He hoped that he might make it through the gaggle of women without being noticed, but when he opened the door and saw them all sitting around the massive dining room table, he knew that would not be possible. The ladies became uncomfortably quiet when he shut the door. He could tell that he had interrupted some juicy gossip. A dozen or so stretched faces turned in his direction to size him up.
Several unopened Bibles and empty wine bottles were strewn about. As he approached the table, Dwayne noticed the weekly Bible study fliers … the Gospel according to Matthew. He chuckled to himself.
“How goes it, ladies?” Dwayne asked insincerely, making his way to the kitchen.
“Just some good Christian fellowship,” one of the ladies replied.
“Dwayne, honey,” Estelle called out to the kitchen, “make sure you get paid from the Simpson account soon. Jacqueline was telling me that they paid their country club bill late. And if you hadn’t noticed, they traded in their Mercedes S-class on a midlevel Lexus.”
“Gotcha,” Dwayne responded sarcastically as he rooted through the refrigerator for one of his favorite dark beers. “We probably shouldn’t speak to them anymore until they can afford a proper luxury vehicle.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole, Dwayne,” Estelle snapped back. “I just don’t want us to get burned by people who don’t have the good sense not to live beyond their means.”
Dwayne rolled his eyes. He fantasized about telling all of the gossiping hens how much money he had in the bank as he drove golf balls at them from the living room. He’d love to see the wine glasses shattering everywhere, splashing hundred-dollar-a-bottle wine all over their thousand-dollar outfits. They’d dive to the floor, cursing him for his insubstantial income and known associations with a colored guy.
“By the way, ladies,” he said instead, “I noticed that you’re reading the Gospel according to Matthew. That’s a great book. How far have you gotten?”
Dwayne peered his head around the corner to watch them search for an answer. They were dumbfounded.
“After the opening prayer, we got a little sidetracked,” one of the fully stretched, prim-and-proper blue bloods responded. “We were just about to begin our studies.”
“Oh, I see.” Dwayne pounded the last drop of beer from his bottle into his mouth. “You should skip the first six chapters and cut right to chapter seven. It starts out, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged,’ and gets considerably more interesting and applicable from there. Thank me later. I’ll be in the other room watching the Rangers game with Alex.”
Dwayne walked into the living room and sat down in his favorite chair. Alex was lying back with his legs up on the couch. He was doing the only thing he loved as much as playing baseball … watching it. The Texas Rangers were playing the New York Yankees in a much-anticipated afternoon game. Alex was glued to the television.
Dwayne grabbed the remote control, turning up the volume in an effort to drown out the cackling from the silicone, purple-toothed hens in the next room. He watched Alex’s face as it hung on every play.
“Dad,” Alex said as he looked toward Dwayne, “do you still think I’m good enough to play shortstop?”
“Yeah, I do.” Dwayne could feel the self-consciousness settling into his son. “I think you’re the best shortstop in the league.”
“Thanks, Dad. I wish Coach Dale would give me a shot to prove myself. I feel like I’m letting you and Mom down.”
Anger crept into Dwayne as he sat stoically staring at the screen. It began to nag and claw at him. What in the hell was Coach Dale thinking? Seriously! He had the option to win games. Instead he chose to crush the dreams of half of his team to overcome some deep insecurity he obviously harbored about fathering a kid that sucked at baseball. It wasn’t fucking fair. He’d had enough.
“I’ll be back in a minute, son,” he said softly to Alex as he rose from his seat.
He walked back into the kitchen and grabbed another beer from the fridge. He popped the lid and quietly slipped out the back door. Leaning over the railing of his back porch, Dwayne surveyed the state of his lawn with a landscaper’s eye. Every few feet along his eight-foot capped cedar fence, he noticed a baseball on the ground. An old aluminum bat lay propped up against a huge live oak. A tattered glove sat inches away. There were a few worn tracks shaped like a diamond in the grass where Alex and his friends had played backyard ball time and time again.
Dwayne couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed. After a few rings, the line picked up with a loud commotion on the other end.
