honorable mention
2003 natioanl short story contest
South Florida Chapter , Natioanl Writers Association
Billy Dayton was always a little different than the rest of us.
As I watched him lying serenely in a field of white, I was drawn back into the memories of my youth.
It was 1962. President Kennedy was still alive, and America was Camelot. All of that was about to change, of course, but none of us knew it then. Laurelwood was a sleepy little town, the kind of place where everybody knew everybody else’s business -- a good thing sometimes, not so good most of the time.
There were only a handful of boys our age in town. Most of our free time was spent looking for trouble and trying not to get caught at it. We were just nine or ten years old at the time, but we could all tell there was something different about Billy. Maybe it was because we were nine or ten that we could tell; kids can be pretty tough on someone who’s different. Only with Billy it wasn’t like that, it was more like reverence. We didn’t know why, but we were all a little in awe of Billy. It wasn’t just that occasional vacuous stare of his that unnerved us; it was other things, too. Mainly, it was the complete absence of that little streak of mischief that each of us had just about every time we got together. We weren’t bad kids, not at all, but boys will be boys.
At first we rode Billy kind of hard for not pulling the same stupid pranks that the rest of us did. You know, things like inking the phones, throwing water balloons off the old Miller Bridge, and just about anything we could think of to embarrass the girls in our class, at least the ones we had crushes on. But soon we came to realize that Billy was happy enough to go along with our pranks, he just didn’t have any time to waste thinking them up. His mind was occupied by more important things; we weren’t quite sure just what, but we knew they were important.
A lot of the grown-ups just thought Billy was slow, but me and the boys, we knew better. After that picnic on the Fourth of July, I was sure a lot of other folks would start to believe, too.
It was hot as blazes that day. My dad was manning the grill along with Rudy Marshall, and the smoke was drifting out over the ball field... I can still smell those burgers cooking if I close my eyes and take a deep whiff. It made it tough to concentrate on the game, but when the whole town was watching, you found a way.
Jack Tasker, the gym teacher, was pitching for both sides. He tossed one in to the sixth grade bully, Hank Remmick, who took a wicked swing. You could tell by the crack of the bat that he had gotten a hold of one real good, and we all knew where he was aiming.
“Billy!” I yelled. “Look up! It’s comin’ right at you. ”
But it didn’t do any good. He had gone into one of those stares of his, right smack in the middle of the game. We had hidden Billy in right field -- he wasn’t the best athlete in town-- but I guess we hadn’t hidden him well enough, and Hank Remmick had found him with a monster fly ball. Hank was laughing as he rounded first, gleaming at the blank stare on Billy’s face as the ball headed his way.
I was embarrassed for Billy.
“Look up, Billy,” I yelled, but I knew it wasn’t going to do any good. I saw that look, too. I’d seen it dozens of times, enough to know that when Billy looked like that, he was in another place, somewhere far, far away, and he wasn’t coming back until he was ready to come back. Usually, Billy didn’t move a muscle when he went into a stare, but this time something different happened. As I ran for the ball, knowing I could never get there fast enough to catch it, but hoping to minimize the damage of Hank’s hit, Billy started to back away. At first, it was like he was moving in slow motion, but his steps gradually quickened, and all of a sudden, he turned.
“Run!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
I never saw Billy move so fast. It was such an absurd sight that I just stopped dead in my tracks. The crowd had fallen silent, except for a few snickers, and I watched the ball float slowly toward the ground, landing with a thud in the stillness of the thick July afternoon. Even Hank had stopped running around the bases to watch the spectacle. It was surreal. One of the most peaceful moments in the history of Laurelwood: the ball lying in solitude on the freshly mowed grass, the smell of barbecue hanging in the air and the whole town looking on in silence. No motion, no sound, except for Billy Dayton, the quietest boy in town, running away from the ball and screaming like a Banshee.
And then it came.
At first, it was just a low rumble coming from the north. Everyone was so engrossed in the bizarreness of the moment that they didn’t notice it. By the time they actually saw the plane plunging over the tree line, there was a thunderous roar. Everyone ran as fast as their legs could carry them, and kept running until the blast of the crash rocked our peaceful little town so hard that we could feel the ground shake wherever we stood.
And then we froze in our tracks. It seemed like we all turned at the same time. Every person at that game, which was pretty much the entire population of Laurelwood, turned toward the field in unison and saw the smoking wreck of a single engine Cessna lying in right field. Where just a few moments ago there had been a lonely ball sitting in a peaceful field of green on a still summer's day, there was now a crater, billowing black, sooty smoke up into the air, overwhelming the smell of freshly grilled burgers with the stench of burnt oil and rubber.
Everyone had their eyes glued on right field at that very moment, and then, like in some ethereal dream, all heads turned toward the right field fence that Billy had hurdled in his seeming race from the embarrassment of a missed catch.
