“You gonna tell them to get off?” Billy Sanford asked me, sounding more challenging than inquisitive.
He spit over the fence, took a pull from a bottle of Rolling Rock, and then spit over the fence again. There was a mischievous gleam in Billy’s dark eyes, but then, there usually was. A tall and rugged guy with an intimidating posture, he always looked ready to kick someone’s ass. In truth, he was a big-hearted soft-touch, usually neck deep in charity work. He had an affinity for children, and they for him, which was fortunate since he and his wife Debbie had eight or so of their own. Watching the Sanford family was akin to seeing two rowboats bobbing unperturbed on the waters of a mosquito-infested pond.
As for the Huddys, there were probably twenty-five or thirty of them on and off the field. They were relatively harmless, but they did what they wanted, where and when they wanted. Few people had the nerve or desire to request anything of them, so the Huddys trumped on that advantage. Trying to get them to leave, if they didn’t want to, would be like squeezing cider from marble.
Bob Huddy, known to most as “Buddy” Huddy, was the most approachable of the family. He was the person I needed to talk to if there were any hopes of getting the field for practice.
I scanned the diamond and found Buddy standing near the far dugout with his arms folded like Cochise. Being more verbally adept and quite possibly the most intelligent, he was the one who dealt with the public when necessary. He was also rumored to have the singular honor of getting his sister, daughter, and granddaughter pregnant within months of each other.
“Be right back,” I said to my surprised teammates and started around the field. I felt curious eyes follow me from both sides of the fence.
A few of the Huddy women sat, or variable forms of the verb, on the home team bleachers. They were an intriguing lot, most of them with similar faces that ranged from plain to downright repellent. Evidence of their ancestral plight was exhibited well in their features, through broad foreheads, weak beady eyes, and large gapped teeth with prominent gums. Of all the Huddy women, the most conspicuous were Simone, Jenny, and Linny, who sat side-by-side-by-side. Possibly mother and daughters, maybe sisters, but a common assumption was that they were equal portions of both.
Simone, believed to be the matriarch of the clan, looked to be around fifty-five and tipped the scales in the region of three hundred pounds. Her muumuu-clad bulk spread liberally over a healthy portion of the twelve-foot by five-tier structure. The great doughy folds of her arms and legs escaped from various points of her dress, exaggerating each of her movements with reverberated jiggles. The billowing meat of her butt draped loosely over two levels of seating. Close-cropped black hair exposed the severity of her face, which constantly displayed an aura of barely bridled lunacy. She was said to have the temperament of an infected Pit bull and was always ready to pounce. There was a facial similarity as well.
Jenny appeared on track to twin the older woman, easily two-fifty, yet youthfully clad in a seam-splitting tank top and a pair of stretch pants that didn’t have an iota of stretch left. I foolishly imagined the cellulite adorning those two bodies resembling giant, clear baggies filled with five-hundred pounds of wet oatmeal. My stomach lurched and I almost had to reverse direction, but I instead focused on Linny.
Linny was the genetic freak of the family. Firm, trim, pretty, and as sexy as the day was long. She sat sprawled like everybody’s favorite centerfold with her long, supple legs spread and resting on the bench in front of her. High cut denim shorts barely concealed what her pose outwardly ached to display. A blue plaid button-down shirt—held in check by her shorts for no buttons were fastened—only just concealed bountiful breasts that were unhindered by anything so binding as a bra. Her shoulder-length hair may or may not have been dirty, but the unkempt look of her chestnut mane only added to her feral sexuality. Linny was well worthy of admiration… until she opened her mouth.
Shifting to offer a generous view of very nice cleavage, she greeted me with a nasal, “Hi minsder,” eliciting an anomalous symphony of chortles from her kin. Her forced, almost hypnotic sensuality, when combined with her simpleton voice, was disturbing. It didn’t belong there. It was like the cat that went “moo.”
