I'm at 1531 words with this story. Five hundred and thirty-one more than I prefer for Flash Fiction Friday. Maybe I should just call it Fiction Friday. Anyway, this story is written in the first person, but, please note, doesn't represent me personally.
Swing It Away
By,
Jennifer E. Miller
The sun begins setting
over the grassy fields of the sports park. I don’t know why I was out here in
the first place. I prefer the walking trails on the opposite side of the park
that weave through trees, leading down to the river. The bunnies emerge in the
evening to munch on the grass and other wild plants. Sometimes I surprise them
when I walk around the corner, and they retreat back to safety under the
shrubbery. Other times, at a comfortable distance from me, they hop out and let
me watch them. It’s intriguing the way their noses twitch all the time. Their
dark eyes stare me down in their peripheral vision.
I guess,
simply, I want to see the other side of the park. The side I didn’t know but
knew was there. It didn’t look unordinary. A bunch of soccer fields, I quit
counting at dozen, and several baseball diamonds.
Various paved pathways
zig-zag through the park. I step onto one and follow it through the soccer
fields. Games or practices, how was I to know, were finishing up. The sounds of
cooler lids clang shut, zippers zip, and final bounces of balls on
grass-stained knees echo. The kids high-five each other, then climb into their
vans, sliding the doors shut.
It reminds me
of what I wished of my childhood. I longed for their laughter, the carefree way
they went about their day. Heck, not even having to find a way home; their moms
were waiting for them.
My mom never showed
up for me after practice. I waited, hoping I’d hear the familiar sound of the
tires. After twenty minutes or so, the coach offered to give me a ride home,
where I’d find both my folks buzzed, in glassy-eyed stupor in front of a
flickering television screen. They forgot again, they said. I didn’t bother
telling them about the reminder note I left on the kitchen table.
I wrap my
jacket tighter, continuing my walk, which brings me to empty baseball fields.
The wind blows a thin cloud of dust over the bases. Glancing at an outfield, I
see a silhouette of a man. He swings and twists his body. I wonder why he is batting
in the outfield rather than at home plate.
The soccer moms
drive past, taking the laughter and good times away. It was silent except for the
occasional crunch of my shoes over the first few fallen leaves of autumn.
A noise caught
my attention.
Whoosh!
Curious, I look
around.
Whoosh!
I hear it again
as the silhouette rotates. This time I realize he didn’t swing out in front,
like a batter, he starts from the back, scooping up toward the sky. He was
golfing.
But I hear no
contact with a ball. No click as it met the metal club, no thud when it met the
turf.
Curiosity gets
the best of me and I make my way over. I pause at the bleachers behind first
base and watch. Squinting against the setting sun, I walk along the baseline to
see better, stopping when I am in line with this stranger, perhaps fifty feet
away. Even though I know it’s rude, I intrusively stare.
The man
repositions himself after his last swing, hips square, thumbs properly aligned
on the club handle. Shifting his feet into place, he focuses on the grass at
his feet, where a pitted ball would normally sit on a smooth wooden tee. He
swings the club back, and thrusts his rotating torso, arcing the club toward
the sky again.
“Ah!” the man
says, satisfied.
I follow his
gaze towards the sky, as though tracking his shot on the course, anticipating
its landing spot.
This time, the
man stands back, leaning against his club like a cane. He briefly looks in my direction,
silently acknowledging my presence, and sets up for another empty swing.
“Why are you
hitting nothing?” I blurt out.
“Ran outta
balls,” he answers, shrugging.
I don’t see any
in the distance I can retrieve for him.
“Got more?”
“Nah, they just
bring back the problems.”
He swings
again.
“What problems?”
“You nosy,
ain’t ya?”
He sets himself
up again.
I snort. “Not
everyday one see a man swinging a golf club on a baseball diamond.”
“I ain’t in the
diamond, I’m in the outfield.”
He swings.
“Oooh! That one
wasn’t good. You’re distracting my game.”
“Sorry,” I
mumble. But I stay put.
