Every Street, Chapter 9

--See previous chapters for notes--





"Alright kids, settle down. You were pretty good out there today. But next
time, no throwing the bat into the bleachers, okay Tariq?" The assortment of
children all giggled and looked at the boy holding a softball and wearing an
old Pepsi baseball hat. "And also, you gotta remember, all of you, that my
decision is final. I don't care if you saw it differently. The umpire is
always right, okay?"

They nodded, a few saying, "Okay."

"Alright then. I think this week, the cap goes too..." Doug twirled an old
Chicago Cubs cap around on one finger. He had come up with the idea of
presenting his own cap, a piece of genuine merchandise he had left from
Chicago, to the kid who had made the most effort, or hit the most, or just
been helpful, each time they trained. To his surprise, the idea had gone
down well, almost too well - it was a sought-after prize. It was actually
making them play better. "...Candice."

The little girl, who was no older than seven, grinned from ear to ear as
Doug threw the cap to her. She'd hit her first home run that day, and as she
was the youngest of the group, Doug felt like he should acknowledge it.

"Okay then everyone. See you all on Wednesday."

There was a lot of clamouring and pushing and shoving as all the children
ran down the bleachers and jumped off in the direction of their homes.
"Slowly guys, slowly!" Doug said over the general racket. He didn't want a
repeat of last week when one of the kids had lost a tooth after being pushed
and falling over. Fortunately, this week there were no injuries, despite the
bat in the bleachers incident. Doug went around the plates, picking up any
lost items that the players had forgotten, and kicking some of the dirt back
into place. He liked his job well enough, but working for two hours twice a
week wasn't really paying the bills too well. Actually, it was more like it
wasn't funding his lifestyle, but either way he was feeling the strain of
trying to save money. The job had given him more confidence, knowing he was
employable, and had also given him a great chat-up line - telling any woman
that you were a little league coach seemed to have a positive effect on
them. The notches on his bedpost were rising.





Picking up a sweater off the third base, Doug looked out to the bleachers to
see if anyone had left anything there. It looked clear enough as far as he
could see. There were a couple of kids still knocking about, horsing around
with their mitts. At the gate of the park, a small figure lingered as well,
looking in Doug's direction. Doug waved at the figure, who waved back and
started walking slowly away. It was Jack, he knew. Since he had become the
team coach, Jack liked to walk back to the trailer park with him, or just
'hang out', as he said. The pattern at home didn't seem pretty for him, Doug
had often thought. Jack lived with his mother, who was a woman of similar
pale complexion and thin build, but her face was sunken in and she rarely
smiled. She worked long shifts, as he sometimes heard her return early in
the morning from a factory on the outskirts of Emporia. Jack said that his
mom hated her job but that they needed the money. His father was in the
picture but Doug had never actually seen him. He'd wondered if the man hit
Jack, as the boy often had bruises. But then again, he'd seen Jack trip and
fall, or get hit accidentally so many times himself that he couldn't be
sure.

Today though, Doug wouldn't be walking back down the trailers straight away
as he had to stop in town to collect the replacement tire for the Jeep. It
had taken six weeks to be delivered to the tiny mechanics' on the high
street, because, the shop assistant had explained, there weren't many people
with Jeeps around here and they'd have to ship it in specially - would he
mind the extra charge? Actually, he did mind the extra charge, which seemed
astronomical, but he paid it anyway. Without a tire, he had no means of
travelling any sort of distance, and if he couldn't travel, he couldn't go
to the next town to buy it any cheaper. He packed away the spare equipment
that the town council had bought, and stored it away in a locked trunk
pushed under the bleachers. Collecting his sweater from the grass by first
base, he left the field and made his way up the road to the top of the hill.
Half an hour later, he was walking back the same way, holding a tire by one
side, and a paper bag of groceries in the other arm. When he got back to his
trailer, and unlocked the door, he dumped the groceries on the table and put
the tire down on a seat. He wasn't going to fit it today, because he didn't
want someone else cutting it to shreds before he even got to use the car. So
it would live safely inside for now. He made some lunch by dropping a pack
of flavoured noodles in a pan of hot water and stirring them for a few
minutes. That afternoon his only plan was to jack up one end of the trailer
that had started to slip down - he didn't want to wake up one morning and
find his feet above his head. He sat down with his lunch with the radio
tuned into a sports station, and ignored the fact that the phone had started
ringing. The answer phone clicked on to take the message, and a female voice
asked him to call if he wanted to get together that night. Unable to place
the name of Gina with a face in his mind, he ignored it.





It was at about 7 o'clock that night when Doug had just got out of the
shower from washing off oil and other grime from the base of the trailer. He
was meeting Bill, Charlie and a couple of other guys at Babe Ruth's for the
pool tournament that Mac had organised, and he couldn't find his shirt of
choice anywhere. Shuffling clothes around in his case, which he still used
as a wardrobe, he grumbled under his breath. He would have thought that now
he had so little place to put stuff that it would be impossible to lose
anything, but apparently not. Outside, the calls of the park kids playing
games and shouts of parents telling them to come and eat dinner drowned out
the noise from Doug's radio. That was almost as irritating as not being able
to find his shirt, because he'd been trying to listen to a Cubs game. At
that moment, someone knocked on the door. Taking a deep breath so he
wouldn't yell at any unsuspecting person on the other side of his front
door, he opened it with a bang. Outside, standing on the gravel that served
as his front door step, Jack stood, wide eyed and holding his baseball bat.

