Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller

by David C. Cassidy

  Still, despite all that had transpired, because of it, he supposed, he found himself looking longingly to that dreamy Iowa sky. It was fresh and deep, the air, oh so sweet. It was good to be alive again.

  The boy—it was hard to think of him that way now—stood on the home-made mound, his brim pulled low. He held the guise of a gangly gunslinger. He waited patiently, barely stirring, and after a pair of soft, deliberate swings cued him, flew into his delivery. The ball came hard and high, a foot over the batter’s head, striking the guesthouse two time zones out of the strike zone.

  The batter looked down at the ball. Looked up.

  “Little rusty,” the pitcher said, shrugging.

  Kain walked up to him. Handed him the bat.

  ~

  The drifter slipped his hand into the glove. Almost immediately, he was taken with the scent of well-oiled leather. It smelled fine and sweet. It swept him back, back to where the Turn could never take him. Faces. Places. Pennant races. Crowds. Spit tobacco (although he used it infrequently, only in the dustiest ballparks). Long bus rides (which he enjoyed; he had always slept better in those days, the ceaseless hum of the engine quite comforting). Friendship and camaraderie. Laughter.

  He looked to the horizon. The sun, still low and pumpkin in the early morning, was as warm as any sunset in so many ballparks. He sported a subtle grin and felt it curling wider. He stood tall on the mound, looking quite out of place, what with the blue jeans and T-shirt. The long hair. The boots. Still, in his mind’s eye, he could pass. He could.

  “How’s this gonna teach me anything?” Ryan said. He tapped the bat in the dirt. The “plate” Kain had carved not three weeks prior had been swept away by the rains.

  “You’ve got a rocket for an arm, Ryan. No question. But you have zero control.”

  “Hey.”

  “That’s not a putdown,” Kain said. “Just a fact.”

  “You sound like Coach.”

  “He sees the potential in you. So do I.”

  “Then why am I standing here?”

  “Remember what I told you?”

  “Yeah, yeah. You used to play ball.”

  Kain motioned with his glove, and the boy settled in. He felt the rust as he raised the glove in front of him. His eyes narrowed. He waited for a swing, and when it came, like an old pro called in to close, he slipped into a natural, near-perfect delivery. The ball sailed smoothly, straight and true, and as the batter swung, it changed direction in a wicked curve and blew by him.

  Ryan straightened, clearly stunned. “What the heck was that?”

  “Control,” the pitcher said, and gave him a wink.

  ~

  The veranda offered comfort as they sipped iced lemonade. Kain relaxed in the shade of the swing chair, while Ryan had curled up on the deck near the steps, his back against the railing, soaking up the rays.

  “I thought you played right field.”

  “One season,” Kain said. “But it turned out I was better at throwing strikes than catching fly balls. I pitched for almost three years.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Don’t take it so hard, Ryan. That was a damn good breaker. Not bad after all these years.”

  “So where’d you play?”

  “Eastern League. Binghamton Triplets.”

  “No kiddin’. Triple-A?”

  “Uh huh. We finished first the last two seasons … won the EL championship in ’40. I closed the last game. Eight straight strikeouts. My claim to fame.”

  The boy looked at him dimly.

  “I’m really sorry about what happened, Kain.”

  “Me too.”

  “I never meant to go crazy like that. You know?”

  Kain nodded.

  “… What’s it like?” Ryan asked.

  “… The Turn.”

  “Yeah.”

  The drifter finished his lemonade. “Hell on Earth.”

  ~

  They spent the next few hours on the mechanics of pitching, working the intricacies of the delivery, from the wind-up to the follow-through. Kain talked. Kain demonstrated. Kain corrected and coached. At first the boy seemed stuck in his ways, inflexible as iron, but under his expert tutelage, he was able to melt that stiff, stilted delivery—and the I can’t do this attitude—and re-mold them. By midday, Ryan was throwing strikes with a newfound grace. He hadn’t become a different pitcher … he had become a pitcher.

