Safe

Safe

Richard Stimac

Intertwining barbed wire crowned the top of the evangelical church’s parking lot fence. Emblazoned with fire-hydrant red lettering “God’s Accountants. Adding to the Saints”, the church bus crouched behind the chain link, like a guard dog seeming to sleep but ever vigilant for its master to return or a thief to steal through the night.

Large enough for two, maybe three, slab-foundation tract houses, an empty field lounged across the broken concrete street from the graveled parking lot. Boys played summer vacation baseball on this patch of bare spots and crabgrass. The church recently bought it. New signs warning against trespassers sat at the corners of the makeshift diamond. A pile of mesh, posts, and bands lay along the street. The digging would begin the next day. Today was a Sunday.

No one made plans for a game that afternoon. No one ever did. Like freely given grace, games arose from their own sovereign power. Nonetheless, someone had to invoke the spirit of the game. Today, the invocation lay at Rickie’s feet.

“Are you gonna call people?” Benjie said. His voice implored as much as it invoked over the phone.

“Call people for what?” Rickie said. He sat on the arm of the living room couch. His mom sat at the other end with a cup of coffee in one hand and a rosary in the other.

“You should be outside,” she said. “It’s a nice day.”

“A game,” Benjie said. “It’s the last day.”

“The last day for what?” Rickie’s mom said.

“Don’t listen to my call,” Rickie said.

“Is your mom there?” Benjie sounded hopeful. “They start digging tomorrow.”

“You’re not going onto the church’s property, are you?” Rickie’s mom said.

“I don’t want to play today?” Rickie began to twirl the cord of the phone around his arm like the leather straps of phylacteries.

“Go. You go.” Rickie’s mom made a shooing motion with her hand. “I don’t need you around the house while I try to get work done.”

“Who else is gonna be there?” Rickie began to collect facts that would either damn or save him.

“Robbie, maybe.” Benjie was cautious.

“Robbie?” Rickie’s mom frowned. “I don’t know about that.”

“Don’t listen to my call.”

“I can’t help it. You’re sitting right here. And Benjie yells like a street-corner preacher when he’s on the phone. I’d hear him even if I were down the hall trying to take a nap.”

“Who else?” Rickie knew he was defeated but kept on.

“Jimmie. Danny. Tommy, maybe. Enough.”

“I don’t like it when we don’t even have enough for an infield.”

“We got enough. With Robbie.”

Rickie’s mom frowned as she stood up.

“You go. Go on. Get your glove. And go.”

She pretended to push him off the arm of the sofa.

“I’m not gonna call everyone,” Rickie said. “Come over and we’ll go together to get everyone.”

“I’ll call Danny,” Benjie said.

“Go ahead if you want to.” Rickie hung up the phone.

It was thirty minutes before Benjie showed up with Danny in tow. They dropped their bikes in the driveway and knocked at the back door of Rickie’s house. His mom opened the door.

“Rickie ready?” Benjie said.

“He’s taking a nap.”

“He said he wanted to play ball,” Danny said. 

“What he needs to do is get up and get outside.” She closed the door. Ten, really closer to fifteen, minutes later, Rickie opened the door.

“What do you want?” he said.

“You said we should come over.” Benjie looked Rickie in the eyes. Danny kicked at the concrete of the back patio.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Come on,” Danny said.

“We’re just gonna wait.” Benjie looked Rickie straight in the eye.

Rickie’s mom was at the kitchen counter. She turned her head over her shoulder as she spoke.

“I already put your glove on the table. Take it and git.”

With that Rickie sighed.

“Wait here.” He locked the door after he shut it. Then minutes later, all three boys were on their bikes to the lot three blocks away.

When they arrived, Jimmie was already there. He was throwing the ball wildly into the air then trying to catch it on the fly. His throws were so aimless that he often tossed the ball from one side of the field to the other with no chance to catch it. Still, he ran after the airborne ball and dove crazily as it bounced ten feet or more in front of him. Rickie, Benjie, and Danny sat on their bikes and watched for a few minutes.

“You look like an idiot,” Danny said.

Jimmie dusted his jeans off.

“What was I supposed to do? You took an hour to get here.”

“We only got four.” Rickie scowled.

