Base Ball Dads

by Matthew Hiley

  Dave pulled the bag off his back and set it on the ground. Russ took the opportunity to hold a small vial up to his nose and snort. He then passed it to Uzi. Uzi snorted, then passed it to Dave. Dave snorted. His eyes teared up. He slapped himself, then looked over at Dwayne.

  “So what’s up tonight, boss?” Dave asked Dwayne.

  Dwayne motioned for Dave to take a peek inside the trunk. He did.

  “You guys fuckin’ party, boss,” Dave said with admiration. “I’m gonna go grab a wheelbarrow. The softest dirt is at the bases on the infield. We’ll use the chainsaw to get their arms and legs off so the holes don’t have to be as big.”

  “Cool,” Dwayne replied. “Line ’em up on the bottom row of the bleachers, and we’ll figure out what bases these fuckers are playing tonight.”

  In no time at all, Dave and Uzi loaded the bodies onto the wheelbarrow and dropped them off, one by one, at the bleachers as Dwayne instructed.

  Dwayne stood at home plate, looking out over the field. He held a baseball bat in one hand and a chainsaw in the other. He envisioned the playoffs, fantasized about the championship win. He imagined the roar of the crowd as Alex struck out batter after batter, hitting line drives into the outfield wall, maybe even sending one or two balls over the wall.

  It was close now. It was so close. The people who had gotten in his way in life and in the game he loved were now being buried on the field where he would bring Alex the glory he’d been due. They were the sacrificial lambs being offered up to the baseball gods. They were the fecal matter in the fertilizer that would fly from the cleats of those who honored the baseball gods as they rounded the bases.

  “Dwayne?” Dave called out, bringing him back to earth. “You ready to get started, boss?”

  Dwayne looked through the chain link fence at the backstop behind home plate. The bloody bodies of Chip Conner, Reese Pepper, Ed Snyder, Tiffany Blaine, and Linda Honeycut sat upright on the bottom row of the bleachers, as if they were some jacked-up cheering section from the afterlife.

  Tommy and Russ walked up to the top row of seating, above and behind the corpses. They lit a joint and watched as Dwayne made his way off the field and over to the stands. Dave and Uzi walked out onto the field to dig holes beneath first, second, and third base. Dwayne rested the bat on his shoulder. His other arm hung limp, with his hand gripping the chainsaw. He was ready to address his blank-eyed, lifeless, hemorrhaging audience.

  “Hello, you arrogant fucks,” Dwayne announced. “Glad you could join me here tonight.”

  He paced back and forth, selecting each word as if he were an executioner condemning prisoners to death. Tommy and Russ sat transfixed. They hung on Dwayne’s every word.

  “You had the option in your lives not to become the pieces of shit that you became,” he preached. “And yet you became those pieces of shit anyway. You spent your lives sitting in judgment of others. Your social circles were just fucked up neighborhood torture chambers. And you had the gall to bring baseball into it. You are nothing more than bullying little cockroaches and whores.”

  Dwayne paused and beamed at each dead socialite. He smiled with a wild psychotic look in his eyes. He took a deep breath, and then resumed his lecture.

  “And I am here today to notify you that your sentences have been handed down from the baseball gods … to be carried out by me, the grand Jedi master ninja motherfucker with the chainsaw and the bat.”

  Dwayne lifted the bat from his shoulder and swung it down with all his might upon the already disfigured head of Chip Conner. Blood splattered up on Dwayne’s face. Chip’s head caved in. Blood poured from his ears.

  “PAY ATTENTION, YOU FUCKS!” he screamed.

  Dwayne was breathing heavily. There was nothing at all hidden about his rage. It had come fully to the surface, and there was no squashing the festering, pent-up fury now. The eruption was an all-out explosion. He tossed the bat to the side and pulled the cord on the chainsaw. The chainsaw came rumbling to life. It was roaring, hungry for blood. Dwayne lifted it over his head.

  “Chip Conner, Reese Pepper, and Ed Snyder. You disrespected my wife. You disrespected me. And you disrespected the purity of America’s game. I hereby sentence you to be decapitated and dismembered, and spend eternity rotting beneath the bases of Jenny Field. I would put your heads on spikes at the entrance to the field if I thought I could get away with it. But justice will be served regardless. May God have mercy on your vacant souls.”