  “Nice work,” Kain said, standing not at bat, but beside the mound, where he had been the entire time.

  Ryan fired one more strike. Dead center. The scuffed hardball struck the wall with a thud and rolled in with the scattering of a dozen other marked balls.

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I gotta get my speed back. I’m gonna get killed out there.”

  “It’ll come. But for what it’s worth, you look like Whitey Ford.”

  “He’s a southpaw.”

  “True,” Kain said. “But he’s all about control—in every sense of the word. You can’t shake him. He’s the rock in that Yankee bullpen.”

  “Can’t argue that.”

  “Three strikes?” Kain asked, playfully.

  The young pitcher shifted. Adjusted his cap. “Sure.”

  Kain took to the batter’s box. He carved a new plate with the bat, then set his swing where he wanted it. When the pitch came, he nailed it.

  “I told you,” Ryan said, watching it fly. “I told you.”

  Kain walked up to him and patted him on the shoulder. “It wasn’t the pitch, Ryan. It was you.”

  ~

  They gathered the balls (one had split its stitches like some zombie skull coming undone, making it more useful as a rock than a hardball), and while Ryan was inside fixing them lunch, Kain rocked slowly on the swing. It seemed hotter now than before the rain, the air thick and dead. Just enough to sicken him, he could smell the rancid remains of Pepper, the stench lingering in the swelter like the permeating rot of a garbage dump in August. Ryan had told him the grisly details yesterday, had explained how he’d had to fish the tabby out of the crawlspace with a stick and a hook. How he wasn’t able to get all of it, on account there wasn’t much left of him but bone and guts. How he had buried him with Abbott (and what was left of Costello) about a quarter mile out back. The boy had shown him the mass grave, the small mound marked with a simple wooden cross he had fashioned in the barn. He had etched their names on it with a knife.

  The boy caught him looking at the footprints. They were faded now, like a long lost memory.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Ryan said from behind the screen door. He came out and set a plate of sandwiches on the table. “I never noticed them. Ma showed ’em to me. It’s just so weird. Sorry.”

  Kain poured himself some lemonade. He said nothing. Those ghostly contours served but a cold dish of reality, reminding him just how distant he really was from the rest of humanity. If the boy only knew. If only.

  Ryan took up in a folding chair. “So it’s me?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The pitch. You said it was me, not the pitch.”

  “Anyone could have hit that. That is, anyone who knows Number 23.”

  Kain held up a ball. Rolled it through his fingers.

  Ryan followed the nimble finger-work. “Yeah, so?”

  “Fastball,” Kain said. “You do it every time.”

  “I do?”

  “Every pitcher has his quirks. Hell, I used to decelerate before every curveball—and got killed for it. It can be anything. Some guys, they move their glove a little differently on some pitches. Tilt it this way. That way. Some lift their knee a bit higher on a certain pitch. They don’t even know they’re doing it. The littlest thing can tip a batter off.”

  “Coach never said anything like this.”

  “It takes a good eye, Ryan.” Kain paused. “But I’m not the only one who knows.”

  Ryan considered. “Jones.”

  “Uh huh. He’s a hitter, that one. A damn good one.”

&nbs
p; “Jeeze!”

  “But now you know,” Kain said.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “There’s, uh … something else.”

  Kain looked at the boy solemnly. He hadn’t wanted to bring it up, had been avoiding the subject altogether, but looking at him now, he felt he owed it to him. There was fire in the kid’s eyes. Not that burning anger he was used to seeing, but that burning desire he’d seen in so many ballplayers. Still, he couldn’t help but feel he should be minding his own business.

  “What is it?” Ryan said. “Tell me.”

  “How did it feel … going after Jones that day?”

  The boy’s expression dimmed.

  “We don’t have to talk about it,” Kain said.

  “Lousy. Okay? I felt lousy.”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  “Why do you think? The guy got to me. You were there.”

