Fiction by Frank Gaughan
The hospice nurse was running late, about 30 minutes, she said, which Greg figured meant 45. He opened the bedroom door gently, as if Susan just had the flu and was finally resting. In reality, the cocktail of fentanyl and lorazepam meant that a marching band could tromp over the bed and not wake her. Better that way. Mugsy followed him inside, sniffed around the bed sheets covering Susan’s feet and then curled herself into a ball. The dog knew as well as anybody.
For a long minute, Greg studied Susan and thought for the tenth time in a week that she had passed. Her breathing had become so shallow that her chest did not rise and fall. He felt her hand. Her warmth relieved him of anxiety and made him feel selfish at the same time. The woman he had known for 50 years did not want to live like this. He should be telling her that everything was okay.
“Hi.” Her voice barely audible over the din of the oxygen machine.
“Shari is on the way,” said Greg. Shari would change the bed sheets, manage any bowel movement, and urge Susan to sip a teaspoon of Ensure, which she had not done in several days. If Susan’s eyes were open, she would close them and say, “Ice chips.”
But today she said, “Your game.” Somehow, through the fog of pain and painkillers, she had realized that today was a Saturday during baseball season, meaning Greg should be umpiring a game at Melville Elementary.
“I’ll call and tell them—”
“Go.”
“No.”
“Mugsy’s here.”
The dog’s ears shifted at the sound of her name.
There was never any point in arguing with Susan. Before all this, she was a beast of a lawyer. So, Greg made a show of explaining to Mugsy the importance of her new job and, for her part, Mugsy made a show of listening. Then, Greg texted Shari to say the back door would be open.
Susan was right. The game would be good for him, a few hours of joy wedged into a bookcase of suffering. He took the little Honda, Susan’s car. She had not driven the thing in months, and Greg’s trail of baseball dirt, coffee cups, and Costco receipts was slowly displacing the polished orderliness that was characteristic of her spaces.
#
Melville Elementary took their baseball seriously. They were doing fundraising for a new scoreboard. The grounds were watered, grass cut, dirt raked. The beauty of the field, the sound of the ball hitting the bat, the dramatic calls—strike three, safe, out—all of these things made Greg feel alive, and then suddenly sad for feeling anything other than sad. Susan used to attend the games, chat up the moms over donuts and coffee. Greg figured this season would be his last. His whole way of living would go with Susan.
“You holding up okay, Blue?” In the tradition of the game, Powers always called Greg “Blue” when he was on the field and wearing the blue shirt and shorts that marked little league umpires everywhere.
“Good days and bad.”
“Anything you need. Sam’s making lasagna. I’ll bring some by later.”
Mason, the coach for the visiting team, West Sable, must’ve overheard because he asked, “You two know each other?”
Greg told Mason that a lot of the coaches and umpires know each other.
“It’s got to be a fair game is all I’m saying,” said Mason.
Not knowing quite what to say, Greg settled on, “I call them as I see them.”
Powers’ Melville Knights were the home team, which meant they should be on the field right now with Powers hitting balls to the fielders. Instead, the away team, the West Sable Tigers, was on the field. “Shouldn’t your guys be out there?” asked Greg.
“I let West Sable have it. Or really this guy took it.” He pointed at Coach Mason who was in the process of walloping a ground ball to the shortstop. “I had 8 kids here at 9:15, so this guy counts them and says that ‘according to article 17, section 9 the home team can take the field,’ but since it technically takes 9 to make a team, then he gets the field for the entire warm up.”
“Do me a favor and cream these guys,” said Greg.
He called over both coaches. You’re supposed to go over the rules, which change a bit depending on the age group. In this league and at this age, the batter cannot run to first on a dropped third strike. Stealing is only allowed from first base. After five runs, the offensive side retires regardless of outs.
Powers nodded and spat the husk of a sunflower seed down the third base line.
#
The game was tied 3-3 in the bottom of the fifth inning. The Knights had a runner on third with one out. The Knights’ batter hit a fly ball to left. In this situation, the runner on third may go home, but needs to remain on the third base bag until the fly ball is caught, a delay which gives the fielder a fair chance at throwing out the runner at home. It’s the umpire’s job to watch, to make sure the runner holds until the ball is caught. Greg did so—or at least started to. He watched the ball fly across the blue sky and pass a bird—might’ve been a Cooper’s hawk, possibly a Sharp-Shinned one. Susan would’ve been able to identify the bird easily. It was not so much the process of hawk identification that distracted Greg as it was the conviction that this hawk held Susan’s spirit, that its flight would take her above the trees, beyond the clouds, into a world he could not know. “Goodbye,” he said, watching the hawk through the long arc of its flight.