I veered wide of the bleachers. It was a good decision, since Simone was known to award those not to her liking with a huge wad of well-aimed phlegm. Fortunately, I was out of range.
Filthy Huddy children of assorted ages and various stages of undress swarmed the visitors’ bleachers, from a dwarfish little girl wrapped in a winter jacket, to another little girl of about three, buck naked and squatting under the bleachers. The children were perpetual motion, weaving ferret-like through the metal and wood, twisting and threading and emitting a cacophony of shouts and incoherent words.
An English sheepdog trotted by with two children in close pursuit. “Pooka, Pooka!” they call to it.
One child noticed me, pointed a dirty little finger, and in a froggy little voice asked loudly, “Who him?”
In a fury of motion the children retreated under the bleachers, their minimal eyes following my passage.
“Who you!” the same voice inquired.
“Me?” I said. “Lew.”
“Mee-loo,” the child copied, and then all the voices were saying it. “Meeloo—meeloo—meeloo.”
I grinned and held the smile as I approached Buddy Huddy. Arms still folded, the man watched me with wary eyes. Many of his kinfolk halted play on the field, which made me a little uneasy. He was probably fifty, give-or-take a few years, though he physically looked much younger. His body was well formed and muscular, but his face was a ruddy display of filth and parchment, deeply weathered by the elements. His hair was a tousled graying confusion of twists and spikes. He remained silent as I walk up to him. A few of the men on the field approached, loyal disciples to the overlord of their twisted empire.
“Uh, hi Buddy,” I stammered, feeling like Livingston greeting the cannibals. I figured it was unlikely that anything communicable could be transmitted through a handshake, but why risk it? I refrained from offering. “I’m Lewis Larabee.”
Buddy leveled a cagey gaze at me but said nothing.
“That’s my team over there,” I explained, pointing to the men mulling about outside the leftfield fence. “We reserved this field last week with the recreation department…so we could practice.”
“Why you here today?” Buddy’s suspicion seemed to elevate.
“Pardon?”
“You reserved the field last week. Why you here today?” Buddy asked. His expression unchanging, though I had a notion that I was being toyed with.
“What I mean is, we reserved….”
“We’re here today,” Buddy continued through my words. “We play, and you play, too.”
“I don’t think…,” I started to say, picturing an intolerant few on my team trying to share the field with the Huddys. It was not pretty.
“You play us,” Buddy expounded. Many of the Huddy boys, their mouths slack, agape, and by Christ, some even drooling, nodded in agreement.
“You want my team to play your… uh… team?” Stunned, I was about to dispute, but quickly contemplated it. I had heard, more than a few times, that the Huddys were very good softball players. Maybe there was a worthwhile scrimmage here.
“Let me ask the guys,” I said and then retraced my steps back to my team.
My proposition to take the Huddys up on their challenge was not exactly met with favor.
“Are you fucking nuts?” Rich Berlander asked. He looked at me as if I had suggested circumcision with a weed-whacker.
Billy Sanford smiled. “You can’t be serious.” He pointed to the gathering of men who were watching us expectantly. “You do realize who they are, right?”
“Yeah, they’re the fuckin’ Rockefellers,” I said sarcastically. “Of course I know who they are, and I’ve also heard that they are great softball players.”
“Yeah mon, so are we,” Jamaal Wilner said in hi
s rich Rastafarian accent. “But we not contagious!” He scratched at his mane of dreadlocks as if suddenly infested.
“I’m not asking you to screw them, just to play ball,” I said.
It took nearly ten minutes to convince my team that playing softball with the Huddys would not promote gaseous gangrene, typhoid, or a penchant to sodomize their own sisters.
Finally conceding, we made our way to the visitors’ team dugout, walking as if we were in an alien world. We paced a wide swath around the mountainous matron Simone, yet stole eyefuls of the accommodating Linny. The bleacher full of children was motionless as they watched us pass, save for one child whom Pooka had firmly mounted and was enthusiastically trying to hump.
