by Tom Swyers
“Hello,” whispered David, while rolling back onto his stomach.
“Dad? Is that you?” Christy asked.
“Yes, who did you expect?” David asked softly as he looked down the hill to locate Barkus and the man. “Why are you up so early?”
“You told me to call if I heard Mom getting up. Why are you whispering?”
“Never mind now. She’s up?” David asked. He reached for his binoculars.
“I heard the TV in your room go on. She must be lying in bed now, waking up.”
“Hmm, now that’s a problem,” David said. He couldn’t locate the men, the enemy. He got off his stomach and crouched to get a better view of the field. The two vehicles stood silent, doors closed.
“Dad?”
David threw the gun sling over his head. Maybe they’re trying to flank me, he thought. He picked up Christy’s glove and tucked it under his arm. He scanned the grass around him to see if he had left any evidence that he’d been there.
“Dad, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” David said as he fluffed up the grass around him so it stood straight again. “Christy, why did you turn my ringer up so loud?”
“You said you wanted me to turn it up, so that was my best guess. Your phone is ancient, Dad. You need a new one.”
“Come on, Christy. I just conquered the learning curve on this one.”
The sound of rustling grass sounded like static to Christy on the phone.
“Are you okay?” Christy asked. “What’s with the heavy breathing?”
David wiped some perspiration from his forehead.
“You caught me in the middle of something. I’m just trying to finish up.” David began moving down the opposite side of the hill that overlooked the river while crouching so as not to be seen from the baseball field below. With his back bent, he started to circle around the field to get to his car parked a couple of hundred yards away.
“Dad? What’s going on?”
“Never mind. I’m good. I’ll be home in a bit. Go back to sleep. Hopefully, Mom won’t see the car missing by the time I get back.” If Annie found out he was at the field, David knew he would be in trouble. She already thought he spent too much time on baseball. The less she knew he worked on baseball, the better things were around the house for everyone.
“Okay,” said Christy.
“I have to go now,” David said, and hung up.
He got halfway down the hill so he could stand without being seen on the other side. He scanned the area around him. There was no sign of anyone. David started jogging toward his car. Maybe I’m the hunted one now, he thought.
He reached his 1974 pearl-white Mustang parked behind some trees and out of sight from the lot where Barkus and the man had parked. He touched the hood. He had reached third base safely in his mind. He leaned against the car for a second; he was out of breath. He brushed his jeans off and looked over his shoulder. Again, there was nobody in sight. He popped open the trunk and loaded his equipment, then looked around again before getting in the car. Still, no signs of anything moving.
Time to head for home, he thought while mounting the Mustang’s driver seat. At that moment, David imagined he felt much like General Buford must have felt mounted on his white horse, “Grey Eagle,” after the first day at Gettysburg: sad, exhausted, yet steadied by an underlying satisfaction of a job well done.
David approached the parking-area exit, about two hundred yards from the entrance to the main lot where Barkus and the man had entered. Both entrances connected to the same county road. He looked down to the other entrance, then in the opposite direction. No traffic, no sign of Barkus. He turned in the opposite direction of the main lot and drove off.
David checked his rearview mirror. He got a glimpse of the black-and-chrome SUV leaving the other lot and heading in his direction. His heart raced and his stomach dropped, the same feeling he got when spying a speed trap. He turned the radio off and applied some giddyap to the gas pedal.
He put a great distance between himself and the black SUV. There wasn’t much traffic on the road except for the owners of a few landscaping trucks en route to care for the upscale lawns of Indigo Valley. After a number of turns, David no longer saw the black SUV in his rearview, so he figured he had lost him.
David considered the absurdity of what he had done. He prided himself on his ability to handle any situation with calmness and reason. He realized that he had risked his family’s reputation and his reputation as a lawyer by acting impulsively. He was forced to consider the distinct possibility that his actions were a little more outrageous than Barkus’s. But maybe, he considered, this was a matter that was best addressed by acting more absurd than the enemy. Enemies in kids’ baseball? David thought. How had it come to this?
When he darted into the driveway, he felt some shame in what he had done but couldn’t deny his sense of satisfaction, a sense of doing something and making it to home base safely, a sense that he knew would persist only so long as his morning maneuvers went undetected.
* * * * *
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About the Author
Award-winning author Tom Swyers first had an audience on the edge of their seat (and the girls giggling) when his play, "The Great Train Robbery," made its debut in the seventh grade.
After high school, he worked his way through some of the best colleges in the country. Employed in a variety of jobs ranging from a late-night convenience store clerk to a fine jewelry salesperson, Tom eventually graduated from college and then worked his way through law school in the caverns of Wall Street.
Since then, he's been a lawyer for much of his career. He is also a former judge. Tom has studied at the New York State Summer Writer's Institute at Skidmore College.
Along the way, he married his high school sweetheart and raised a family. When he isn't writing or reading, Tom is usually running (literally) away from trouble on the back roads of Upstate, New York where he lives with his family and two cats (really two dogs working undercover).
You can find him at his website tomswyers.com or you can write him at [email protected]
