The boys’ coach pointed at me, “Watch his finish. See how he gets through each of his pitches?” He bent over in imitation, balancing on one leg.
“Yeah, he’s going to look great in a Wild Things uniform isn’t he?” Mazz said. He had finished his lesson and now came to mock.
“Why don’t you grab a bat and stand in here, Mazz,” I called to him.
“No thanks, I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your fans,” he said. “I might be older, but I can still turn on your eighty-six.”
“I thought you said you threw ninety-two,” the coach said.
“Whoops,” Mazz said, tittering.
“I, uh…well…I can. I mean, I don’t right now because it’s cold and I’m still getting into shape and…” I stammered out some hyperbole on pitching that ended with, “Besides, velocity isn’t everything, you know.”
“Neither are K’s or Wins, which you also don’t have. Funny how that works.” If I did have Jedi powers, I would use the Force to choke Mazz until his head popped off.
I ended my practice session with a dazzling array of big, loopy curve balls. The kids oohed and aahed over them; Mazz yawned. Finished, I strolled over and addressed my crowd. “Thanks for coming in tonight guys. I appreciate your time.”
“It was our pleasure. I think the boys really learned a lot from hitting off you.” I nodded and told him they looked good and had a lot of potential, which I would have said regardless. “Hey!” the coach said, forming his hand into a pistol and shooting me as he talked. “If you make it to the big leagues, we expect tickets!” If I had a dollar for every time I got gunned down with that comment, I wouldn’t need to make it to the bigs.
They left, and I went back to my cage to keep throwing, trying to make my pitches obey. Fastballs that wouldn’t go down and away, curves you could hang on a coatrack, and a slider I had been tinkering with for years with no luck. I was trying to get better today, but I felt worse than when I came in. The ball felt wrong in my hand, and all the grips were like math problems I couldn’t solve. The game didn’t even feel right to me anymore.
Mazz, done for the night, said, “I’m leaving. Lock the place up, turn off the lights—”
“And turn off the heat, and enter the alarm, and make sure there’s no penny unaccounted for, I know. I’ll take care of it Ebenezer.”
Mazz stopped and looked at me. In an extremely rare moment of genuine care, he dropped the surly routine and said, “Easy Dirkus, you can’t force it. Relax.”
“All the same, I’m going to stick around for a while and see if I can.” It was kind of him to let me keep working. I won’t deny, he did support me in his roundabout, borderline abusive way. Maybe he wasn’t that bad after all.
“Well don’t blow your arm out. The Wild Things can’t use you if you have a bum arm.”
Then again, maybe he was.
“I’ll remember that—top of my priority list.” Right under leaving the door unlocked, turning the heat all the way up, and dumping the rest of his Gatorades.
Away he went, turning out all the lights save for the one cage I was in. I stayed, who knows how long, alone in a cold, dark building, throwing sliders that wouldn’t slide into a worn, plastic tarp, trying to figure out more than just pitching.
Chapter Two
When I woke up the next day, my arm was sore from throwing. I lost count of how many sliders I peppered into Mazz’s tarps, but the big knot by my scapula and the stiffness in my elbow told me it was far too many for this time of year. I would’ve loved to have fallen blissfully back to sleep, let my body mend the way God intended it too, but the unholy antics of my housemate wouldn’t permit me.
Considering how old my grandma was, you would think her house would be shaped more like a pyramid than a split-level with a leaky basement. God knows how long she’d been up, watching over her precious bird feeders. I honestly didn’t think she slept. She just waited, hanging upside down in her room at night, devising more ways to make my life a living hell come sunup. Pounding on the storm door at squirrels at the crack of winter dawn was just the latest development on a long list of tortures.
I rolled over and read the alarm clock: 6:30 A.M. The sight of those cruel digits incited instant fury. Lying with my arms spread wide on the air mattress, my angry face aimed toward the heavens, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “SHUT UP, GRANDMA!”
She continued to bang. She’ll pretend she didn’t hear me when I ask her, but her hearing is never an issue when she stands outside my door, eavesdropping on my phone calls. In an attempt to drown out her noise, I pressed a pillow over my ears. That didn’t work, so I tried to suffocate myself with it instead. That didn’t work either.
Moments later she burst into my room. “Where’s that gun of yours?”
“Why?” I asked, pulling the pillow from my face. “Are there terrorists in your bird feeders?”
“I’m going to shoot ’em! Give me that gun,” she said, referencing my pellet gun. I’d shoot up soda cans with it every now and then to blow off steam. Sometimes pretending the cans were her face. She’d taken it before, while I was sleeping, and tried to shoot the squirrels but ended up shooting up the whole neighborhood because her hands shook so badly. My parents had to confiscate the old shotgun she brandished for the same reason.
“I’m not giving you that gun. The squirrels aren’t hurting anyone.”
“They’re plotting something. I know it.”
I stared at her blankly. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Oh, you are good for nothing! You get out of that bed and get those things out of my feeders if you’re not going to give me that gun.”
“No. It’s six thirty in the morning! Let them finish breakfast and they’ll leave.” I rolled over, but she remained standing there, burning holes in my back. I couldn’t sleep with her hexing me, so I rolled back to face her. “I know. Why don’t you throw one of the seventy chocolate cakes you bought on sale out there? Try and make friends.”
“I bought those cakes for you!” she wailed.
“The squirrels can have my share as a peace offering.”
She shook her head at me in a disdainful manner. “The way you talk to me,” she seethed, “after all I do for you.”
And boy, does she do a lot for me.
My laundry, for example. She still uses a wringer washer, a testament to the time period she’s stuck in, in which she threshes my clothes. The wringer sits in the basement like some beast lurking in the dark, waiting for her to feed it my wardrobe with a tall, cool jar of lye soap to wash it down. To date, that machine has mangled melted, or consumed enough fabric to cover a third-world country.
She cooks for me too, mainly because I am forbidden to use the kitchen. She’s appointed herself my personal chef, which is more akin to kitchen dictator. She oppresses me with bacon-grease-injected marathon meals chanting, “You’re a growing boy, calories aren’t going to hurt you!” The grease I don’t consume is repurposed into the soap used in her first charitable act.
Some days I don’t eat. I can’t risk getting her started. She pumps out food like a munitions factory during the war effort—high-calorie rounds of biscuits and gravy aimed directly at my heart. She’ll hold me hostage until it’s all finished,