Slippin' into Darkness

12:03 A.M.

There’s the windup, and here’s the pitch: a beer bottle flew through the night air and exploded against a granite cross. Shards of broken glass knifed the soft earth. Cold liquor rained down on clipped blades of cemetery grass, shivered, and formed fat tears.

The pitcher stood on the mounded grave of an insurance salesman who had expired in 1992, exactly sixty feet, six inches from the granite cross. He smiled, appreciating his skill. Half in the bag, but he was still putting them over straight and hard with a strong arm. Dead solid strikes, one after another, each bottle shattering against the center of the granite crosspiece…the cold hard strike zone.

Graveyard baseball was the name of the game. No men on base. Rounded mounds for first, second, and third; the graves of a telephone solicitor, a war hero, and an infant born without a brain. Not exactly a million-dollar infield, but the infield didn’t matter when the pitches were flying straight and true. Every bottle right on target. A cancer-serious no-hitter.

The pitcher sighed, concentrating on the cross. He was alone. No men anywhere, but that was to be expected. This was a pitcher’s game, a hurler’s midnight solitaire. Graveyard baseball was a game that disallowed self-deception and required a certain amount of imagination. After all, a granite cross couldn’t really swing a bat, so imagination was truly a necessity.

Unless the pitches were flying straight and true. Unless the bases remained empty, as they were now. Then the game didn’t require any imagination at all.

Sweat beaded on the pitcher’s forehead, soaking the band of a Hogan Spartans baseball cap that had spent eighteen years lost in one closet or another. His arm would ache like hell tomorrow. Eighteen years had passed since he had last held a beer bottle in his hand and faced an implacable granite batter. But tomorrow’s pain didn’t matter. Tomorrow didn’t matter at all, because tonight it was April, and it was opening day, and the pitcher’s mind was deep in the pit of memory.

Memories that had brought him to this place.

Memories of a girl.

The pitcher opened another bottle-the dry hiss of released pressure was as cold as the stunted stone forest that surrounded him-and he drank deeply.

The windup. The pitch.

The crackle of exploding glass. The smell of beer and a distant ocean breeze and an unseasonably warm April night and clipped cemetery grass.

A gentle rain of alcohol brewed from pure Rocky Mountain spring water.

A wet granite cross reflecting the gleam of the moon.