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Bat Boy Zvi A.
Sesling
Back in the 1950s Dickie McGregor was the Washington Senators’ centerfielder
and his best friend was Walter (Stem) Stemcarzyk. The two were inseparable after the baseball
games and usually could be found in the same bar downing beers or maybe the hotel lounge
where the team was staying sipping martinis.
Stem, a bachelor would often pick up a couple of women and he and Dickie would then
have some entertainment for the night. One evening
Stem told Dickie he had a ticket to the rodeo but could not go because he had a date, so
gave his ticket to his friend.
Dickie went to rodeo held in Virginia, about forty minutes from Washington. After
a while he got bored watching men in cowboy outfits ride bulls or horses and get thrown
to the ground. He found his car in the parking
lot and began driving. Though the traffic was as usual in the Washington area it took him
a bit more than an hour to get back to his suburban home. There he saw a car parked in
front of his house. Dickie turned off the
motor, reached into the back seat for his baseball bat, and left the car quietly closing
the driver side door and tiptoeing into his home. There he found his wife with Stem
on the couch, her blouse off, his pants down to his knees.
“Some date,
you rat,” Dickie blurted. Dickie’s wife sat up, put her blouse back on and Stem
pulled up his pants.
“It ain’t what it seems Dickie boy, it ain’t what it seems.” “Yeah, so what
is it?”
Dickie’s wife ran out of the room crying and Stem tried to think of what to
say.
“Look, I … we ….” That was as far as Stem got as Dickie
brought up the bat from behind his back and with a swing that had hit twenty home runs
struck Stem squarely in the temple. Three days later the
Senators game was postponed so a funeral could be held. The whole team attended, including
Dickie McGregor, who gave the eulogy.
Carmelita by Zvi A. Sesling The Mexican chick, Carmelita, I’ve
been visiting in Tijuana for months wants to know why I am divorced, so I tell her.
The first wife fucked half the Seventh Fleet in San Diego. They literally came and went.
In and out, so to speak. The second wife chose the Marines at Camp Pendleton while I was
at work so she could buy the clothes she took off for those leatherheads.
My guess is this Mexican gal, Carmelita, probably used to earn her pesos on the
streets of Tijuana. I really don’t care because like the past times I’ve been
in Tijuana, she is going to let me get laid tonight, bless her brown thighs. But then,
unlike the past times, she shows a picture of her late husband, a fat, smiling Mexi wearing
a sombrero and a smile that reveals two missing teeth up front and a belly that’s
downed too many Cervesas. She says his name was Poncho, but it sounds like Pauncho to match
the picture. Then
she says the drug cartel filled him with a hundred pieces of lead because two and a half
million dollars in some drug deal is missing, and now they are looking for her because
Poncho gave her half a million to get away to San Diego and set up a place for them with
different names. He never made it, so she had to scoot out of Tijuana to San Diego late
at night in the trunk of my car.
So here we are at Papa Pedro’s Bar & Grille in La Jolla pretending we
just met when I see a couple of goons at the end of the bar.
“Lady,” I say pretty loud, “just remembered I gotta be at work
early.” And before she can say Oh
senor, I’m gone, out the door of the bar on a side street off Girard in La Jolla
and in my Chevy. I make for home.
I had a rented room on Poole Street, and as I drive up the hill to my pad, I notice
a car following me, so I pass my street and drive up to the main drag and over to Torrey
Pines Drive and down the winding road back to Girard, the car tailing me all the way. I
then take rights and lefts, but the sedan behind me hangs in there. Finally, I stop at the police station and the sedan
takes off. I notice it’s black and has California plates. As soon as it’s out
of sight, I make a U-turn and head home. No car follows.
The next morning, as Carmelita and I had
planned, I hoof it down to the airport, and get a flight to New York.
Carmelita, who’s been my lover for the past year since Poncho’s demise
hangs in San Diego, a few days while avoiding the goons. Then she catches a flight to Dallas,
spends a couple days there and then off to Chicago. From there she’ll fly to Atlanta
before finally coming to New York where, with new names and low visibility, we’ll
live happily ever after with the money she converted to a bank check and slipped to me
while showing me her late husband’s picture.
Zvi
A. Sesling, Brookline, MA Poet Laureate (2017-2020), has published numerous poems and flash/micro
fiction and won international prizes. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he has published
four volumes and three chapbooks of poetry. His flash fiction book is Secret
Behind the Gate. He lives in Brookline, MA. with his wife Susan J.
Dechter.
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