“Bad Pooka,” the little girl said, struggling to squirm from beneath the large dog.
“Well, at least they stick to their own species,” someone muttered. Others chuckled.
I nodded assent to Buddy who returned the nod and moved the encouraged Huddy tribe en masse to the home team side of the field. As if on cue the lot of children ran to the opposing bleachers and resumed their sinuous navigations there.
Most of my team looked a little dumbfounded by the visual overload as they moved dreamily around the dugout, going through the motions while stealing flitting, shocked glances at the Huddys.
Linny had skillfully repositioned herself to a forty-five degree angle with the dugout. Leaning with her left elbow on her left knee she presented us a clear view of one succulent globe. So obvious were her intentions, yet not a single Huddy seemed to either notice or care.
Jamaal and Richie, a slight and lean kid who hit harder than anyone his size had a right to, watched Linny in action.
“Dat so unfair, mon,” Jamaal complained. “What cosmic glitch make someone so sexy as her in dat family?”
“Careful, Jamma. Your pervert is showing,” Carl Steinman said.
Billy Sanford rummaged through the bat bag looking for a decent ball to toss around. He said, “Hey, Jamma, she could probably straighten your hair,” he motioned a nod to the clan of Huddy men across the field. “Think of all the experience she has.”
“Ah, god!” Richie cried. “Thanks for the visual, Sandman.”
I chuckled and dramatically cleared my throat when I saw Buddy walking towards us. “We bat,” Buddy said and turned back.
On the bleachers, Simone Huddy tilted to her left and farted enormously, forcing a tympanic rattle from the metal seating. Again, not a single Huddy seemed to notice.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Berlander barked with pure disgust. He walked out of the dugout looking like he’d just ingested a shit sandwich.
We warmed up on the field until the Huddys were ready to bat. Only four came up to bat that first inning, one hit and then three outs. When we got up to bat we managed three hits and a run before the Huddy boys retired us.
Though we were winning, the Huddy’s bats had connected solidly. I figured it would be close, judging by the first inning. Might be a good game, I thought.
And then, all hell broke loose.
I had heard most of the axioms; they took us to the cleaners, wiped us out, swabbed the deck with us, cleaned house, pummeled, trounced, crushed, knocked our dicks in the dirt, and annihilated us. None of those fully described what happened in the next five innings.
The Huddys were like a hitting machine, directing the balls with maddening precision, placing them exactly where we were not, and sending a healthy supply over the fence. And they were even better in the field.
I stopped keeping score when it was twenty-six to three; that was in the fourth inning. The thought came to me that maybe the only reason we got up to bat again was because the Huddys got tired of belting the ball around.
By the end of the sixth inning, our team (one of the top four in New Hampshire’s men’s league the previous year) conceded to the Huddys. Stunned and humiliated we shuffled our sorry selves off of the field.
“Goo gayum boyaz,” Linny Huddy yelled to us and then literally brayed laughter like a donkey. Looks were exchanged and eyebrows were raised, but we were otherwise silent until we reached the parking lot. We gathered around my Dodge pickup.
Ed Winston swung the bat bag into the bed of the truck, looked at us one by one, and asked, “What the hell just happened?”
“Seems we just got our balls served to us on a platter,” Berlander answered.
I leaned back on the truck’s fender, interested to see how the team reacted to such a sound beating.
“Yeah?” said Marcus Spracher. “Well, they play dirty.”
I was about to censure Marcus for being whiny, but I realized in time that it was a joke.
“It’s like the fucking Twilight Zone,” Billy Sanford said. “Or Deliverance.”
“Wait! I think I can hear them banjos down yonder,” said Richie Berlander.
Carl Steinman pulled a flattened pack of Marlboros from his pants pocket, extracted a banana-shaped cigarette from within and lit up. “Ya rekkin?” he asked.
“Yeah mon, I reckon,” said Jamaal. “I reckon I be going to Malarkey’s, order a big-ass hamburger, a pitcher of Bud, and drink tonight out from my head.”