“Tommy’s walking,” Danny said. “He bent the spokes of his front tire. Tried to ride down the middle of the tracks. He heard a train horn, got scared, and got his front wheel caught between the ties. Almost didn’t get his bike off the tracks in time.”

“How do you know?” Benjie scoffed with an upturned lip.

“I was there.” Danny glowered. “I saw it.”

As if on cue, Tommy shuffled up. He carried an aluminum bat on his shoulder.

“Heard you wrecked your front wheel,” Benjie said.

“It’s hot.” Danny dropped the bat on the ground.

It was midafternoon in the Midwest summer. All the boys wore jeans and t-shirts. No one ever wore shorts, except at the pool. Only Jimmie wore a cap.

There were no proper bases but spots worn down to the dirt at all four corners and one in the middle for the pitcher. Tommy walked to the plate while Jimmie took to the mound, nothing more than a small pile of dirt that acted as the rubber.

“Why do you get to bat?” Benjie said.

“It’s my bat,” Tommy said.

“And I’m pitching because it’s my ball,” Jimmie said. “Danny, you catch.”

“I’m taking first.” Rickie frowned as he walked to first base.

“You’re taking first because you don’t want to run,” Benjie said. “Now I have to play shortstop.”

“I said we wouldn’t have enough for a full infield.” Rickie placed himself between first and second. Benjie did the same with second and third.

The first pitch bounced. The second sliced so far out that Danny had to fetch it from the curb. Jimmie missed the third pitch.

“This is boring already,” Rickie said.

“And it’s hot.” Jimmie held up his baseball hat. “Look at the salt from my sweat.”

“Come on,” Danny said. “Just pitch.”

Tommy took a practice swing then pointed the bat at an imaginary wall.

“In the park,” he said. “In the park.”

At the dink of the ball on the bat, Rickie, Benjie, and Jimmie turn their heads to follow the ball’s path. Danny stood up and shielded his eyes from the sun. The ball passed in the air over second base all the way to the edge of the field then hopped over the curb and began rolling along the gutter of the street. Tommy was already at first.

“Go on and get it,” Danny yelled.

Benjie began to trot towards the ball. He nearly ran into Tommy turning at second. By the time Benjie reached the street, a car was coming. He waited. When he had the ball, Tommy was touching home.

“Get to the cut off,” Benjie yelled.

“Why?” Rickie stood where he had been, between first and second.

“Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.” Benjie threw the ball towards second, where Rickie should have been. The ball stopped in the grass. Tommy pretended to step out of the dugout to take a bow to the crowd.

“Showboater,” Jimmie said.

“MVP. MVP. MVP.” Tommy waved his imaginary hat in the air.

The boys played like this, off and on, for another hour, until the sun began to go down and the temperature began to drop. They took breaks. Sat in a circle under a scraggly tree. Talked nonsense. Got up and played through a few batters. And so on.

“I’m tired,” Rickie said. He lay in the dappled shade of the leaves. All the other boys lay on their backs, knees up, or splayed out like they were making snow angels, but in the dirt.

“It’s still hot,” Tommy said. Something caught the corner of his eye. He turned to look. “Robbie’s here.”

Robbie was older and he dropped out of high school. His mom had died, and he didn’t get along with his dad who often kicked him out of the house. When that happened, Robbie lived in the ditches and trails that ran along the tracks and he’d steal food from the gas station or pharmacy. He’d often steal beer and sit on the tracks and drink. The boys would ride their bikes to him and watch him as if he were a perverse ascetic who disciplined himself through overindulgence. Robbie would regale the boys with wild tales, about girls, married women, fights, or idiotic adventures, like the time he passed out on the tracks and woke up to the hum of the rails. He’d laugh and say, “Fucked up. That is really fucked up.” The boys were wide-eyed, though afterwards Danny would say that Robbie was fake, that he knew things about Robbie the others didn’t, and that it was weird for Robbie to hang out with boys younger than he was. The other boys kept silent, caught between the truth of what Danny said and the unnamable but alluring danger that Robbie represented.

“His dad kicked him out again,” Benjie said.

“How do you know?” Jimmie said.

“I don’t wanna play,” Danny said.

