyes soon clouded over and he couldn’t see once more.

“You know what we’re gonna do?”

“No…Please…”

“We’re gonna put you on a plan.”

“No…”

“Every day you don’t have my money, I’ll take a little compensation from your son Timmy here. Yeah? Just a little bit. You wouldn’t mind would you Timmy?”

Now Jake felt a cold, hard piece of metal nudge his chin up and he opened his eyes once more, resting them on his whimpering son who was now prostrated before him.

“Every day you don’t have my FUCKING money, It’ll be like this…”

And with that she took the shotgun from under his chin and rested it a foot above Timothy’s right hand which she had isolated on the concrete by the heel of her boot. The gun cocked, she turned her head to give him a wink, and the world exploded around Jake’s head. A sea of blackness engulfed his vision and he felt unbelievably woozy. He felt drunk. Or was it high? The blackness began to shake loose and as the scene in front of him materialized he saw his son’s finger nestled between his legs on the pavement and then he saw where it should have been.

“Tim…” But Timothy was out cold. His eyes were flickering and his feet were twitching. A little tired and pretty high and slightly lethargic, Jake reasoned that without a hand, Tim would be nothing. No baseball player. No athlete. No success. No chance.

The shotgun was sitting right there and it gave him something to look at as he tried to avert his eyes from his son’s twitching body. He picked it up, barely able to handle its massive weight, and aimed it at Timothy’s heart. BANG.

Right as Jake pulled the trigger on his son he twisted the butt of the gun around as quickly as he could manage. But his eyes strayed — flinched, and caught a glimpse of his son’s disheveled body and a flush of emotions ruptured his head with an impossible magnitude. His eyes were torn from their sockets and everything went dark. But he could still feel the gun. All was not lost. He could finish it now. He curled his finger around the trigger. It wasn’t too late now. He could still do it. Just once more. Once more. If not now…He tasted metal in his mouth…BANG.