Fahrenheit .406

This week’s new flash fiction is a baseball story not really about baseball. Published Monday in the great The Under Review sports lit journal.

Fahrenheit .406

My parents were in the bottom of their 8th. At least. They had been together for 63 years. Long enough to remember when pepper was more than something encrusted on sushi. And a can of corn was not merely something from the Cub Scout food drive.

My mom was being wheeled away, in handcuffs, again.

Dad sat quietly on the couch peering out impassively from under his Red Sox cap. If the police action fazed him, it was not apparent. He didn’t say much these days. You could still see, poking from the yellow plaid flannel shirt, those wrists that in their day could rocket a misplaced slider the other way into the gap before the pitcher could turn his head to observe the damage.

“Mom, it’s not cute anymore.” I was exasperated but trying to find my better angels. “You are too old to be a firebug.”

I huddled with the sheriff.

“It’s the third time this month, Chet,” said the lawman.

He was an old family friend, but I knew the man had a job to do. “I know. I thought dad was fading and she was fine for the most part, but this is a whole new direction.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Fire’s a dangerous thing, Chet. Not just for them but the whole side of the mountain. We’ve got to think about the whole damn neighborhood.”

The week before, out of nowhere it seemed, Mom had started closing the flue to the ancient fireplace and then igniting fires that quickly filled the house with smoke. Not enough to shut down their aged and papery lungs but plenty to fill the air with the strong and acrid tang of smoldering ash wood.

I grabbed the remote and muted the ballgame.

“I promise, Sheriff. One last chance. I’ll take care of her.”

“Mom,” I watched with guarded relief as she was uncuffed, “this has to stop. Or else we are going to need to look into different living arrangements for both of you.”

As a dutiful son, I was gutted by the diminution of this fine woman. But to my shame, I also could not help but weigh the costs for me personally. First of all, I feared my genetic fate. I had resigned myself to a potential future of hereditary dementia, but I had envisioned the docile brand my father had demonstrated. Now I was witnessing precedent for a more violent strain in my line. Also, I could not help but do the internal math on dollars and man hours necessitated by a simultaneous brace of incapacitated parents. My sister meant well but would be no real help.

My mother was having none of my scolding.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with me, goddammit,” she swore uncharacteristically as she wheeled herself past the fireplace, lit a match and threw it in. She then turned the TV sound back on, seeming to draw strength from Costas’s silky patter as smoke billowed.

“I’m not going to burn the house down. I know exactly what I’m doing.

“When I met your father, he was the best right-handed hitter in the Pioneer League. He lived, ate, and breathed hitting. He read somewhere that the great Ted Williams said if you hit a ball just right, the bat causes friction with the ball’s raised laces and you can actually smell it burning on contact. Your dad said that had happened to him once. Only once. And it was the greatest moment in his life. Better than meeting me or fathering you and your sister. Can you imagine a feeling like that?

“I’m just trying to give him that again, maybe for the last time.”

Amid relief at my mother's demonstration of coherence, I was almost overcome with the power of the love that lay behind her machinations. Although the pragmatist in me made a mental note to recommend incense or potpourri as a substitute.

The sheriff lifted me from my reverie with an urgent whisper. “Check out your old man.”

Indeed, all eyes turned to the superannuated ball player sitting on the couch haloed with a narrow wreath of smoke. He wore a wide smile and closed his eyes, breathing in again, perhaps nevermore, the sweet smell of one more perfectly struck two bagger.