by BB Sheehan
I’m getting dizzy. I need to lie down. Thinking about J.P. has got me thinking too much.
CHAPTER 13
In the park with the gang; not playing ball, not playing anything at all at least not anything with rules that can be written down, these are the high school times the ones that last forever even though they are almost over and gone and then I am in the land of, “What do we do now.” You always think something is going to happen, but sometimes nothing happens. Then the next year happens and the next year happens and then you end up sounding like your parents.
CHAPTER 14
Dreaming again. I wake up with a vivid image. I’m walking a tightrope that is strung across the infield attached to the third base and first base grandstand roofs. The ballpark is packed and the crowd is on its feet cheering wildly. I’m in my underwear, the baseball hose and I’m using a Louisville Slugger as a balancing stick. Below me are my family and friends and everyone in my life at this time.
St. Sligo is riding a unicycle and drinking whiskey from a big bottle.
Mr. Shane is riding a horse bareback, standing up, holding the reins in his teeth and shooting pistols in the air with his free hands.
Mom and Dad are wearing fencing outfits without the masks. They wave their swords furiously at each other. Their eyes are covered with black cartoon circles.
J.P. is dressed like a nasty rap vid dancer, shaking her booty. Her eyes are covered with an identity hiding black strips like the ones used in porn personal ads.
The rest of my friends and teammates are on an old style carousel, riding the painted ponies up and down in a circle.
I’m moving slowly across the wire. J.P. jumps on a trampoline and vaults herself up to the tightrope.
She spins, she twirls, she flips herself in the air and grabs the tightrope at the last second to breach her fall.
I stumble. She climbs onto the line. I’m swaying. I’m trying not to look at J.P. or I’ll fall. I fall.
I fall out of bed. I’m awake just before I hit the floor.
Mom knocks on the door and barges in looking like she is still scared from last night’s dinner conversation.
“We’re you drinking with your uncle last night?”
“No.”
“Then why are you falling out of bed?”
“If I was drinking I would have fallen down last night. I had a bad dream. I almost died in my dream. They say if,”
“I know. No one dies in their dreams.”
“Prove it.”
“Drop dead. Now get dressed and have some breakfast.”
“If I drop dead and come to breakfast I’ll be like the living dead movie zombies who likes crispy bacon.”
Mom slams the door.
The smell of crispy bacon finds its way to my bedroom door. I’m alive. I roam the earth. I eat bacon. Farmer John’s.
CHAPTER 15
I’m not bipolar, but sometimes the right side of my brain isn’t talking to the left side of my brain.
When I’m on a baseball field the baseball side of my brain kicks in and I don’t let anything else mess with it.
I think there is a baseball side of the brain that leads to addiction. Scientists have not detected a baseball area of the brain, but ball players all know it when they see it.
There are things about baseball that just don’t make sense otherwise.
Sometimes you outscore a team and sometimes you beat them. If you get them to think that they have no chance of winning against you, then you’ve beaten them. Right now I’m outscoring the competition, but I don’t think I intimidate anybody. They all think they have a shot at beating me.
Friday night and someone mentions night baseball. We caravan to White Point Park and hop the chain link fence at the baseball field. We have a bag of fluorescent painted baseballs and three flashlights. Three of the girls try to keep the lights focused on the ball when it is in play. It is a full moon, so with the combination of the day glow baseballs, the flashlights and the moonlight we’ve changed the rules of the game a little. Sometimes it works, sometimes it is like playing while wearing a blindfold.
Uncle buys the booze for us and we drop him off at one of the old seafront dives in the Bukowski neighborhood with promises that we won’t forget where he was even if he forgets. If we both forget then we are in real trouble.
We can’t hit the ball out of the infield which is good since we forgot to bring bases. We split into teams and split open the first twelve pack. It’s hard to keep track of whose beer is whose in the dark.
“Drink it down fast. Just chug it. That way you don’t have to keep track of whose beer is whose,” Milton says.
We drink faster and play worse. Fortune Cookie runs down the first base line and sits down.
“I’m first base. Tag me out.”
If we are quickly losing grasp of some of the subtleties of the game no one seems to care.
The flashlight girls throw baseballs at each other until all the balls are AWOL.
“I need some balls,” yells Gina.
“What’s the score,” yells someone.
“Count your balls,” yells someone else.
“I’m streaking, I’m streaking,” Lana yells.
All flashlights shine on Lana. She is telling the truth.
“Let’s streak!”
“Are those police cars?”
A police helicopter flies up from behind the cliffs and throws its searchlight on the field. It flits around the grass and settles on Lana.
“My clothes, my clothes.”
We scramble over the fence. The police run after us, but they can’t chase the smiles from their faces. They focus their attention of Lana.
I walk home. There is a police car in front of the house.
I left my friends, my car and my uncle. I think I’ll lose my parents. I can sleep in the bushes or find a friend who hasn’t been arrested and stay in their bushes. What will I say to the parents?
