Aspen Leaf Ultimatum

by Laura Mahal (releasing the full text in honor of baseball season!!)

first appeared in Chiaroscuro, 2020

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen naked young men lounging in trees—this was, after all, Boulder, Colorado—a college town with plenty of pledging fraternity brothers and those who got an extra-strong handful of gummies from the medicinal dispensary. But it was the first time the young man in question looked like her son. If it weren’t for the spider monkey tattoo on his left buttock, she really wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

“You, young man! Come down this minute,” she said.

He peered past delicately placed aspen leaves. Wide-lobed oak leaves would have done a more thorough job. His auburn beard caught the light, and then caught on a branch. “Ouch,” Aspen Man said, tugging fruitlessly, snarling his facial hair, his pale buttocks flailing like a fish seeking a path to the sea. “Could I maybe get some help, lady?”

She climbed atop a concrete turtle, meant for the entertainment of children whose parents foolishly brought them to witness the carnival-like atmosphere of Pearl Street, and reached up. Her keen eye for snow-weakened tree limbs was as honed as her ability to spy a shortstop with overly tight hamstrings or a pitcher not yet adequately recovered from Tommy John surgery. Rather than attempt to free the beard, she broke the branch at its base, wielding it, young man still attached. He dropped to the ground as effortlessly as a circus acrobat, or Troy Tulowitzki fielding a ground ball.

“Have you any clothes handy? We need to talk,” she said, as she seesawed the wood from the thicket below Aspen Man’s chin, evaluating the candidate before her. About six foot two, two hundred pounds, with a glorious curly mane cascading over his broad shoulders. Oh yes. This young man would work perfectly. Lean, muscular. Endowed with, um, all the right qualities.

He shrugged and wrapped himself in a tattered blue beach towel he pulled from beneath an overflowing recycle bin. The towel featured a large red C. Alas, she noted, not the C of a Colorado sun pressed against a mountainous skyline, but the logo of the cursed Chicago Cubs.

She snatched the towel from his waist and snapped him with it, for good measure, leading to an adorable wince on his adorable face. He wiggled and weaved a few steps away from her, in what could pass as a victory dance, under the right circumstances. She flung the towel as far away as she could throw, which actually wasn’t shabby for a woman her age. “That won’t do! I’ll buy you something.”

Taking him by the hand, then thinking better of it, given his extraordinary nakedness, she pushed his shoulders down so the concrete turtle hid most of his lower body. Like it or not, he was crouched like a catcher behind home plate. “Wait here. I’ll be back before you can sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’”

She hustled to the All Things Colorado store across the way and purchased him a complete set of Rockies gear, from socks to sweatpants to jersey plus a ball cap. Boxer shorts were only available in Denver Broncos colors, but that would have to do. Blue and orange were a darn sight better than Cubs colors, for mercy’s sake. No one would ever know if the young man looked like a Detroit Tiger underneath his Rockies uniform. Besides, the last time the Tigers won the World Series was 1984.

As to shoes—or better yet, cleats—they could figure that out later. They had a few hours to play with. Fortunately, the “no shoes, no shirt, no service” rule was loosely applied in a town that considered dogs and service donkeys perfectly welcome patrons at bars.

The pedestrian-only zone was mercifully quiet at this hour. She crossed to Aspen Man, whose eyes appeared to be closed. Probably meditating. She promptly upended the All Things Colorado reusable cloth bag on his head.

He snatched the boxers off the ground with admirable speed. Good eye. “Look, I can explain—”

“No time. Get dressed,” she said. “I’ve a proposition for you.”

He looked up, alarmed. She was at least twice his age.

“No, not that. After all, I’m asking you to get dressed, right?” She frowned. Did she look that old? She pinched her cheeks to add a bit of color and assessed her stomach. She hadn’t missed a Barre fitness class in months. But whereas his freckles were adorbs, her sunspots were dime-sized and the color of a breaking-ball bruise. Focus, she reminded herself. You’re on an important mission that could make or break the postseason. You’ve got to sell this and sell it hard. She shook off her thoughts and forgot about her abs, which were not bad for pushing fifty. As to the sunspots, well, she had spent a lifetime outside, cheering on her favorite teams.

