Baseball Dads: Sex, Drugs, Murder, Children's Baseball Part 11

Dwayne needed to have a few stiff drinks and talk it over with a friend. He wasn't looking for advice. He wanted someone to shut up and listen. He definitely didn't feel like dealing with Russ, and Tommy was too woven into the social-climber scene to be trusted. Those two would never let him live it down if they knew Estelle had allowed a Walmart guy to throw a bone at her.

He dialed his phone.

"This is Steve."

"What's going on, bro?"

"Just looking at my teachers' progress reports and watching MSNBC. You?"

"Awww, man, I just need to have a few drinks and talk to somebody. I was gonna see if you wanted to join me."

"I would, but I-"

"Thanks, man. I'll see you at The Tavern in ten minutes."

Dwayne whipped the Audi into the run down old parking lot of The Tavern. It seemed a little bit out of place. He usually drove his truck there. The Tavern was a run-down old joint on the outskirts of the good part of town. Dwayne liked it, though. The people were real. You might actually get knifed if you ordered anything other than beer, tequila, or whiskey.

Dwayne waited until Steve pulled up. He arrived in his Prius and parked it between two heavy-duty GMC diesel trucks. Steve hopped out of his 50-MPG Democrat hauler wearing gray corduroys and a tight white silk Sean John t-s.h.i.+rt.

"Holy Jesus," Dwayne said. "Are you trying to get us killed? What the h.e.l.l is that s.h.i.+rt, man?"

"It's Sean John, by Puff Daddy, or P. Diddy, or Diddy. Why?"

"Didn't they at least sell them in your size?"

"It's formfitting. And it's a really nice s.h.i.+rt. I'll have you know that several kids at my school have been beat up for their Sean John clothes."

"That doesn't surprise me at all."

"No, I meant they got beat up in a good way."

"Of course. Hopefully, tonight you won't find out that there's really no difference between being beat up in a good way and being beat up in a bad way."

The two friends perched themselves atop a couple of barstools near the end of the bar. On the old square television hanging above a wall of cheap liquor, Dwayne was glad to see that the Rangers were up over the Angels 60.

"Two cold ones and two whiskeys, neat, please," Dwayne called out to the pregnant, acne-scarred bartender.

She poured the drinks and slid them in front of Dwayne and Steve. Steve recognized her from his high school a couple of years back. She'd been to his office several times. This was exactly where he told her she would end up if she didn't get her s.h.i.+t together. Steve's disapproving look was trumped by her look, which said I'll f.u.c.king gut you like a fish. He decided not to talk to her.

"So, what's going on, man?" Steve asked in his best school counselor tone.

Dwayne turned up the whiskey gla.s.s and slammed it, wincing and feeling the burn as he turned to answer. "Estelle is having an affair."

He tapped the counter for a refill.

"Oh, Jesus, Dwayne, I'm sorry," Steve replied. "Is it Russ?"

Dwayne shot a disgusted sideways glance at Steve.

"Russ?! Are you f.u.c.king kidding me? Why the f.u.c.k would it be Russ?"

The bartender set another whiskey down for Dwayne. He slammed it and tapped the bar for another, waiting for Steve to answer.

"I don't know, man. It's just the way he always talks about her to you. And Tommy. He mentions covering her a.s.s in honey at least a half-dozen times a day. He never talks about my wife that way."

"Steve, Judith has a terrible a.s.s. It's huge. It's not proportionate at all to the rest of her body."

Dwayne looked at Steve. He'd gone too far. He could tell he'd hurt his feelings.

"I'm sorry, bro," Dwayne said consolingly. He threw an arm around Steve. "That wasn't cool. Judith's a sweet girl. I'm sure she's got great t.i.ts or something."

The two sat for several minutes in silence. The bartender continued to bring refills of whiskey and beer. Dwayne built up a healthy buzz.

"So anyhow," Dwayne broke the silence. "I asked you here because I needed to talk. I thought I turned over a new leaf today, bro, and it was really working for me. I got my s.h.i.+t together at work. Estelle stopped by the office and rode me like a mechanical bull. Things were going great, seemed like they might turn around. Then that Walmart b.a.s.t.a.r.d Pete f.u.c.ked up the baseball practice."

"Yeah, he sure did. Same old s.h.i.+t."

"And he's the one that's f.u.c.king Estelle."

It was a h.e.l.l of a bomb to drop. Steve was beside himself. He went into total shock. He picked up his whiskey and slammed it, tapping the bar afterward for another.

"I don't mean to rub salt in the wound here, Dwayne," Steve said. "But you know you can't make fun of Judith anymore. I mean, you know me, I'm not a big 'cla.s.s warfare' kind of guy. But he f.u.c.king works at Walmart, man."

"I know. I know."

"That's gotta sting, Dwayne."

"It does."

"So what're you gonna do? You could probably get past it if it were a Men's Warehouse, or h.e.l.l, even a Target. Target is pretty nice these days. I mean ... Even Costco has stepped up their game. But Walmart? No sir. They don't even try, man."

"I know. Even if it were Sears, or JC Penney, I mean ... Christ, just give me something to work with, you know?"

"So what are you gonna do?"