Only Mason’s screaming, “Step on third!” broke Greg from his reverie. The Knights’ runner had gone home, the catcher had thrown the ball back to the third baseman, and finally, the confused 11-year-old stepped on third. Mason looked expectantly at Greg who said nothing, although he quickly identified the problem. If the runner leaves the base early, before the fly ball is caught, he can be called out. Clearly, Mason thought the runner left early, and just as clearly, Greg had not seen the critical part of the play.
He called Powers and Mason to a conference.
“Are you blind or is this just your first day?” said Mason.
“Easy,” said Powers. “I didn’t see it either. Blue?”
Greg said he didn’t see the play. Powers agreed to take the out, seeing as Mason felt so strongly.
“No, no, no. That’s no good,” said Mason.
“What’s no good? You said the kid was out,” said Powers.
“That’s not the point!” Mason yelled. “You give me this, you’ll just take it out on my ass next inning.”
“Easy,” said Greg. “We got kids and families all over. We’re supposed to be role models.”
In the next inning, the West Sable lead-off hitter tapped a roller to the Knights’ shortstop. The West Sable kid had hustle, but the throw still beat him by a half step. Greg had long since lost his hustle, but he trucked up the first base line to show he was in position to see the play.
“Out!” called Greg.
Mason ran out of the dugout, protesting the play. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re taking it out on my ass.”
“Coach, we can talk about plays, but I’m giving you a formal warning about the language. Next time, you’re out of the game,” said Greg.
“We’re already out of the game.” Mason turned to his team. “That’s it. Wrap it up, everybody.” The kids on the West Sable bench just looked at one another.
“Coach,” said Greg. “You do this, you lose the game by forfeit. It’s a 3-3 game. Let them play.”
To this Mason said, just loud enough for Greg and Powers to hear, “What’s the point with you two sucking each other’s cocks all game. I’ll show you what it is to lose.”
Greg could have let it go, pretended he did not hear. West Sable was leaving the field either way. But he did hear it, and he was certain he would return home to find Susan dead, so he turned to Mason. “You’re out of here!” Mason didn’t even turn around.
#
Mugsy was waiting at the driveway when Greg got home. She always went through the dog door to greet whatever car was pulling in. He could tell the dog was nervous, pacing around and nudging Greg inside the house.
Susan has almost disappeared in the bedsheets. He had rehearsed last words, but they didn’t seem right anymore. He’d forgotten half of them anyway. Instead, he lay beside her and held her impossibly frail hand against his beating heart. The counselor had explained the stages of dying. The last ones were supposed to be painless.
At last, Greg pulled himself to his feet. “You go on now. I’ll be fine.” He’d been told that at the very end, some people want to be alone, but he stopped at the doorway and looked back at her. “Not yet.”
He called for Mugsy, thinking everyone should be together one last time. The dog didn’t answer, so he looked downstairs. He found her halfway down the driveway, lying on the ground, just the tip end of her tail beating the pavement. Not knowing if she’d been hit by a car, he checked for trauma, feeling each limb up from the paw, and gently pressing her abdomen and spine. He called out for Shari, his voice thin and breathless. She knelt beside him and took the dog’s floppy ear between her fingers. “Be with Susan. I’ll call the vet.”
#
Susan had been cremated, her ashes placed in an urn from Walmart that she had picked out herself. “You will definitely spend too much, so here,” she said. Half the town showed up at the wake.
Mike Powers was there. After three straight days of hearing “I’m so sorry” and telling everyone, “Thank you,” Greg was hoping to talk about something else, but if the topic was not Susan, it was Mugsy’s unexpected death. “That’s a raw deal,” said Powers.
“The thing I keep seeing over and over is her eyebrows. You know how dogs can move their eyebrows around? She had this look after she did something bad, like when she’d steal your sandwich. It was an ‘I’m sorry’ kind of look. That’s how she died, feeling sorry that she couldn’t be with Susan.”
“Do dogs have heart attacks?”
“Vet said she must have gotten into some kind of poison. But Mugs didn’t eat weird things. Food, yeah. But she wasn’t the kind of dog to lap up a bunch of Roundup. We don’t keep that stuff around anyway.”
“I’ve seen your lawn—all crabgrass and dandelions.”
“Susan liked it that way. An environmentally-friendly lawn, she said. Less work for me at any rate.”
Powers, a retired ex-cop, now handled security at the convention center downtown. “You still got those cameras?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
Powers took out his phone. With the app, you could log in and see the recording. With some fiddling, Powers navigated to the feed from the day Susan died. The whole thing happened at double the speed: Greg walks inside the house. Mugsy follows. White Ford F-150 pulls up to the curb. Mugsy comes out. Guy in a jacket and ballcap walks up the drive and sets something down. Mugsy eats it. Ford drives off.
