The Mere Tide P81

His name was Andrew Mansell. A broadshouldered lugger with big hands, a flat nose that had already been broken. They walked out to a weedy field nearly flooded and mostly of mud. Along the way he explained the rudiments of the game omitting the sordid history that had led to its decline.

You can be on our team. Were the Jackal Cats and theyre the Blue Bears.

Ta hell is a jackal cat. And when did ye ever seen a fuckin bear kiss blue?

It was the second game of the day. The Cats were 0-1 and the quarter toss dictated the Bears would bat first. They made Dachni first baseman. Andy was the short stop and a lanky boy who pitched for both teams stood like a sage in a sink of mud that swallowed him to the knees. He waited till the hitter stepped to the plate and then he threw a ball that crashed him.

Thats for being a asshole!

And the pitcher was promptly ejected from the game and a new boy elected to the diamond.

Dachni yelled to Andy for a clarification on the rules. They doan beat ye with the bat is they?

No, he called back. Theyre just mad at each other.

The struck boy was consoled to first and Dachni stood nervously by while he glowered and frote the snot leak from his nose.

A replacement pitcher was sought while another, a lobber of curves filled in and he struck out the next two players unwinding like a ballerina top from so far back he whirled. He tried a curve ball on the fourth batter and the crack of the bat and the hot woodsmoke saw the ball whip out to left. The runner took off towards second but not before Dachni clouted him in the ear. And quit hitting me. It seemed the right thing to do. The pitcher exhumed the ball out of the mud where it had lodged like an asteroid and beamed it to her. She caught it and it stung her hands. A holler rose for her to step on base but the runner was barreling down the line and his was not a path to be barred. She stepped clear and punched him in the shoulder with the ball and he was out.

The Cats came in from the field to a trench of a dugout flooded with a brackish water. Behind them girly spectators cheered friends and beaus from the bleachers and bewared any soiling of their dresses. Can you bat?

Ye mean swing the bat?

Yeah.

Gived a hurt to a dog with a broom.

Thats not exactly what I mean.

He helped her with the grip and the girls oooooooohed and he blushed and rolled his eyes.

The first up to bat popped a caught flyball and sulked back to the dugout. Dachni came up to the plate next. The first pitch flew past and rebounded off the crib mattress the catcher hid behind.

Strike.

Dachni grimaced. The next pitch spouted straight off the barrel of the bat but the catcher tripped before he could catch it. Dachni took off but the opposing team yelled her back.

Hit the ball, she whined.

Its out of bounds, called Andy.

Well shit, she said. Nobody said was bounds.

The third pitch she didnt even see.

Out, said the catcher.

Give another try.

You only get three strikes.

Jess another try.

Andy jogged up and relieved her of the bat. Its alright, he said. Youll bat next inning.

Two innings later. When the replacement pitcher was no longer in the diamond but an ace of renown whom through curses she had come to know as Haybox and who had in those innings suffered none as far as third base. There were two on now. He kept a cunning look about himself and he never watched the batter for any sign. At the windup he would hike his knee almost to his shoulder and hold it there like a statue and then he would lunge forward and do a hop skip with his arm lashing out to the side and the ball would hone in at an angle so that it just cut into the strike zone and in all of this he would never quite look at the batter.

Get her Hayes!

And he wound up. Dachni had dredged a trough behind herself and before he head even released she stepped back. When she swung the ball skidded over the barrel and a thunder was stifled in the dugout.

Come on Hay!

The catcher threw the ball back to Haybox. The pitcher caught it and wiped it on a trouserleg. Now he looked at her. And what he saw transcended all considerations of the game. For the brittle scarecrow of scars he measured seemed medieval in its cerebration, some horror apathetic to the peculiar and his orchil sagathy. That should have been relegated to the vile harlequinade of the ringmaster’s freakshow or the aberrations as asylums curate or that priests exorcise or that witch’s are rightfully wary in summoning but that had been loosed among children and given a bat.