“Yes I saw the girls running around naked. I was tempted to subdue them and make a citizens arrest on charges of public indecency except for the fact that they looked more than decent to me and we weren’t being that public on a scale of one to pornography. If the police hadn’t shown up this wouldn’t have been public at all.”
I park my ass in some neighbors’ bushes until the police leave. I saunter into the house nonchalantly. I am unmasked by my parents. Evil walks amongst them.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Put the gun down Mom.”
“You’re lucky I don’t have a gun. I would have popped a cap into your empty head a long time ago.”
“Abortion is not retroactive.”
“I’m going to re-abort your sorry ass.”
“Mom you have to stop watching rap videos.”
“The police had to drive Sligo home tonight”, Dad said.
Mom sounds like she’s had some drinks. Dad sounds like the voice of reason.
“While you and your girls were out having your orgy in the park we were trying to explain you to the police.”
“Dear, I’ll handle this”, says Dad.
“Is Saint alright?”
“We’ll see when he wakes up in the morning. The police were kind enough to drop him at his house.”
“He buys them enough beer.”
“Honey, that’s bribery. If there’s a bad habit he knows about it doesn’t he?”
“So you kids had a good time at the park?” asked Dad.
“The police seemed to be having a good time.”
“So much for law enforcement? What if it had been a terrorist attack?”, asked Mom.
“Naked terrorists?” Dad asked.
CHAPTER 16
Morning. No breakfast. Mom and Dad sit in the kitchen.
“Well, no reason for me to be here,” I mutter with great stealth.
“Sit,” says Mother like a Siberian border guard.
I si
t.
“I have one thing to say to you young man.”
“Yes.”
She slaps me.
“I get the message Mom.”
She bursts into tears.
“Look at what you made me do. You made me slap my only son.”
“I’m sorry Mom.”
She slaps me again.
“You made me cry.”
“Isn’t that what sons are supposed to do?”
Trying to be funny.
“Who told you that, your father?”
She slaps Dad across the face. Dad stands.
“I’m going to the diner for breakfast.”
I stand.
“Go,” Mom says, “go infidels, escape while you can.”
In the car Dad says, “Your Mother is going through the change.”
I nod like we both know what the change is, but we never will know even though we can pretend to know. And they say that men can’t fake it.
I’m afraid that Dad is going to try to convey some kind of message now that we are in the car together, but I think he is just hungry and wants to get away from Mom while he eats. I’m hungry. We go to the diner to have some greasy hash browns with our eggs and bacon.
CHAPTER 17
JP’s parents are gone again.
“Well boy you done got yourself in one big ole heap a trouble” says JP.
“Don’t talk to me like that Jasmine. You sound like something from the Dukes of Hazzard.”
“Why you is getting mighty uppity . You got somekind of problem wit me boy, me being a big time San Pedro hillbilly and all.”
“Hillbilly?”
“Hell yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Can you stop talking like that?”
“What’s it to ya Gomer?”
“I am not a hillbilly.”
“Yer running from the law in yer pickup truck and yer nee-glectin yer eddycation. That sounds like a hillbilly to me.”
“You’re not very good at starting fights.”
“I don’t want to fight. I want to have fun. Talk to me dirty in hillbilly. Talk to me real good.”
“You better shut your pretty little mouth before I open up a can of whoop ass on your nasty freakin bee-hind.”
“Golly, you shore do know how to say the right thing to a lady.”
Later, we’re talking now with our clothes off.
“You don’t like being called a hillbilly. That’s good.”
“What brought that up?”
“I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately.”
“Yeah.”
“Well the English actors all play noble characters and speak so properly and smartly and win awards for that, but for an American actor to win an award they have to play a mental defective from the south.”
“Like Forrest Gump or George Bush.”
“Shaazaam, you got it.”
“So that makes me a hillbilly.”
“Yes, we all are. We say things like night owl. How many day owls do you know? If an American uses intelligence and speaks smartly no one believes them.”
“But they believe idiots.”
“Exactly. They think an idiot is too stupid to fool them. They can’t get fooled by an idiot? It’s the smart guys they look out for.”
“Even a hillbilly can figure out an idiot. Like you figured me out.”
“You all hillbillies talk too much.”
“Well shut my mouth.”
CHAPTER 18
“There is no slacking in baseball” said Uncle Sligo.
“How would you know? You lead the world in slacking. They didn’t keep stats on slacking until you came along.”
St. Sligo O’Shaunessy, master slacker, has taken it upon himself to explain the game of baseball to me.
“I’m a trailblazer. I ‘m trying to help you blaze your own trail.”
“I’m blazing, I’m blazing. Can’t you see me blazing?”
“I will help you blaze brighter.”
“As long as you don’t make me flaming.”
“No flaming, I don’t do flaming.”
“How are you going to help me? All you do is drink and watch baseball.”
“The great Yogi Berra once said that you can observe a lot just by watching and that still is true.”
