Heart of the Order

By T.R. Healy

With the assistance of a burly corrections officer, the two old teammates lifted the cream-colored steel casket into the back of the Ryder rental van.  Then they secured the casket with a couple of ropes attached to the inside of the van and braced against it four bales of hay.

Before he got out of the back of the vehicle, Dyer stared at the casket for a moment.  “It’s hard to believe Ted could fit into that box.”

Boxall nodded in agreement.  “He must’ve lost a lot of weight in that place.”

“That’s for sure.  In his heyday he would’ve required a casket twice that size.”

“At least.”

“Are you ready to go?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be I guess.”

Big Ted Mahaffey’s widow, Amanda, asked his former teammates to bring him home to Portsmouth where he could be buried next to his parents on the bluff that overlooked the park where he learned to play baseball.  They could not refuse her request because she was someone they both were very fond of even though they had not spoken with Ted since his incarceration.

***

For eight seasons Skeet Dyer and Dewey Boxall were teammates with Ted on the Amity Broncos.  It was one of eight teams in the Coastside Independent League that played in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.  They usually won more often than they lost but they seldom ever contended for the league championship because they lacked a solid core of reliable pitchers.  They won games because of their prowess with a bat, not their pitching, rarely scoring less than six runs a game.  Boxall and Dyer hit for average, usually line drives to the opposite field, while Ted was the long ball hitter who batted clean- up in the lineup with Boxall ahead of him and Dyer behind the slugger.

Big Ted was the undisputed star of the Broncos, leading the team in home runs every season but his first, and three times was elected the most valuable player in the league.  He also led the team in strikeouts, averaging a couple every game, and his batting average seldom was above .250.  A mammoth guy who weighed nearly 300 pounds, he swung from his heels, with such ferocity that at times he fell to his knees in the batter’s box.  His cap would then fly off his head and some in the stands would doff their caps in appreciation of his desire to crush every ball he swung at with his menacing coal black bat.

***

The drive from the corrections facility outside Los Angeles to Portsmouth was approximately 1,200 miles.  Boxall thought they could deliver the casket in a day but Dyer was skeptical.  Because they agreed to take turns driving the van, Boxall assumed they would flip a coin to see who would start out behind the steering wheel but Dyer noticed a broom inside the vehicle and, grabbing the bottom of the handle as if it were a baseball bat, presented it to Boxall who, smiling, slipped his hand above Dyer’s and, like youngsters on a playground, they walked their hands up the handle until Dyer’s was the last one gripping the broom.

“I still don’t think there’s any way we can make the delivery in a day,” Dyer said as he pulled out of the visitor’s lot of the corrections facility.

Boxall winked.  “Maybe a day and a half.”

“That sounds more like it, partner.”

The two men had known one another since they played for rival teams in high school.  On the Broncos, as they did in high school, Dyer played shortstop and Boxall second base, and they were one of the most efficient keystone combinations in the league, making more than their share of double plays.  Dyer didn’t possess the most accurate throwing arm but, despite his size, Ted was an excellent first baseman and managed to dig out some of his wildest throws.

Though it was past the morning rush hour, traffic was still pretty heavy so Dyer was more certain than ever they would not make it to Portsmouth before tomorrow.  Probably not until sometime late in the afternoon.  Sooner or later, he figured they might have to call Amanda because she was expecting them to arrive this evening.  Back in their playing days they would have had no qualms about driving as fast as necessary but now as men with families they had become much more caution in just about everything they did.

As they crept past a stalled panel truck, Boxall noticed Dyer smiling and asked, “What’s so funny, Skeet?”

He raised a thumb above the steering wheel.  “See that?”

“What?”

“That water tower.”

“Yeah.  What about it?”

“Do you remember that home run Ted hit off that water tower in that bandbox of a stadium in Culver City?”

Boxall smiled.  “Yeah.  That must’ve gone 500 feet.”

“At least.”

“Someone I believe put a plaque on the spot where the ball hit the tower.”

“Someone did.  That’s right.”

“That had to be the longest home run Ted ever hit.”

“I don’t know, Dewey.  He hit an awfully lot of long balls,” Dyer said, steering past a bicyclist walking alongside his flat mountain bike.

“It’s the longest one I remember.”

“What about that blast over the center field wall in that park in Whitman?  I bet it went more than 500 feet.”

“Yeah, that was a long one, all right.  He broke a window in the apartment building across the street from the ball park.”

“You know, you didn’t have to see one of his home runs to know he really tagged one because you could hear the sound of the ball coming off his bat.”

