Wolf Land

by Jonathan Janz

  “There’s still football,” his mom said.

  His dad scoffed. “Hell. If he’s too passive to play basketball, he’ll get his dome ripped off on the football field.”

  Duane dared not say a word. He no more wanted to play football than he wanted to masturbate with a scrap of sandpaper.

  From across the dinner table, his dad’s bloodshot eyes squinted at him. “Did you do any of the things I taught you? Did you play a lick of defense? Get a single goddamned rebound?”

  Her mom put a hand on his dad’s arm but didn’t otherwise intervene.

  Duane stared down at his bowl of chili. For once he wasn’t hungry.

  “I tried to,” Duane said, “but the other boys were quicker. I…I couldn’t jump as high.”

  “Couldn’t jump as high?” his dad said, his rheumy eyes widening. “Jesus Christ, son, with an ass that big, all you had to do was block out and wait for the ball to come to you.”

  Duane studied his chili.

  His mom said, “Maybe you can ask the coach for another chance. He always did such a great job with your brothers.”

  His father grunted. “That’s because his brothers knew how to work for something. Not a one of them as big as Duane, and they all ended up starting varsity.”

  Duane withdrew, knowing all of this by heart. The varsity letters. The sectional championships. His oldest brother getting hurt his senior year and going no further athletically, but his next two brothers getting partial scholarships to play ball at Division II schools.

  His father was still rambling. “…does is play video games and watch those damned slasher movies. It’s no wonder he’s so goddamned flabby.”

  “Honey,” his mom said.

  “Well, dammit, it’s the truth!”

  And Duane just sat there and took it like always. While he tried and failed not to cry. It made him wish there were no such thing as sports, or maybe just wish that he’d been born smaller. Then there’d be no pressure, no expectation. Most of all, no disappointment when he—

  “Hey!” a voice shouted. “You missed the goddamned turn!”

  Duane jolted back to himself, saw he’d indeed motored right by the lane leading to the Marvins’ land.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Short Pump?” Weezer demanded. “It’s like you’re dreaming about eating a chocolate cake up there.”

  Duane glanced askance, noticed Glenn was scanning the row of cars along the country road.

  “He’s not here,” Glenn said in an undertone.

  Duane shifted in his seat. He thought for a second that Weezer wouldn’t pick up on Glenn’s train of thought, but then Weezer said, “If Freehafer does show up, you’re gonna kick his ass, right?”

  Hell, Duane thought.

  He’d been best friends with Glenn and Weezer for a long time, but he’d also been close to Savannah forever, and because of that, he’d naturally been friends with Mike Freehafer back in high school. Glenn and Weezer had always given Duane shit about it, as though by treating Mike decently Duane had been betraying them. Duane didn’t particularly fancy the notion of dredging up those old animosities tonight. Or ever.

  “Maybe he won’t show up,” Glenn said.

  “If Savannah’s here, he sure as hell will,” Weezer said. “Hell, I would if I was Mike.”

  This time Glenn turned all the way around in his seat. The look he gave Weezer made Duane’s balls shrink.

  “What, man? What’d I say?” Weezer asked.

  Glenn stared hard at Weezer for a good ten seconds. Then he faced the road again, his expression stony.

  Duane decelerated and prayed Glenn wouldn’t go apeshit on Weezer.

  Glenn glowered straight ahead and said nothing.

  A half-mile beyond the lane, Duane checked the rearview mirror, executed the U-turn, and headed back toward their destination.

  No one spoke again until they reached the bonfire.

  Chapter Two

  Mike Freehafer parked his rusty white Yukon and studied the gleaming chain of thirty vehicles strung along the sloping, grassy shoulder. It was still twilight, but the orange western glow was rapidly giving way to violet. In another hour or so, full night would descend upon the countryside.

  Stepping out of the Yukon, Mike inspected the line of cars unspooling before him, trying to spot one or two that were maybe familiar.