Time to sweeten the pot.

“It’s about a job. We’ll talk over a good meal. My treat. Shake a leg and robe yourself, Your Highness.”

She realized, in retrospect, that might have sounded like a slight. He didn’t appear to be stoned, simply fond of aspen trees and the superb view these must certainly afford.  For all she knew, tree climbing was his own form of Spring Training. As to his nudity, she’d never asked any of the naked young men she’d met in Boulder about motivation.

He dressed and followed her somewhat meekly to a burger joint around the corner, where they both ordered a mushroom swiss with sweet potato fries and an iced tea. Great minds think alike, she thought.

She waited for the server, Candy—who looked like she wanted to ask the young man for an autograph—to quit hovering. “Here’s the scoop,” she said without preamble. “I’ve got a problem. I need you to help solve it. There’s good money in it for you, and it’s one night only.”

He looked frightened for a moment, like the twentysomething he was. “Look, lady. I make an honest living. I’m not interested in a life of crime.”

She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back—a good firm grip. Yes, he would do just fine.

“I’m not asking you to commit to a life of crime. Just one night of baseball. Your name, well, not your name, but someone else’s name called—you run out—wave at the crowd, doff your cap, that sort of thing . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Lady, I’m a street performer, not a sports guy. I climb ladders balanced on concrete turtles and do handstands on the top. I juggle bowling pins and bottles and occasionally flaming torches.”

“Yes,” she interrupted. “I’ve seen you. You’re good.” Even if you are a Cubs fan, she thought. “I’ve paid you $5 on occasion, because you’ve got skill. The key thing is you can catch.” She emphasized the word. “You’ve never once dropped a thing when you’ve juggled.”

The food arrived. The young man was distracted as the server stood at his shoulder, twirling a corner of her tavern T-shirt.

“You want his autograph, I take it?” asked the woman. The girl, cute enough but far too young, nodded shyly. This would take some managing. Fortunately, the woman had a wealth of experience when it came to shielding superstars from overly enthusiastic fans.

She cleared her throat. “Well, he has a game at seven tonight, Candy, so Major League rules say he can’t sign autographs. But this is your lucky day. I happen to have a spare poster here in my bag if you’d like.” She reached into the silver-clasped Michael Kors portable suitcase that had appeared out of nowhere (no different than good-looking young men manifesting in aspen trees, if you think about it). Her Kors bag was embossed with the Coors logo. She tugged out what looked like a roll of parchment, unfurling it and pressing it flat on the table. “But I suppose we can make an exception, let him write a ‘To Candy, my biggest fan’?”

She shoved a Sharpie at her unsuspecting tablemate. “You heard me. ‘To Candy, my biggest fan.’” He moved in slow motion, staring down at the face—and beard—that so closely resembled his own. She almost said, “Yes, you’re twins. Get over it.” Except darn Minnesota clinched first in the AL Central last year. She could not say the word Twins to save her life.

To her unabashed joy, he reached for the marker with his left hand. Mercy me, he’s a leftie, she thought, suppressing her desire to give him a quick peck on his cheek. (The one on his face, not the one sporting a spider monkey. What kind of story do you think this is?)

He wrote, “To Candy. Call me.” Then scrawled a 303 phone number. Candy hustled to the kitchen, face flushed with pleasure, poster held close. Aspen Man followed her with his eyes, then shook his curls so they wrapped around his ears for a moment frozen in time. A Sports Illustrated photographer could have captured that image for the cover of next month’s newsstand issue and no one would be any the wiser. If his own mother wouldn’t know the difference, then what could be the harm? Her plan was brilliant. She was batting a thousand.

The young man took a deep pull of iced tea and said, “I need to understand what you’re asking of me.”