“This is … umm … OH MY GOD THAT’S THE SPOT!” Russ yelled as he dropped the phone to the floor.
Dwayne could hear Russ struggling to grab the phone as his young wife was obviously sexually assaulting him.
“This is … OH GOD, BABY, DON’T TOUCH IT! IT’S SO SENSITIVE RIGHT NOW! DON’T EVEN LOOK AT IT! PLEASE! JESUS!”
Dwayne was about to set the phone down, when an out-of-breath Russ managed to gain his composure.
“This is Russ Paisley,” he said, panting and clearing his throat.
“Ummm, yeah, Russ … It’s Dwayne. I was … uhhh … Is this a good time?”
“Yo! Dwayne! Thank Christ! I was hoping it wasn’t the church calling again! Just getting a little wink-wink ‘cardio’ in, if you know what I mean. I swear, Jade’s been so damn freaky since she got her nipples pierced, I think she’s going to rip my d—”
“WHOAH! Hey, brother! That’s a little too much info. Good for you, though. I just—”
“Dude, she’s like a friggin’ rabbit, 24/7, bro. Seriously. I can send you some pictures.”
“No, no, no, man … That’s just … Wait, okay, email them to my work email. But that’s not why I called.”
“Cool. I’m sending them now. Why did you call?”
Dwayne paused for a moment. He was getting cold feet. He had been so certain just moments before. His phone beeped. He looked at his phone. He had an email. He pushed the button quickly to glance at it.
“You get the email yet?” Russ barked.
“Yeah, I just … Jesus, is that a carrot?”
“She’s been going through some weird vegetable fetish. Who am I to judge? I just let her go with it. Wait ’til you see the one with the—”
“Holy shit!”
“—Large English cucumber.”
“Yeah, man, I’m happy for you. I just … wow. Ummm … That thing we were talking about, with Dave …”
“Yeah? What about it?”
Dwayne paused again. Thinking it over one last time made him more angry and resolute.
“I’m in,” Dwayne barked. “Let’s do it,”
“Cool. I’ll get started.”
“Nothing over the phone from this point forward though, okay?”
“Sure.”
“And Russ …”
“Yeah?”
Dwayne took a deep breath. “Nobody gets hurt.”
7.
“I know what you did, David,” the heavily disguised voice said into the receiver.
Dave the umpire glanced down at his phone. The call was coming from a blocked number. He pushed his three large pit bulls off his nasty old mattress, which sat on the floor of his trailer, so that he could get a clear line of sight on his alarm clock. It was 3:21 a.m.
“Who the fuck is calling me at three in the morning? Is this a joke? Earl, this better not be you callin’ from the pen again. I told you not to—”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP, LOSER!” the caller screamed. “I saw what you did at the baseball field, David. Would you like me to share what I saw with the police?”
“GODDAMMIT, WHO IS THIS?!” Dave sat up and rubbed his eyes to make sure he was awake. He was. He grabbed a half-burned joint from the ashtray and lit it.
“David, David, David. You’ve been a bad boy,” the voice scolded. Russ was trying to sound like a cross between Hannibal Lector and the guy from the Scream movies.
“With yo
ur record,” Russ continued, “I doubt that you’d like anyone to find out what you’ve done. You’d be locked up for good. You don’t want that, do you?”
Dave jumped out of bed and walked to the window of his double-wide. He crinkled the mini blinds down, peering around the Movin’ On Up trailer park for suspicious activity. He saw nothing.
“What do you want?” Dave asked.
Jade had begun to rustle from her slumber. Russ knew he had to get off the call quickly, before Jade grabbed the cocaine and wanted to have sex for the ninth time that evening. Russ had hoped to be making the phone call to Dave much earlier, but Jade just kept coming back for more. Now her hand slid up his thigh and into his new shimmery golden thong she’d just bought him.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” Russ mumbled as he tried to grab Jade’s hand before she latched on. “Not now, honey, just let me get off of this ph—”
POP!
She had pulled back the front of the thong, stretched it to full elasticity, and then released it, snapping Russ square in the twig and giggleberries.
