Page 154 of Never Flinch

Her phone rings.

8

7:04 PM.

Trig goes back to the arena, stepping delicately along the ties. His prisoners are still all present and accounted for.Squared away, Daddy would have said. He calls the Black singer.

“You want to go east from the field,” he tells her. “Your phone will point you the way. Cross the soccer field and the playground. You’ll see some food trucks—”

“Mr. Gibson, there are forty-sixty-eighty people outside where I am, waitin to get my autograph.”

Daddy says,Didn’t think of that, Mr. Useless, did you?

“Shut up!”

“What?” She sounds confused, fearful. Good, that’s good.

“Not talking to you,” Trig says. “The people who want autographs are your problem, not mine. I ought to shoot your little Black friend right now for interrupting me with your nonsense.”

“Don’t do that, Mr. Gibson, please. You said about the food wagons?”

“Okay, right. Right. There are trees behind them. And picnic tables. You go through the trees and there’s a big wooden building like a grain silo, only bigger around. You can probably see the roof of it from where you are. It’s an old hockey rink. Condemned. That’s where you come.”

Trig looks at his watch. The signs at the Mingo will change in just twelve minutes. Give people some time to see them. To realize what he’s done. Doing.

You aren’t doing anything. You’re Mr. Useless. You’re Mr. Flincher.

“What I’m doing, Daddy! What I’mdoing!”

“Who you talking to, Mr. Gibson? Your father?”

“Never mind him. I want you here at the Holman Rink at 7:40. Thirty-five minutes from now. Knock on the door. Say, ‘It’s me.’ I’ll let you in. If I don’t hear a knock at 7:40, I’ll shoot her. I’ll shoot them all.”

“Mr. Gibson—”

He ends the call. He points the .22 first at Kate, then at Barbara, then at Corrie. “You… and you… and you. If you’re lucky, Iwillshoot you. If you’re not…”

From the Giant Eagle grocery bag he takes the lighter fluid. He squirts it onto the crumpled posters in their nest of old creosoted wooden beams.

“They’re gonna see this,” he tells the three women. “Everyone at their stupid game. See it, see it, see it. You know what my daddy would have called it? A Viking funeral!”

He laughs, then goes back to the foyer and resumes kicking the body of Christopher Stewart. The son of a bitch actually tried tostophim! Toshoothim!

9

7:06 PM.

Lewis Warwick (PD) and Darby Dingley (FD) don’t care for each other, but they agreed on one thing: there must be no bitching and moaning this year about partisan umpires, as in years past. No “homing” for either side. There happens to be a big Babe Ruth League tournament coming up in Cincinnati in early June, and for three hundred dollars, Warwick and Dingley hired two umps from that squad—not kids but grown men. Since these two aren’t from Buckeye City, they don’t give a shit who wins.

The field umpire lowers himself, hands on knees. The home plate umpire pulls down his mask and crouches behind the catcher. Both sets of bleachers, filled to capacity, cheer. “No batter, no batter, he’s a whiffer!” Darby Dingley shouts.

The first Guns hitter, Dick Draper, steps in and waggles his bat. He drives one to left. The FD fielder fades back and catches it easily.

Top of the first, one out.

The big game is underway.

10

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