Triggerfish Twist Read online

  Unlike most homeless people, Ernie had a nemesis. His name was Bert. He was homeless, too. Bert told himself he was a social drinker, and his society was made up of Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac and John Bonham. Yep, he was crazy. His flavor of madness made him believe he was the Antichrist. He shaved his skull and used a rusty razor to carve demonic stuff in his forehead.

  As Christ and the Antichrist, Ernie and Bert fought pitched battles across Tampa Bay for the soul of mankind. They would tail and ambush each other on a daily basis like Inspector Clouseau and Kato, wrestling and tumbling all over town. Other times they got along quite well, playing checkers in the library, boosting each other into Dumpsters, taking turns pushing the shopping cart. When you got right down to it, they needed each other. At the end of each day, they always pooled whatever they had for quarts of Olde English.

  But the Antichrist was an angry drunk. Sober, there was nobody nicer. Under the influence, however, it was another story. Something just changed in the Beast. The Messiah would go in the Circle K to get another quart, and on the way out the door, Bert would blindside him with a right hook.

  The police hauled’em in dozens of times. After a while, the cops didn’t even fingerprint them anymore. They’d just throw them in the tank to dry up and tease them mercilessly—“Hey Jesus, wait till we tell your mother!” “Yo, Antichrist, who’s bad now!”—the way some officers used to do before they instituted the education requirements.

  John Milton would eventually learn the whole back story. But all he knew right now, as he continued his journey away from the car dealership, was that he heard a creaking noise. It sounded like a large tree branch starting to snap. John turned around. He saw the man with the pinwheel hat walking away on the sidewalk. Hanging over the sidewalk was the bough of an old oak. Another homeless man was up in the tree, perched on the branch, ready to strike.

  The branch snapped.

  Both men lay on their backs, groaning. John ran to help. He pulled the tree limb off their chests. The pair thanked John, then jumped each other. They fell and rolled into the gutter. Cars drove by on an otherwise pleasant afternoon. Ernie and Bert saw it differently as they tightened grips on each other’s throat. The sky was blood-red, and purple lightning forked over the city. There were two moons in the sky. The earth cracked open on Dale Mabry Highway, and magma gushed out. Shopping centers burst into flames. The lava flow stopped traffic, and ten-foot winged lizards pulled people from their cars and ripped their arms off.

  Suddenly, Bert jumped up from the ground, holding the pinwheel hat in the air like the head of his enemy. “I got it! I got it!” He ran away.

  John helped Ernie to his feet again and pulled leaves off his shirt. Ernie asked John his name. John told him. He blessed John. “You are the gentle one. From now on your new apostolic name will be John.”

  “My name already is John.”

  “This is a different John.”

  “Oh.”

  Ernie bent down and stuck his thumb in the dirt. He stood back up and pressed the thumb to John’s forehead, giving him a little Ash Wednesday action. “Now go. You have much to do.”

  “What do I do?”

  “You will be told by the Anointed One. The Messenger who will reveal all.”

  “Who’s the Messenger?”

  Ernie pointed down the street. “You must hurry!”

  John hurried. He began walking briskly. Faster. Then trotting. Finally he was running full speed, on a mission. Only two questions. What was that mission, and who would be the one to reveal it?

  Cars blew by John on the highway. Mitsubishis, Porches, Datsuns and a blue Buick Regal with bug shield and curb feelers.

  The E-Team was on the move. They all had coupons for the free lunch buffet at Hot Buns, the new all-male revue in north Tampa. Eunice pulled the Buick into the parking lot.

  Twenty minutes later, Eunice pulled out of the parking lot. The whole E-Team was mad at Edith.

  “I wanted to stay!” said Edna.

  “Me, too!” said Eunice.

  “I can’t believe we got kicked out for life!” said Ethel.

  Edna glared at Edith. “Everyone knows you’re not supposed to touch the dancers.”

  “Or get up onstage,” said Eunice.

  “Big deal,” said Edith. “The coleslaw was runny.”

