A Manly Night Out
“The town’s really named Manly?” Hank asked Taylor. It was getting close to three in the morning. They were rocketing up Highway 65 in the night, surrounded by nothing but dark fields and the bright lights of farms at rest for the evening. The two HooseCows were in an old truck, on loan from Dom Swede, the manager (and father) of the Mason City Ugly Birds. Hank was driving. He suspected it was because Taylor was too angry to drive, even though the older man’s face held no expression.
“Yeah. Just a smear on the map, really,” Taylor answered. “Don’t go to fast. Cops around here got nothing better to do than to pull us over.”
Hank slowed down, but he got the feeling that no one was going to pull over Dom Swede’s truck in this area, unless they were pretty sure it had been stolen. He knew the ride wouldn’t take much more than ten minutes, but he also knew if they were late there was a good chance Mickey Danz would kill somebody.
After losing their opening game to the Ugly Birds 2-1, the HooseCows had come back with a solid victory behind Mickey Danz’s complete game shut out. The pitcher had only allowed four hits, and they had been pretty weak hits at that. It seemed like the kind of victory that would relax a person, but Danz was out in the stands after the game, asking everybody about the old man with the beard and the bright red suspenders and the kid that was with him. Taylor had to actually grab him by the elbow and drag him back to the bus, so they could return to their hotel.
It should have ended there, but Mickey was determined. He went out to a bar with the rest of the guys, and apparently decided to try some charm. Hank wasn’t sure how many locals Mickey had to work over before one of them knew the guy, but Hank did know how it was in small towns. Somehow, someone did end up knowing him, and then Mickey told the rest of the team he was off to Manly. He left laughing at the name of the town, and he brought a barely 21-year-old waitress to drive him. Alan Stone had called Taylor from a paypho
ne, and Taylor called Dom to bring him the truck, then called Hank and told him to come along.
“Was this guy heckling him or something?” Hank asked Taylor.
“After they turn fifty, all of these guys start to look alike. I don’t know,” Taylor replied. The radio went from Led Zeppelin to Metallica, and Taylor shook his head and turned off the radio. Hank didn’t turn it back on, but he wanted to. Somehow, the music helped distract him from the smell of the pig crap caked all over the truck they were driving.
When 65 hit Highway 9, Hank took a right. Manly wasn’t a big town, and without speaking both Hank and Taylor sat up straighter in their chairs. Hank was hoping the temperamental pitcher would be fairly conspicuous in the tiny town. The owner of the bar in Mason City had told them the waitress drove a blue Sierra sedan, so that was at least something. When Taylor asked the bartender to describe her, the bartender just shrugged and said “blonde.”
“Do we just drive up and down the streets?” Hank asked. “There aren’t that many of them.”
“If he’s already in one of them, there’s nothing we could do to stop him,” Taylor asked. He shook his head. “This whole thing could wreck the league, and I got a lot riding on this.”
Hank nodded, not bothering to add that it could also send Mickey to jail and someone else to the morgue. Hank wasn’t even sure Taylor had considered these outcomes as being problematic.
“What if we catch him?” Hank asked, slowing as they crossed train tracks.
“You’re bigger than him, and you brought that bat I told you to, right?” Taylor asked.
“Yeah.”
“Then you get what to do. Whatever it takes. We can clear that up in house, like a kangaroo court. Get his legs if you have to. Stay away from his arms.”
On their left was a Pronto gas station. The lights were still on, but Hank wasn’t sure if it was open or not. Diagonally across the intersection were two out-of-use train cars, on display as perhaps the town’s one claim to fame. Hank wondered what would happen to the town if they ever did finish up the Avenue of the Saints idea, connecting Saint Paul to Saint Louis.
“Pull into the station,” Taylor commanded. Hank began to pull in before he saw what the coach had seen. At a pay phone outside of the gas station, a young blonde woman was talking and pushing back her bangs with a look of great annoyance. Her ring-collared T-shirt advertised the bar Mickey Danz had been in before he went off in search of the old fan.
Hank parked the car on the opposite end of the parking lot from the woman, so they wouldn’t terrify her by roaring up all at once. As they got out of the truck, a patrol car squawked once and parked outside a house up the street. The porch light was on at the house, and before the cop car could even completely stop a very large old man with a beard walked out and stood on his front steps. The man was easily over 350 pounds, and he was only wearing a well-used pair of tight white jockey shorts. Other men would have been ashamed.
“That’s gotta be because of Mickey,” Taylor said. “I’m gonna get over there while I can still do something.”
“And do what?” Hank asked. They were closer to the blonde girl now. She was eyeing them with some concern.
“Kiss their ass, I guess,” Taylor said. He trotted off to talk to cop and the big man. As he did so, Taylor pulled his HooseCows cap down and, by the time he got to the front steps of the house, he was walking like the baseball manager he was.
“We’re with the team. The HooseCows. Mickey’s quite the guy, but he’s mostly harmless,” Hank said, hoping it sounded like he believed it. “We just want to get him home. We can give you a ride, too. Mickey can sit in the back of the truck and think about what he did.”
The girl shook her head.
“I have a friend coming. I think I’m done riding with ballplayers tonight.”
Hank nodded, and then became distracted by a scuffling sound. He looked up to see a thin, pale boy in dirty jeans, a white t-shirt, and a baseball cap walking down the middle of Partridge Avenue. Except you couldn’t call it walking, because the child was dragging his legs behind him with every step. As he worked down the street, moving toward the ornamental railroad cars, the boy stopped to look at Hank. Hank noticed some sort of marking, in bright red, on the boy’s shirt.
“Holy shit, what is wrong with that kid,” Hank asked. He felt a deep cold wash over him, but the wind was not moving the trees at all. He turned to the waitress, but she was backing away from him. She had pulled her nail file out of her purse and was holding it between the fingers of her fist. From the way she was gritting her teeth, he was sure she was willing to use the improvised weapon.
“I don’t see anything,” she said, harshly.
When Hank looked back, he wasn’t surprised to see the strange boy was gone. He was surprised to hear the scraping sounds of the boy’s shoes (which looked older than they should have). It was loud; each step sounded like someone was dragging a shovel across the asphalt. He wanted to turn and talk to the woman, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to hear what she said.
There was a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned and saw Mickey crawl out from the foliage with a nervous, excited look on his face. He held out his hands as if he was bringing a peace offering, and he smiled far too broadly at the waitress.
“It’s cool,” he said. “I don’t have to go bug that old guy anymore. He didn’t know anything anyway.”
The sound of the scraping footsteps had faded, and Hank glanced around to see the cop, the old man, and Taylor Nickles. The old man was pointing at Mickey and shifting his considerable weight from side to side.
“I’m sorry,” Mickey said to the waitress, sheepishly. “I really just needed to come check something out.”
“My friend is coming,” she said. She gripped the nail file, but her face was becoming more annoyed than angry. Across the street, the cop and Taylor were walking toward them and talking. Hank had a hunch this would work out okay. Somehow, despite his gruff demeanor, Taylor had a way of getting people to see his side of things. The cop looked too relaxed to be angry.
“I know you saw that,” Mickey Danz said, patting Hank on the shoulder. “Now I know you did.”
(NEXT)
