World Series ’66: A Harrison Bennett Letter

Drake C. Dyer

October 9, 1966

Dear Whomever Shall Be Concerned,

Marsha visited my window late last Thursday night the week after I first found a Playboy in a garage box—it was my father’s, and in a plastic slip with a smiley face sticker on it. The Playboy was laying open under my bed, where an empty package of Nabisco Oreos, with all crumbs, was propped upside down, creating a haven for the cold ants of the brisk autumn wind. Marsha was sixteen now, with a fully developed body and face, glistening in late night makeup; I suspected she was at some football party. The window was closed, but she never knocked if wanting to come in. I had a bay window, which was extended with a four foot plank of removable wood, with storage room underneath. It was flimsy, but entertaining watching Marsha consistently place her hand on the flat surface, while sliding around when swooping her legs in between her top arm and the damp windowsill. I instantly smelled her raunchy perfume, clouding my mundane vision of the world, filling my room with a tasteful aroma, capable of luring men into a fatal stream of unconsciousness. She tripped on her entrance, sitting roughly on her rear end, and crossed her legs as if the whole messy process was purely intentional.

“Were you sleeping, Harry?”she asked, rubbing her nails on her thumb.

“What do you think, smartass?”

I was half-asleep, trying to come to an understanding of why Marsha thought it was okay to just barge into my room unprecedentedly; she had never done this before, but she seemed to change every week when I was in the plastic house. During the summer, Marsha saw me in school while I was a new freshman, and she was a junior—she was still on the college courses track, feeling obligated to convince me to do the same as a starting freshman. I was under the impression that the only reason she talked to me on a daily basis, while passing me in the hallway, was because we were close neighbors; and neighborly churchgoers at that. Marsha was really in the moment, faddish and all, along with becoming more entitled and exposed to the wrong subcultures. She dug the wrong speeds, you know? Her eyeliner was thin, black, and fluorescent in the moonlight, which was pooling on the pile of clothes in the middle of my floor. After a moment of seeming jumpy, she stood up on her heels and leaned forward above my small bed, blocking on the light from the window with her tight blouse. I saw particles fly in and out of her hair like a blonde airport.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” she said, putting her hands on the footboard of the bed, rocking slightly.

“Can’t be as exciting as Marsha fucking Maude standing in my bedroom at midnight, on a school night…” I rambled.

“Watch your mouth, freshie,” Marsha warned.

“What’s the surprise, Marsh?”

She smirked in the darkness, rocking the bed more now, balanced on the balls of her feet and leaning her head back.

“How would you like to come with us to watch the World Series?”

World Series? My team, the Baltimore Orioles, in their first World Series! 2-0 against the best baseball team since Cy Young, The Los Angeles Dodgers? My heart dropped in my throat all the way to my small intestine to be shit out in the bathroom. I had heard on the radio that they were playing the next couple of games at home, in Baltimore. I could’ve kissed Marsha on her dry lips while crying on her face, but I resisted the tempting urge to act upon it. I kicked the comforter up from my chest and stood on my bed, fixing my long sleep pants against my large waist. I had gotten a little doughy since last year, and hadn’t really been too concerned with it as of late. When I listened to the game which got the Orioles in the World Series a short time ago, I was over the moon with excitement, feeling proud of the underdogs for once. They were an honorable band of misfits, sharing/ implementing an aspiration for playing baseball and putting up a good effort all the way until they felt like they deserved it. With a near perfect entrance into their first World Series, the Orioles have created the perfect set-up to claim their first championship. The window blew cold air in, which traveled onto my feet and up my pant legs, shivering my pelvis and lower torso. Marsha was unaffected, not really changing her posture when she told me.

“You’re kidding,” I cried.

“Hell no, I ain’t kidding. Fourteen hours to Baltimore, tomorrow morning!”

“Good God, Marsha, this is the best thing ever! I love you so much!” I said, grabbing her around the neck and holding her tightly. She patted me on the head and let go quickly, while I was still leaking from my wide smile. I shuddered like an anxious junkie.

“What do I owe your folks? I’ll pay anything…”

“Mom said it was the least she could give you, she thinks you deserve it,” Marsha said, standing up straight. “She wasn’t too specific on exactly what she meant.”