“Like a clap of thunder.”

Dyer grinned.  “That was the night a couple of gals came out of the stands and ran around the bases behind him.”

“Lord, I forgot all about that, Skeet.”

“One of the gals tripped over second base and the long blond wig she was wearing sailed across the infield grass.”

“That’s right,” Boxall recalled.  “And when she ran to pick it up she twisted her ankle and fell again and had to be carried off the field by a couple of groundkeepers.”

“Nowadays, if something like that happened, the woman would be arrested and fined a couple hundred dollars.”

“No doubt.”

***

Shortly before noon Dyer, whose stomach had started to growl, pulled into the gravel lot of a caboose-sized roadside diner.

Boxall, half asleep, sat up in his seat.  “Are we there?”

“I thought we’d get a bite to eat then you can take over the driving.”

“Sounds good.”

In one of the back booths were three boys who looked about ten years of age.  They had on baseball uniforms which had numbers stenciled on the back that were the size of traffic signs.

 “When we were their age,” Dyer observed, after ordering a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich, “we never had uniforms.  Just caps.” 

“Couldn’t afford them.”

“All we wore were jeans and T-shirts.”

“We could play, though.”

“We could and that’s what mattered.”

***

After passing through Carmel, Boxall, who had been driving nearly an hour, got an idea and veered off Highway 101 and headed toward Salinas.  Dyer was sound asleep otherwise Boxall knew his old teammate would object to his taking the detour.  He drove for several minutes before he came to Alameda Drive then, slowing down, he searched for the residence of another former Bronco teammate of theirs, Reece Hubbell, who pitched middle relief for the ball club.  Finally, after quite a few long blocks, he found the small sandstone corner house and pulled into the driveway behind a pockmarked Caprice.

“We’re here, Skeet,” he announced, switching off the engine.

“What?”

“Wake up.”

“I’m awake.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Is this Amanda’s place?” he asked, blinking his eyes.

“Nope.”

“It isn’t?”

“Nope.”

“Where are we then?” “Reece Hubbell’s.”

 “What the hell are we doing here?”

“We weren’t too far away from where he lives and I thought we might as well stop and say hello and let him pay his respects to Ted.”

“You should’ve told me you were going to do this, Dewey.”

“It just popped into my head,” he claimed, “and I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Still, you should’ve told me.”

Without replying, Boxall opened his door and got out of the van and walked up to the front porch with Dyer half a step behind him.  Softly he knocked on the door then stepped back and waited for someone to answer but no one did so he knocked again a little more forcefully and soon heard footsteps inside the house.  In another moment, the door was opened by a freckled woman who was at least half their old teammate’s age and Boxall assumed she was his daughter.

“Hello.”

Nodding, she secured the striped towel that covered her head.

“We’re here to see your father.”

“My father?”

“Reece Hubbell.”

“He’s not my father.  He’s my husband.”

“Oh, my mistake,” Boxall said sheepishly.  “Is he here?”

“He’s at work.  What is it you wanted to see him about?”

Quickly he explained their connection to her husband, which made her smile, but when he then mentioned Ted’s name her smile immediately evaporated and her pear-shaped face hardened into a fierce frown.

“Reece doesn’t want anything more to do with that man,” she said adamantly, “even if he’s in a casket.”

“Why’s that?” Dyer asked, startled by her angry outburst.

“He borrowed $8,000 from Reese several years ago, even signed a promissory note to pay the money back in six months time, but he never did.  Not one red cent.  Reese eventually took him to court and got a judgment but still never got back any of the money he loaned him.”

“I heard Ted had some financial problems.”

“We all have problems, sir, but we don’t have to make them other people’s problems.”

“No, ma’am, you’re right.”

“Please, guys, come by some other time to visit my husband but I’m afraid he would go all to pieces if he knew who you brought with you.”

“We will,” Boxall said, knowing it was very unlikely since neither he or Dyer lived anywhere close to Salinas.

***

Big Ted retired as a player three and a half months before he turned thirty-five.  For a couple more years, however, he remained in the game as a roving hitting instructor in the Giants’ organization.  Then, at the suggestion of one of his uncles, he became a long-haul truck driver and earned considerably more money than he ever earned in his baseball career.  Some winters he went up to Alaska and hauled cargo across some of its treacherous icy roads and earned even more money.

“I may not hear the roar of a crowd for driving up a truck up here,” he wrote on a postcard he sent to Dyer from Alaska, “but I make a hell of a lot more loot than I ever did hitting home runs.”