  Who was he kidding? He was looking for Savannah’s yellow MG convertible.

  He smiled ruefully and slammed shut the door.

  Making his way down the blacktop toward the metal gate, Mike decided she’d probably given up the MG since he’d seen her last. That was how long ago? Man, he thought. More than five years.

  His throat tightened up, a dark throb of guilt starting in his chest. He questioned the logic of showing up here tonight. Granted, he’d been invited. Hunter and Brian Marvin, twins he’d known since elementary school, had made it a point to stop by Mike’s dad’s house when they heard Mike was in town, to invite him to their bonfire. Their parents owned a hell of a lot of land, and they’d partied here all through high school. The way the Marvins had made it sound, returning to the old forest would be a blast: tons of girls and more booze than anyone could handle.

  But as Mike approached the pasture gate, he felt foolish, like an over-the-hill actor playing a sports star in some dreary straight-to-video movie.

  Hell, he thought, stepping over the waist-high gate. He wished he hadn’t thought of sports. Because it brought back the tide of memories that had ultimately forced him to seek professional help, to begin medication for depression. Zoloft, the drug was called, though Mike was taking some generic crap because it was cheaper, and his insurance sucked.

  He started toward the forest, keeping to one of the wheel ruts that threaded through the weedy lane. He should be feeling giddy about this, about seeing the old gang and catching up. Instead he felt like he was marching to his execution. But rather than a climb to the gallows and a snapped neck, he’d be tortured slowly, the last decade of his life vivisected by everyone who’d thought he’d make it big.

  Who were no doubt delighted he’d failed.

  Mike faltered and stared at the forest’s rim.

  He shouldn’t be here.

  If life were fair, he’d be playing for the Cubs, who were in San Diego tonight. Were, in fact, starting in half an hour.

  But instead he was here. Standing in a pasture on a Sunday night, the smell of cow flops overwhelming his cheap cologne. He heard the music. Predictably, Steve Miller’s “The Joker”. The kind of shit they listened to in high school.

  Then he’d been drafted. The fourteenth pick of the first round. The Chicago Cubs. His favorite team. His dad’s favorite team. They’d been to how many games over the years? Fifty? A hundred? Going to Wrigley Field was like going home, and when he heard his name called—his parents had thrown a party that day—the whole house had erupted. The whole town had erupted. Hell, it was the biggest thing in Lakeview since…well, since maybe ever, unless you counted the tornado of 1973, and that was only famous because it had been so destructive. In comparison, Mike’s being drafted should have been a good thing, the town’s favorite son going off to deliver the Cubs from their century-long misery.

  He’d barely made it past Single-A.

  Actually wouldn’t have made it past Single-A had the Cubs not been so bullish about his potential. They were disappointed in his first month’s batting average, sure. How could they not be disappointed when he was sitting at .219? But they’d drafted him for his raw power, for his lightning swing, and had promoted him to Double-A Tennessee not for his performance, but for his potential. And as a result, the players at Tennessee had treated him like a spoiled kid who’d been handed everything he had, who no more deserved to play professional ball than the fucking mascot.

  Then Mike hit like the fucking mas
cot.

  .130 in June.

  .112 in July.

  He’d actually strung together a fairly respectable series of games in early August, which earned him a call from the team president. You’re really putting it together, Mike. This is precisely why we drafted you. Just keep raking and you’ll sniff Triple-A soon. Then it’ll be the fast track to the big leagues, slugger, and you’ll be holding down third base for the next decade at Wrigley Field.

  Except he didn’t hold down anything. Could barely hold down his lunch the next day because all he kept thinking about was the team president having all that faith in him.

  If Mike hated anything, it was people having faith in him.

  Why? he wanted to cry out. Why the hell would you have faith in me? Even worse, why would you squander the fourteenth pick on me?

  If the team president had just left him alone, he might have made something of himself. Instead, he went out that day and struck out four times.

  Four. Fucking. Times.