  Eunice began a slow, methodical drift toward the exit ramp. Eunice’s lane changes usually took more pavement than a 747 takeoff. Unless there was another car in that lane, in which case she could be over with utter suddenness.

  The exit ramp approached fast. Eunice was driving in the triangular wedge of warning stripes painted in the fork, her left wheels running over raised reflector hubs bolted to the yellow stripes, rat-a-tat-a-tat, standard operating procedure. Still plenty of time to miss the upcoming guardrail. Leaving the yellow stripes now, three-quarters of the way into the exit lane and looking good.

  A low-riding Geo without a blinker shot by on the inside, taking the ramp at ninety. Eunice yanked the steering wheel left, just as they were about to crunch fenders. Everyone including Eunice clenched their eyes shut, waiting for impact. Nothing. They opened their eyes. They were back in the striped triangle again, guardrail coming up fast. No escape. They hit the guardrail end on. Driver and passenger airbags: bang-bang. Bobbing-head dolls from the rear window catapulted forward through the passenger compartment. Guardrail legs snapped off at bumper level, pow-pow-pow-pow-pow, glancing off the windshield. Curb feelers sheared off. Red and orange reflector discs from the guardrail sailed in all directions, and the horizontal aluminum rail curled away like a wood shaving. Sod and gravel slung past the windows. Four hubcaps took off independently, passing the Buick, which veered onto the wrong side of the guardrail, high up the grass embankment. They were at an angle now, leaning right as the embankment’s incline increased. The Buick finally began to decelerate. Forty miles an hour. Thirty. Twenty. The women sighed with relief as the car neared a standstill. Meanwhile, the angle of the embankment had increased. Twenty degrees. Thirty. Forty. When the Buick was just about to roll to a stop, the pitch reached sixty degrees, and the Buick tilted up on its right tires and slowly creaked over for a soft landing on its roof.

  Everything was still. The four woman looked around at each other hanging upside down in their seat-belt harnesses.

  “This reminds me of The Poseidon Adventure,” said Edith.

  “Shut up,” said Eunice.

  “At least it’s over,” said Ethel.

  The Department of Transportation had done a fine job landscaping the interchange. The grass was smooth and mowed, still wet with dew. The Buick had just been waxed.

  There was a lurch. The women stopped talking.

  Another lurch.

  The car began sliding down the embankment on its roof.

  Edith looked out the window at the grass going by inches above her head.

  “Shit.”

  The Buick picked up velocity again, tobogganing down the embankment. Ten, fifteen, twenty miles an hour, speeding for the retention pond choked with hyacinths, reeds and cattails growing to improbable heights due to nutrient-rich fertilizer runoff. The Buick slammed into the cattails, flipping back upright and landing fifteen yards out in the pond. All was still again.

  “Look on the bright side,” said Eunice. “Nothing else can go wrong.”

  They began sinking. Swamp water squirted in the rivet holes at the base of the firewall. The women watched water and minnows swirl on the floorboards.

  “Remember how Shelley Winters held her breath in The Poseidon Adventure?”

  “Shut up!”

  Suddenly, it stopped, a foot of water in the car.

  “There’s got to be a morning after…”

  “I’m warning you!”

  “Maybe we should climb on the roof and get someone’s attention.”

  Eunice tried her door, but the cattails were thick and tight against the car. It wouldn’t budge. “Try yours.”

  The other
three pushed on their own doors. Negative.

  “Don’t worry,” said Edna. “Help must be on the way. Probably a hundred people saw us go down. And we’re in the middle of a big city.”

  “My window’s working,” said Eunice. She crawled out and climbed on the roof.

  The rest of the E-Team looked up as they heard her footsteps.

  “Can you see anything?” asked Edna.

  “No. The cattails are too tall. But I hear something.”

  Police and fire rescue had gotten thirty-two cell-phone calls about a vehicle going off the highway. Trucks with flashing lights responded immediately.

  Unfortunately for the E-Team, the Geo that had cut them off on the ramp had been running from police, and it failed to negotiate the turn at the bottom of the exit, spinning off the shoulder and wedging nosedown in the edge of the pond. Police cuffed the driver; a city tow truck winched the Geo out of the water. Everyone drove away.