I was still in love with that woman, Betty Maude, and would be until the day I die; I knew she was destined to keep our secret safe and sound, buried in her brain’s wavy layers. I jumped out of my bed while still standing on it and dug out my old piggy bank from my trunk under my bookshelf. In the trunk was a set of unopened underwear, along with an old toothbrush, some wooden toys, and the bank containing nine years worth of petty birthday change given to me every spring for my birthday since I was four. Before, like usual, my mother would pocket the money handed to me when I was three; she claimed to be holding onto it for safekeeping, but spent it frivolously after the fact, never paying it back to me. If my average calculations stand correct, she owes me within the ballpark of five dollars straight among the first few years I was born. My extended relatives wanted my mother to set up a college fund for my first birthday, but thought of opening a second checking account for herself; it seemed illegal now that I thought about it. It wasn’t the American dreamer’s hustler business; it was the unethical, illegal way to accumulate more money from selling things to consumers; a real capitalist belief, which, theoretically, made my mother a born and raised American. My mother was also a Cleveland Indians fan, having been raised just outside Cleveland, and with that I made sure she was never around when I talked baseball with anybody.

“I want your folks to have this, Marsha,” I said, presenting the small piggy bank containing about twenty dollars, broken into mostly quarters, dimes, and some nickels, but never half dollars. She held up her hand and shook her head, refraining from repeating the statement she said previously; not only would they not take his money, but she was not going to be an accomplice if he so desperately wanted to hand it over in the first place. It was his problem for not listening rather than her own.

“If you want to practically beg on your knees to give the money up, then be my guest, but I’m not going to intervene in that, you know,” she said, calmly. She sat down on the messed up bed, crossing her ankles and stretching her back while leaning both arms backward. I was curious how tense and stiff a sixteen year old could get, and was surprised to see quite so. I watched her do this several times while circling my room and trying to start smoking, to which I put a rushed halt to. Marsha eventually took out her large hoop earrings and pocketed them, while they gleamed like golden headlights in the pale midnight. I shrugged off her comment and put the piggy bank back where it belonged, leaving the trunk open, and then turning to my sliding door closet to find my suitcase in tatters on top of my shelf. My grandfather used it as a traveling salesman in the 30’s, going west through Okie territory and giving himself terrible sinuses and vision for the rest of his life; he was a good salesman, but perhaps was too persistent in the dull times. The non-recoupment times, shall we say? With a few handfuls of socks and underwear, I filled the suitcase with my cleanest clothes, laying my Orioles orange-colored tee shirt right on top, nestling the undergarments, and keeping them warm. I packed a toothbrush in the side compartment, along with my tiny deodorant, but talked my way out of bringing the razor kit. God knows Bobby, and perhaps Marsha, would give me a hard time for having to regularly shave at fourteen; I was worried about scraggly beards, let alone a neck beard that was patchy. It was all ridiculed material at this point: the choices were limitless to pick from to make fun of me more. What self-conscious, personal subsidy of mine would reign its justice among the courts on this trip. Was this trip a test of superiority, or strength? A test of bravery and resilience? Marsha walked to the other side of my room, leaning out the window and started her descent back to the ground; I asked her what time we planned on driving, and she said right after breakfast. As if I’m supposed to pinpoint it, I simply waved good-bye from my window to the ground, closed it, and finished packing in order to be awake for the car ride. The suitcase wouldn’t close right, but I managed to flatten in with my pudgy body soon enough, hearing the monotonous clicks of the clasps. I plucked my Orioles hat from my desk lamplight, placing it far back on my head like the cats in the Majors do; they exposed the first tuft of hair, only enough to still shadow their faces at home plate. Some of those hip suckers learned to flip the hat backwards and lean the bill against your neck to protect from the sun; it was pretty smart stuff, if you asked me. But on the contrary, that act looked pretty dumb from a plain old bystander; looked sly, unprofessional, lenient, and made their hair choppy. I wouldn’t tell my mother about the trip until we were done eating our lunch; it wasn’t like she would care well enough to wonder; I was the one being considerate for actually telling her.