“What kind of sick bastard?”
“Mason,” said Powers. “That was the same day you threw him out of the game. Guy’s got the same truck. Same ball cap. Look.”
Practically half the town drove a 150, and through the grainy footage, it was hard to see exactly what kind of ball cap the guy was wearing. Maybe it was the West Sable Tigers cap. Maybe it wasn’t.
“I don’t know,” said Greg.
“Remember what he said, just before you tossed him?”
“Something about cocksuckers.”
“After that. He said, ‘I’ll show you what it is to lose.’”
“He’s going to drive up and kill someone’s dog over a little league baseball game?”
Powers had a clear view of human nature. “I’ve seen double homicides over pocket change. Hell yeah, he’d kill a dog over a baseball game.”
“We should call the police,” said Greg.
Powers scoffed at the idea. “Are you kidding? Where do you think we are, Mayberry? They’ll send someone down, take a report. And you know where that goes.”
In the intervening pause, Greg considered the injustice he had suffered. What would Susan do? He reached for her essential goodness. She would have grieved Mugsy. Then, at some point way past when Greg thought it was time, she would have gotten up and walked back into the world, tears still running down her face. Susan would have called the police, and when the cops ignored her just like Powers said they would, she’d have posted pictures all over the neighborhood and called the local newspaper. She would have called the schools to remind them that serial killers start by torturing animals. Greg balled his hands into fists.
“You should kill his dog. Bet he’s got one,” said Powers.
In another time, Greg might have laughed at the idea.
Surely, his next step involved misuse of the league database, but there were all sorts of reasons why umpires might need a list of coaches’ addresses. That night Greg cruised past Mason’s house. The place looked like most homes in the area, two levels, three bedrooms. Backyard. White Ford F-150 in the driveway. Greg knew the truck to be one of the most enduringly popular trucks in America, and everyone from your local plumber to your grandmother drives one of these things. He would need better evidence, or at least more evidence.
That night, he met Powers to relay the results of his reconnaissance.
“You can’t just zoom by the house. You gotta run surveillance,” said Powers. “You gotta know when the occupants of the house come and go. Does he have a dog?”
“Didn’t see one.”
“He’s got one. Everyone around here does. You’ll need to know the dog’s schedule. Probably sometime between 9:00 and midnight, the dog goes out to pee. That’s when you get him.” Powers opened a bag to reveal a pair of night vision goggles, the kind that make everything look like the inside of a watermelon Jolly Rancher.
“What am I supposed to do with these?”
“If you’re going to hunt the darkness, you gotta be able to see in the dark.”
Later that evening, as Greg approached Mason’s house for a second time, he cut the lights to Susan’s Honda and set up down the street. A Honda parked on a side street among other cars would not stand out. A guy sitting in that Honda with night vision equipment was another story. Greg took care to duck below the window when he heard a car approaching. He peered up to the side-view mirror, but the lights of the approaching truck blinded him. After they passed, he peeled off the goggles and saw Mason’s truck speeding down the street.
He followed. Recklessly close, but it was too late now. The truck slowed and made a quick right into the driveway. Greg kept driving. He stopped at the next intersection and turned around, fiddling with the night vision once again. “Useless.” He cast them to the side. Mason stepped out of the truck, and some big fluffy dog came out to greet him, a retriever of some kind. Given the great flag of a tail, probably a Golden.
He reported back to Powers once again.
“Was it the same jacket as in the video?” asked Powers.
“Might have been the jacket. Might not have been.”
Powers frowned. “The intelligence picture is always fuzzy. By the time you get a clear enough view, the window has closed.”
“The window?” asked Greg.
“The window of opportunity. There comes a time when you decide to act or not to act. Go or no go. But if you go, you’re all in.”
#
That night, Greg sat alone while a muted Gene Hackman western played, providing the only light in the room. He had always talked through difficult decisions with Susan. There was so much of her still here, it was hard to imagine she was gone. He went upstairs and packed her clothes in boxes. Her pillow, six different kinds of hair conditioner, make-up, shoes. The medicine chest had fifty kinds of pills and patches: fentanyl, lorazepam, oxycodone. All the boxes went into the garage. Barefoot on the driveway, he studied the spot where Mugsy died.
But Mugsy didn’t just…die. Susan died, and while that was awful, it was the end of a long and difficult illness. Mugsy was murdered.
Greg looked up at the stars. Where was Susan now? Was she in the stars? Or on her way to them? Was she in some circle of light? Perhaps she was still here, a bird of some kind? He called out to her, but there was no way for him to hear a response that would displace Powers’ assessment turning in his mind: Go or no go. But if you go, you’re all in.