She tut-tutted. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re an exact replica of my son, down to—” She thought of the inadequate aspen leaves but forced away the image. The last time she’d given her son a bath, he’d been six and a lot must have changed since then. It was unfair to compare. She might have sunspots—anyone who called these liver spots was going to get an umbrella upside the head—but she had eyes, and she hadn’t forgotten how to use them. She was, um, a scout. Yes, that’s it. A baseball scout. Evaluating a potential candidate for his, um, fitness.

She waved Candy away, who was bustling toward the table with a basket of fried pickles.

“We clean you up properly, the fans will never know, and neither will the ball club.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “He’s on probation. If he shows up inebriated one more time, he’ll be suspended for the season. I stopped by his house this morning with a fresh apple pie . . . you know, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie? The all-American symbols of wholesomeness, good fortune, all that?”

She saw the young man’s confused look and said, “Never mind. The point is, he’s going to be in no shape to play tonight, and you are in fine, err, shape.” Her eyes drifted sideways. Candy was tittering next to the bar with a gaggle of college girls, cell phones out. Or maybe high schoolers. It was hard to tell, and she couldn’t afford to take any risks with an underage server. Why oh why had she let him hang on to the Sharpie instead of grabbing it away, limiting Aspen Man’s likely on-base percentage? Focus, she reminded herself. You’re on an important mission.

“All you need to do is come over to my place, have a shower, let me get the twigs out of your beard, then you slip on a uniform and show up at Coors Field by 4:30. I’ll walk you in the players’ entrance, and, voilà! You get to hit the big-time tonight.”

“But I couldn’t hit a ball off a tee in Little League,” he protested.

Golly he was cute when he was nervous. He would look marvelous on a jumbotron.

“Doesn’t matter. My son’s in a terrible hitting slump. Just stick the bat out—you might get lucky—then run like the dickens toward the base on your right. All that really matters is you catch any balls that come to center field.

“I believe in you,” she continued after a lengthy inhale, no doubt honed by Pilates. “Last month, I watched you juggle baby hedgehogs. You managed to outrun the PETA people when they showed up. You’ve got decent speed, and your route efficiency isn’t bad. We could go over running routes and fielding strategies this afternoon, if there’s time. I’ve tried to advise my son [who shan’t be named lest the author of this story be sued] on geometry, but he’s a bit of a hardhead, it turns out.”

He sighed, seeming to give the idea serious attention. He undoubtedly got propositioned every week during tourist season. Not that that’s what I’m doing, she was quick to assure herself. Though it isn’t unheard of, surely. I’m not dead, for heaven’s sake. Her attention had wandered. She looked out the window of the restaurant to the crown of an aspen tree headed toward golden-yellow glory, reminding herself to concentrate on the tree as a whole and not as the sum of lovely individual parts.

“What’s in it for me?” he asked, his eyes now focused on hers.

“Sign a contract that says you’ll never ever spill the beans, and I give you $5,000 now.” She looked him over carefully. “$5,000 after you’ve showered, that is,” she amended. “Another $5,000 after you flash my son’s pass at Coors Field and confidently stroll to the workout room, and $5,000 more when I pick you up at the end of the night.”

His eyes bulged.

“Five grand once a month for the next two years, or as long as my son’s contract holds out. That’s if you keep your word about our deal and don’t blab to the Daily Camera or the New York Times. Plus you clear your schedule on home game nights, just in case. If you play, you make a flat $7,500 per game. I’ll throw in free medical care, in case you ever fall off your ladder or drop a flaming torch on your toe.”

He leaned toward her, his purple, silver, and black jersey rippling in all the right places. “And what if I don’t take you up on this deal of a lifetime?” he asked, arms crossed over his chest, looking for all the world like a major league baseball player negotiating a contract.

Her voice became arch and prim as she delivered the ultimatum. “Well, then, young man. That’ll be twenty-five dollars for that mushroom swiss burger you’re shoving in your mouth, to start with. If I tell Candy you’re a regular old street performer and not a sports star, she and her friends aren’t likely to ring you up on your cell, are they? Or offer you free dessert?”

The server seized that exact moment to lean over the young man and smile, whispering, “Shh . . . It’s on the house,” placing an extra-large hot fudge sundae before him. Candy had fashioned a baseball diamond out of peanuts, then filled it in with whipped cream and added pink candy hearts for the bases.