  Dwayne placed the chainsaw at the base of Chip Conner’s neck. Blood sprayed in all directions as the rotating blades worked their way through skin, spine, and ligaments. Within seconds, the chainsaw emerged on the other side, and Chip Conner’s head rolled off his shoulders, bounced off the bench seat, and came to a rest inches from Dwayne’s feet.

  The same fate fell upon Reese and Ed. Dwayne’s clothing was soaked entirely through with blood. It dripped down his arms, trickled onto the chainsaw, and was launched into the dank evening air from the spinning chain.

  He approached Tiffany Blaine and Linda Honeycut, again raising the loud, violent piece of machinery over his head.

  “Linda and Tiffany … You and your minions made my homelife almost unlivable for years. You tainted the spirit of my beautiful wife for too long. But you can’t have her. She’s back in my arms. Gone are the days when you could look down upon those with less. Gone are the days when you could spend your days stabbing people in the back with your incessant vile gossip. Gone are the days when you could cast judgments while cloaked beneath the banner of God. You are contemptible, repugnant, noxious stains on this earth, and I am the motherfucking industrial-strength cleaner that’s here to wipe you up. I hereby sentence you to decapitation and dismemberment, to spend eternity being talked about while unable to respond as you decompose beneath the bases of Jenny Field.”

  Dwayne dug the chainsaw first into Tiffany’s neck, and then into Linda’s. The first four rows of the bleachers were bright red. On the ground, surrounding Dwayne’s feet, lay the heads of the elite members of Fort Worth society.

  Dwayne then carved up the bodies like five large Thanksgiving turkeys. When he had finally finished, he was left wading through a pile of arms, legs, heads, and torsos behind the backstop of his favorite field.

  Russ and Tommy watched in silent wonder as Dwayne turned off the chainsaw and wiped the blood from his eyes.

  “That was fucking crazy, bro,” Tommy muttered. “You okay, Dwayne?”

  Dwayne looked around, wild-eyed, with a half smile on his face. He was trembling. His ears were still ringing from the roar of the chainsaw.

  “Dwayne? You good?” Tommy asked again.

  Dwayne flashed a huge grin. “Get the wheelbarrow, boys. Let’s load ’em up.”

  46.

  Dwayne was the last member of the Jedi Alliance to be dropped home that night. Russ wrote Uzi a check for a tip: $10,000. He wrote another for Dave—$5,000 just to keep his shit together. They had earned every penny. Dave and Uzi had busted their asses. They had dug holes, buried bodies, and gotten the field back in shape for the playoffs.

  The bases looked nothing short of fantastic. First, second, and third were impeccable. Everything was level, and the softened up dirt would cause fewer injuries when the kids slid into base. Dwayne felt as though he’d provided a service to the baseball players of Jenny Field.

  And that was before anyone took into consideration how great the pitcher’s mound now sat, or how green the grass in the outfield had been growing. Seven bodies being sacrificed to the baseball gods at the field might have been just what the ballpark needed.

  Dwayne walked through the door to his home, dripping wet from having blood, dirt, and bone fragments hosed off him. His phone quacked.

  RUSS:

  Has anyone seen Jade?

  STEVE:

  Jesus. Tell me you didn’t off her too.

  DAVE:

  Cant txt n ride modorsicle.

  DWAYNE:

  We dropped her o
ff with Kelly, remember?

  DAVE:

  Feeld looks good.

  STEVE:

  Please take me off of this text chain.

  DWAYNE:

  Field looks great, Dave. Can’t wait to play on it.

  STEVE:

  Please take me off of this text chain.

  RUSS:

  Oh yeah. Man, I was out of it. Tommy? Is Jade at your house?

  TOMMY:

  :)

  RUSS:

  Oh lord.

  STEVE:

  LOL.

  RUSS:

  Don’t do this to me, Tommy. I have a tiny penis. You’re black. Not cool, bro.

  DWAYNE:

  I can vouch for him, T. It’s tiny.

  RUSS:

  Proportionally exceptional though, asshole. But still. Tom?

  DAVE:

  Can I come ovr, Tom?