  “I know,” Kain said. “But why? You didn’t have to.”

  “I know! Jeeze!”

  “Was it the home run? Was it Jones? What was it?”

  “We lost. We lost. Happy?”

  “Ryan.”

  The boy looked away; turned back. “Because of me, okay? Me.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “Ask the guys. Ask anyone.”

  “You can’t beat yourself up over it. In the end … it’s just a game.”

  “I guess they taught you that in the Eastern League.”

  “Not exactly,” Kain said. “But I learned a long time ago you can’t always change the way things turn out.”

  The boy had to laugh. “Coming from you, that doesn’t hold much water.”

  “The rabbit doesn’t always come out of the hat, Ryan.”

  The boy paused to consider, and his expression brightened. “That’s why you got me to hold Beaks the next time round. Ben would’ve hit him again.”

  The drifter tapped his temple. Right.

  “I guess I understand, Kain. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “Can I ask you something? Something personal?”

  The boy regarded him cautiously. Nodded.

  “What do you want to do with your life?”

  “How the heck should I know?”

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  Ryan dropped his gaze.

  “When you’re out there—when Jones is swirling that bat and crawling under your skin—you’ve got two choices, Ryan. You can pitch around him—you might walk him if you’re lucky, but he’s so good he’ll likely run you out of the park—or you can pitch to him. It’s you against him. Your best against his. Life’s no different. Pitch around it, or pitch to it.”

  Something stirred in the boy. There was life in his eyes, something hopeful, yet something tempered and wary.

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  “I guess.”

  “That first pitch—way back when—were you trying to skull me?”

  ~

  They finished lunch. Ryan never did answer the question, only shrugged as he laughed it off. They worked on a new pitch, a breaking ball, and within an hour or so, the kid held an extra weapon in his arsenal. It needed control, needed speed, but all of that, as Kain assured him, would come. They broke again for a short respite.

  “You’re a quick study,” Kain told him, again taking up in the swing.

  “Lee was right. You teach pretty good. A few guys on the Tigers could use your help. Stu Bergman, for one.”

  “That boy throws way too hard. Good fastball. But he won’t last. Jimmy Long’s good. Real smooth delivery.”

  “I guess. He … never mind.”

  “What …”

  “He can be a real pain sometimes. You know?”

  “He jokes around.”

  “Yeah, jokes around like an idiot.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t.”

  “Do you like me?”

  “What?”

  “Do you like … me.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “You didn’t at first. Maybe you still don’t. But at least you’re not swinging a bat at me anymore.”

  ~

  “I get it,” Ryan said, after a drink. “I got to know you. A little, anyway.”

  “You and Jimmy could be real friends.”

  “Friends? Are you kidding? My old man would—”

  “What.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Your father would what?”

  “You don’t know him, Kain.”

  “I know enough. Enough to know that you don’t have to be afraid of him. Afraid of yourself.”

  Again. That odd mix of fear and expectation in the boy’s eyes. Want and wary.

  “Pitch to it,” Kain said.

  ~

  They sat for a time, the conversation lighter, the bold sun beginning its long westward journey. Kain finished his second glass of lemonade, and then asked the young pitcher if he wanted more practice with his change-up.

  “In a minute,” Ryan said. Suddenly, his demeanor had become quite sullen. “I want to ask you something.”

  Kain had already gotten up. He sat. He considered how they were getting along; he wouldn’t call them friends, exactly, but they weren’t strangers anymore, either. For now, they seemed to be drifting in that gray area in between, feeling each other out like two prize fighters who have never faced the other before. It was something. Perhaps trust could be built on a baseball.

  Ryan just came out with it, a flash flood. Simply told him the straight goods about Henry Roberts. About what the man had done to Billy Kingston and his little brother, Johnny. About the damning letter from his friend, how it was inside a strongbox and buried in the barn. How he had blackmailed the greasy sonofabitch. That’s what Ryan had called the old barkeep. A greasy sonofabitch.