  And it wasn’t like the opposing pitcher was a juggernaut either. He was a minor league lifer, just roster filler. A guy whose rubber arm was lucky to break eighty-five miles an hour.

  Yet he made Mike look like a goddamned moron.

  The first at-bat, he swung at and missed all three pitches. But at least they were close pitches and they were good swings.

  The second time, that had been worse. Disconcertingly worse. He’d taken two good pitches and then told himself the dickhead pitcher—who looked older than Mike’s father—would certainly not throw another one right down the middle.

  The dickhead threw one right down the middle.

  Mike plopped down on the bench. His teammates eyed him with open disdain.

  Third time up, Mike damn near screwed himself into the ground, he swung so hard. Too bad the pitcher’s control was off and the ball was spraying all over the place like Uzi fire. Had Mike gotten hold of one, he would have sent it over the state line. As it was, he only succeeded in embarrassing himself, on one swing actually blundering into the umpire and landing at the obese man’s feet.

  “You’re out,” the umpire said.

  The fourth time, that wasn’t quite as bad. At least he didn’t fall at the umpire’s feet like some uncoordinated penitent. But the at-bat still wasn’t good. Four pitches. Two called strikes. One swinging strike.

  You’re guessing, the Tennessee manager told him when he slunk back to the dugout.

  I guess I don’t have it tonight, Mike said and ventured a grin. It was a grin that had won the hearts of many people over his first eighteen years.

  The manager didn’t return the grin.

  You need to learn how to hit, he told Mike.

  Mike glared at him.

  I know how to hit, he’d answered.

  The manager gave him a dour look. Sure doesn’t look like it.

  Mike’s confidence, already meager, had dwindled.

  He struggled through the rest of August.

  The team president was ominously silent. No phone calls offering encouragement. No pep talks from the manager, who seemed to think Mike had the skill of a mentally challenged otter. The year ended as miserably as it had begun, and Mike was thrust into a primeval training regimen designed to, in the team president’s words, “reboot his approach at the plate by restructuring his mental, emotional and physical makeup”.

  Translation: Start hitting or we’ll void your fucking contract.

  The experience was grueling, humiliating. The team president was a progressive thinker, or so he liked to proclaim. He employed a New Age mystic to help Mike align his priorities with the franchise’s. A former Olympic silver medalist wrestler to alter Mike’s body.

  That first week, Mike thought he would die. By the end of the first month, he’d learned that his physical being wasn’t actually real. He was simply vapor being directed by his spiritual core.

  Then why do my legs hurt so much? he asked the mystic.

  You are shackled by material matter, the mystic answered.

  But despite being utterly befuddled by the mystic—who told him his aura needed cleansing, and promptly changed his entire diet to one bereft of grains, milk and fiber—Mike didn’t hit the ball any better than he had before. Now, he was not only terrible at recognizing breaking pitches, he was paranoid, hungry and constipated.

  He was finished with minor league ball after three catastrophic years.

  He refused to go back to Lakeview.

  The friends he’d considered losers were still there, but rather than attending high school during the day and hanging out in the Burger King parking lot at night, they were working shitty jobs during the day and hanging out in the Burger King parking lot at night.

  Mike refused to work a shitty job. And he sure as hell didn’t want to hang out in a parking lot, comparing engine sizes.

  But by that time the friends Mike considered intelligent were already most of the way through college. If Mike had started his college education at twenty-one, he’d have been twenty-five by the time he finished. Problem was, he didn’t have a clue what he wanted to be because he’d always thought he’d be a major league baseball player. Getting drafted in the first round had seemed to cement that fate.

  Turns out, the only thing being the fourteenth pick had cemented was the precipitousness of his fall.

  Mike grew depressed.

  At first he didn’t think he needed medication. It’s not a chemical issue, he’d told one girlfriend, a woman eight years his senior, it’s my situation. I’m really goddamned tired of disappointing everyone, and it makes me screw up even worse. I’m buckling under the pressure.