“Well, you got your full infield.” Benjie jabbed a foot at Rickie.

“If Danny plays catcher, we’re still short one.” Rickie stood up.

Robbie stood above the boys with his legs wide apart and his arms on his hips.

“What are you girls doing, sitting there under your tree? Pretending to play baseball? Or playing with each other?”

He laughed.

“Not funny,” Danny said.

“We’re about ready to go.” Rickie tried to say it in a matter-of-fact way.

“And it’s hot.” Tommy was rolling his bat back and forth between his legs.

“Gimme that bat. Go on. Give it to me.”

Tommy looked up at the older boy. Benjie watched them both. Rickie looked down the street to his house. Danny and Jimmy were drawing in the dirt with their fingers. Robbie took the bat from between Tommy’s outstretched legs.

“You two, left field and right field. You, first. Second. You, third. I’ll pitch to myself.”

Everyone moved slowly, but they moved. Benjie and Rickie took their spots in left and right field, respectively, while Danny, Jimmy, and Tommy covered the infield from first base onward. Robbie began hitting easy ground balls to Tommy, then to Jimmy, then a few to Danny. The infielders handled the stops and throws without much effort. After that, he popped up soft flies to the outfield. Unless the ball was hit directly at them, Rickie and Benjie let most of the fly balls drop to the ground. One landed in center field.

“Come on, you,” Benjie said. “Get the ball.”

“I’m tired,” Rickie said. Benjie got the ball and Robbie smirked when Benjie’s throw home landed ten feet too short.

“Limp wrist.” Robbie made the hand gesture.

The hits began to pick up velocity. Ground balls bounced wildly, sometimes ricocheting off a clump of grass. At third, Tommy used his glove to protect himself more than field the ball. Then Robbie began hitting line drives to the outfield. Benjie lost sight of one and it hit him in the shoulder.

“It’s too dark. I couldn’t see.”

“Suns still up,” Robbie said.

Benjie mouthed, “Why are we still here?” to Rickie, who shrugged his shoulders.

Just as the sun was about to set, and Robbie would have to call the game and let the boys go home, a Lincoln Town Car pulled into the church parking lot. It stopped at the entrance. The man at the wheel watched the game, then he parked at the back entrance to the church.

“That’s the old preacher,” Robbie said. “He called the cops on me when I was asking some of his people for food after some sort of dinner they had. You watch this.”

Robbie kept up with the fielding practice but with soft hits the boys could handle. The man in the car got out. He wore a suit too tight for his fat body. The jacket bunched up in the back and the crotch of the pants rode up the crack of his butt. He hitched up his belt and began to walk across the gravel towards the baseball field. The crunching was so loud it was as if the rocks were crying out in pain with each of the preacher’s steps.

“You boys . . . you boys, you hear me?”

He waved his arms in the air as if he were in supplication.

Robbie watched the fat man cross the street, then the curb, and make his way through center field. The boys stayed put, first watching the preacher approach Robbie, then watching Robbie wait for the preacher. When the preacher was at second, he stopped.

“You all see these signs? You know how to read signs? No trespassing allowed. I’ll call the police. Trespassers. That’s what you are. Trespassers.”

Robbie spit, rested the bat on his shoulder, tucked the ball under his arm, and gave the man in the tight suit the finger. Then he tossed the ball chest high, waited for it to drop to his waist, and swung. As if choreographed, everyone, Robbie, all five boys, and the preacher man, lifted their heads to heaven. Their eyes arced across the sky, as if they were following the bend of a rainbow stretching from one tip of the horizon to the other.

The baseball fluttered above the crown of barbed wire. It hung in the air, like putti of love, innocence, and joy, then fell. The windshield of the bus collapsed into a ripple of concentric cracks, just as if a bored boy on summer vacation dropped a stone in a pothole filled with oil-slicked water after a sudden summer storm.

Richard Stimac has published a poetry book Bricolage (Spartan Press), two poetry chapbooks, and one flash fiction chapbook. In his work, Richard explores time and memory through the landscape and humanscape of the St. Louis region.

Jason David Córdova lives in Puerto Rico as an illustrator and painter. Some of his art can be seen on Instagram at @jasoni72. You can visit his shop on Red Bubble.

The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.