Dwayne slammed another whiskey. He was good and drunk now.

"I don't think I could've said this last week, or h.e.l.l, even yesterday. But I think I love her, man."

Steve hunched over the bar and stirred his whiskey with his finger while he pondered the situation. Was Walmart something they could get past? Would it eat at Dwayne for the rest of his life?

"I think you've gotta try, Dwayne. You've got Alex to think of here. You need to take control of the situation and fix it."

Dwayne rose to his feet. He could feel it again: that really good feeling about the way life was going. He knew he could get past this. It was worth a try.

"Thanks for being a friend, Steve." Dwayne extended his hand in grat.i.tude.

Steve reached out and shook it, clasping his other hand on top for a more heartfelt gesture of support.

"And if you tell anyone about this," Dwayne pulled Steve in close, "I'll rip your f.u.c.king arms off and beat you to death with them."

Steve's smile dropped from his face. Dwayne turned and walked out the door.

Once he was in the Audi, Dwayne sparked up another joint. He turned the music up loud. It was Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher." He threw the car in reverse and punched the gas. He flew over the curb and into the middle of the road in a stunt-like reverse 180, popped the car down into drive, and sped toward home.

Only ... he didn't go home. Dwayne drove past his street and headed to Walmart.

There was a fire burning deep in Dwayne's soul. It was consuming him. It was that same level of emotion that had made him call every past-due customer. The same level of emotion that had pushed him to make love to his wife on top of his desk two more times than she had expected. It was that same level of emotion, only darker.

Dwayne parked in a quiet corner of the Walmart parking lot. From this spot, he had full visibility of the entrances and exits. It was a twenty-four-hour Walmart, he told himself, so he would have to be alert, watching every single vehicle.

He wasn't prepared for the midnight creatures of Walmart. It was mainly the meth-lab crowd: s.h.i.+rtless men and tube-topped women, all with mullets, carting around four- and five-year-old children, each wearing nothing but a diaper and drinking a c.o.ke. There were several "Dixie flag" b.u.mper stickers on rusted vehicles with mismatched tires. It was a sight to behold. If they hung in there long enough, Dwayne thought, MTV might come along and give them a reality show, turning the process of evolution and the idea of celebrity completely on its head yet again.

He waited, lit a joint, and then waited more. His head began to fall every few moments from utter exhaustion. His eyes began to close. He managed to slap himself back to a state of alert several times before giving way to a whiskey- and weed-induced slumber.

A couple of hours later, a truck door slammed and jolted him to consciousness. He popped up, ready for action. It was 3:00 a.m.

Dwayne started his car and put it into drive. He still felt hammered. Just as he turned his vehicle's lights on, he noticed a five-year-old burgundy Toyota Avalon making its way into the lot.

Dwayne's heart raced. He was sweaty and mad, and had a crick in his neck. Neil Diamond's "America" played on the radio. Obviously, the station he had been listening to switched formats after he pa.s.sed out. He turned it up anyway, inching the Audi to the end of the row of cars where the Avalon was parking.

No one was around. Dwayne watched Pete Rearden, showered and ready to kick a.s.s for another day at Walmart, exit his Avalon and walk to the rear of it. He began to stack files of paperwork beneath his arms as he hunched himself over, digging around in the trunk.

The rage overtook Dwayne. He jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, and proved the manufacturer's impressive zero-to-sixty claims to be spot-on. Pete turned to look at Dwayne at the last second, right before Dwayne nailed him head-on, sending him high into the night sky over the Audi with a full flip. Files of paper exploded into the air.

"Clean up on aisle four, motherf.u.c.ker!" Dwayne screamed as Neil Diamond belted out the climax of the song with all his heart. He jacked the brakes hard and looked in the rearview mirror.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," he whispered. He wasn't scared; he just hadn't planned anything out.

Dwayne threw the car in reverse and stopped just short of Pete. He got out of the vehicle and looked around. There was still no one. Pete was in bad shape. His legs were a mangled mess. He had propped himself up on his elbows and was trying to drag himself to safety. Blood was pouring from his nose and mouth. Dwayne had no idea how Pete was still conscious.

He popped the trunk on the Audi, impressed as the day he bought it at the ample trunk s.p.a.ce. The salesman at the time had joked that there was room for three bodies back there. Dwayne needed room for only one.

He reached inside Alex's baseball bag and pulled out his $349 lucky tournament bat. He walked up behind Pete and took a full swing at his head, making that glorious Tink! sound that bats make when you put one over the fence.

Thankfully, Dwayne had spent a lot of time in his warehouse loading huge bags of dirt onto trucks. It was good training for loading a body into a trunk. It had always seemed so difficult in movies, he thought to himself, but this wasn't that bad at all. Dwayne threw the bat on top of Pete's lifeless body in the trunk, slammed it shut, and headed to the warehouse. Pete's spreadsheets and files flew up from the pavement in a horizontal tornado behind him as Dwayne hauled a.s.s out of the parking lot.

He cranked up the radio again. It was more easy listening. He didn't mind. Dwayne was an easygoing kind of guy. He slapped his hands on the steering wheel to the percussion genius of Barry Manilow's "Copacabana." When he arrived at his office a few miles away, he was singing The Commodores' "Sail On" at the top of his lungs. G.o.d, those Commodores could sing.