Ted had been driving for nearly fourteen years when late one afternoon, three weeks before Thanksgiving, he was arrested at a California weigh station for hauling a five-million-dollar shipment of cocaine from Mexico.  The contraband was concealed inside the wheels of his truck.  He claimed he was hired to deliver a shipment of car parts and had no knowledge that he was hauling the cocaine.  At his trial he continued to maintain his innocence but the jury found him guilty and he received a sentence of six years in a California medium security facility.  None of his former teammates could believe he knowingly hauled the illegal contraband or, at least, didn’t want to believe it.

“I’m not so sure now,” Dyer admitted after they left Hubbell’s house.

“About what?”

“That Ted didn’t know he was hauling that cocaine.”

Boxall, long one of his staunchest defenders, sighed.  “Neither am I but I prefer to believe he didn’t know.”

Dyer, silent, recalled how Ted was often in debt when he played for the Broncos.  As the star of the team, he believed he should have the best of everything even if he couldn’t always afford it.

***

Soon after they crossed into Oregon, Dyer, who was back behind the steering wheel, looked for Pfiffs Park where the Broncos always played a dozen games every season.  He thought he remembered where it was located but he couldn’t find it, and Boxall had no idea where it was, either, so he pulled into a service station and asked the attendant.

“You must not be from around here?”

“We aren’t.”

“The park was torn down nearly nine years ago.”

“No kidding.”

The attendant nodded, slinging a greasy rag across his left shoulder.  “It’s a shopping center now full of the same damn shops you find in every other shopping center in the state.”

Dyer asked for directions to the center then backed the van out of the station and got back on the street.

“What are you going there for?” Boxall wondered.

“Just curious.”

The center was less than a mile from the service station and, not surprisingly, was still called Pfiffs Park.

“You want to get a cup of coffee?” Dyer asked as he pulled into the vast parking lot which scarcely had any cars parked in it.

“Yeah.  It’ll help keep me awake for the final push to Portsmouth.”

They found a small coffee house at the north end of the spacious center and sat down at a window table that Dyer figured would have been about where the visiting team’s bullpen was located.  The sole waitress handed them a menu of exotic coffee drinks but they ignored it and ordered two plain black coffees.

“Remember that game when Ted hit three consecutive home runs at this field off three different pitchers?” Dyer asked, slowly breathing over the scalding mug of coffee.

“I sure do.  After that performance, Ted got his first and longest call up to join the Giants squad.”

“I’m surprised he couldn’t stay with the club.  He had as much sheer power as anyone on the roster.”

“I was, too, at first, but after a while it became clear he couldn’t handle big league pitching,” Boxall stated.  “Like a lot of players, he had trouble hitting curve balls.”

“He could still hit a fastball out of the park.”

“He could but not as often,” Boxall contended.  “Not only were crooked balls a problem for him but soon pitchers discovered he couldn’t turn his bat quick enough to handle inside pitches so they began to jam inside with fastballs.”

His head inclined, Dyer took a sip of his coffee.

“Ted always struck out a lot but with the Giants he struck out even more and he didn’t hit as many home runs so eventually they cut him loose.”

“Yeah, he found out in the big leagues he wasn’t as good as he thought he was and, as a result, he lost much of his love for the game.”

“I believe it broke his heart so I wasn’t surprised when I heard his heart finally gave out on him in prison.”

“Neither was I, Dewey.”

***

Toward midnight Boxall called Amanda to let her know they would be arriving at her house in about an hour.  They had made much better time in Oregon than they had anticipated.

“I didn’t know if you’d be able to make the delivery before dawn,” she said, sounding half asleep.

“Nor did we,” he admitted.

When they pulled into her driveway, she came out on the back porch and asked them to carry the casket into the living room where she planned to have a wake later in the afternoon to celebrate Ted’s life.

“You fellas must be exhausted,” she said, after they set the casket on a sturdy black work table with thick wooden legs.

Dyer nodded.  “It’s been a long day, all right.

“If you like, you’re welcome to get some sleep on the couches in here.  They are pretty raggedy looking, I know, but they’re comfortable.”

“Thanks.  We’ll do that.”

“I’ll fetch some pillows and blankets.”

As soon as Boxall stretched out on the couch in front of the empty fireplace, he fell sound asleep, but before Dyer dozed off, he could not help but think they were back in some dugout again, their gloves in their hands, waiting to take the field.

T.R. Healy was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and recent stories of his have appeared in Freedom Fiction, Loch Raven Review, and Polaris.