“OH, JESUS!” Russ whispered loudly, with all of the breath gone from his lungs from the immense pain. “All I see is white! Oh God it hurts! You’re such a twisted freak! Oh, why, why, WHY?!?!”
Dave listened to the commotion on the line. He was lost. “You talkin’ to me, dipshit?” he asked the caller.
Russ flew out of bed and began jumping up and down. The pain was too much. He had to scream.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! NO, NO, NO, NOOOO!!!”
Russ stood on the white marble bedroom floor, doubled over in pain at the foot of his ornate eighteenth-century bed. He held the phone in one hand and pulled back the thong with the other to survey the damage. Aside from the agony and odd purplish coloring from overuse, everything appeared fine. He took a couple of deep breaths, walked toward the large picture window with his winky and a testicle protruding from the side of his thong, and jolted himself back into character
“Listen, Dave,” he whispered menacingly. “You’re going to do me a favor if you want to stay out of jail for the rest of your natural life.”
“I’m listening,” Dave replied. Dave was utterly bewildered by the early morning call. Normally, nothing scared him, but something wasn’t right with the guy on the other end of the line. He knew he was dealing with a psychopath.
“Ricky Dale is a douche, Dave,” Russ stated. “We both know this.”
“Yeah. So?”
“He’s playing too much daddy baseball these days, Dave, and some friends of mine and I have had enough.”
Dave held the phone away from his head for a moment to glare at it, and then he placed it back to his ear and mouth. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Would you like to find out if I’m kidding you?”
“No, it’s just … What the hell am I supposed to do? You want me to tell Ricky Dale how to coach his shitty baseball team?”
“I want you to make sure there’s no more daddy baseball going on, Dave. That’s all. I don’t give a shit how you do it. It’s simple. The good kids play the good spots, the shitty kids play the shitty spots. And no more good kids on the bench. This isn’t the goddamned YMCA. We want to win. Who gives a shit about the kids that suck? Fucking Democrats! That’s what’s wrong with this goddamned society! Winners need to win! It’s your job to make it happen!”
“But I just—”
“Goddammit, Dave! No excuses! It’s your job to restore some goddamn order to the universe! I don’t give a shit how! Scare him! Make it happen! Make it happen, or you go to jail!”
Russ clicked his phone off. He missed the days when phones had two parts to them, and you could slam them together to hang up with much more dramatic effect. But the days of the dramatic effect were no more. He knew the Democrats were behind this as well.
Dave sat back down on the end of his bed. His pit bulls were snoring again. He flipped on his old box television and hooked up his illegal cable box, turning the channel to a show about a guy who lived in the swamps of Louisiana and fished with his hands. He sparked up another joint and drifted off to sleep.
8.
Monday morning, Dwayne Devero stood over the stovetop frying bacon and eggs for Alex before he headed off to school. Alex was drinking his orange juice while watching ESPN SportsCenter on the television near the kitchen table. He did this every Monday morning, catching up on all of the college and professional games he’d missed over the weekend.
Estelle came dragging into the kitchen as Dwayne set Alex’s breakfast plate in front of him.
“I guess I have to make the coffee around here,” Estelle mumbled as she filled the coffee machine with water and placed the filter with ground beans inside.
“Yeah,” Dwayne replied. “It must be rough to have to go to the trouble of pouring water in that thing before a long day of spending money, drinking, and talking shit about people.”
Dwayne was thankful that Alex stayed submerged in sports news so that he didn’t hear the back-and-forth between his parents.
“You left the lawn truck parked out front again,” Estelle sneered as she looked out over the kitchen sink into the driveway. “Jesus, Dwayne! You know how I feel about that!”
“Oh my God!” he snapped. “Now everyone in the neighborhood is going to find out I work for a living! Shit! Our cover is blown!”
“Okay, asshole,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away. “I’ve got a yoga class in an hour. Bye.”
Estelle offered an evil, yet quite sincere, middle finger to Dwayne as she walked back to the bedroom. This was what it had become.