*zz*zz*

The late Bernie Shaw, world renowned, once said: “There is no sincerer love than the love of food,” to which he could not have been more right. I hadn’t eaten breakfast with the Maudes—let alone eaten the day before—so I was incredibly relieved when we stopped for lunch at the border of Illinois and Indiana. A small town called Canyon was the home of around seventeen diners, all of which were increasingly terrible in cleanliness and customer service and satisfaction, but there was one on the far side of town, a mile from the border, that was the epitome of a culinary masterful work of art. Keep in mind, it was all still greasy, but the taste was infinite in your mouth, saturating the beef and cool milkshakes; there was a philosophical vein that seemed to burst at the seams, spilling out into my flow of words right here. It’s all experimental existentialism at this point in time. I scarfed my food, and then some of Marsha’s when she lightly dabbed her mouth with her thin napkin. She didn’t dare let a dribble of ketchup drop down on her hand or legs. Mr. Maude was the stingy one, ordering a hamburger and sending it back twice because of the pink in the middle; once the waitress returned the last time and witnessed Mr. Maude taking a bite, I heard an ominous crunch from the center. I grimaced and looked at my own juicy burger, relishing it for not sounding like a chocolate bar. Betty Maude got fried chicken, but took her butter knife and cut off the meat from the bones, so as to not get grease all over her fingers and bundle up used napkins by the bunches next to her drink. I downed at least four Dr. Pepper’s while we ate, along with two slices of pie once Mr. Maude ordered an apple pie for the table; they were all graciously generous to me, and I was eternally grateful. Once the Maudes were done eating and using the bathrooms before we started the trip again, I dipped outside and went to the phonebooth on the left to make a direct call to Archer Park for my mother. The operator apologized twice when I asked why the phone was being picked up, but on the fourth try, my mother answered in a monotonous, groggy tone. I could almost see her scrubbing at her eyes to get rid of the crusty bits in the corners.

“Mom, it’s Harry, I won’t be home until the end of the weekend,” I said, not really thinking of how to phrase it.

“Why’s that?”

“The Maudes are taking me to see the fourth World Series game in Baltimore,” I said, getting excited again from saying it out loud. “We’ve got a long way ahead though; we won’t get in until late tonight.”

“Do you have money?”

“Sure, I got some,” I said. “You know I had at least a dime for the phone.”

“Well, you’ve got school to think about, so don’t drink too much,” my mother said, oddly. I furrowed my eyebrows, wondering if my mother remembered how old I was and if she knew I had ever had alcohol—I hadn’t yet.

“All right, well I’ll see you later, Mom.”

“Ciao,” she said, acting like a sophisticated French woman from a crummy movie. I hung up the phone, and let the person behind me in, holding the glass slider open. The Maudes were standing outside, hands in pockets, waiting for me; they had packed some of the pie in a doggy bag, which I would later eat once we arrived in Cincinnati.

