The Evil B.B. Chow & Other Stories by Steve Almond Page B

and I rose from our chairs and strolled into the dusk. It was one of those warm spring jobs that coats everything in gold and we floated through the courtyard, with its sleeping crocuses and luminous blades of grass. The cafeteria was pumping out the sweet greasy smell of calico skillet and the tall stone cathedral was dozing before us and all the students gathered in the shadows to hug struck me, just then, as beautiful creatures, freaks, all of them, with their frail bodies and fearless hearts. We could hear them kissing, wetly, to the point of collapse.
    Brendan Mahoney ducked into an alcove behind the rectory. He pulled a joint from his hip pocket, lit up, and took a drag.
    â€œYou want a rip?” he said.
    â€œBetter not,” I said, taking the joint.
    The lovers were all around us, making their strange, gentle noises of mercy. I took my rip and Brendan nodded. “Nice,” he said. “Nice form.” He put his arm around me, as if we’d done something heroic together, as if the happinesswithin us were a puff of smoke we might hold on to forever, and he snorted like a horse, a young fearless stallion who’s just shaken his bridle, and pawed the ground, and I snorted and pawed the ground too and both of us began to giggle, wildly, senselessly, and went galloping (us stallions!) off into the dusk.

I AM AS I AM
    T HE DEVELOPER ’ S HOPE had been to establish the park in Dorset Centre as a “public square” of the sort British townships once organized themselves around. The design featured a lazy slope of grass circled by a gravel pathway. In the proposed model, displayed at Village Hall, little plastic mommies pushed perambulators along this path, while a knot of boys tussled after a ball on a swathe of green. Beyond this, a man on a raised box held one arm aloft, his tiny mouth open. A group of fellow citizens stood before him in postures of thoughtful attention.
    This was not, in fact, how the park looked. The village crime consultant voiced alarm at the prospect of creating an unstructured “youth magnet” environment. The open space, therefore, was somewhat reduced and converted into a par course. When, after several months, it became clear no one used the par course, a baseball field took its place. As the village fulfilled its prophecy of attenuated growth, the roads around the park widened and a new round of fretting ensued over the possibility that a childwould chase a ball into traffic. The park’s central location, originally embraced as a quaint communal flourish, seemed, upon sober reflection, inattentive, even reckless. The baseball field was soon encircled by a high chain-link fence.
    This was why the boys of Dorset began referring to the field as the Prison Lot. They grumbled over the sense of confinement, which ran contrary to the sport’s pastoral spirit. And, being children, they took up the obvious challenge: to hit a ball over the fence. In this way, they managed a collaboration that publicly confounded adult concerns. On summer afternoons, with the shadows drawn long across the grass, threads of boys in baseball mitts converged on the Prison Lot to conduct the business of childhood.
    E RIC H IELMAN WAS a handsome boy and he had lived with the advantages of his looks. He was picked up and played with frequently as a baby. He made friends easily. Teachers doted on him. He had a fine jaw, his father’s jaw, and eyes the green of antique glass. He was also the only boy ever to clear the Prison Lot’s fence in a game situation.
    Bat speed was the central issue in Eric’s life. His father, who had played ball in college, explained that a major leaguer must be able to bring his bat from a motionless state to a dynamic point of contact, at waist level, in lessthan half a second. This required coordination of the entire body: the eye had to pick up the ball and anticipate its path, wrists and forearms had to bring the bat to the back of its swing,