  Maybe you were just overdrafted, the woman had said.

  Mike had stared at her, appalled. How the hell had she even known such a word, much less understood how aptly it applied to Mike?

  So at twenty-one, Mike had tried to hedge his bets by joining a semipro team, thinking to work out his contact issues there.

  This had proven one of the most disastrous decisions of his life.

  Because the guys in semipro were even more toxic than the guys in Double-A. They were okay to him at first because they didn’t know who he was. He’d moved to Pennsylvania thinking he could eventually try out for one of the East Coast major league teams.

  But someone had googled his name and informed the entire league of his story. How he’d been drafted fourteenth, how he’d crashed and burned.

  They found out about his signing bonus.

  It was this fact that damned him. The guys he played against were mostly in their late twenties and thirties, and they knew they’d never make more than ten or fifteen grand playing ball. But the fact that he, a guy whose only success had come against high school pitching, had been gifted a seven-figure signing bonus was too much for them.

  They set out to destroy him.

  Oh, no one tried to kill him or anything—unless you counted leading the league in hit-by-pitches as attempted murder—but they insulted him mercilessly, conspired to exclude him from team functions, batted him eighth in the order and generally did all they could to force him out of the league.

  It worked.

  But he still couldn’t return to Lakeview. He especially couldn’t face his high school sweetheart.

  Savannah Summers was, if the reports he’d gotten from his few remaining Lakeview friends were true, even hotter than she’d been in high school. He and Savannah had been prom king and queen, and had been considered a sure thing to get married. But Mike had developed an inflated sense of worth after being selected by the Cubs, and he’d pretty much shunned Savannah after leaving town.

  He figured she’d spit in his face if he ever showed up again.

  What he did do was finally swallow his pride enough to go to Dayton University. His thinking was simple. He’d already alienated the peo
ple he knew in Indiana, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. Ohio wasn’t tainted yet.

  It was by the end of his freshman year.

  The thing Mike hated most about technology was how easy it was for people to find out about you. He’d met a girl he really liked and dated her for most of the year. He’d left out the story of his failed baseball career because he didn’t know how she’d react. And sure enough, when she found out about his past, she lost all trust in him and branded him a predator.

  This was because he’d claimed to be eighteen, like her, rather than twenty-two, which he was. At eighteen, he figured, there weren’t four years to account for. So he lied. And got busted.

  And dropped out of college.

  He saw Savannah once, but he couldn’t think about that now. Too painful. He proceeded to knock around at a series of crappy jobs in Ohio and southern Indiana for a few years. One night when he was twenty-five, he was boozing at a local dive in Jasper, Indiana, when on a whim, he decided to tell a hot Hispanic chick about his baseball career, such as it was. She had just turned twenty-one, and as a result was even drunker than he was. Mike had gotten pretty good at getting laid, and since he figured he’d be able to seduce the Hispanic girl no matter what he said to her, he told her the truth.

  The problem was, the more he said to her, the more he felt he should give the story a more interesting ending. Being cut by the Cubs just wasn’t a good climax. It wasn’t happy, obviously, but it didn’t even have the sexiness of tragedy. It just…ended. So Mike told her he’d been hit in the face by a fastball.

  She’d practically straddled him on the barstool.

  Yeah, he’d continued, rubbing the scar beside his left eye. Right here. Bastard had a hundred-mile-per-hour heater, and he pegged me right in the temple. It took four reconstructive surgeries and years of rehab just to be able to drive a car again.

  Poor baby, the Hispanic girl had said.

  Then they’d rutted like animals.

  Mike took his tragic pitch on the road. Working construction now, he was able to move around a lot, live the life of a womanizing nomad. He retold his tragic tale to hundreds of women over the next several years, and astonishingly, very few of them failed to put out. They’d never know the truth about his baseball career, never know the real cause of his scar: jumping on and falling off a bed when he was four years old.