“Fuck it. I’ll show you what it is to lose.” Greg tore through the boxes in the garage until he found the necessary pills and patches, the potency high enough to kill a whole pack of dogs. In the kitchen, from the back of the freezer, he pulled out a box of chicken wings. He cut long slices in the meat and stuffed the drugs under the bones. It was a half-assed job at best, but Goldens will eat your shoes just to swallow the socks.
He put the box of poisoned chicken wings on the passenger seat of the Honda and drove to the top of the hill overlooking Mason’s house. His hands fidgeted as he imagined scenarios that required him to explain himself. Just some guy with a box of half-frozen chicken wings under his arm, out for a walk in the dark. There were lights on in Mason’s house, lights on in all the houses. But lights were on when this asshole poisoned Mugsy.
As he walked up the driveway, he paused—unsure of what to do next. He realized that he had no plan, just a box of poisoned chicken wings under his arm. A motion-activated light clicked on, illuminating the driveway and out came Baker, a 75-pound Golden Retriever, who decided instantly, even before fully sniffing this new pack member, that Greg was The Guy. The dog’s great flag of a tail wagged so fast that his hips wagged too. There were sniffs and licks and an ever-inquiring nose moving toward the box of delicious chicken under Greg’s arm. Greg squatted down like the catcher he was in his youth and petted the dog. “Look at this good boy!” he said, rubbing Baker’s soft underbelly.
#
Inside, Mason saw the driveway light had clicked on. Everyone was home, but sometimes, people did a three-point turn in the driveway, which set the thing off. But then the dog door opened and shut, so he knew Baker was out there. Mason went to the window, caught a glimpse of a man petting Baker, and then turned to the kids: “Go to your rooms, now,” Mason commanded. From the closet, he removed a pump-action shotgun and chambered a round with every intention of putting the fear of Jesus into this goddamned porch pirate.
Mason kicked open the front door and set the stock of the weapon into his shoulder. “Get away from my dog.”
Greg put his hands up in the air, and as he did the box of wings dropped to the ground.
“Blue?”
The dog moved toward the chicken wings, taking the box in his teeth, gently as if holding a prized duck, then trotted off to the backyard.
“You killed my dog.”
“The hell I did.”
“I know what you did,” said Greg. “And I wanted you to know that I know.”
“You come on my property again, I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”
Greg took off into the backyard as fast as his arthritic knees and double hip replacement could carry him.
#
“Stop!” Mason ran after him. Once in the clearing of the yard, he leveled the gun at the old man but thought better of shooting him. Still on the move, he aimed the weapon at the sky figuring that a warning shot might have the desired effect. Mason’s kids had a thing for trucks: toy fire trucks, dump trucks, tractor trailers, flat beds, car hauling trucks, trucks with big wheels designed to run over the top of other trucks. So many trucks that it would later prove impossible to tell which one got underfoot. Had Mason kept the weapon pointed at the ground, his fall would likely have been of little consequence. But with the gun pointed at the sky and with his finger on the trigger preparing to squeeze off a warning shot, the fall sent his body and his weapon horizontal to the ground. A double-aught buckshot boomed across the yard, past the swing set and into Greg’s back.
Greg didn’t move much, except for some grasping with his fingers stretched out before him as if reaching for a prize. The dog, unaccustomed to loud bangs, dropped the box of wings and took off at a gallop. Mason pulled himself to his knees. The recoil of the uncontrolled shotgun had bounced the stock against his face. Bloodied but otherwise undamaged, he crossed the distance between himself and the wounded man. It seemed that all the lights in all the houses came on at once. Mason’s wife ran onto the patio. She opened her mouth as if to speak but ran back inside without a word.
Greg’s blood was draining into frothy pink puddles all around him.
“Why’d you run?” asked Mason. He turned the man over. He didn’t know if that was the right thing to do, but he did it. Greg’s eyes suggested a presence, even if they were unfocused. Above him, beyond Mason’s face and the bright lights of the porches and the second-story bedrooms, a half moon lit the sky.
Mason’s wife returned with an armful of towels. “I called the ambulance,” she said, applying pressure against the bleeding. “Help is on the way.”
“What’s he saying?” Mason looked more at his shotgun than his wife.
“He’s in shock!”
“What’s he saying?” demanded Mason.
“For Christ’s sake, what does it matter? He’s saying ‘wings. Wings.’”
Frank Gaughan is a writer and educator based in New York. His academic writing has appeared in College Composition and Communication, Inside Higher Ed, and other venues focused on rhetoric and writing studies. He teaches composition and ESL at Hofstra University and is currently working on a short fiction collection.
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