"Sorry Jack, I can't play tonight, I'm going out." Doug said, sharply. He
didn't feel like babysitting. He felt like getting out of this goddamned
trailer dump.

A shout from the trailer opposite silenced him suddenly, and both of them
turned quickly to see the Jack's trailer rock a little as something hit the
wall, shortly followed by more shouting. The door banged open for a moment
and Doug caught a glimpse of Jack's mother running to the other end of the
trailer, and a large man following, hollering and cursing. Doug looked back
down at Jack, who looked paler than ever.

"Please?" the child whispered.

Doug grabbed an old shirt from his case and put it on, also picking up a
baseball, and slammed the door behind him as he left. Jack was ahead of him,
walking so fast he was almost running, with his head down. Doug followed him
to a small grassy area that lay just behind the park.

"Throw me a high one, Doug!" Jack stood at the far end and waited to be
pitched a ball. He seemed suddenly happy, now freed from the havoc and pain
inside his own home.

"Okay, here it comes..." Doug threw a looping underarm ball to Jack, who
caught the end of it and hit it straight up into the air above his head. It
landed a few feet away to his left, and he collected it and lobbed it back.
It fell a few meters short and Doug bent over to pick it up.

"Hey Jack," he said, throwing another high ball to him, "you're mom and dad
seemed pretty angry tonight." The ball skimmed the top of the bat again and
went backwards this time, into some undergrowth. "You know why they're
fighting?"

Jack dug the baseball out from a small shrub and threw it back in Doug's
vague direction.

"Sometimes they just fight...throw me a curve ball this time, one that goes
like this," Jack swooshed his hand around in the air moving through a
semi-circle. He obviously didn't want to discuss what was going on at home.

"Does you dad ever hit your mom, Jack?"
Doug could see a change in the boy when he asked. His shoulders dropped, and
he squashed his mouth together into a line. He studied his bat and flicked
the dirt below his feet with it. His eyes blinked rapidly. Doug picked up
the ball from the floor and threw it between his hands and back again as he
walked closer to his young companion.

"Does he hit you, Jack?"

"No...he only hit me once and it was an accident because he was drunk..."
Doug nodded, once. "But he hits your mom?"

"Yeah," it came in a whisper and a small tear splashed the sand, splattering
and displacing grains. His head was bowed so Doug couldn't meet his eyes, so
he grunted and sat down on the floor next to Jack. Picking up a handful of
sand and watching it run off his palm, he remained silent. He could feel
Jack wanted to say something, and he wanted to let him have the chance to
say it.

"He doesn't always mean to hit her, because sometimes he has too much beer
and he can't control what he does. He gets angry with her about everything
when he drinks, and when he doesn't sometime he's angry too. He tells me to
go out and play but I can still hear them fighting and I hate it when he
hurts her because she cries for ages and just sits there, and I want to make
him stop but I can't-"

He stopped to draw a breath, but couldn't continue because sobs overtook him
as everything poured out. He flopped down onto the ground, holding his bat
tight and heaving with sadness. Doug studied him and wondered just how many
of the other children had to deal with the same thing - the sound of arguing
between parents was a common one in the trailer park. It hurt him that he
couldn't do anything, and he reached over and rubbed the sobbing child's
hair. He would have called Child and Family Services, had this been Chicago
and had he still been a doctor. But he wasn't, and he didn't even know if
there was such a service here, let alone who ran it. They both sat like that
for some time, Doug with his hand on Jack's head or back, trying to soothe
him as best he could. Jack leant in towards Doug, sniffing and dripping
tears.

"Why don't you have children?" he managed to get out, wiping an eye.

Doug shrugged. "Never got around to it. You know, some people aren't made to
be parents."

Jack nodded. "My dad wasn't...you would be a good dad."

"No, Jack, I wouldn't."

"Yes you would. You understand people, and you never fight and you care
about stuff."

"There's much more to it than that, buddy. Trust me."

Jack sniffed and wiped his eyes with both hands.
"Can we play some more ball?"

"Sure. Want to pitch?"

"Okay..."

They resumed play as the sun dimmed over the park and settled beyond the
trees.





It was late the next morning when Doug awoke in his trailer, yawned and saw
a woman standing by the bed, putting a shirt on.

"Mornin'" he said, gruffly, and sat up.

"Hi," the woman said softly back, and reached for one of her shoes. The
other was nowhere in sight, and she began hunting for it.

"You okay getting home?" Doug rubbed his hair, hoping she didn't want a
lift. He suspected if he was pulled over he'd still score quite highly on
the breathalyser test.

"Yeah. Um, have you seen...?" She held up the one shoe she had, a sling back
sandal that looked about twenty years old.

"Uh, no, sorry." Doug had a look under the bed for it, and behind a small
chair.

"It's okay, I've found it," she said, pulling it from behind a drape and
putting them both on quickly. "I'd better be going, um. Thanks..." she said,
uncertainly, making a direct line for the door. Doug smiled at her and
watched her leave the trailer park to make sure none of the kids said
anything to her. As she passed through the gates, he crawled back into the
bed, lay down and massaged one eye with the heel of his palm, desperately
trying to forget what he'd just noticed on the middle finger of her left
hand.





to be continued