“You’re not going to sing, ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’ are you?”
St. Sligo picks up the baseball bat and walks away a few paces. He turns and faces me.
“Guess who I am?”
He holds up the bat up like Luke Skywalker holding a light saber.
“Don’t make me do this.”
“You must be the force.”
I throw the ball at him. He smacks it into the ground. I throw another one and he repeats his action.
“What are we doing?”
“Centering. You must find the exact center of the ball and hit it with the exact center of the bat. The center of each is the size of a pinhead.”
“So I’m supposed to find my inner pinhead?”
“Find it and label it.”
“Label it. I can see why you drink.”
“Okay, pinhead is not a good name for it.”
“You want me to pinpoint my baseball mind.”
Sligo collapses to the ground.
“Brilliant, why didn’t I think of that?”
We go to work on emptying the ice chest of beers one by one.
“Do you know what you will need to make it?”
“A new liver?”
“If you don’t know.”
“Right now I need some luck.”
“You can’t rely on that. You have talent.”
“I have to find my game.”
“Find the game.”
“Find the game.”
CHAPTER 19
“So you and your uncle had some drinks,” said J.P., “that’s not exactly news.”
“He’s worried about my baseball career.”
“Was he waxing poetically?”
“No he was trying to talk like a real baseball guy.”
“He’s seen enough baseball. He should have some idea what he is talking about by now.”
“He talks a good game.”
“A baseball career. Money, women, fame and still get to play baseball.”
We are in J.P.’s room. Her parents are out of town for the weekend. Again she has a short attention span on the subject of baseball.
“Why don’t you step up to the plate slugger.”
“Are you waxing poetically?”
“You don’t want to wax all by yourself do you?”
CHAPTER 20
THE SAINT SLIGO CHRONICLES
Hear ye, hear ye, on this day I do hereby decree myself to be the writer of great things. A scribe non-pariel, a poet unleashed. I shall place ink to parchment and inspire the masses as well as those in smaller groups. You shall see métier of ample portion. For once someone will explain it all in words that make sense so one and all can read those words and say, a-ha, that is it! Or did I see that in a soft drink commercial?
There is always the risk of confusion when extrapolating on logic.
Thinking makes me tired.
My brain hurts.
I need a drink.
Goodnight.
CHAPTER 21
A baseball is thrown at my face. It will hit me between the eyes. A tiny pill with shades of red forming from the spinning seams. It spins to a point precisely; a pinpoint area dead center between my eyes. I wake up before it hits me. Feel the force, right across the bridge of your nose.
CHAPTER 22
I am Shane, Shane of Anger, Shane of Middle School, Shane of High School, Shane the one who will have the final say. Shane of the ages - the last line of defense to battle the treason against reason that is perpetrated so wantonly in the halls of our schools. I live in a world that only Dostoyevsky could comprehend. Only he could explain the permeability of the
disease to my soul. A diseased soul is better than no soul and I live in the land of those with no soul. I can’t live long when every day is an execution. Every night is a long Russian winter. Everyday I wake up in the morning and feel the need for a blindfold, a cigarette and a firing squad. Everyday I go to school and greet the mini Bolshevik siege against the Leningrad of my being. Can we build a campus with size enough to squeeze in all these miscreants? Or should I be a sniper and deal with each of them on an individual basis. I could develop my own nuclear arsenal. There must be a manual that I can find online.
CHAPTER 23
Let me say something about teachers. I’m not including Mr. Shane since he isn’t really a person. Teachers are not understood in the way that most people are understood. Not that I can’t understand them when they speak, they speak well and I get what they are talking about, but I ‘m not always sure where they are coming from. Why would they do this job? Most of the time no one cares except them. Some of them care, some are probably just faking it and sleepwalking until they reach the sleep which they can’t walk away from.
One teacher is good, but his voice is boring and listening to him is like taking a drug or having the oxygen taken out of the room. Kids heads start dropping to the desk, then snapping back up as they catch themselves falling into a haze.
The teacher doesn’t get why we’re falling sleep and slams a book on the desk when he gets mad and frustrated, “Open eyed coma, open eyed coma, you are all in an open eyed coma!”
We’ve learned to ask a lot of questions to break up the monotony. We’re not mean to him. We all like him and we know it is not his fault that he is boring. He was just born that way. One kid with long hair covers up his sleeping by combing his hair over his face so no one knows if his eyes are open or closed and it muffles the snoring. The teacher will stand in front of him and comb his own hair in front of his face to see if the long haired kid notices. He never does.
Once the teacher had the class leave five minutes early, lunch was next and we left the kid alone in the class snoring in the dark. A couple of kids stayed in the hall to see how long it would take for him to notice. Five minutes later he came running out the door and ran straight into the locker across the hall and fell to the floor on his ass and did the ‘cockroach on its back kicking legs in the air dance’ before he realized his place in the universe at that moment in time.