Beaned
The bean ball might have killed Hank James’ if he had leaned backwards instead of forward. Because he had flinched forward, the ball barely glanced off of the dome of the helmet. Even so, the ball had been thrown by the Ugly Bird’s pitcher George Swede at such a high velocity that he still found himself in the dirt, barely aware of what hit him. Swede raised his glove to get the ball back from the catcher, and the umpire interrupted that by ejecting the pitcher. Hank James blinked and crawled his way up to his knees, motioning for the HooseCows bench to stay off of the field.
Hank knew why Swede had thrown at his head. The day before had been one of his best performances at the plate. Against the Ugly Birds weakest pitcher, Ian Johnson, Hank had knocked in three home runs. He had done it the right way, without flipping his bat or strutting around the bases. Still, the last place Ugly Birds were not known for their grace in losing. True to form, the Ugly Birds had wasted no time and threw at Hank in his first at bat. They had found one way to surprise him; he had expected them to hit him in the back.
With his team barely staying at the top of the dugout, Hank staggered on uneasy legs to the pitcher’s mound. His head was ringing and his eyes were full and watery. He supposed some of this might be delayed revenge for what Drew Harrold had done to their player. It wasn’t too much of a stretch, especially considering the pitcher who hit him was Gus Swede’s brother George. George had now stopped on his way to the dugout and was waiting for Hank James to reach him. The Ugly Birds bench was now rising to its feet. George Swede had not motioned for them to sit down.
“Got a problem?” George Swede asked, adding a tough-guy sneer to his face when he said it. He dropped his glove to the grass beside him.
Hank stood up. He was taller than the pitcher, but he knew the rest of the Ugly Birds’ bench was filled with a bunch of unwashed subhumans, most of whom also had the last name of “Swede.” Even the coach had the last name of “Swede.” Their team was so good at clearing their bench to brawl they probably would have been thrown out of any other league. In this league, they desperately needed the Ugly Birds around, if only because they needed four teams to keep things somewhat stable.
“What, you gonna set me on fire like you did that reliever in Mankato?” George asked. Even though there were no official charges pending against Hank James, the public opinion on him had turned greatly. Now people thought he was guilty of that crime, and the death of “Bunk” Edwards, and some were even wondering about what had really happened to Billy Royce during the winter. Even his teammates, except for Mickey Danz, were giving him more space than he was used to in the locker room. It could have been enough to drive him out of his mind, except he was smacking the ball out of the park so often he couldn’t care less what anyone else thought. He was dialed in. He could hit his way back into the bigs, and he absolutely knew that as a fact now.
“You threw at my head,” Hank stated. He was rubbing his head and trying to stop the team’s trainer from coming out to examine him. It didn’t work, and the trainer was nearly halfway to the mound already. Hank realized he had nothing planned to say to the pitcher. The teams, and the crowd, started to return to their seats, convinced this skirmish was going to be nothing but a lot of talking.
Hank himself was convinced there would be no confrontation until the HooseCow’s trainer tried to touch him, and he shoved the man down to the ground. The trainer was short, , thin-limbed, and uncomfortably quiet-voiced. He dropped hard, and he even seemed to apologize to Hank for having been hit. The crowd gasped, and the Ugly Birds’ bench laughed and pointed. On the HooseCows bench, Taylor Nickles shoved team mascot Babe Mooth onto the field to distract the crowd.
Hank almost apologized to the trainer, but didn’t. He didn’t want anyone from the HooseCows team touching him. He especially did not want them giving him medication. He was convinced there was a murderer on the team, and he knew it wasn’t him. He was convinced he had found a body dump in the bleachers in the outfield, but when he went to go check the little brick alcove he had found was open and empty. He was almost convinced he was going insane until he saw a small pile of dying maggots squirming in a dark corner of the brick alcove, and then he noticed dark drops of reddish-brown fluid spattered all about.
The trainer backed away, and George Swede started to head in. The HooseCows players also readied their caps and gloves to take their positions. Hank blinked hard and winced in pain. Something here did not feel right. He looked in the outfield and, far away in dead center field, he saw the ghostly forms of the boys he and Mickey had seen around the park. Their eyes were dark and empty, and as Hank watched, the darkness in them grew. They were fading away, and they were leaving. They were walking through the outfield wall as if it weren’t even there. To Hank, they seemed disappointed.
The look on Hank’s face, after he saw the children, seemed to startle George. He reached out a hand as if to console the man who he had just beaned with a baseball, and he made the mistake of reaching out with his pitching hand. By the time George was touching Hank, too much was going on inside the hitter’s head for him to back away.
Hank turned around and trapped George Swede’s hand under his armpit. Before the pitcher could react, he grabbed the man’s ring finger and bent it back until it stood up like a flagpole. George screamed and dropped to his knees. Hank just grabbed the next finger down and yanked up. The players from both sides didn’t have time to join in, because the security forces were unholstering their stun guns and running onto the field in full emergency mode. They didn’t get to Hank until he had broken all of George Swede’s fingers but the pinky, screaming uncontrollably as he did so. Then, they used their stun guns to make him unconscious while both teams’ trainers turned to help George.
The last thing Hank saw, before he went completely out, was one small, ghostly child sitting atop the outfield wall. The child was grinning.