It was time to clinch the deal.

“The fine for public nakedness is $500, payable immediately, cash only. I’m on the Boulder City Council! Your nakedness is—” she was going to say shameful, but really, his body was taut and toned and easy on the eye.

“Providential, if I must say so myself. Welcome to the Rockies.”

 

Hands-On Experience

by Laura Mahal (published under a pseudonym, I didn’t love the editing)

first appeared in Chiaroscuro, 2020, penned by “Carolena Romee”

*another baseball story, yet much darker in tone–go from coffee to whisky!

Have you ever just touched your own hands, your fingertips steepled so your left thumb meets right, right pinkie meets left? Doesn’t matter if your hands are lotioned and moist or rough and cracked, because the point isn’t about calluses or whorls—just this essential need to feel something.

I was always a tactile kid. Yes, I plopped everything into my mouth as a baby, but it was about the touch. Squares and triangles and circles, stars and moons made of plastic all tasted the same—like China, I guess, or Taiwan. But touching them, shoving those shapes through their matching receptacles, then fishing them back out from the Fisher-Price belly, waiting for my mom to wash them, then doing it all again—it was about touch.

By the time I was four, Mom let me sort and fold the socks for our family of—back then—five. I mostly knew my colors, but I could feel which socks went together, the pairs that were equally knubby and worn, whose heels were thickest and who had a third toe longer than the second. I’m not claiming I knew all of that at age four—no. I was just having fun sorting socks, helping Mom. Watching her work, her arms wiry and muscled, already freckled.

By the time Jimmy was born and everybody wanted to hold the newest baby, I was a bat boy, busy at the ballpark, a talented and employed ten-year-old, but after patting Jimmy’s tousled curls once, it was Mom I wanted to caress. She, with lumps under her freckles. Like I said, I was ten. Not a dermatologist. But I felt the lumps, along with a flushed sense of overpowering anxiety that filled me from ball cap to sneakers: Maybe I should run to the garage and grab the box cutter, cut those hard spots out myself? Though my panic subsided, our overall anxiety levels did not. Mom had to have big patches of herself removed before Jimmy was two. Melanoma and, later on, Merkel cell carcinoma.

She lived long enough to give me several more brothers and sisters and constantly told me she had me to thank. I mean, it wasn’t rocket science. People should pay attention to changes in skin texture. My real thanks was I got to do tick checks on my siblings when we came back in from playing in the woods. Though, to her credit, Mom was the one who burned them off with matchheads or tweezed them out, dropping their disgusting blood-bloated bodies into a cup of rubbing alcohol. If one of the twins was sick and Mom didn’t have the mercury thermometer close by, she’d grab my hand and press it to a warm forehead, heedless that I didn’t want to catch what they had. At that point, I didn’t think of my “gift” as a curse.

I was thinking about bats and batting gloves back then. Well, gum and Gatorade, too. Free handfuls of the former and endless refills of the latter from the five-gallon container in the dugout. It was my job to pick up the tossed Dixie cups and spit-out gum, scrape wet sunflower seeds off the home and away team’s benches, and yeah, this meant I was baptized in baseball players’ spit. I volunteered for these things, when I realized the groundskeepers hated this part and brought grouchy energy into the dugout. Their muttering somehow seemed wrong, like they were dropping the bibs of their overalls and emotionally pissing into our sacred space. Whereas the players—the players tousled my hair with sweaty hands and, when they won, now and then they showered me in Gatorade. Sometimes, I thought of myself as their good luck charm. They let me know I was more than a bat boy, for damn sure.

Here’s the thing. I wasn’t the leanest or the fastest kid, but I knew Joey Martinez from Stephen Dady by their batting gloves. You could’ve put me in a cave and I’d know Martinez’s bat was a Marucci and Dady’s was a Louisville Slugger. The players said the entire operation flowed less smoothly when they were on the road because those older bat boys, who could miss school for away games in Cleveland or Kansas City, they weren’t as reliable as me. Couldn’t tell the sticks of wood by the sweat stains and skin cells of the players, which wasn’t that hard, to be honest.