*zz*zz*

The Maudes’ Plymouth station wagon was a true gallant hero in the midst of things. Besides the Sunday church drives or late night dinners with Mr. Maude’s clients, the Plymouth never really got out and about; this long trip was a happy first for her, and better now than ever. From Archer City, Iowa to Baltimore was close to fifteen hours. The tires were white-walled, with steel rims and a thin exhaust system that hissed like a radio with feedback; I was impressed by how the gas mileage was so high. Mr. Maude opened the glove box and got out a thin cigar, roughly three quarters of a foot, and struck a long match to light it. Ironically enough, Mr. Maude was quite loquacious; I never really heard him talk much if I saw him eating dinner. All he did was chat chat chat to Betty who was driving her half of the way; I heard they agreed to switch after Cincy. Bobby Maude was in the third row, laying across all three seats, feet kicked up, cap tilted down, and arms crossed against his chest to conform for—from the looks of it—a very bumpy nap. Marsha, on my right, was reading one of her mother’s magazines, Look, and constantly glancing out the window to see road signs and wildlife grazing in the vistas of fields. I looked over to her reading, and saw a large picture of Cynthia Myers, in clothes surprisingly, with another man as if doing an interview. She was in the middle of saying something, because her teeth and lips were separated. It was a cloudy day, so there wasn’t any real lighting in the car, besides the bits of sun that escaped behind the sky; I couldn’t make out the small words on the magazine’s page, let alone any other pictures besides the one closest to me. Marsha noticed me reading over her shoulder, and asked if I wanted something to read; I gladly accepted anything. She fished out of her bag a copy of The Sound and The Fury by. William Faulkner that was paperback; the cover and back was white, with red and blue stripes. She told me it was her favorite book from school, and begged her parents for weeks to give her the money to buy a copy for herself. All of the school copies were hand-me-down copies with countless amounts of marginal notes, underlined words, and lewd pictures drawn at the end of the chapter—mostly male and female body parts with little to no accuracy. I thanked her for the book, and read the synopsis, wondering if it was going to be hard to read. It’s about a Mississippian family with a lot of melodramatic problems—takes place right before the Depression, and flashes back to right before the first World War. I had only read one or two Faulkner stories before, but not well, and a long time ago. They were in a collection my dad read often, in his office. While my father was at work, and I had just started the fifth grade, I found the book left on the coffee table by the television, and opened it, reading lots of enunciated Southern dialect that I was unfamiliar with. “Chilluns” was my favorite of them, and I told my parents so for the next few weeks after that, calling all of my schoolmates “chilluns.”

By the time we reached Indianapolis, I was a few pages in, looking over at Marsha when I had a question, but quickly finding the answer before I had the chance to open my mouth. It was the early afternoon. The sun had winked its eye softly, but the clouds were still rushing past us overhead in volleys like spaceships. There wasn’t any rain—it was as if the clouds were teasing us by tickling our noses with a feather, but holding our noses shut so we couldn’t sneeze. Mr. Maude was still talking quietly to his wife—but what about?—with the cigar half gone and the ashes tapped into the tray in his lap. Bobby had woken up and sat leaning his forearms against my section of the bench seat. He asked what I was reading, and I told him that it was Marsha’s; I knew he’d want to know what it was about, and I’d have to take time to explain it, while taking away my precious reading time. Bobby, in my opinion, wasn’t worth the effort, no matter how much I had admired him when I was younger. He taught me how to pitch a baseball, and how to catch one barehanded. I told him I loved the Orioles, and he told me they never stood a chance at going big; he loved the Yankees as if he was someone special—I loved his old impressions he used to do, imitating a New Yorker poorly. Bobby grabbed my hat and turned it around where the bill was covering my neck.

“You gotta wear it slick, you know slugger?”

Bobby tended to sound like a middle-aged dad every time he spoke in the past year; maybe it had something to do with the chick he was going steady with. I shook my head, wanting him to talk to himself so I could read. He eventually caught on shortly after, and lay back in his seat, reading a sports magazine.

After the sun went down, and I was feeling my eyes squint lugubriously, I closed the book and handed it back to Marsha, bookmark in place on page 74. I nudged Marsha, and we watched the sunset together, admiring the clouds forming into a carnival of pink and orange; I traced the shapes with my finger, making out a giraffe, an elephant, Ray Bradbury, a Fiat sports car, and an eyeball. Bobby had fallen asleep again, this time with no baseball cap and his head at an awkward angle against the window. He would complain about his neck pains for the remainder of the night, rubbing it roughly and sighing. By a little after five o’clock, we were in the middle of downtown Pittsburgh, watching drunk, rich men vomit in full trash cans, and a little under five hours away from Baltimore. I woke Bobby up and pointed at one of the men, illuminated by a street lamp, hunched over, and barfing into one of the sewers. He lost it, and laughed until he coughed profusely, and cried he was going to get abs the way his lungs were tugging at his core. Mr. Maude, now driving, noticed we were all antsy and not able to read anymore, so he turned up the music on the radio to overshadow the passersby acting irrationally. The Crystals sang “Then He Kissed Me,” then into a Tide Laundry Detergent commercial, a McDonald’s burger commercial, Bill Evans playing “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” Ol’ Blue Eyes singing “That’s Life,” The Association singing “Along Comes Mary,” a Hostess Twinkies commercial claiming that a box was only 69 cents, The Supremes singing “Come See About Me,” The Byrds singing “Eight Miles High,” a Coca-Cola commercial, The Who singing “My Generation,” Tommy James and the Shondells singing “Hanky Panky,” The Beatles singing “Twist and Shout,” The Beach Boys singing “Help Me, Rhonda,” Booker T & the MG’s swiping their keyboard for “Green Onions,” and an election campaign from a running Pennsylvanian school board member named Pierre McRainey. And just like that, I saw Pittsburgh as a line of tall buildings dissipate into a blank, dull light past the horizon, and the turnpike formed into Maryland. The tires were beating, beating, beating the ground to a pulp, while restlessly spinning off of the broken pieces of the road; I leaned back and watched the gray ceiling slowly close in, watching the black waves circle the middle like a murder of crows. My brain gave my eyes an all clear as they shut and didn’t open back up until we were entering the Baltimore city limits; a passing truck with a boat trailer honked at our Plymouth for moving too close to the left when he was passing us on the right. We got off at the exit, slovenly halting at a red light and feeling a retaliation from the braking system of the station wagon. I, like Bobby, laid my head back at a forty-five degree angle around the seat rest, turning my neck into a wonky question mark.

