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 his 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, pacing a wide swath around the mountainous matron Simone, yet stealing 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 toward 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. 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 Huddys’ 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 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, scratching her head vigorously. 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.
A Moment of Reflection
An Afterword
By James A. Moore
There are some people, some writers, who are simply damned good. John McIlveen is one of them. If you’re reading this, you’ve very likely already read all of the stories in this collection. If not, you should do yourself a favor and get back to it as soon as possible.
I’m here to tell you what you already know. I’m here to tell you that McIlveen is a writer of powerful prose. He’s a damned gifted storyteller of the finest quality and he’s one who, when you’re reading his works, manages to hide that fact.
As a writer, most times I find myself skimming along the surface of a story r
ather than reading it. It’s something I suspect most writers do. We read, we enjoy, but at the same time we also analyze. It’s maybe intentional in some cases, but mostly it’s an unpleasant side effect of what we do. Read a sentence that staggers you with its power and instead of simply enjoying it, you have to stop reading and pull that sentence apart, dissect it, and rebuild it until you understand why it works. It’s like watching a good magic show and looking for all the smoke, wires, and mirrors that make the tricks work. You might not mean to do it, but the analytical writer within makes you do it anyway.
There are exceptions, of course. The best writers, the ones who can tell the best stories, they can get right past your need to know by making you lose yourself in the tale. I wish I knew how they did it. It drives me crazy sometimes not understanding that simple prestidigitation, but I love them for it all the same. Stephen King does that for me. He always has. I read his stories and I can stop and admire a sentence and I can look at it and ruminate over it and, damn it, there’s no reason why that sentence stands out, no trick that I can see, but there it is, this amazing sentence that rings of truth, pulls at my heart and soul, and lets me get lost in the tale.
John McIlveen does that, too. The first story of his I ever read, “Playing the Huddys” was like that. He asked me to give it a look over and I shrugged my shoulders and settled in, expecting to pull out a red pen and start marking the hell out of that manuscript. Instead, I lost myself for a little while. His words drew me into the tale and I found myself watching a wondrous game of ball on a day where everything just felt right. Nostalgia and comedy and strange characters and people, real people, all wrapped into words and moving around in their own little world and I was allowed to settle in and watch for a while.
Naturally, I thought it was a fluke. I mean, I know John. He’s one of the best kinds of people, but how was it that this man was writing tales of that caliber and I’d never read him before?
I read his collection fully believing that the tale of a group of baseball enthusiasts must have been a fluke.
It happens, you know. The occasional one-hit wonder. I’ve read some mighty promising books and stories by people who came out of nowhere and been pleasantly surprised. When the next book came along by the same name, I snatched it up, pushed aside my staggering To-Be-Read Pile, and settled in for a good read and found myself disappointed in my latest treasure. It’s happened so many times that I could easily get jaded. I probably have gotten jaded.
But then I run across someone like McIlveen, who makes up for those teasing promises of future joys. Because, damn it, I haven’t run across a tale by the man yet that didn’t hold my attention, draw me into it and let me slip right past the How_does_this_work stage of my reading. It’s a gift, perhaps, or maybe he’s just been honing his skills when I wasn't looking.
Either way, wow.
When I got the stories for this collection, I read them back to back. It was an enlightening experience. When it was done, I felt like I’d been pulled through the proverbial wringer, because the tales are powerful stuff, from the humorous all the way through to the darkest tales of retribution, McIlveen works his magic and leads the way down a path that is both wondrous and nerve wracking.
Here’s the thing, John McIlveen writes tales of the absurd and the preposterous. He tells stories about people in situations that are dark and humorous and wrong on so damned many levels and he pulls you in close and shows you the human aspects in those tales all at the same time. He does what the best storytellers do and makes you care about the characters. Within his stories of abuse, misfortune, revenge, tragedy, and dark, sinister urges, he slips in surprising flashes of humor and humanity. And he does it so skillfully that it makes me envious in the best possible way.
He makes me want to be a better writer. McIlveen raises the bar with his tales, and in the process of entertaining the hell out of me he makes me want to see if I can get to the same level or even surpass him. That, boys and girls, is the sure sign of excellence for me. With the unsettling gift of showing us the decency in even the darkest figures and the shadows that hide in even the kindest souls, McIlveen quietly throws down a gauntlet and leaves it there to be picked up.
I hate him for that and I love him for it. I love a good challenge, but sometimes, when I’m not quite sure I’m up to it, I want to scream, or laugh, or cry.
Or maybe that’s just the emotional afterimage from the stories in this collection.
Yeah, I’ll tell myself that. It’s easier to live with.
In a perfect world John McIlveen would spend more time writing. I know how it is, the annoying need to pay the bills and take care of life away from the office chair, but I’d love to see more of his work. I can accept that it’s not a perfect world and I’m even a little grateful for it. He’s already raised the bar for building a fine story. If he did that for speed of writing I could be in deep trouble. I’m already pretty prolific but there are limits.
McIlveen paints with a broad palette of colors, and he blends them and highlights them with a master’s touch. Tragedy and comedy, vengeance and salvation, hope and horror, the absurd and the sublime, all skillfully worked into the same pages and presented here for our enjoyment. Some of the pieces are little more than vignettes, others are darker and show us the details we might wish we could hide from, but they are the sort of details that we’re compelled to look at anyway, the minutiae of the macabre and the highlights of life.
If you didn’t cheat, if you’ve read the stories before reading this afterword, there is nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know. John McIlveen is a writer of incredible range, who wields his words like a scalpel. Sometimes he is a surgeon and other times he is a torturer, but in either case, he is adept at what he does.
Damn, I wish I could write through his eyes.
James A. Moore
Marietta, Georgia
October 19th, 2014
Inflictions Page 30