“You leaving?”
he asks.
“I want to know
why you don’t get more golf balls.”
The man sighs. “The
same reason you’re out here loitering in a place designed for sports
activities.”
“What?”
He rests a fist
on his hip. “When a man finds himself somewhere he don’t belong, it means one
of two things: he is looking for trouble or trying to clear his mind. You don’t
strike me as trouble-type.”
I study the
man. Is he mad?
This time it’s
he who snorts. “I see you don’t comprehend. Most don’t at first.”
He takes
another swing. I welcome the now soothing stroke slicing the air. I can’t bring
myself to break away from this mysterious stranger and our acute conversation,
which I have no idea where it will lead. But I have to know.
“Explain,” I
said. It was neither a demand or a request.
He strolls over
to me. I thought him to be a small man, but he seems to grow taller as he
approaches.
“You see,” he
starts, “most people have a crutch; something to take their mind away from
their troubles. Some drive along desolate highways with music blaring, other
lose themselves in dense wilderness, many simply throw stones in the river.”
“Of course,” I
say. “Otherwise they will go mad.”
The man smiles,
showing a neat row of teeth. He raises his thick eyebrows as if in a eureka
moment.
“Wrong.
I, myself, hit golf balls as an emotional release. Standing on the range, I
imagined each one representing a pesky thought, and I whacked it away far from
me. Felt good to get physical. Give it a piece of my mind, if you will.”
I
smiled at the pun.
“Therapeutic,”
I said.
“Sure,
sure.” He exhales, looking into the sky’s and its changing colors. “But they
came back—and I figured out why.”
I
straighten, standing more alert.
“Thinking
I had knocked out my frustrations, I packed up and went home.”
Turning
back, he sees my confused expression.
“It
didn’t make sense at first to me either. Felt gratification doing something I
enjoyed, to expunge whatever troubles consumed me. But why were they coming
back into my mind?...” his thoughts trail a moment of ponder. “Then it hit me. I
used golf as a way out. No, not golf. Swinging the damn club, that’s what.
“So
the next time I went out to the range I didn’t bring balls with me. Wasn’t
gonna let those little bastards torment me another second. I blasted imaginary
golf balls off somewhere. The others thought I turned looney, swinging at nothing.
Eventually, I was asked not to return on account I was making folks feel
uncomfortable.”
“Now
you come here?”
“Where
ever. Sometimes I stand on a boulder overlooking the river. Another time, I
climbed on the roof of my shed. Neighbor called somebody—adult protective
services—on me. I explained I was just swinging away my troubles. They asked
why I didn’t golf normally, so I described all the things I just told you.”
I
shift uncomfortably. He notices.
“You
think I’m mad, too, dontcha?”
“I
think you found a creative way to interpret the world around you.” I was
impressed at my quick thinking.
The
man stands proudly, putting both hands on his hips this time.
“Ah!
Finally, someone who understands,” he exclaims, gleefully satisfied. “You have
a good night now.”
“Thanks.”
I reach the
parking lot where my dented Ford waited for me. It hard starts, as always. I
sit there thinking about what the man said. About swinging away troubles. I
think about what I do to swing away my own troubles. I take walks, I guess. I
go home and the next day I paint pictures with a clear mind. But the ugliness
of my past returns and I go walking again.
The man’s way
had never occurred to me before. How routine locks us into a thought prison.
I shift my Ford
into gear and go home with the man’s revelation confusing and exhilarating me
at the same time.
The next day I
return for a nature walk, but I pause at the corner where I usually find the
bunnies. Quietly, I sit down and dig out my sketch book and a pencil from my
knapsack. I ignore the wet grass soaking into my rump, and the autumn leaves
raining upon me.
When the
bunnies appear I quickly sketch them, trying to capture their wiggling noses on
my artist’s paper. I draw the baseball diamonds in the background, although
they are disguised as hills to keep the naturalistic theme of my drawing. I
finish with an outline of a man in the distance, swinging away.
Copyright 2017 Jennifer E. Miller