Bat boy days were my best days. I was kind of a legend. The ball players brought me back slabs of ribs from St. Louis and Boston Baked Beans from Chicago, not the kind out of a can but the little red sugar-coated peanuts. I’d listen to a Sox game and cram my mouth full.

Ten years of eating went by, and then Mom found lumps in her breasts—I had no reason to touch those and I wasn’t an oncologist. Jimmy was probably ten and had been followed by Sammy, Jillian, Patsy, and Lee. There were nine or ten of us by then. I’d lost count. Okay, that’s not accurate, but suffice to say I’d lost interest in the chaotic and noisy household that was my family. I was nearing twenty and struggling with my weight. College hadn’t worked out so well. I was back at the ballpark but as a peanut salesman, hawking Planters by the packet, carrying trays up and down the stands. Got to handle fives and tens and twenties, but mostly folded-up ones and warm dimes and quarters, passed down the line of fans to me on the stairs, where I made change and gave out the goods. Later, I lost that gig to someone with seniority, and that’s when I got to hot dog days instead.

Have you ever worked at a ballpark? No? What about a hockey arena? Ever fundraised for your kid by spending five hours in a stand, running the cash registers or making hot dogs so you can pay your daughter’s softball dues or for ice hockey lessons? The point is, have you ever seen how the hot dogs come frozen in bags of seventy-five, how hands have to count them at the start and end of every shift? You are trusting total strangers to get the food safety and handling right. Trusting that the frozen dogs haven’t slipped out of the bag onto the floor where numerous feet have trod, or been turned, turned on the grease-caked auto turner but maybe not for the minimum seven minutes. Still raw and pink and partially frozen inside, or worse yet, thawed just enough for the juice of pig parts to wet the bun.

I don’t know. Most people don’t want to think about hot dogs. But they sure do eat them. Sold me a lot of hot dogs at the park. Carrying hot dogs is a lot heavier than peanuts, I tell you.

And that was trouble, because I had Grandpa Berl’s genetics. Not lean like Mom, even before the cancer ate her away from the inside, one cell after another, organs eviscerating, despite all those kids and accumulated “baby fat” in her abdomen. Not a smoker like Dad, who never weighed more than 185, not even after a rainstorm when he was soaking wet, sitting in the cheap seats to cheer on the home team while the grounds’ crew was covering the sacred baseball field for a two-hour rain delay. By then, I was pushing 225, which isn’t ideal when you’re barely five foot seven, sweating it out, hauling a tray of dogs plus condiments up and down stairs.

What, they don’t sell hot dogs at your stadium? Yeah, I get it. Times change. Twenty years ago, now, those were the days. Slick mustard running over your fingers, salted grit and oil on peanuts that tasted like summer, candy bars they don’t even sell anymore that I used to eat two or three at a time while waiting for Mom to come out of surgery or one of her radiation appointments. Meanwhile, my siblings sat there and read books or put together puzzles, hardly bothered while Mom died a day at a time. While I, I picked up each hair that fell from her head onto the seat of my lousy beaten-up car. A car as beaten down by life as the rest of us, rusted near the wheel wells. It smelled of the cigarette smoke of the previous occupant, cancer sticks the aroma of my life when I wasn’t at work or driving Mom back and forth. I picked up each hair of Mom’s and tucked it inside a Ziploc bag, kept that in my glovebox, each hair parallel so it looked like a bag of very thin, fine spaghetti. Each follicle I collected was a prayer Mom would recover. A bag full of failed faith, stashed mere feet away from my heart.

But we were talking about the ballpark. My hot dog days. I was huffing and puffing up and down those stands, carrying my tray of dogs and an array of condiments. Nobody cared or remembered I used to be a legend, a bat boy in this very place, the one who knew if the bat was going to crack from heat or overuse. Players trusted me to warn them about things like that because my hands were never wrong. I could feel it in the wood, the grain thinking of separating before the inning was through.