This scenario garnered vast approval and the men started for their vehicles. Marcus Spracher called out to Jamaal, “Hay Jamma, why don’t you invite Linny, looks like you could use a friend.” Then he brayed like a donkey.
I climbed behind the steering wheel of my truck and watched until the last of my teammates drove out of the parking lot. I started the engine and turned to see Linny Huddy approaching. She was scratching her head vigorously and I felt a quick urge to hightail it out of the lot, but it wasn’t in me. I rolled down my window and Linny leaned against the door, all but pushing her d-cups right out of her shirt.
“Daddy wan’da know if it you dhat leave da note in hid car,” Linny said.
I looked at her pretty face, surprised that her breath smelled of fresh mint. I tried to puzzle together what she just said. “Your dad wants to know if I left a note in his car?”
“Ya.” She cocked her head endearingly, and the realization came to me that underneath it all she was just a kid like any other kid, wanting approval.
“What kind of note?”
“Note sayed come play today.”
A set-up? Who? I wondered. Richie? Jamaal?
I couldn’t help smiling, and then the laughter escaped. Linny’s trouble-free gaze held mine, and then she succumbed to braying laughter. She had an unconstrained laugh, unhindered and unabashed like a child’s. If only we could all laugh like that.
“Sorry,” I said. “Tell your dad it wasn’t me, but tell him we did have fun.”
“Wa-ever,” she smiled. “Dad say thank you for a goo game.” She smiled coyly, offered a cute wave and headed back to her family.
I started the truck, gave two quick beeps for the Huddys, and then headed for Malarkey’s. That hamburger sounded good.
CRASHING DOWN
By Weston Ochse
Sometimes during the night I wake to find my body shivering with frenetic memories of the old me. Cocaine and LSD had been my high-octane energy for over twenty years—happy Janus, psychotropic dreams responsible for my best times, my worst times, two divorces, the loss of eighteen girlfriends, my last nine jobs, and the death of both my wife and my son.
Even though I’d been sober for three years now, my body still remembered. I could never be sure whether my spasming muscles were the result of my body begging for another hit or if chemicals were still racing along the closed loop of my system. Whatever the cause, at 4:02 this morning, I awoke on sweat-soaked sheets and tried not to cry. As always, I stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine who I could have been, what I could have done.
And as always, I failed.
The world was filled with too many reminders. Like the white stucco drips on the ceiling, forever dangling above my head and reminding me of my nose and the way it had drip-dripped after seventy-two hour nights of blu
rry-faced women, disco lights, and the rugged search for another fix.
I fought, but the memories took hold.
The walls closed in.
The ceiling descended until I was tempted to sniff, ready to strip the very paint from it. Shadows reached out and embraced me, crushing, promising serenity within soft, impossible darkness.
Unable to free myself from the paranoia and need, I threw on a gray sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, grabbed a pair of gym shoes and within minutes was walking the early morning streets, trading the monotony of my steps for the nightmares of my life. Times like these were like a hard crash. A body can only take so much. Once the chemicals outnumber the white-blood cells, life signs take a dive and you crash down. Back when I was still tripping, my cure for the crash was a day in the spa, sweating out my addiction while beefy Russian gals with man hands pounded my bones back into recognizable shapes.
Now, my only cure was to walk.
Walk and try not to think.
I was almost alone, with only a street sweeper, a few early morning commuters, and paper delivery trucks to accompany me in my misery. Even so, the quietness of the city during these moments was the therapy my over-medicated body required. Like a psychic salve, the very lack of humanity stilled jangling nerves that were too much like the frenzied traffic of midday.
Fourteen blocks later, shoulders hunched, eyes down, and hands shoved deep within my pockets, I noticed the man standing upon a stepladder in the middle of an empty sidewalk. I slowed, then shook my head to give the image a chance to dissipate before I actually began believing it, certain I was in the midst of one my thrice-weekly flashbacks.
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