Seth’s Death

It was late August, and the season was canceled. Hank had just loaded up his things from his locker and driven to Taylor Nickle’s farm. When Taylor had announced the baseball season had been canceled, he also handed out a sheet of paper detailing what they were to do next. Since they couldn’t trust each other if the team was apart, Hank was requiring the HooseCows stay moved in together until the next season began. Each player’s schedule told him which bunk he would sleep in at Taylor’s farm, when they should call their family to say they weren’t coming back home, and other details. None of the HooseCows argued, perhaps because of all the death they had witnessed in the last few weeks.

Hank had been given a bunk — really, just a bed in the wide-open barn the team had been remodeling for Taylor over the season — in a dark corner. If he hadn’t disappointed Taylor, if he had done everything Taylor said he might have been able to live in the house with Taylor. John Todd was going to live there.

Seth Speaker was being walked around the farm by Taylor, who was telling him how sustainable the farm would be in case of a nuclear war from some rogue Russian state, or from some Bill Clinton/UN conspiracy to sell out the American heartland. Unable to watch where he was going, Seth bumped into Hank and his box of locker things. The baseball fan and writer mouthed “Help Me” to Hank, and then was off following Taylor around the buildings.

Hank walked up the steps in the barn and set his stuff down on the bed. A few bunks down, Jean Gierau was listening to his cassette player and singing about the scream of the butterfly. Some of the other guys were looking over the stats from the year and arguing over who had done the best.

Seth had been aware something was up for some time. He pulled Hank aside the morning after “Bud” Abbott’s death and told him his suspicions.

“He’s very disturbed,” Seth told him. “I asked some buddies on the BBS service about his pro career, and apparently he was good enough to keep playing. He just took one too many fastballs to the head and started getting real cranky with everyone. His managers, teammates, the owners of the team, anybody. No one would sit next to him on the benches because he’d start going on about conspiracies and other stuff. On his days off, he was always visiting with lunatics he heard about from mailing lists and things like that.”

“Okay,” Hank said. He believed Seth, but he wouldn’t have when he first met Taylor Nickles. Until recently, the manager had held his insanity in.

“That’s why he couldn’t keep jobs in the majors — the word was already out on him. When they started up this league, he saw it as his chance to start more than a team. He wanted to start an army.

“He started right away, making you throw at the other team for no real reason, making you do chores without asking questions. Anything to break you down. He hadn’t planned on someone on the team killing people, but it all worked for him. He made the team kill last night so he knew you could never leave the team without getting into trouble yourself.”

Hank examined the box, noticing there were no shelves for pictures in the barn. Taylor wouldn’t want his new army thinking about home. They were only allowed to call home or visit home when supervised. If any player hesitated, Taylor just showed them a picture of a safety deposit box in Cedar Falls. In it, there were VHS tapes labeled “‘Bud’ Abbott Murder.” The implication was clear.

Hank wrinkled his brow in frustration and shoved the cardboard box under his new bed. Nothing he had found in his locker had been helpful to him. He was especially horrified to come across the pictures from his February trip to the cemetery. The names on the tombstones were names of players who had either died this year, or who might die. The strange man who had frightened him was a dead ringer for the organist he had killed with a foul ball.

Hank sat on the bed and ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t contacted his wife, because he thought it might be safer for her if she continued with the divorce and thought he had abandoned her. There were too many people dying around him. He couldn’t even pretend Taylor Nickles wasn’t behind Billy Royce’s death. He also suspected Taylor and John Todd had murdered “Smitty” Carroll and Roger Bartt, then convinced the Swedes to frame their youngest, unloved boy Chuck.

Hank had warned Seth, too. Seth was a bright guy, but he was too nice and likable to really keep up with what Taylor was doing. Having a biographer spoke to Taylor’s ego and need to vent his bizarre beliefs, but it went against the manager’s secrecy. When the madman came to his senses, how long would Seth live?

Hank walked outside to find Taylor guiding a load of corn to fill a metal silo. Seth was nowhere to be seen, and the manager was fully immersed in the filling of the silo. Taylor’s jaw was clenched, as it usually was, but there was a certain bounce in his step these days.

“Move in all right?” Taylor asked. Behind him, Mickey Danz approached. Mickey was looking paler every day. He stood next to Taylor, as if he deserved no better than that.

“Yeah,” Hank said. He wondered if there was any hope for this hell resolving itself.

The corn poured into the opening of the metal silo. Hank watched it, and then he noticed the top hatch of the silo had a single bloody hand-print on it. He looked down to Taylor Nickles, and saw the man had two lines of blood trickling down his right hand and dripping to the gravel below.

Then, Hank heard the screaming.

“Where’s Seth?” Hank asked.

“He didn’t know how to follow orders like a team should,” Taylor said with a smile.

Inside the metal silo, there was another loud wail. Then, there was the frantic thumping of a man who had become a trapped animal. The pounding grew faster, and the screams were soon followed by big, gulping gasps. Hank saw there were several tractor-loads of hard corn kernels waiting to get dumped into the silo. Fred Duchess was looking impatiently out of cab of one of the tractors.

Mickey shivered in front of him, and Taylor just laughed and kicked the side of the silo with his boot. The screaming continued on the inside, but no one would save Seth. Farms were so isolated they were like cities unto themselves, and sometimes those cities seemed to be able to impose the death penalty for perceived disloyalty. Hank knew there was nothing he could do, and he was ashamed to find himself walking away before the baseball fan had stopped screaming. He couldn’t bear standing there, trying to imagine the hell of drowning while painfully inhaling dried corn.

He walked past the big cement bunker Taylor had built earlier this season, and he wondered how much the crazy bastard had stockpiled. He wondered why Mickey Danz had given up on everything. He wondered if the ghostly children would appear, and if they did,would it make things better or worse?

But mostly, he wondered what was on the 3 1/2″ computer disk Seth had dropped into Hank’s cardboard box before going off to his death and execution. He wondered if Seth had known, then, how little time he had left.

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