He wound up. His arms bracketing his ribs and his knee to his cheek, his right foot turned almost backward. When he uncoiled it was like a top festooned with ribbons, his limbs unfurling elongate and when he released his forehead was almost touching his shins and his right leg cocked up like a mizzen. The ball slipped from his fingers with a liquid inviscid curled towards. Dachni had stepped back. She had watched his hands to tell how would the ball mend its path. She swung. Wedded in the act was the woodburn groom, the stinging bride. A veering right fielder that seemed to vacate the field of all sound save the echo of the crack. Her hands stung.

All at once a choral roar erupted. The runners on first and second took off. Andy took her by the shoulders and pointed to first. Run you gotta run.

She sloughed through the mud. The right fieldman had gone in search of the ball. She stopped at first and her team cried and made huge waving gestures for her to continue to second. She was exhausted by the time she got there but the calls for her to hustle the hell up did not cease and she slogged on to third. By then the fielder had found the ball and was sprinting back. Dachni rounded third. She saw with a feeling of dread and she came to running on the balls of her feet like a crazed swan. The fielder threw. The ball flew over the sink and the catcher threw down his mitt and leapt and the ball slapped hard against his downcurling fingers and he slapped his hand against the backside of the facedown runner already a halfsecond at his cleats.

In the end it was a tie. She rode back in a suit of mud feeling spent and good. Her palms stinging and blushed. And was back again the next day. The day after. Twice she hit what would have been homeruns but was still outed because she couldnt round the bases fast enough. But her teammates considered her something of a maimed prodigy and save for the first day she never struck out.

Once after an afternoon of victories the team captains conspired to the creek behind town, a secluded hatchery of shenanigans inherited through the generations. The boys went to beg their mothers’ leave, Dachni the pilot’s. She limped up entreatingly. Her arms crossed over her chest.

Arent you making friends.

Uhhuh.

Did you win?

Teams goin down to the creek. And aye won three.

You have the knack.

Well does ye say?

How long will you be out?

Dont know. Saided ay ta make fires. So affer night prolly.

How will you get back?

Welllllll, intoned the child as she swiveled about. Could ye come back? Or linger lee?

I could. What time are the others planning to go in?

Dachni swam her shrugging shoulders back. Dont know.

Lets say eleven.

How about middy. Hey how bout ye come?

The pilot smiled. Unfettered and afternight access to a platoon of preadolescences? No, the evil remains and I wouldnt trust my inclination’s check. Rather you be the instrument of my corruption’s spread. But no blood. This war needs its fodder.

A headcount was conducted in the field and those allowed marched off through a carpet of flowers. Only two other girls had finagled permission to attend and these the wiliest of the bunch. A tomboy who kept her bob capped and spoke with a vulnerable gruffness. The other a flamboyant tyke whom kept a cluster of boys around her at any given time. Earthy smell to her reminiscent of the hyacinth reek.

Shes gonna be a whore, observed Dachni.

Andy sputtered out the juice they were sharing. They were walking somewhat behind the main group.

What?

Ye know. Shes gonna sell her pussy.

Andy turned rose red. I dont know anything about that kind of stuff.

Well theys yer first look.

Andy wiped his mouth and regarded the girl for signs of dawning whoredom. She was leaning into Haybox and drawing circles in his ribs with a delicate finger and with her other hand she was feeling the wrist of a second boychik also her senior.

Hes thirteen, said Andy. Fourteen almost. Lelly’s hardly eleven. Im twelve. How old are you?

Dont know.

How can you not know?

Nobody ever said. Its no manner anyhows.

Whens your birthday?

Dont got one.

That sucks.

They entered the woods and clambered down to the trail and crossed the swollen banks of the creek on a log and went a little farther to where a rusted husk of a chopped lorry kept watch over a bowergrounds. Carbonized sticks lay on the ground like black asterisks surrounded by concrete blocks burnt on their firesides and colored petals of bottleglass were littered about and more than one unshoed footarch that day would cut be cut on their edges. They children arrayed themselves around the pit and Miley who held seniority arranged a pyramid of branches and squirted lighter fluid over them and struck a match and let it fall. The flames whipped up like a tonsure and the woodsap crackled and smoked. He was also the son of the town butcher and his backpack was stuffed with bratwursts and burger that soon were skewered and dangled over the flames. Buns were distributed and the sizzling meat loaded into their clefts and they chewed and babbled.