He felt great.

He pulled to one of the large warehouse doors around the back of the property, opened it up, drove the Audi in, and closed it again immediately. He then moved the car to the rear of the cavernous interior where the heavy equipment was housed. As he parked next to the hoist and leaf shredder, Dwayne heard soft thumps coming from the trunk. Pete wasn't quite dead yet.

Dwayne looked at his watch. It was 3:37 a.m. He was making good time. He knew that his work crews would start showing up around 6:30 a.m. He had enough time to make sure he did things right.

Dwayne grabbed some thick vinyl zip ties and opened the trunk.

"Dwayne," Pete sobbed. "Please ... help me."

"I tried to help you earlier, Pete, but noooo, you wanted to run things your way. I mean, seriously, who puts a kid like Alex at left f.u.c.king field? And ninth batter? Please. That's just ridiculous."

Dwayne slipped the zip ties over Pete's ankles and around his wrists and tightened them as much as he could. He needed them on good. Pete didn't have the energy to struggle. He was in and out of consciousness. Dwayne reached over and slapped him on the cheek to make sure Pete could hear him.

"We're going deep into the playoffs, Pete. Deep. h.e.l.l, we may win it all. Our team has talent. And you could've been there for it, Pete. You could've been there."

He grabbed Pete's face and leaned in close, forcing Pete to look him in the eyes. "You could've been there. But you had to go and f.u.c.k my wife."

Pete's blackened, b.l.o.o.d.y eyes got huge. Dwayne shoved his face back down again and walked over to the hoist. The hoist was a gas-powered hybrid of a tractor and a crane, used to pick up crates, large bags, equipment, and so on. It had a large arm with a steel cable and hook that would pivot around and grab and move whatever needed to be grabbed and moved, up to 2,000 pounds.

Dwayne pushed the lifting lever forward. This lowered the hook into the car's trunk near Pete's feet. Enough slack was left in the line so that Dwayne could attach it to the zip ties, which he did, running the hook between Pete's ankles, positioning it squarely in place to lift the weight. Back on the hoist, Dwayne pulled back on the lever, lifting Pete slowly into the air, nearly eight feet off the ground.

Because his legs had been broken in several places, the process was excruciating for Pete. He didn't scream; he just cried until he lost consciousness. Blood and tears streamed steadily toward the ground, pooling together on the concrete floor. Dwayne lowered Pete a couple of feet and walked over to him. He gave him a hard slap to wake him up. They were face to face, with Pete dangling upside-down.

"You made my son feel inadequate today, Pete, and that's just not cool. I want you to be awake for this."

Dwayne fired up the engine of the leaf shredder. He attached a large catch bag to the side, adjusted the setting to "fine," and then climbed aboard the hoist once again. Dwayne thought that Pete might be saying something, but the noise from the equipment drowned it out. Dwayne pivoted the hoist, bringing Pete above the opening of the shredder.

"f.u.c.king Walmart, man." Dwayne said as he pushed the lever down. Pete's body went down, head first, into the shredder. He looked down toward the spinning blades, shaking wildly, as his head disappeared into the cylindrical opening atop the machine. His legs and body erupted into crazy, spasmodic motions as the noise from the machine indicated that the shredding had begun. The shaking stopped once the blades got to mid-chest.

Dwayne was impressed with how quickly he could d.a.m.n near liquefy a human body. When only the feet were visible, he pulled the lever back, jumped down, and pulled the hook off. He dropped the b.l.o.o.d.y feet and ankles into the shredder and listened to the rest of Pete get blown against the back of the catch bag.

Next, Dwayne brought his truck into the warehouse and stationed it underneath the catch bag, where the bag was released into the truck bed. He then picked up a residential-sized push-powered yard fertilizer and set it beside the bag of Pete.

Finally, he grabbed the power washer and blasted the equipment he'd used with full pressure, and then did the same to the inside of the trunk of his Audi. He walked in a circular motion around the equipment and the car, slowly pus.h.i.+ng all traces of blood down the centrally located drain. He parked his Audi back outside, turned out the lights, pulled down the doors, and headed off to Jenny Field in the truck.

Once there, Dwayne dragged the bag over to the main field that the boys played on and left it in the dugout. He then grabbed the push-powered fertilizer, filled it up to the rim with red sludge formerly known as Pete, and walked back and forth across the baseball field until the machine cast out every tiny bit of him into the perfectly manicured gra.s.s. It took four trips back to the catch bag for refills to get all of Pete spread around.

After his final trip across the outfield, Dwayne looked up at the smiling face of Ricky Dale on the scoreboard advertis.e.m.e.nt. He shot a middle finger at him as he marched back to the dugout.

Dwayne loaded up his truck with the push-powered fertilizer and empty catch bag (which now weighed 180 pounds less), flipped on the main sprinkler for the fields, and drove down to the river behind Jenny Field.

Dwayne threw the fertilizer machine into the middle of the river behind the ballpark. He then found a large rock and placed it inside the catch bag before throwing it into the river as well.