Jokers Club

by Gregory Bastianelli

  He got up, shook off the dirt, and then glared at me, brandishing his lumber menacingly. The fire in his eyes dried up my throat.

  I knew I had to forget about the curve. My control was shot.

  I wound up and reared back, gripping the ball tightly, and heaved it with all my might. I think I garnered energy I thought was long gone. It was inside and he swung. He was over anxious I think and it jammed him. He fouled the ball back over the backstop.

  The ump threw in a fresh ball and it turned out to be brand new. I pretended to accidentally drop it on the mound and, when I bent to pick it up, I dragged it in the dirt. I then rubbed the ball in my palms. I didn’t need to give him a nice bright white target.

  I think the last pitch totally exhausted every muscle I had. I didn’t think I could throw another fastball. I figured maybe I could fool him with a breaking ball. Maybe he wouldn’t expect it.

  I tucked the ball deep into my palm. Chuckwagon was gripping the bat so tightly his knuckles were white. I wound up and threw, releasing that ball ever so lightly. It drifted down toward the plate, right down the middle, letter high. It must have looked as big as a beach ball to him. The ball seemed to take forever to get to the plate.

  Chuckwagon gritted his teeth and swung with all his might.

  There was a loud popping sound.

  I shook my head.

  The ball was in Woody’s mitt.

  I was dazed. I couldn’t even lift my arms above my head to cheer. Everybody was on top of me. I was buried, but soon found myself hoisted up in the air and carried off the field. I turned and looked toward the stands, looking for my dad.

  I wanted to see how proud he was of me.

  But he wasn’t proud of me. Because that wasn’t the way it happened. That was the way I wished it had happened.

  Someone else pitched that game. I watched the whole game from the bench in the dugout. I didn’t get to pitch that game. I never got to pitch in Little League. I sat on the bench most games, and when I did play it was for a couple of innings in right field. That was where they stuck the players who were no good. Right field was where the fewest balls got hit, there were fewer chances to screw up.

  We didn’t even win the game that day. Chuckwagon hit the homerun. I remember Oliver rounding third base and making faces at me as I sat in the dugout. Chuckwagon ran the bases with his arm in the air, finger pointing skyward, waving it back and forth. My teammates slowly walked off the field, heads down. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t a part of it. Why should I have cared?

  I stood on the mound remembering days best left forgotten when I realized I was being watched.

  I didn’t make any sudden movement. I was afraid to.

  Someone was sitting in the dugout on the third base side watching me. I could see the figure of what looked like an old baldheaded man behind the chain link fence, sitting in the shadows of the dugout. Just sitting, staring out at me.

  I suddenly felt an uncontrollable panic creep over me. My heart raced, but I tried to remain calm. It was broad daylight, nothing could happen to me. I inconspicuously glanced around. There was no one else here. Across the road from the ball park were a few houses, but there was no one visible in or by them. Why was this town so damn quiet?

  I thought about sprinting for my car. He’d never catch me.

  This is ridiculous, I thought. I was getting paranoid. It’s probably just some old guy out for a leisurely Sunday walk who decided to stop and rest in the shade of the dugout.

  But his stillness spooked me.

  Maybe I should just go over there and talk to him, see who he was?

  I stepped off the mound and gingerly approached the dugout. I tried to form some opening line in my head, something about the weather usually worked. As I got closer, I noticed that something didn’t feel right.

  I got to the dugout and peered through the fence. My heart was no longer beating furiously. It almost stopped in mid-beat. I ran around to the side and entered the dugout, though there was no need to hurry.

  It was Lonny, sitting on the bench.

  He was slumped there, one eye open, staring out onto the field. But he hadn’t seen me on the mound. He wasn’t seeing anything anymore. His throat was slit.

  I approached slowly, not taking my eyes off the gaping gash in his throat and the dried blood that glazed the front of his shirt. My knees felt like they were going to buckle, so I sat down beside him.

  I had thought he was an old man because his toupee was gone. Without it he looked much older, like a completely different person. He appeared utterly peaceful, except for the wide gash and the blood. Maybe he was at peace. His problems were behind him. At least now he could finally sleep.

  This really was a nightmare, I thought. His glassy eye showed no horror. The one closed eye gave the impression of winking, as if he were trying to let me in on a secret, a secret only he now knew. What had that one eye seen? Whose eyes had he looked into when it happened?

  “I’m so sorry, Lonny,” I said. I wanted to believe he could hear me. I looked around the dugout for his toupee, figuring it must have fallen off in the struggle. But I couldn’t find it. Besides, it didn’t really look like there was any kind of a struggle.

  Lonny had played the shadow to find the killer. At least he succeeded in the last endeavor of his life.

  * * *

  The three of us sat on the bleachers on the third base side of the field, near the dugout. Oliver was on my left, on the row halfway up the bleachers. Martin sat two rows behind us. His face was pale, his eyes stricken with shock and fear. Oliver showed little emotion. His face held a relaxed expression, almost serene. Was this man stone?

  I looked down at my own hands and noticed they were shaking. There was no doubt now. Dale’s murder was not random. Someone was stalking the Jokers Club.

