Flash Fiction Friday: Swing It Away

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