The hotel was twenty blocks from Memorial Stadium, called The Requisite by an ironic circumstance, explained by the receptionist at the front desk of the little U-Shaped hotel. Mr. and Mrs. Maude reserved two rooms for the five of us; the kids in one and the adults in another. Double beds in ours. Marsha was fortunate enough to have a bed to herself, while Bobby and I—mostly Bobby—shared the other bed near the door. Within the first fifteen minutes, Marsha was in the shower, I was changing into some decent clothes, and Bobby was brushing his teeth and spitting into a cup he found in one of the small cabinets under the desk. I was too tired to cast prejudice. A little while after, I smelled Marsha walk past me and jump into her bed, checking for bugs and stains first. Bobby’s pants were hanging on the right side bed post, exposing a pack of Chesterfields; Marsha took one with no hesitation and smoked the whole thing until the clock read midnight. The light was off, but I opened my eyes every time I heard movement from Marsha, watching her carefully lay out her clothes, moisturize her skin and arms, dry her hair to her best abilities, and uncomfortably wiggle in bed, trying to find the right position. The last thing I remembered was when Bobby’s bare feet touched my calf and I was shook from the surprising coldness of them.

*zz*zz*

I woke up wondering if Mrs. Maude had forgotten that I told her I was in love with her. There was an aggressive knock on the hotel door, as if someone was getting brutally stabbed and clawing at any source of freedom. I heard Bobby roll out of bed, trip over his shoes, curse quietly, and run to the door, rubbing the sleep from his face. The door opened and I sat up to see the Maudes, swaddled in ivory bathrobes, scuttling through the new pile of clothes spewing out of our suitcases in the little makeshift hallway separating the front door and the rooms, with the bathroom on the left side coming inward.

“There’szazhotzbreakfast,zcomplimentary to us,” Mr. Maude said, scratching his head and forearm. Mrs. Maude glanced in our bathroom, seeing it half destroyed from her daughter, and crossed her arms, never mentioning it verbally.

“Cigarettes,” Betty Maude scrutinized, “Has someone been smoking in here?”

Bobby looked at his parents, then at Marsha, then at me; I was not the guilty one here and knew it well. Marsha had moved the pack of smokes from Bobby’s hanging pants into the night stand drawer, hidden next to the dusty bible.

“No, why?” Marsha said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes; I realized her face was, in a nutshell, perfectly intact after an unfamiliar night’s sleep. She obtained the most immaculate tendencies of never waking up and looking like it; she was like a worried housewife trying to look good for her husband. Betty Maude shrugged her shoulders, as if trying to deflect a draught, and rolled her eyes, knowing she wasn’t crazy yet. I lay there quietly, watching them like a tennis match, wondering where I squeezed into the Maude Equation; I felt left out, but they were like another family that I was a part of. They never made me feel any less than that.