What does any of this have to do with anything? Well, I asked you, way back at the beginning, if you knew what it was—this sense of touch—steepling your fingertips, touching the pads of flesh. If you didn’t do it before, it’s okay. You can do it now if you want. Take a good look. But imagine your fingers are fatter. Part of the 250-pound you. The 300-plus pound you. Okay, you might not be able to see it—I get it. You’re thin like Dad. Or you’ve had a kid or two, you’re heavier, packing on a little extra weight around the middle—but not in the hands.

Do you have them pianist hands? Pretty, tapered beauties, nimble digits that can tumble around an organ and play “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” or rally people to shout “Charge!”?

Yeah, not me. Life had got to me. So much so that I stopped taking care of my body. Refused to brush my teeth for days at a stretch—didn’t feel like smiling. There was honestly nothing to smile about, and I sure didn’t want to see myself naked. Went weeks without bathing sometimes. Chewed my nails to the quick until my cuticles bled and I had to hide my hands in my pockets. As I said, life got to me.

By the time I was thirty, Mom was gone and Dad gave up smoking—not because he was worried about cancer, but because he still had all those kids to at least get through high school. Dad wasted away to brittle bones, but every one of my brothers and sisters did all right. None of them were anything super special, but they’re doing good. Not fat, like me. You could practically pick any three at random, add up their weights, and yeah, they might equal one of me on a bathroom scale. Well, not a bathroom scale, because those suckers don’t go high enough.

In here, they do. We got special scales. Scales of justice, the nurses like to call them. The “care team” thinks it’s pretty funny that we fat-farm dropouts need to be locked away from the Boston Baked Beans and racks of ribs. As if some of us might bust outta here and become cannibals. While there certainly were some oddballs stuck in here with me, I don’t think any of them look like good candidates for bludgeoners or serial killers. There was a guy once, Fat Johnny people called him, which wasn’t very clever, seeing how all of us looked in a mirror, but anyhow, Johnny Blubber broke into the nurses’ station. That was straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I tell you, and we did have our share of Nurse Ratcheds, we did. Johnny broke in and stole the nurses’ junk food, their Tab sodas and Mike and Ikes, their Slim Jims—which made us laugh, to be honest, as Johnny told the story—and somehow, he came across a box of Boston Baked Beans. I lived for a long while on listening to Johnny describe the taste and texture. If you don’t know what that is, run out and buy some. You don’t know what you’re missing.

Except my weight is down some now. Ten fingers’ worth. Because, you know? Those fingers looked a damn sight like ballpark hot dogs. And I’m locked up in here, a place with smooth walls that all feel the same. Same as the floors, the ceiling, and trust me I know because I crawled the floors, clawed at the imitation skylights. It’s all fabricated material, designed to give a little under impact. Each tile is exactly the same, even for me, who could feel the skin and sweat of ballplayers on a piece of wood. These tiles are . . . all the same. The pills, all the same too. Every one of us eventually loses our appetite. For food, for drink, for life. We feel no pain, dumbed down, the ridges in our brain smoothed by chemical reagents called prescription drugs, the only things dispensed by the handful in this cold and heartless institution.

They got me in here and it’s hard, being on a two-thousand-calories-a-day liquid diet, no texture, just swallowing gruel, really. I miss the ballpark, and they never even show baseball around here, where most of the people are old with frazzled white hair. And me not even forty-five. Me and the new baseball manager, we’re the same age. Even have the same birthday.

The nurses wouldn’t give me cake for my birthday—not even an ice cream sandwich.

So I ate my fingers.

Not all at once, mind you. Over several hours. A night shift, because that nurse on duty was playing games on his phone. He was our favorite. At least he was my favorite. Sometimes he could be bribed to slip us a fountain drink from 7-Eleven, or give us a pull of the tequila he kept in a flask, tucked in the same pocket where he kept his cell phone. That night, I traded him one of my rarest and most collectible baseball cards—it’ll break me to tell you who because that can never be replaced. Let me just say it was the best of the best players, one who will go down in history as a blessed saint. In return, the nurse handed over the freshly filled flask. That was the last thing I grasped in my fingers, the metal cool and smooth like the walls and floors of this place. The tequila numbed my lips, my tongue, but my heart and soul were long sated not by alcohol, but the absolute loss of everything I once held dear.