  It was quiet again.

  “I think they left,” said Eunice, climbing back in the window.

  “Shit.”

  24

  F LOODLIGHTS LIT UP the Palma Ceia Little League complex in south Tampa.

  Parents stood in the bleachers and cheered as the Raptors ran from the dugout and fanned out across the field in gleaming white uniforms and satin warm-up jackets. Then the team’s four-man coaching staff ran onto the field. Head Coach Jack Terrier waved to the crowd with his good arm, his other dressed in a sling from pit-bull punctures.

  On the other side of the diamond, the visiting team huddled in the dugout. Two weeks earlier, the team’s original coach had been sent to prison for securities fraud and absconding with the team’s uniform fund. The coaches of the other five teams quickly responded to the civic crisis by snatching up all the best players from the local talent pool. The leftovers, a platoon of underweight, spastic, nearsighted children, were delegated by default to the coachless sixth team. Problem solved. The coaches could count on at least one automatic win every fifth game. But they still needed a warm, adult body to sit on the last team’s bench, for insurance purposes.

  Jim Davenport arrived to drop Melvin off for baseball practice. The other coaches summarily drafted him. Jim told them he was swamped with work. They told him to think of the children.

  “What about uniforms?” asked Jim.

  Sorry, they said. The former coach needed the money for jewelry and personal electronics. Jim decided to buy the uniforms himself. He went to the sporting-goods store.

  “I’m on a really tight budget. Give me anything you have.”

  “We got some factory seconds and sample runs, but I don’t think you—”

  “I’ll take ’em.”

  The Raptors had been warming up for five minutes when there was a second roar. The parents in the visitors’ bleachers stood and cheered as their children took the field. The cheering dribbled off into puzzlement as the players ran to their positions in mismatched T-shirts, the team’s new name in a different typeface on each jersey: TEST PATTERN.

  The public-address system crackled. “Please rise…” Everyone stood at attention for the national anthem.

  “Coming through! Coming through!” Coleman balanced a tray of nachos and wobbled up the steps of the aluminum bleachers wearing a rainbow afro wig under a beer helmet.

  Serge was already standing on the top row, hand over his heart, and he gave Coleman a look of disapproval.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Coleman.

  Everyone was silent in the stands. Serge made a head motion toward the flagpole.

  “What?”

  Serge glanced down at the hand over his heart.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Fucking national anthem!”

  Parents turned around.

  The music ended and everyone sat back down. Coleman took the beer tubes out of his mouth. “Nacho?”

  “I’m on a diet,” said Serge.

  “You don’t need to diet.”

  “I’m not doing it because I need to. I doing it just to prove I can. I haven’t had anything solid for three days.”

  “Is it working?”

  “Hard to tell. But I’m dizzy all the time, so I guess that’s something.”

  Serge leaned toward the family on his left. “Politics!”

  The family looked at him.

  “Little League,” said Serge, pointing at the field. “It’s all politics!”

  The family moved to a lower row.

  “What’s their problem?” said Coleman.

  “Pressures of modern society,” said Serge. “People like that need to learn how to kick back.”

  Jason Terrier led off the Raptor half of the first with a home run, and the floodgates opened. Nine more runs before the end of the frame.

  The Test Patterns came to bat. Jason took the mound and struck out the side with high heat, the Raptor bleachers erupting in cheers each time a child was sent back to the bench. “Way to go, son!” Coach Terrier patted Jason on the back as he came off the field.

  Everyone scrambled for the concession stand.

  The Test Patterns took the field again.

  Coleman pointed down at the diamond. “Where’s the rest of our coaches?”

  “It’s just Jim,” said Serge.

  “But the other team has parents in the first-and third-base coaches’ boxes. That’s clear edge.”

  “You’re right,” said Serge. They got up and began bounding down the bleachers toward the dugout, Coleman grabbing people’s shoulders to stay upright.

  “I don’t know,” Jim told them.

  “Think of the children,” said Serge.

