The Killdeer Connection

by Tom Swyers

  The popping gravel of the driveway announced the arrival of the man. The sun peaked over the hill. The SUV, a mass of red and chrome with all the subtlety of a parade float, parked facing the field along the first baseline.

  The driver’s door opened, and the man got out. A puff of smoke came from behind the man’s head. David adjusted the focus on his binoculars. Barkus, he thought, the face of baseball’s death.

  Rob Barkus was the Elite Travel Baseball League promoter when he wasn’t working at his dead-end midlevel management job at a regional car dealership. In his early forties, he was well over six feet tall, triple chinned with a goatee and a gut the size of a small beer keg. His flattop crew cut made his jet-black hair bristle like a scrub brush. Fat folds ran up his neck to the back of his head, as if someone had surgically implanted a pack of hot dogs.

  David now understood how desperately Barkus wanted the Babe Ruth field. David was a sitting board member in charge of Indigo Valley Baseball League’s Babe Ruth program, and Barkus had already started an e-mail assault directed at David personally. Barkus’s teams were made up of high-school players who had enjoyed access to the Babe Ruth field for more than a decade. David wanted that usage to stop.

  David had explained to his board that giving the Elite Travel Baseball League access to the Babe Ruth field was like being a bystander, or even an accomplice, to the killing of Indigo Valley’s Babe Ruth program. The town league was losing players to Barkus’s Elite teams at a rate that rivaled the decline in David’s client base. As a result, David was dead set against giving Barkus access to the Babe Ruth field. If the Babe Ruth program folded, Christy, his friends, and other nonschool players would no longer be able to play baseball.

  Board members favorable to Barkus had leaked news of David’s stance. Barkus, in turn, had launched a daily e-mail campaign accusing David of bullying, acting in a disturbing manner, and trying to hurt his players and families by keeping them off the field. Barkus sent these e-mails to the parents, the high-school coaches, and all league board members. Some of the parents joined Barkus in the e-mail attacks. Members of the board were afraid of Barkus and what he might do to impact their sons’ baseball careers. Many on the board had sons that played both for the school and on the Barkus teams. Nobody stepped up to defend David.

  As a lawyer, David understood his legal duty of loyalty toward the survival of Indigo Valley’s program, open to all teens regardless of ability. Indigo Valley’s Babe Ruth program provided baseball for teens while its

  Cal Ripken program covered younger kids. Both programs operated under the direction of Babe Ruth League, Inc., a nationally recognized nonprofit created in the 1950s.

  The Barkus teams had access to the two Indigo Valley school fields, so David thought Barkus would just move on after whining in a few e-mails. Instead, Barkus’s appearance on the Babe Ruth field four days in a row strongly suggested that David had underestimated Barkus’s determination. While lying on the hill, David had come to fully understand Barkus’s desire to get the Babe Ruth field.

  David understood that a military commander on the battlefield essentially has three choices: attack, stand pat, or withdraw. David’s counterattack on the e-mail front was to more or less stand pat, though he’d told himself he was engaging in an aggressive campaign of absolute silence. David’s plan was to have Barkus wear himself out and to have others question Barkus’s sanity.

  It wasn’t in David’s nature to take endless bullshit without defending himself. Being passive hadn’t been in his nature, even before he’d become a lawyer. The daily e-mail thrashing had taken its toll. It required a great amount of energy to do nothing. Although David had tried to suppress the thought while lying on the hill, he couldn’t help but think he should go on the offensive right then and there.

  Barkus stared at the field, blowing rings of cigar smoke. He loved his cigars, and anyone could find him at the ballpark just by following his nose. He spat on the ground in the direction of the field. His three boys, his teams, and his league had played on this field for over ten years. He was infuriated with David for trying to end his reign over the best field in town. The field looked playable to him. That’s all that mattered; the field’s beauty blew by Barkus like a hundred-mile-per-hour fastball. He longed to have his sons, his teams, his travel league play on it right then and there. I need this goddamn field, he thought. What will everyone think of me if I lose it?