  TOMMY:

  Hell no.

  RUSS:

  Don’t do it, Tom.

  DAVE:

  Feeld looks good, guys.

  STEVE:

  Please, god, take me off this text chain.

  RUSS:

  Shut the fuck up, Dave.

  TOMMY:

  Later, homies. Girls are in the shower.

  DAVE:

  Hit it for me, Tom.

  RUSS:

  SHUT THE FUCK UP, DAVE!

  DWAYNE:

  Later.

  RUSS:

  Tom?

  Dwayne shut his phone off. He smelled jasmine and eucalyptus when he walked through the bedroom door.

  “I figured you could use a good aromatherapy bath, honey buns,” Estelle said sweetly. “It’ll help soothe your muscles. Now let’s get you out of those pants.”

  Estelle unlatched his belt and unbuttoned his pants, then helped him climb into the tub. It was exactly what Dwayne needed. He relaxed and leaned his head back. The love of his life pulled her tiny nightgown over her head and lowered herself into the tub on top of him. She grabbed a sponge and tenderly began to wash her husband’s entire body as she straddled him.

  Dwayne and Estelle couldn’t help but become aroused. Everything that one of them did turned the other on. An unquenchable, tantalizing sexual chemistry had developed between them.

  They made love twice in the bathtub, until Dwayne’s neck could no longer take the awkward positioning. Not to mention, he almost drowned a couple of times when his head slid under the surface of the water. They moved from there onto the bed, where Estelle insisted on doing all of the work while Dwayne lay back and enjoyed the view. The two of them made love until it was no longer physically possible to continue.

  It was love and lust, admiration and desire, domination and submissiveness, blood and sweat … all rolled into one. Rooted firmly at its foundation was love—love of each other, love of family, and love of baseball.

  47.

  “Wake up, my hairy little sex machine,” Jade announced as she came through her front door Sunday morning. “It’s time to go to church!”

  The slamming of the front door caused Russ to jolt upright. He looked around, trying to figure out where he was. It was dark. There were sheets and towels stacked beside him. He realized he’d passed out in the linen closet.

  When Russ opened the closet door and crawled out, the bright morning light blinded him. Jade giggled when she saw him roll out and collapse onto his back, shielding his eyes.

  “Oh, my little snuggles, you pass out in the funniest places,” she offered adoringly.

  “Sweet Jesus, Jade, I had to hide from a tribe of pygmies last night,” he explained. “They chased me everywhere! I think I beat one to death in the kitchen. It jumped out of the fridge when I went to put the milk back. I had to put a dagger through its heart.”

  Jade glanced into the kitchen. In the middle of the floor sat a pummeled raw chicken with a large butcher knife sticking up from it. All of the cabinet doors were open. A broken bowl of cereal lay spilled across the floor beside an empty gallon of milk.

  “Aww, baby, I’m glad you’re okay,” she soothed. “It’s time to get ready for church, okay? Jackson is getting dropped off from his sleepover any minute.”

  Russ pulled himself up and balanced against the wall.

  “Are you just now getting home?”

  “Yes, I spent the night with Kelly and Tommy, sweetie pie, and now I need to go ask Jesus for a little forgiveness.”

  Jade walked into her bedroom and stripped her clothes off. Russ heard the shower turn on as he tried to process what Jade had just said. He flung his underwear across the room and joined Jade in the shower so that he could interrogate her concerning the previous night’s activities.

  “Why the hell do you need to talk to Jesus, Jade?” Russ demanded. “Did you see Tommy naked? Just answer me that.”

  Jade looked down at Russ’s package briefly and winced.

  “Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” she said with pity. “It was a lot like any other crazy night in our bedroom.”

  “Yeah, except it wasn’t our bedroom, and I wasn’t there!”

  “You’re so cute, honey,” she said in a baby voice as she softly grabbed his manhood. “I wuv my furry widdle fella!”

  “Goddammit,” he muttered as he stepped out of the shower and toweled off.

  Tommy, Kelly, and TJ had saved seats for Russ’s family at the Westside Church of Jesus. Russ glanced accusingly at Tommy as they took their seats. Kelly had a mildly uncomfortable look on her face as she hugged Jade, who took the seat right beside her. Tommy just grinned.

