I didn’t want to ask the kid if that was Dylan on the radio. He had a bat in his hand and was dug in damn certain he was lining the next pitch between my LA dude eyes.

What the fuck? He said. Pitch.

I looked over at his red Comet with white walls and heard again this ‘not’ Dylan voice gutting out a line I liked right away: darkness on the edge of town.

I palmed the wiffle ball and smiled at the shaggy-haired bulldog built neighbour of my Uncle Dave. Eighteen and surly, he didn’t like me for some reason.

He was up 1-0. We had ten bucks on a nine-inning game. I hadn’t thrown a fastball in twenty minutes because he hit the last one over a fence with a barking wiener dog and I had to go get it.

I came side arm but he hung in and laced it, striking me in the belly. I went down to a knee. The hit spot hit welted and stung and the kid gave me that contemptuous look again, that look that blamed me for the Dodgers, the Hillside Strangler and fucking Hotel California.

You done or not? He yelled.

Good question. Right before the game I learned my bride was pregnant. We’d been in Europe the last three and half months trying out a life of roaming, reading and screwing. And it was working not working, not hanging out with friends who were infected with disco and Dallas.

I picked up the ball, hearing this graveling ghost voice singing darkness on the edge of town. I got scared right then but I didn’t show it to the kid who was rocking with his bat in front of a washed out building.

What? He said.

I gestured to his Comet. Is that Dylan singing?

He scoffed. Dylan don’t sing.

I threw a riser that he whiffed on. He acted like it was no big deal. Don’t you know anything? That’s Springsteen and that’s me he’s talking about. I didn’t argue. I threw a fastball that he jacked over the fence and it landed on an aluminum patio awning that roused frothy razzes from the wiener dog.

The kid rounded some imaginary bases but he didn’t heckle me. He squatted in the shade, lit up a cigarette and said: Is it true?

I joined him. What?

About the girls in California, naked on the beach?

I married one.

She’s nice looking, he said.

She’s pregnant too.

He flicked his cigarette. That a problem?

I didn’t say anything. Another Springsteen tune came on, grouchy, grungy. Adam raised a Cain.

I gave the kid ten bucks and he went and bought a six- pack of Hamm’s. We drank and listened to more commercial free Springsteen. The kid mellowed and asked if I was Italian.

I said, Mexican, and he said, good, because some fucking Travolta looking stick dick stole his girl and he didn’t think he’d ever like an Italian again.

He tossed his empty. I’m not prejudice or anything. But I loved her.

The kid grayed a smile that I learned to smile many times. He got up and tracked toward his comet as the moany opening to Streets of Fire filled this patch of Jersey.

And he turned it up.

M. Frias-May is a native Californian, born in Santa Ana in 1956, and presently living in Cambria, with his best friend, lover, and muse, his wife of decades, Juanita of Sweden. They have three grown children who were raised with humor and knowing they would have to start working with the old man at the restaurant when they turned 13. Besides his restaurant career that spanned from 1983 to 2004 (washing dishes, busing tables, bartending, cooking & managing), Frias-May has cleaned pools, picked lily bulbs, worked newspapers and was rejected by military recruiters for being too educated and having too many kids. He enjoys keeping his plants alive and playing blues runs on a small-bodied Martin folk guitar that he purchased in 1974 for $200. He’s been sober for two years. He’s written screenplays (Juarez), plays (Morro Bay Noir), novels (Psychonaut, Pinocchia, Devil on Dialysis), short stories and poetry. His novella (The Longest Suicide Note by Stanley K) is at The Kings English and has received a Million Writers’ Award nomination for best online story for 2005. His poetry can be read at Angry Poet, My Favorite Bullet, Coe Review, & Static Movement. To read his story, ‘Reunion’ on the showcase section of this site, click here

© 2009 Laura Hird All rights reserved.