  The Babe Ruth field had stadium lighting that made nighttime play possible. The ballpark had a sprinkler system that kept the field green during the hot days of summer. It had a modern concession stand that served a full range of food and beverages. It had a nice electronic scoreboard. It had a PA system that announced the games. It had rest rooms.

  It had large bleachers and a fence spanning the outfield. A contractor mowed the grass every few days during the summer. The league had a grooming tractor to comb the infield dirt. All these amenities made the Babe Ruth field one of the best baseball parks in the region.

  The school district owned the other two full-size baseball fields in town, and neither had any of the amenities of the Babe Ruth field. No lights. The temporary outfield fence was removed for the summer, preventing home runs from being awarded unless they were of the inside-the-park variety. No irrigation. No restrooms, though one field had a Porta-Potty nicknamed the Red Rocket because of its color and conical shape. No concession stand. No PA system. The varsity field had a small scoreboard that was crooked and didn’t work. And the chain-link backstop had long turned brown; rust fell to the ground when foul balls hit it.

  When the school season was over at the end of May, the school did not maintain its fields except for an occasional mowing. The grass would get too long. Water would puddle in the infields. Weeds would begin to claim the dirt infield and baselines starting in early June. By mid-July, the weeds owned them. By August, after the baseball season had ended, the weeds seemed as high as cattails, and the fields had the swampy smell of wetlands.

  Barkus walked to the passenger-side door and opened it. Out came the Great Dane that David had seen for the first time the day before. Not again, he thought. David had let it go the previous day; he’d stood pat and done nothing. But he didn’t know if he could restrain himself this time. This was opening day; it had taken him hours to ready the field under the lights last night. He was physically exhausted, and his lack of sleep unsteadied him.

  Barkus walked the dog on a tight leash toward the field entrance. The beast was the size of a man, a gray man, a gray man with the ears of a devil that galloped on all fours. Barkus opened the gate. The dog’s head bumped against his belly with each step, like a Thoroughbred being placed in the starting gate. Barkus stepped onto the field and closed the gate behind him. The dog bounced up and down off the ground.

  David knew what was coming. He’d seen it happen yesterday, and it was going to happen again if he let it. But what could he do? He’d brought the gun and ammunition with no real intention of doing anything, just in case. He had hoped it wouldn’t happen again.

  But it did happen. Barkus unhooked the leash and set the beast free. It took off in a sprint down the first baseline, obliterating the razor-sharp chalk lines and kicking up a mist of white dust. The dog raced to right field, scuffing up the crisscross pattern created by the mower’s passes. It then bolted toward the infield dirt, destroying the brushstrokes between second and third, before rounding third and going home. It sniffed around home plate and left paw prints in the batter’s box.

  David put the binoculars down.

  Reaching for his gun, David flipped up the rear sight on the barrel and set it for two hundred yards. He pulled the hammer back into the half-cocked safety position, removed a homemade paper cartridge armed with a .52 caliber bullet from his box, then dropped the trigger guard to lower the breech block and expose the chamber. He checked the pellet-primer system that fed percussion caps into position. David pushed the cartridge into the chamber.

  He peere
d through his binoculars. Barkus stood along the first baseline. The dog was sniffing his way over to him. David laid the binoculars on the ground. He brought his Sharps up and lined up the rear and front sights to his targets, first to the dog and then to Barkus.

  At that moment, David’s conscience flashed to life. What am I doing? he thought. He heard his wife’s voice. “It’s only baseball,” Annie would whisper as the two lay in bed when he couldn’t sleep. This isn’t Gettysburg, David reminded himself.

  He put his gun down and reached for the binoculars. The dog narrowed its area of sniffing to a small circle a few feet in front of Barkus. It hit David then. The dog was searching for the perfect spot, and he was zeroing in. Oh, my God, he is going to take a dump on my field!