“Breakfast if you want it,” Mr. Maude said, turning back around and taking his wife by her hand, and leading her down the hallway to the elevator. The door closed with a slow and steady pause before shutting like a Venus fly trap, echoing into the tense silence.

“You gotta be slicker than that, Marsha,” I piped up, feeling remorseful about the idea of her getting in trouble.

“Piss up a rope,” she remarked, opening the drawer and taking another of her brother’s smokes. Bobby looked over and nodded his head when she raised her eyebrows, holding up the cigarette by its butt. I asked for one, but was refused one not by Bobby, but by Marsha. She shook her head and told me I wasn’t old enough yet; fifteen was the required age set by Marsha Maude herself. It was a notarized law, doncha know? I rolled my eyes, and threw on my orange shirt, my light gray jeans, and my hat; I wasn’t going to let Marsha’s poisonous relationship with her mother leak into my feeling of glee for today. Plus, I was going to be fifteen in five months; it was cutting close to when I could smoke, from Marsha’s perspective.

Bobby and I took ten minutes, a piece, to get ready, while Marsha was still styling her hair by nine; I asked Bobby if he wanted to go to breakfast. He said yes, and I told Marsha I’d bring her some toast with butter and jam—she nodded her head in thanks. Bobby and I trailed behind a cleaning cart trying to get back to the first floor; the woman pushing it had a very curvy body, with luscious black hair and tan skin. Bobby nudged me, as if I hadn’t already noticed, and pointed to her; she was opposite us, showing us her backside. She had a pen in her hand, dropped it, and leaned over to pick it up, while watching us watching her. I thought we were for sure busted, but she just smiled when looking at our faces, and continued to the elevator, giving us room to get on after she pushed the cart against the right side. She looked even more beautiful from the front; Bobby couldn’t stop staring, while the woman blushed charismatically. Bobby gestured his arm forward, letting the woman and her cart pass first, then he nudged me again and walked down the opposite end to the breakfast room. There was a wooden sign nailed above a set of double doors, wide open, exposing a line of people salivating at silver trays balanced over heat. The Maudes, I saw, were sitting at the table closest to the entrance of the breakfast room from the dining room, where Mr. Maude ate a dry bowl of cereal and a banana, while Betty Maude poured some milk into her warm oatmeal, along with some cinnamon and sugar, and ate a hearty spoonful, licking her lips right after. Bobby handed me a plate, loading up on sausage links, bacon strips, some silver dollar pancakes, and a small scoop of scrambled eggs. I got the same, minus the eggs, and sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on my pancakes, watching it melt into its hot surface. I found the bread sitting next to the toaster, opened and getting stale; I set my plate down and made Marsha’s toast, scraping a thick layer of butter on it, while grabbing a small plastic cup that I put her jam in.

After another encounter with the cart woman, Bobby was getting the hots for her badly. She saw me first, and smiled delicately; she noticed Bobby holding both plates of food, and smirked downward.

“Nice morning, doncha know?” Bobby asked.

She looked at his face, memorizing it, and nodded her head a little. I wasn’t sure if she spoke English, or if she was too starstruck to speak. Bobby’s hand was wobbling a little, holding his plate, and I watched the sausage links roll around, frighteningly close to the edge of the rim.

“Watch yourself, soldier,” I commented, holding my free hand underneath the side of the rolling sausages. He cocked his head my way, stiffening up, and turning his attention to the elevator door, watching the light flicker in between floors. We got off, leaving the woman by herself, smirking and thinking about ol’ Robert Maude, wondering if it was a once in a lifetime experience. I told myself that if I were to run into her again during the trip, I’d make sure to say she wasn’t missing out on much, not going steady with Bobby. I’d known the man most of my life and knew he was nothing but cynical, premeditated trouble with the woman he went with. He was a pervert, sad to say, and knew it well enough to control it under the right circumstances. I’d seen too much of the Maudes through innocent eyes, and knew they were the reason I was ready to go into middle school, mentally speaking. I knew my way around the block, perhaps the city, if I needed to.

Marsha was almost ready by the time we got back, with Bobby barely balancing the food on his palm. The room reeked of cigarette smoke, my eyes started to swell and water up.