My fingers were the texture of hot dogs, except not cooked the full seven minutes. I did spit out the fingernails. Didn’t hurt a bit. Laughed a little, envisioning overalled groundskeepers grumbling about having to clean up my spit-coated digits miss the ballpark, wishing some bat boy would do the job on their behalf. Wrapped my stumps in the last thing Mom ever gave me—a pair of thick knubby socks she wore in hospice, with rubber bumps on the bottom meant to give her traction and keep her from slipping on equally smooth linoleum floors. At one time, these cotton bundles used to smell like her, so much so that I kept these balled-up in my underwear drawer, to remind me of the person who gave birth to me and would have loved me no matter what my size and shape, be I an overstretched shirt or a pair of thin leggings. Rather than the triple XL son I turned out to be. Mom was ever sweet, her font of loving generosity unstoppered by cancer and a slow, demoralizing death and disintegration.

I staunched the bleeding with those socks, and Mom saved me from bleeding out, as God is my witness. Even toes can smell like love, if you can believe it. But smells fade, and people disappear. They get thinner and thinner until they’re entirely gone. Vamoose. Mom faded from my life, followed by Dad. And along the way, everyone who once knew me as the “bat boy with a gift,” yeah, they all forgot that I was real. Real! The bat boy with some sort of extra-sensory touch. A bat boy who maybe was a good luck charm, knew which bat and gloves to pick at any given moment. The kid who scraped up sunflower seeds and Bazooka Joe gum, Big Red and Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, oh how I remember them all. Those were the days. My best days.

No, I didn’t write any of this, you paying attention? I ain’t got any fingers left. That night nurse who used to play games on his phone wants to be a writer and is setting all this down for me in exchange for fountain drinks and Boston Baked Beans. He says I’m a prime example of gluttony. Such a craving for my lost youth that I turned my fingers into stadium fare.

But he’s missing the point.

I just couldn’t stand having nothing left to touch.

 

Walrus Brings the Dominoes

by Laura Mahal

first appeared in the Fish anthology [Ireland], 2018

Joe Simon ordered Domino’s, popped open a Budweiser, and put his feet up.  

He closed his eyes . . . for a minute.

Long day . . . laying shingles . . . installing windows. Finishing up drywall. His lungs were tight with construction dust.

The doorbell rang.

Pizza’s here.

On the porch stood a walrus. His nose wrinkled in displeasure at the smell of the boots set by the door.

“You ordered dominoes?” said the walrus, in a flat, disinterested voice.

Joe nodded, looking for the insulated bag that should contain two large pepperoni pizzas.

The walrus extended a box, no more than 6” x 10.” Pearly white dominoes with dark dots seemed to shift slightly of their own accord.

Joe rubbed his eyes.

“I’m Russ,” said the walrus, shuffling his way into the kitchen, flippers slapping on the bamboo floor. “You ready to play?”

Joe sputtered, “I ordered Domino’s. Not a damn kids’ game.”

The walrus directed his steely eyes to Joe’s.

“Kids’ game, is it? Not good enough for you?”

“Nah,” said Joe. “I’m hungry. I feel like downing some Budweiser and seeing if there’s a game on.”

Russ’s metallic whiskers lifted in an unfriendly way.

“There is a game on. You beat me at dominoes—the delivery guy brings piping hot pies.” The walrus gazed around the room, his eyes recording everything.

Joe reached for his beer, and the Colt 45 he kept in a side drawer.

The walrus coolly set up dominoes, undisturbed by Joe’s activity. His animatronics were impervious to human ammunition.

People were so predictable.

It was a matter of time until the boot-owner asked: And if you win?

But Joe simply set his beer on the table and started choosing dominoes.

“Guests go first,” Joe said, smiling. “And when the pizza gets here, you’re paying for it.”