  I had called the police from one of the nearby houses, as my cell still couldn’t get a signal. Hooper had rounded up Martin and Oliver (the usual suspects) and brought them out here. I could hear the chief and the medical examiner now, talking in the dugout as they looked over the body.

  “It’s not the same kind of wound as the other,” the medical examiner said.

  “Different weapon?” the chief asked.

  “Not necessarily. It’s a nice fine cut. They could have used the same knife, but this time used the smooth edge of the blade as opposed to the serrated edge used on the first body.”

  Their voices dropped and I could no longer hear them.

  I thought about the hallucination I had of Lonny in the gazebo last night, about how similar it was to the way he was killed. It was too frightening a coincidence.

  I turned sideways on the bench so I could see Martin and Oliver at the same time.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Maybe it’s time we tell Heifer about what happened with Jason?”

  Oliver’s eyes widened. “NO! Don’t even think of telling him that!”

  “I just think it’s about time we come clean with Heifer on everything. What about you Martin?”

  He nodded. “I think you’re right. It’s gone on long enough.”

  “There’s no need for Heifer to know,” Oliver said.

  “It could help him figure out what’s happening here,” I said.

  “I’m not having my reputation ruined by something that happened nearly twenty years ago.”

  “How will your reputation be if you’re dead?” His childish stubbornness angered me.

  “No killer’s going to get me.” He sounded arrogant. “There’s no need to dredge up that old stuff. Besides, we took an oath. Remember?”

  Yes, I remembered. Cross our hearts and hope to die.

  Chief Hooper came out of the dugout and stood in front of the bleachers. He looked us over, as if studying us. Maybe he actually thought he could stare one of us into a confession.

  He finally spoke. “When did you see Mr. Mudge last?” The question wasn’t posed to anyone in particular. Both Oliver and Martin responded that the
y hadn’t seen him at all yesterday.

  “I saw him last night, at Loon Tavern,” I said. “Just like I told you earlier.”

  “That’s right. What time was that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t remember. Early evening.”

  “He was still there when you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what’d you do?”

  I thought for a moment. “Went back to the inn. Did some writing, and then went to sleep.”

  “That’s it? You didn’t go anywhere else?”

  I told him how I had woken up in the middle of the night, couldn’t sleep and went back to the tavern. But I said I didn’t see Lonny that time. (That wasn’t Lonny in the gazebo. Was he already dead then? Was that his ghost trying to warn me?)

  The chief stared at me for a while.

  “Funny,” he said, his forehead furrowing. “Funny how you’re the one who’s discovered both bodies.”

  I explained to him how I happened to come to the ballpark.

  “I think Carrothead’s the one you should be talking to,” I said.

  His face flushed. “You’re not trying to blame this on a helpless idiot?” he yelled.

  “I didn’t say that,” I yelled back. “I’m just saying that obviously he saw Lonny here, saw something. Maybe he saw the killer with Lonny. I think you should just question him.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job, mister! I’ve been chief in this town a helluva long time. I damn well know how to do my job!”

  No, I thought. This wasn’t your job. Your job was breaking up underage parties, handing out speeding tickets and maybe once in a while investigating a case of vandalism at one of the summer cabins. Murder was out of your league. There hadn’t been a murder in Malton in nearly half a century. Not unless you considered Jason Nightingale’s death a murder. I looked over at Oliver. They say the best planned murder is one no one considers a murder at all.

  “What about Woody?” Oliver asked. “Any word on him?”

  The chief’s color returned to normal and he shook his head, almost in disgust.

  “He’s still listed as a missing person. There’s been no trace of him at all.”

  “Any sign of Lonny’s toupee?” I asked, Oliver snickering beside me.

  “That’s missing too. Damn weird.”

  “Chief,” I started to say. Oliver shot me a threatening look, as if afraid of what I was going to say. I hesitated, unsure myself of what I was about to ask.

  “Did you check Emeric Rust’s house again?” I finally asked.

  The chief looked disgusted. “Old men, retards. You’re trying to look in every direction but the obvious one. I have no doubt the killer is sitting right here in these bleachers.”

  The three of us looked at each other.

  The scary thing was, he was probably right.

  I dropped Oliver off at the Tower House Inn and offered to give Martin a ride home. A tow truck was hooking up Lonny’s dealer car when we got there, and we watched them haul it away. It made me think of Lonny’s body being put into the plastic bag and hauled away. I wondered if that same fate was awaiting me soon.

  I was disgusted with myself for not telling Hooper about the real story of what happened to Jason Nightingale. I don’t know why we listened to Oliver. It was like, after all these years, he was still our leader. He was still telling us what to do. And we still listened.

  I couldn’t wait to get away from Oliver. I couldn’t stand being around him. Martin didn’t say a word the whole time during the drive to his house.

  As we pulled into his driveway, I looked at his home. It was an old colonial farmhouse, probably a couple hundred years old, but it looked as if it could have been built yesterday. The clapboards looked freshly painted, a dark hunter green, and all the shutters hung perfectly straight. A couple of polished brass lanterns kept guard on either side of the old-fashioned wooden door.