“Jesus Christ, Marsha, could you spare us some oxygen by chance?” Bobby chimed in. She smiled, not speaking, and took the plate of her food, plopping down on her bed and eating quickly. I pulled up the desk chair, kicked my feet on Marsha’s bed, and ate my breakfast slower. By ten o’clock, The Maudes had returned to our room, sitting on the edge of the bed, twiddling their thumbs, and waiting for Marsha to spray her hair into oblivion.

“Marsha,” Mr. Maude said, “honey, we’ve got to go soon so we can get good seats.”

“Almost ready,” she replied through the closed door. It was a miracle I didn’t hear her body thud on the ground from the amount of hairspray she put into that bathroom’s atmosphere. The towels were going to be stiff when we got back. I put my hat on, and crossed my legs in the desk chair, wondering if Mrs. Maude was looking at me or not. In the way that I wanted her to, not the way she would as if I was her own child; that thought gave me chills for the whole trip, along with a long time after the fact. She reminded me of a Midwestern Brigitte Bardot. I wouldn’t let it become the idea of me being in love with another mother figure of my life; the idea was too vulgar, I thought. She had curled her hair, curving the ends of it, and wore a small orange hat, while Mr. Maude wore a hat of his own. Mine was better because it was newer. On the trip there, Mr. Maude asked me why I was such a massive Orioles fan, and if I knew that they were also. I explained that when I was four, we lived just outside Baltimore for about two years, but had to move because of my father’s job rotation; it was another branch in Iowa that he was to move to, which is where we ended up. My father was an Orioles fan, and I assumed I inherited it honestly, because from the time I was six until ten, we watched the games every summer, and prayed that they made it to the Worlds. Mr. Maude told me that he went to Baltimore on a business trip, and got to watch a game with his regional boss as a treat; he loved the way they played and their redundant pitcher, Jim Palmer, with a miraculous ability to strikeout only the best hitters. I exclaimed my deep admiration for Jim this season, and we conversed for the next twenty minutes; it was the one and only time in the past six years that I had a long conversation with Mr. Maude. That conversation was also the first time that I heard Mr. Maude say his first name, Timothy, and I realized I had never known that in the first place.

Marsha came out of the bathroom, wearing a skin-tight layer of hairspray, and put on her shoes.

“You don’t seem like you should be in the sun for too long, Marsha, or you’ll burn alive,” I said, acting like the wannabe smartass. Her parents chuckled, Bobby lost it again, and Marsha told me to can it, respectfully. A moment later, the five of us drifted out into the hallway, noticing the cart woman again; Bobby nudged me in the sore spot he created from before, and winked at her while he passed. I held my tongue about the whole Bobby-isn’t-worth-it speech.

*zz*zz*

During the first five minutes of the first inning, I witnessed my first fist fight in the stands below us. One man called the other a “dumbass,” while the other responded with an insult to the first man’s little boy. With the little boy crying tears into his cotton candy, the first hand slugged the second in the right cheek, watching him stand up and spit a droplet of blood next to his feet. Marsha looked away, trying her best to drink her Coke and watch Palmer strike out a Dodgers baseman. Once the O’s got a homer, or smacked their feet at home plate, Memorial Park as a whole erupted in an ear-splitting scream of grandeur, spilling food and drinks onto the lower sections like it was raining from Heaven. Luckily enough, the Maudes bought tickets in the middle section, right behind home plate, which was lucky when a contacted ball fouled behind, and landed into our section a few times. I, unfortunately, didn’t catch any, yet I was hopeful, and so were the Maudes. Palmer struck out another Dodger and the crowd roared.

“Attaboy, Jimbo!” Mr. Maude cried, “Knock ’em deader than dead.”

Mrs. Maude patted her husband’s shoulder encouragingly, most likely feeling his racing heartbeat every which way in his body. I stole some of Bobby’s popcorn, flattening the kernels against my underdeveloped wisdom teeth; I was convinced I had a cavity back there, on both sides of my mouth. Another swig of my Coke, and my stomach was flexing and churning against the sun beating down on us. Bottom of the fourth, O’s were leading hard, swatting against the seemingly unbeatable baseball team ever to set foot on a field. And yet, even a bird can swipe in and make a paper team crumble and burn against everything they’ve worked for. Another swing out and the inning was over, swift and painfully.

