Page 82 of Perfect Mess

As soon as the ball reached the spot I had shown him, Kyle jerked the bat backward as hard as he could pull, building momentum in the windup.

Crack!

I felt the wood smash into my knee and I dropped faster than a lead balloon carrying a grand piano filled with bowling balls.

Then, even faster than it had launched in reverse, Kyle’s bat surged forward.

Thwack!

It was a perfect strike. Wood impacted leather. The ball rocketed forward.

Gary never had a chance. Before he could even process the fact that his son had finally hit a pitch, the baseball plowed into his groin with testicle crushing brute force. Gary screamed like a banshee, then dropped to his knees. Fueled by adrenaline, dazed by his first taste of success, Kyle forgot to drop the bat as his body swung around.

Still doubled over from the searing pain in my knee, my head was now at the same height as the spot where I had told Kyle to smash the ball.

I looked up.

I saw a blur of lacquered wood.

I heard the crunch of wood on flesh.

I felt the splash of liquid, warm and sticky.

My head began spinning. A ballerina out of control, twirling and twirling, faster and faster.

Then it wasn’t just my head spinning. I was spinning. The ground was spinning. Everything was spinning.

The last thing I saw were the vultures, also spinning in the air right above me, slowly circling in their descent.

* * *

We saton the splinter laden wooden bench inside the dugout. The air smelled like clay and sweat, but the tin roof shielded us from the sun. Luckily, there was plenty of ice left in the cooler. And a few juice boxes, too. I sipped on a grape juice while wearing a bag of ice on my head. Gary nursed an apple juice with a bag of ice on his crotch. Kyle sucked on a fruit punch, his straw sucking air like a cat fur clogged vacuum.

“Nice hit, by the way.” I toasted Kyle with my juice box.

Gary shot me a look, his face red and blotchy. Probably a side effect from the intense groin pain.

“What?” I shrugged. “It was.” I gave Gary an apologetic smile. I wasn’t sure how much he blamed me for the impromptu circumcision. “Thanks for chasing away the vultures, by the way. I thought I saw them calling dibs on my body parts.”

“I couldn’t let that happen,” said Gary. “Your corpse would have impeded the base runners.” Gary repositioned the bag of ice on his privates. “You going to be okay?”

“I think so.” Nothing was broken, that I knew of, and the ice had brought most of the swelling down. I still had a lump on the side of my head the size of a turnip and my knee was now the same shade of Periwinkle as my ankle.

We sat a bit longer, nursing our wounds and sipping on juice boxes.

“Are we still going swimming?” Kyle asked. “You promised we could go swimming if I hit the ball.”

“He definitely hit the ball,” I noted.

“Maybe I can turn on the sprinkler in the backyard after dinner,” Gary offered.

“What are we having for dinner?” Kyle asked, swinging his legs back and forth on the bench.

“We’ll have to stop at the store and get something.”

“Can we have pasta?”

The fight drained out of him. Gary said, “We’ll see.”

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