  I asked if I could come in for a moment.

  He hesitated and I thought the answer would be no, but he nodded.

  “Sure. But I’ve got to feed the ducks.”

  We stood in his back yard by a small duck pond. He held a bowl in his hands filled with torn pieces of bread. There were over a dozen ducks, some in the water, others around the pond, and they gathered near him. He tossed some bread to the ones around his feet and out into the water to the ducks that had swam to the edge of the pond where we stood.

  His house had been just as well-kept inside as out. He told me he had put a lot of work into it, that the place had been pretty run-down when he bought it at a bank foreclosure auction. He showed me earlier some of the molding and baseboards he had replaced, carefully matching the original woodwork. He had stripped and refinished most of the wood floors until they shone like glass. He had even retouched the brickwork around the fireplace. Most of his free time was spent working on the place, he said. Between that and taking care of his mother.

  “How is your mother?” I asked, trying to break up the silence.

  “The same,” he responded. “Doesn’t get better; doesn’t get worse.”

  I looked around Martin’s yard. There were no houses visible on either side of his. He had found a pretty secluded spot for himself and his mom.

  “It’s good that she has you to take care of her.”

  “I just hope I outlive her.”

  He said it so casually, so naturally. Yet it was frightening to think our lives could end so abruptly.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “And the more I think, the more I believe it’s Oliver we have to watch out for.”

  He looked at me but said nothing. The ducks quacked around his feet and he scattered a few more pieces of bread.

  “I know I’m not the one,” I continued, “and I hope you can believe that too. I have no doubt it’s not you. I just want you to be very careful. We both have to.” I pondered whether to tell him about Woody, but I just wasn’t sure that was real or not. I wouldn’t be able to explain to him why it might not be. I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  “Be alert,” I said to him.

  “Whatever happens, happens. There’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

  There was no emotion in him. I looked at his face and could see he really wasn’t worried.

  “You don’t care, do you?” I asked.

  He was silent, tossing pieces of bread, then stopped and looked up at me.

  “You know what I keep thinking about?” he said. “That day we played Relievo, when Oliver sent Jason up into that refrigerator to hide.” He gripped the bowl in his hands tight. “I was worried about him being able to breathe in there. And I was going to say something, but I figured that Oliver and you guys knew better, that it must be all right, cause Oliver knew everything and if it wasn’t all right, one of you would have said so, so I kept quiet and didn’t bother saying anything, because you guys always knew better than me, so I didn’t say anything and I keep thinking about that all these years, that maybe I could have done something.” He lost his grip on the bowl and it fell from his hands, spilling bread crumbs onto the ground. His red face stared down as the ducks swarmed around his feet.

  “So now I stay out here, where no one else is around, and I take care of my mother and my house and my ducks and that’s pretty much all there is and that’s probably more than I deserve.”

  I think that was the longest I had heard Martin speak uninterrupted in my life. I wondered how long he had been waiting to say it.

  “You can’t torment yourself, Martin. And you can’t hide. Not even here anymore.”

  “Hiding is over. I’m just tired of hiding.”

  “You can’t give up,” I continued. “Don’t you think about your loved ones? What about your mother? Who’ll take care of her if you’re gone? Who will feed your chickens?”

  “They’re ducks, dammit! They’re not chickens, they’re ducks!”

  I thought about when we were kids, when we were in the club. Everything was so easy and carefree then. We
had nothing to worry about. Everything had changed now. Everything had gone wrong.

  I looked behind Martin, up at the back of his house. A face appeared in a second-floor window. It was an old face with thinning gray hair and round, wire-rimmed glasses. I looked at Martin, then back up at the face in the window, then back again at Martin. The resemblance was uncanny.

  Martin was turning into his mother.

  “Don’t give up,” I repeated. “You have to keep hope going. I still do. I hope to still publish a book (I do, maybe even this one). Heck, I even still have hopes Meg and I can be together again someday.”

  He looked bewildered.

  “What is wrong with you?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re still so obsessed with her you don’t even realize it.”

  “What are you talking about, Martin?”

  “Meg. You’ve had this big lifelong crush on her, but the two of you never even dated.” He looked angry with me. “Christ, Dale got so tired of you waiting that he went out with her, took her to the prom. We all went to their fucking wedding! Don’t you even remember?”

  I staggered backward, away from him, my mind going numb, and then I turned and ran back round to the front of his house and my car.

  “No!” I screamed when I got behind the wheel. It couldn’t be. But it was, of course. It was Dale, not me. Hell, I’d just spoken to Meg the other day when I called from the phone booth to try and tell her what happened to Dale.

  I sped off wildly down the road, my nerves shaking. All those years. But it was true, wasn’t it? God, what happened to me? I imagined it. A whole relationship, all those times together, those experiences and memories never existed. She never read my stories in the chairs in her front yard overlooking the lake on a warm summer day. Never held my hand, never pressed her lips against mine.

  It had felt like it really happened.

  But when?

  When did I start to think Meg and I had been together? Was it when the tumor started? Or did it go all the way back to those years in high school?