  Pastor Jim Harper asked everyone to bow their heads, hold hands, and join him in prayer. When he asked for God to forgive everyone of their sins, Russ felt Jade squeeze his hand a bit tighter. He looked over at Tommy, who was standing with his eyes closed while smiling. He watched Jade’s hand release Kelly’s, and then find its way down the small of Kelly’s back and onto her ass, where she gave a gentle squeeze.

  The pastor asked God to watch over those who had gone missing in recent weeks, including a group that had disappeared the previous evening.

  “I’m not sure what your plan is for these people, Lord, but I know it must be something amazing. With the exception of the guy who worked at Walmart, these people had valuable lives. Please offer comfort to us as we try to understand your plan. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

  Russ and Tommy slid down in their seats. Pastor Jim then launched into his sermon for the day: “Jesus Was a Capitalist.” When church finally ended, Russ and the other deacons went to greet Pastor Jim, to congratulate him on another fine sermon.

  “Just wait until you hear next week’s sermon,” the pastor boasted. “It’s titled ‘Science: The Tool of Lucifer.’ It’s a big part of my campaign to get creationism back in public schools. Should be amazing.”

  Once the deacons began to depart, Pastor Jim pulled Russ to the side. “Russ, I’m concerned for you,” he counseled. “You’ve been running around with a known drug abuser, Dwayne Devero. And your actions at the fundraiser last night were jaw dropping.”

  “Sometimes, the sheep strays from the herd, Pastor,” Russ said, placing his hand on the pastor’s shoulder. “And sometimes the sheep has an orgy with the herd. Hell, sometimes the sheep takes ecstasy and snorts cocaine and then gratifies himself watching other sheep mount his wife. Sheep can get crazy, Pastor Jim. They can lose their fucking shit. But as long as they have a good shepherd, they can usually take a shower with a crab-lice comb and be forgiven. Am I right?”

  Pastor Jim mustered a half smile, unsure of what to say. Russ leaned in and slapped him on the butt.

  “Good stuff, Pastor. You’re the man. How’s that Porsche running? It’s gorgeous.”

  “It’s running great, Russ. The Germans have a proud history.”

  “Indeed they do, Pastor.”

  48.

  Monday morning, Dwayne rolled out of bed ready to swing at whatever pitch life threw him. The Tigers’ first playoff game was that evening, and no on
e was more excited than Alex. The championship game would be two weeks away, and he knew he’d be in it. He was proud of his dad for bringing honor back to the game. Anyone who watched them knew that they were fast becoming the team to beat. They were no longer a joke.

  Lately, Estelle appeared able to sense when Dwayne would wake up. Even if she’d been sleeping deeply, something would nudge her brain and pull her from her slumber. She was glad for it. She loved their playful nature in the mornings. Estelle rubbed her eyes and grinned at Dwayne from the bed as she lay there watching him turn the shower on and throw a towel over the shower door. He offered her a fully nude, goofy, “come-hither” raised eyebrow when he noticed her watching him. She instantly threw the covers off and sprinted in to join him.

  With most couples, the quality of the sex might have declined at this stage … or they might have started to pass on it altogether. But for Estelle and Dwayne, sex just kept getting better and better, the desire stronger and stronger.

  After their morning shower session, Estelle headed to the kitchen to make breakfast for Alex while Dwayne got ready for work.

  “Honey, turn on channel eight, please,” she called from the kitchen.

  Dwayne was just in time to catch a reporter interviewing Detective Loffland. He turned the volume up.

  “So, Detective, do you have any leads in the case? That’s seven missing people now from the upscale Westside area of Fort Worth, and one con firmed murder on top of that.”

  “Yes, we’ve got a few leads right now that we’re working on. We need as much help from the public on this as possible, though. Late last night, we located an old burned van that could possibly fit the description of the van used in the kidnapping and murder of Ricky Dale. The charred remains of a body were found inside. Our team of forensic specialists are combing it for evidence as we speak.”

  “Do you have any suspects or persons of interest?”

  “Not just yet, but we’re pretty sure we’re dealing with professionals here. We’re looking into the backgrounds of all who went missing and looking for a common thread that ties it all together.”