  “I’d have him locked up,” Kain told him, when Ryan had asked what he’d do. Since he’d met the man, he had always felt Henry Roberts a strange bird, but this?

  “I can’t go to the cops,” Ryan said, and went on to explain how Sheriff Roberts was Henry’s brother … and how just last week he had asked Ben to help him burn down the Wild. It was Bullshit Benny—rather, the serious side of Benjamin Caldwell—who had, despite having been more than slightly inebriate at the time, talked some solid horse sense into him.

  “I think you know what you have to do,” Kain said.

  “Billy’s dad.”

  “You have to give him the letter.”

  “It’ll kill him, Kain. After Billy drowned himself … it wasn’t long before his mom committed suicide. All the man has left is Johnny. I don’t know if he could live with this.” He paused. “I haven’t.”

  “He’ll have to. The man has a right to know.”

  Ryan’s expression fell. But then, after a long deliberation, his eyes grew brighter.

  “I will. I’m gonna do it.”

  “It’s the right thing to do.” Kain started to rise.

  “Wait,” Ryan said. “Sit. Please.”

  Kain did.

  “Ma would never tell you,” he went on. “It’s too hard. I just wish somebody knew, you know? Somebody besides us.”

  “Ryan … whatever it is … if she wanted to tell me, she would have. It’s not my business. You’d better think about this.”

  “No.”

  “… Are you sure?”

  “No. But I need to do this. Before I lose the nerve.”

  “All right.”

  The boy stiffened; he had all the color of a leaden November sky. “You ever wonder about my sister? Why she dresses the way she does?”

  “I know about the burns,” Kain said. “Your mom told me there was a fire.”

  Ryan shook his head. It was more an act of disgust than disagreement. His gaze fell.

  “There was no fire.”

  ~ 17

  Frank Wright stood at the curb, outside Milton
’s Hardware & Grocery. He’d been making puppies for the last half hour, leaning far more on the broom than into it, taking his sweet time to do what should have taken him five minutes. He gave the old man the finger. The old man never saw it, of course, never saw a fucking thing; he was almost as blind as he was stupid, as useless as that fleshy stump at the end of his arm. What did it matter if he missed a spot? It was a fucking sidewalk, for Chrissake. A goddamn sidewalk. If he weren’t so strapped—Jake owed him twenty, but he was into Ray for almost two hundred, not a situation he felt would be conducive to walking (or worse) much longer—he’d take the man’s precious broom and shove it right up his ass. Let the sonofabitch tell his customers that war story. Better that than that goddamn shit about how his hand got blown off. Jesus, if he heard that crap one more time he’d have to beat the old fuck to death. And when they came to sweep up what was left of the old bastard, wouldn’t he tell them not to miss a spot.

  The old man stood akimbo in the doorway, towering at the top of the steps. He had snow-white brows, thick as weeds, over beady little eyes on a furrowed little face. He looked just like the idiot Frank always thought he was, what with his green-striped shirt and red suspenders, his dark gray pants riding nearly as high as the pants on that other idiot, Sid Plummer. The bastard let out a fart, a soft squealer, then made yet another joke about eating too many field mice. He scratched his crotch as casually as he might hand you a pack of smokes across the counter, and then, without further ado, fingered something from his teeth, toyed with it a bit, grumbled about the heat (he never shut up about that particular subject, Jesus), and finally hobbled back inside.

  Frank coughed. It came hard and sharp and phlegmy. It hurt like a bastard today. Like a knife. Doc Wheatley wanted him to quit, told him just last month when he went in for another of those killer nosebleeds. He was getting at least two a month now, and sometimes they went on for hours. But what the fuck did that quack know? He smoked, a regular goddamn chimney. The sonofabitch even sucked ’em back while he checked you over, for Chrissake. It was a wonder he didn’t blow smoke right up your ass.