  The dog assumed the squat position. David glanced at Barkus and saw a smirk. Clenching his teeth, David looked back to the dog. He was laying one of the biggest craps that David had ever seen. It swirled like a coiled snake, one layer on top of the next, a mound of crap rising high above the grass in the infield. David’s eyes bulged. It continued to flow. Barkus grinned ear to ear. The dog finished his business with a shiver. Barkus patted the dog’s head. It was as if he had taken the dump himself and was proud of his accomplishment.

  Enough. Binoculars down, gun up.

  David brought the gun to his cheek and froze. He didn’t aim at anything. The dog doesn’t know any better. He pointed the gun at Barkus, but his hands trembled, and he couldn’t hold his aim. An image kept racing through his mind: A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty. It was a Winslow Homer painting. David had seen this work the previous summer in the Portland Museum of Art. Homer’s painting was of a Union sharpshooter perched in a tree, aiming, finger on the trigger, at an unsuspecting Confederate soldier through the scope of a long-barreled rifle. Then David thought, Murder. That’s the word Homer had used in a letter years later in recalling how horrified he had been by the sharpshooters, how they were as close to murderers as anyone he had seen in the army, how they had picked off unsuspecting soldiers who were disengaged from battle: having a meal, going to the bathroom, or writing letters to loved ones.

  Murder, David thought again. Am I going to kill this son of a bitch over a baseball field?

  He brought the gun down and set it on the ground. Is Barkus really engaged in battle here? David flicked the saddle ring around the slide bar of the carbine with his trigger finger. Maybe I just need to walk away from this. But he couldn’t. David considered firing shots to scare them off, but he couldn’t risk being caught. How would he explain his acts to Annie and Christy?

  He thought about just going down to the field and telling Barkus to get lost, but any contact between David and Barkus without witnesses would be used by Barkus against him. The board would think David had lost his mind lying in the brush and spying on Barkus in the early morning. Once again, he could do nothing. He continued to spin the ring and consider his options.

  Then, as a pungent reminder to all who might choose to forget its origin, David’s hill belched gas through its candy-cane pipe vents. The rotten-egg odor of decades’ worth of decomposing crap invaded David’s nostrils. It felt as if Barkus was sticking his face right in the pile of dog shit. David’s eyes welled up. A flash of anger rushed through his veins. The ground seemed to grow warmer now, the town’s past fermented beneath.

  In the distance, downriver, he then heard the sound of airplane engines. A gigantic C-130 transport plane—a blimp with wings and four thunderous turboprops—was on the approach to land at nearby Stratton Air Base. If history were any guide, the flight path would take the plane overhead. Cover, David thought, I’ve got cover! He felt like a center fielder facing a short line drive: he could now chance attacking the ball knowing he had fielder backup to his rear, in reserve.

  Now might be my only chance, David thought. The plane would be able to provide noise cover for about twenty seconds, enough time to get three shots off: one before it passed, one when it was overhead, and one right after it passed. David quickly removed two more rounds from his cartridge box and set them by his side within easy reach.

  He raised the gun and sighted down the shiny bluish-steel barrel and took aim. With his peripheral vision, he strained to look for a glimpse of the plane coming over the treetops. The turboprops roared louder. There was a lull in the breeze, and the dump’s gaseous odor intensified. His throat was on fire, and his head pounded. He sensed the plane in the corner of his eye. He squeezed the trigger and took his shot as Barkus looked up at the plane passing. The bullet crackled out of the rifle. The gun recoiled amid a plume of smoke.

  David felt good; he felt alive for the first time in months. He finally had done something, though he wasn’t entirely sure of the consequences. David thought about Doubleday’s memoir and imagined that’s how Doubleday must have felt when he’d fired the first Union shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. “There is a trifling difference of opinion between us and our neighbors opposite,” Doubleday had said to a fellow soldier, “and we are trying to settle it.”