 

One Person, One Vote

by Laura Mahal

first appeared in Still Coming Home, 2018

I SMILED AT the man who approached my desk, his untied work boots caked with mud. His open plaid jacket had a bit of stuffing poking out just below his right pocket. The contrast of that texture, a fluffy bunny’s tail, attracted my attention to a glint of metal on his belt. Not in the center, where he sported a large silver buckle of an elk’s head, but to the right, over his hip.

Probably a cell phone, I thought, dismissing my inquisitiveness as paranoia.

“I’d like to vote,” he said.

“Glad to help,” I offered. “Would you prefer a paper ballot or would you rather vote by machine?”

“Don’t trust those damn machines,” he said, spitting as he reached for his wallet.

Did he seriously just spit on the floor of the voting center? I asked myself.

A big globule glistened near his left boot, refracting the fluorescent lighting of the Sunday School room. The church had rented the space to the county through the end of elections for the use of our Early Voting Center. Bible verses still showed faintly through the big sheets of construction paper we’d used to cover the bulletin boards. “Love your enemy.” “Be kind to one another.” Puffy pastel hearts surrounded the advice to “Be tenderhearted.”

A train whistle blew outside, startling me, as well as a woman in a blue rain jacket who had just finished voting. As she walked past me, I caught a whiff of her body lotion, pomegranate and blackberries.

She smelled like California.

She stepped right into the spit.

I politely asked the man if he had a form of ID.

“I’m an American. I don’t need no ID.”

I wondered why in the hell he’d been reaching for his wallet if he wasn’t planning to provide a form of identification, but whatever. My job was to take care of the customer. Yet I sure wished my supervisor wasn’t across the room behind the enormous TSX voting machines.

“Actually, I do have something I want to show you,” he said, leaning in close enough for me to see the hairs curling from his nose. He tucked his jacket back, long enough for me to see the glint of metal in a holster on his belt.

Not a cell phone.

He propped his elbows in front of me.

“I said I want to vote. And I mean to do so. But you’re gonna give me a stack of ballots, then wait here while I vote every single one of them.”

My breath stuck in my lungs like I’d swallowed salt water taffy down the wrong pipe. I cleared my throat, then did it again, louder, hoping my bipartisan partner would get back with her Keurig coffee. Red nametag for Republican, Black for Independent, or Blue like mine—I didn’t give a rat’s ass who showed up or what their party affiliation. I just wanted some help.

I started buying for time.

“Sir, I may have misunderstood you. I can only distribute one ballot per person. If you’ll just give me your name and birthdate, I can pull you up on my computer in twenty seconds.”

My gray metal folding chair screeched as I leaned back on two legs, desperate to draw anyone’s attention to what was going down at my station.

My second-line supervisor was helping a man with the distinct shake of Parkinson’s to unfold his paper ballot.

My Jolly Red partner was stirring nondairy creamer into her coffee, and sneaking bites of the donut she didn’t want anyone to notice she was eating. Her back was to me. She was facing a bulletin board that once had addressed the thrill of victory over sin.

I scanned my desk for tools of self-defense. A ball point pen. A cheap plastic stapler. A vase of black-eyed Susans and a potted chrysanthemum. The jeweled and studded purse of the woman in the blue raincoat who smelled like blackberries and pomegranates and had spit on her expensive shoes.

The man reached for his hip, grunting, “I don’t think you understood me.”

But I was quicker.

I sprung up and swung my chair like a baseball bat, smashing it as hard as I could onto his head and neck. I vaulted over the table and onto his chest before he could say “What the . . .?”, pinning his arms and knocking his weapon out of the holster. It went spinning across the room toward the provisional ballots table.

I dug my knee into his ribs, right into the white fluff of the bunny tail on his plaid jacket.

“I understood you just fine,” I said.

People ran toward us from every direction. My partner dropped her donut. My supervisor shouted into her cell phone and the second-line supervisor herded voters out of the room. But my attention narrowed to the man at my mercy.

“Don’t ever make the mistake of assuming you can intimidate a woman. I was an MP long before I became an elections judge,” I said.

“One person, one vote. That’s democracy.”