The ninth came too quickly, and Marsha was jumping up and down more than me, which seemed impossible. Bobby, I noticed, got tired around the eighth, slowly becoming quieter and stopped clapping so much. Mr. Maude was screaming his silly incantations as if it would have an effect on things, as was Betty Maude, while she just repeated the things he said every so often. It was derogatory and vulgar, yet I had this silly little voice in my head telling me to shout it—my brain wanted me to badly.

“Quit kissing his ass, Dodger Man,” Tim Maude spoke, moving his fist in circles, pointed upward. A few men next to us gave him dirty looks, while holding back slurs of their own; thankfully, I didn’t see another fight closeby for the remainder of the game. The bottom of the ninth, inching…brimming like a fountain, it seemed…crowds roared in waves…wind blew against the ball caps; and against the Coke cups, spilling on our already wet shoes. One final batter for the Dodgers, shaking against his awkwardly high angle of his bat, held crooked in the air. Palmer raised the mit, leaned back, leg rose, head cocked, pulled back, pitched forward, and RELEASE! SWING AND A MISS! The Orioles have done it for the first time!!! THE 1966 WORLD SERIES IS OVER!!! MY TEAM, HOT DAMN! I yelled in cheer, but I couldn’t hear myself, nor did the Maudes as they were cheering appropriately obnoxious themselves; I chugged my drink and threw the cup in the air, as if it was a graduation cap. Someone, I saw, noticed the cup and began hitting the underbelly of it like a beach ball, which then started a fad to toss the cups and keep them in the air; they clamored on the concrete ground, soaking shoes with partially melted ice, and the backwash liquid of old men and women. Marsha leaned over, grabbed my right cheek, and planted a firm kiss on my face; I resisted the urge to wipe it off; I made out her perfume as if dissecting the chemical formula for it. Bobby grabbed my shoulders and shouted brutally in my ear: “WE DID IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” I nodded my head, making it clear that I heard him, but my ear was moist from his breath. He shook me again, and turned to his father, who he hugged wholeheartedly; I was in the middle of the Maude clan, staring at the Orioles’ players, running across the field, clicking their heels, and kissing each other’s cheeks. The manager, Hank Bauer, a semi-portly man, sprinted across the field to Jim and tackled him like a football player. Mr. Maude leaned over his son, and it was his turn to shout in my ear.

“WHO WOULDA THOUGHT THE BIRDS COULD’VE DONE IT?”

“Our goddamned team, Mr. Maude!!”

He nodded his head, and shook my hand earnestly, clasping my shoulder and shaking me like I was his second son; I felt honored, to say the least. I wondered what my mother was doing; whether or not she was drunk yet, or if she was hungover enough to not move from her bed. If my dad came home from Philly, and turned on the radio to hear the World Series ending; and if my mother was at all worried about me. But, none of that mattered to me anymore right now…all I cared about was my team, and the fact that Mrs. Maude kept looking at me, and winking occasionally. I glanced at her, and saw she didn’t have a drop of sweat on her, which made me be in awe of her. I walked past Bobby and Tim and met Betty’s eyes with deep compassion. I leaned forward, hopeful that she would understand I was going to say something; she leaned forward herself, and I whispered in her left ear.

“I love you, Betty!” I shouted, as it quickly blended into the continuous yelling of the others. She leaned back and embraced me tightly; I felt her racing heartbeat, monotonous, then occasionally paced like a pendulum. It was, after all things considered, the first time I ever felt like an equal compared to my favorite people on the planet, the Maudes. The time that arrived with awkward eavesdropping, which thoroughly evolved into a beautiful flower, spreading its petals against the aged ground. I took another look at the field, now seeing some fans hop the seat barriers, and run to the players. I hadn’t realized, but there was a single tear falling out of my left eye, and I let it fall for all to see; I was at peace finally.

Much love,

Harrison Bennett

P.S. I got to meet Jim Palmer and got my O’s hat signed with a fountain pen he carried…