  Dirt popped where the bullet had driven into the ground. It fell short and to the right. Barkus didn’t flinch as he looked up in the opposite direction for the plane roaring above. David figured he had to adjust more for the wind. He reached for his second cartridge and quickly loaded it, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The gun cracked like thunder.

  The bullet drilled into the ground and kicked up some dirt just as the plane flew overhead. It was in line but a few feet short. Barkus continued to watch above. David reloaded for the third time and brought the gun to his cheek. He was excited by the smell of burned black powder in the air. His left arm held the barrel, and his sculpted forearm muscles aligned parallel with it. He took a deep breath, aimed, and then pulled the trigger. The bullet rocketed toward its target.

  Splat, direct hit.

  David picked up his binoculars to survey the damage. The dog shit had splattered all over Barkus’s gray slacks. David had obliterated the pile, sending the bullet through the mess and then into the ground. Barkus seemed oblivious to the fact that his lower half was sprayed with dog crap as he followed the plane overhead.

  After the plane passed, Barkus looked around and found the dog peeing in the on-deck circle. He clapped for the dog to come. The dog ran over and jumped on Barkus, with his front paws hitting his chest and working their way downward to his slacks, adding dirt to the shit splatter. Barkus pushed him away playfully, and the dog ran in a small circle, through the area of his nasty deed, and then he returned to Barkus again, placing paw prints of dirt and crap on the man’s Elite Travel Baseball League jacket as he jumped on him. Barkus smiled and pushed the dog away. The dog retreated, circled in the area of the deed once more, and then added a fresh coat to Barkus.

  “What a fine animal,” David said out loud as he smiled ear to ear and rolled over on his back, laughing. “What a good dog,” he added, trying now to contain his laughter so as not to be heard. A strong gust of wind blew the gas odor away. David drenched himself in sunlight as his laughter settled down. He put a reed of grass in his mouth and savored the moment as puffy clouds, like seamless baseballs, flew by in the light-blue sky. He wished he could celebrate his small victory with someone.

  His thoughts turned to Union lieutenant Marcellus Jones, who is said by most to have fired the first shot at Gettysburg. Jones had borrowed a Sharps carbine from a soldier—the same as or a similar model to what David carried—asking the soldier for the “honor of opening this ball.” Jones had fired at a Confederate officer but had missed the shot. David, in his mind, had one-upped Jones. While he had missed Barkus, he had at least sprayed his enemy with dog shit, something more than Jones had accomplished, though he had to grudgingly admit that Jones was a half mile away when he fired, not a few hundred yards.

  David rolled back over to his stomach, found his binoculars, and looked for Barkus while chewing his reed. The dog was in the car with his head hanging out of the passenger window, panting away. He fo
und Barkus now bending over a few feet away from the driver door. He was tugging at the front of his slacks with one hand while scratching a spot on them with the index finger of the other. He held the index finger to his nose and then abruptly pulled it away while his head quivered.

  “There’s a wake-up call for you, Barkus,” David said.

  At that point, David heard the popping gravel of another vehicle entering the parking area. He raised his binoculars to locate it. Another SUV, this one a mass of black and chrome, slowly crept through the lot to park next to Barkus on his driver’s side. The vehicle sat there with its motor idling for a few seconds before its driver’s door slowly opened. David saw a shiny black wingtip shoe touch the asphalt under the door. He then saw Barkus step back between his door and his vehicle, pulling the door toward him.

  David found the feet of the other man and began to scan him from foot to head. He was dressed in a black suit with a beige trench coat and sash. David got a glimpse of a large flashy ring on his pinky finger. He had what appeared to be a blue lanyard around his neck that stood in contrast with his power-red tie.

  Then it happened. Ring. It was long and loud, like an old-fashioned dial phone. David tossed his binoculars on the ground and rolled on his side. Ring again. He jammed his hand into his front pants pocket and searched for his cell phone. Ring. He fumbled to open the cover before it rang a fourth time. He saw Christy’s number flash on the screen.