“Comb your hair and brush your teeth when you’re done, buddy, and I’ll take you to school,” Dwayne told Alex.
Dwayne set the frying pan in the sink. He squirted about a half a cup of dish soap into it, and let the hot water fill it up. As he turned the water off, he noticed his phone light blinking. He’d received a new text from Russ.
RUSS:
The orange hyena is on the bike.
DWAYNE:
What the fuck does that mean?
RUSS:
I’m speaking in code, lawn boy!
Dwayne was getting impatient with Russ. It wasn’t hard to do.
DWAYNE:
Are you goddamn retarded?
RUSS:
Dumbass! I’m just trying to say something without saying it!
DWAYNE:
That doesn’t make any sense! Are you coked up right now?
RUSS:
Wtf does that have to do with anything??? LOL.
DWAYNE:
Don’t LOL me! I’m a grown-ass man! Are you 14 or something? Jesus! Just tell me!
RUSS:
LMAO! You get so flustered! :)
DWAYNE:
LMAO? Really? And did you just smiley-face me?
What’s wrong with you, man?! Jesus! Use your words!
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! SPELL IT OUT!!!
RUSS:
Sorry. : (… Didn’t mean to upset you. I made the call we talked about. It’s happening. I’ll see you at practice tonight. After I nail your wife.
DWAYNE:
Oh. Cool. See you tonight. Dick. You can have her. :)
The texting session over, Dwayne looked up from his phone to see that Alex had finished his breakfast, put his dishes in the dishwasher, combed his hair, and brushed his teeth.
“I’m ready!” Alex exclaimed as he headed for the truck, his backpack on his shoulder.
What a good kid, Dwayne thought. He hoped he would never let such a perfect child down.
“Hey, Alex,” he said softly. “Does it bother you that I drop you off for school in my work truck? I know lots of kids are riding in much cooler cars. It’s just … if I head back to the office to get my car after work, that means I get to spend less time with you.”
“I don’t care, Dad,” Alex responded. “It’s just a car.”
Dwayne smiled. He’d somehow managed to raise h
is kid pretty well so far. He handed Alex a few bucks for lunch as they approached the school drop-off, and gave him a little fist bump before he climbed out of the truck. “I’ll be home around five to take you to practice, buddy. When you get home, do your homework first thing. I think things are about to get better for your baseball team. I can feel it.”
9.
Ricky Dale arrived at Jenny Field an hour before practice to set up the bases and write up a game plan, as he always did. He illegally parked his classic silver 1961 Mercedes 300 SL convertible in the handicapped parking space nearest the entrance to the field.
An old black van, badly painted in a poor attempt to re-create the A-Team van, appeared out of nowhere. It came screeching up behind Coach Dale as he leaned deep inside his trunk to grab the team equipment bag. Coach Dale turned around to see the van’s sliding side door fly open, and thick marijuana smoke come pouring out.
Coach Dale stood paralyzed with fear as a large masked man dressed in a tattered red ski suit emerged from the smoke and sprang through the side door of the van wielding a large aluminum baseball bat. His red ski mask looked as though it were on sideways, and Dave was having a difficult time seeing through it. The scene looked straight out of a low-budget horror film.
“You’re gonna stop playing daddy baseball out here, Ricky Dale,” Dave demanded. He held the bat high, acting as if he might clobber the coach. “You’re gonna play the good kids in the good spots, and the retards in the retard spots. Understand?”
The impeccably dressed and leathery tan Coach Dale leaned in to inspect the masked man. The lunatic with the bat reeked of cheap weed, cheap whiskey, and body odor. He knew that voice. He recognized it. He stared at the one bloodshot eye that had a line of sight through the mask. Then it clicked.
“Dave?” Coach Dale moved closer. “Is that you, Dave? What the fuck? Is this a joke?”
“I’m not Dave. I don’t know anyone named Dave. I mean, I know a couple of guys named Dave … everybody knows a couple of guys named Dave … but not the Dave you’re talking about.”
Base Ball Dads Page 3