  Jim finally relented, but said Coleman’s beer helmet would have to go. The Test Patterns were trailing seventeen-zip in the bottom of the second inning when Serge and Coleman ran onto the field and took up positions in the first-base coach’s box.

  “You’re supposed to be on the third-base side,” said Serge. “One coach per box.”

  “But I want someone to talk to.”

  The first batter came up and Serge and Coleman crouched next to each other with their hands on their knees.

  Coleman: “Hey, batter, batter, batter. Hey, batter, batter, batter. Swing!”

  Serge elbowed him. “That’s our batter!”

  Coleman thought a second. “How come they don’t chatter in the pros?”

  “All the fame and money,” said Serge. “They forget the fundamentals.”

  Serge clapped his hands and shouted encouragement to the batter. “Okay! Big inning! Let’s put some Louisville on the ol’ horsehide!”

  The boy struck out and tripped on his way back to the bench. Serge helped him up and patted him on the back. “Way to look alive! Way to take that called third strike!”

  The next batter struck out.

  “Way to hustle! That’s the spirit! Good eye! There’s still plenty of time to come back!”

  The third batter struck out to complete the inning.

  “Okay, that ends the rally,” said Serge, clapping hard.

  “Still a lot of innings left! It ain’t over till it’s over!”

  It was twenty-nine to nothing by the middle of the third, but the Raptors weren’t finished. Jason had a no-hitter going, and Coach Terrier wanted to break the local record of fifty-two runs. He directed his players to turn up the aggression. They stole and bunted and hit-and-ran. They slid with cleats high.

  The Test Patterns’ second baseman was taken out of a double play in a nasty collision. Serge and Coleman ran out and helped the boy off the field. The Raptor bleachers began singing.

  “Na-na, na-na-na-na, hey-ay, good-bye!…”

  Coach Terrier got his record, fifty-three-to-zero in the middle of the sixth. Just one more out and Jason would also have his no-hitter. It was up to Percy, the smallest player batting in the ninth position. He adjusted his owl glasses and choked up on the bat almost to the label. Jason’s fastball was still working, and he sizzled one high insid
e to brush Percy off the plate. Percy never saw the ball. It hit the end of his bat handle and bounced in front of the plate, rolling slowly down the third-base line. The third baseman charged for the ball. Percy stood frozen in the batter’s box, surprised he had made contact for the first time in his life.

  “Run!” yelled Serge.

  “Run!” yelled Coleman.

  Percy ran.

  The third baseman made a great off-balance throw, but Percy beat it to first by a full step.

  “Safe!” said the umpire.

  The no-hitter was dead.

  The Raptor bleachers booed. Debris flew onto the field. Hot dogs and batteries and ice cubes. Coach Terrier stormed out of the dugout. He twisted his cap around and got nose to nose with the ump. He screamed in his face. He kicked dirt on his shoes. He began mocking him, acting like he was blind and walking with a cane. The bleachers threw popcorn and chanted.

  “Bull-shit, bull-shit…”

  Serge and Coleman stood nonchalantly in the first-base box.

  “What an absolutely pathetic display of citizenship,” said Serge.

  The umpire stood his ground and told Terrier to get back in the dugout or he was tossed. Jason had begun crying on the mound.

  Melvin Davenport was the next batter. Coach Terrier went back and stood on the top step of the dugout, signaling urgently to Jason. “Hit him!” Jason nodded.

  Serge saw the exchange, but it was too late. Jason threw a fastball into the batter’s box without a windup. Melvin partially ducked, and the ball ricocheted off the oversized batting helmet swimming around on Melvin’s head.

  Melvin ran to first base. Serge came out of the coach’s box and knelt in the orange dirt. He grabbed Melvin by the shoulders: “You okay, son?”

  “Never even felt it, Serge!” said Melvin. “High five!” Melvin put up his hand for Serge to slap. Serge gave him the high five, but it was without enthusiasm. His mind was elsewhere. Across the diamond, Coach Terrier gave Jason a thumbs-up.

  Serge returned to the coach’s box. He became a statue, eyes locked in tunnel vision on the other dugout.

  “Uh-oh,” said Coleman. “I’ve seen that look before.”