JACK THE DROOL

He’d show up at the ball field on summer days, arriving on a beat up bicycle with a baseball glove looped around the handlebars, and riding that bicycle was an accomplishment in itself considering the limp he had.

He was a few years older than us, but his peers derided him with insults and nicknames and shunned him, so he found refuge in our company, and in our company he was no longer a pariah. His appearance was off-putting, but we ignored it, just to have another body on the ball field. Baseball was the religion of our youth, we played before our league practices and games, and we played after our league practices and games. We found it as natural as inhaling and exhaling, but it required two teams, and fielding two teams required players. The more the better.

Jack, better known as “Jack the Drool,” had one leg larger than the other, the foot on that leg was shod with an oversized, unlaced sneaker and his face was locked in a peculiar expression, as if he was trying to blow a smoke ring. His mouth never closed, and a trail of spittle leaked from it and down onto his yellowed t-shirt. He was relegated to be the full-time pitcher, running was out of the question for him, and soon the ball he gripped with stubby fingers, fingers that each looked like a thumb, was sopping wet. But we played on, even after catching and throwing the ball soaked with his saliva.

The adults said Jack had lockjaw, delivered to him when he stepped on a rusty nail in a barnyard. His parents ignored the symptoms until the tetanus grew to an unmanageable point, leaving him disabled.

Watching him put a bottle of soda into his mouth was disconcerting and he would often ask to take a swig out of one of our bottles, and I always let him, but I’d never finish the remains. I never saw him eat and I wondered how he could chew with a mouth that never closed.

He was quite the bullshitter, no doubt to impress his younger comrades. All one summer he bragged he was going to England to see his uncle who owned a castle there, complete with a moat and a drawbridge along with medieval swords and shields lining the stone walls of the fortress he described. No one believed him, but we did our best not to laugh at his stories. The older kids harassed him enough, besides, we had someone willing to pitch all day, and no one else liked doing that.

The day came that summer when Jack announced he would soon be leaving for England. The words came slow and slurred, the drool wept from his chin and down his neck, some strands would reach the ground before he wiped them away with his forearm. But for once, he seemed sad to be telling us his latest fantasy.

“You won’t see me for a while, my uncle says he’s gonna’ take me for a ride on one of those red double-decker buses, and we’ll get to see Big Ben. He’s filthy rich you know, and he has horses we’re gonna’ ride on a fox hunt.”

There were some chuckles and sneers among the four or five of us, and Jack was not happy with our reactions.

“You assholes just wait and see, I’ll send you some postcards.”

And with that, he mounted his bicycle and pedaled away. We were no strangers to deformities. Some of our parents had lame arms and legs from the polio they suffered as children, and Dennis, the kid who lived behind the ball field would often watch us from his backyard in silence. He had one arm the size of a baby doll’s, and he always dressed like an old man, in short sleeved dress shirts tucked into his khaki shorts. He never spoke, he just watched, and I guess if I had been a better kid, I would have invited him to join in, but I never did. There was something about his arm that disturbed me to near panic. I heard a teacher at school telling another teacher that Dennis’s mother had taken a drug to prevent nausea during pregnancy and that caused his birth defect.

Joe, the kid who had the locker next to mine during gym class, used to show me the six toes he had on each foot. He had scars on his hands where there used to be extra fingers as well. He said he should’ve been twins, and he liked to refer to himself as “Six Toe Joe,” but his toes didn’t bother me nearly as much as Dennis’s arm.

Dennis was in a couple of my classes as we progressed through school and I would often think about his arm, how it just hung there, damaged and useless. Maybe someday he’d have it removed and tell everyone he survived an enemy attack during a war, something others would admire him for, but he exhibited no shame, he earned good grades and a bunch of scholarships when we graduated high school, and I was left with the regret of never inviting him onto the ball field. A few one-armed players had made it to the major leagues, maybe he could have been one of them with my encouragement.

Jack returned a few weeks later that year as summer crept into fall, but he wasn’t on his bicycle. He was on crutches, and he was missing the lower half of his deformed leg. From just above the knee down and the hospital bracelet was still on his wrist, but for once his clothes were clean and pressed. His pants leg on the amputated side was folded up and held in place with safety pins, and instead of his t-shirt, he wore a collared golf shirt.

There was a bead of sweat outlining his face, it must have been exhausting to traverse the two or three city blocks it took to get to the ball field on crutches, and his breathing was evident of that.

“Guess you guys will need to find another pitcher, I was in a train accident in London, it killed my uncle and they had to chop my leg off, but they’re saying I might get a fake one someday, one that works as good as a real one.”

We just nodded our heads in agreement, although we knew the truth, the tetanus had cost him a limb in addition to his facial disfigurement, and the postcards he promised never arrived. Why he couldn’t just say it I’ll never know, and that was more pitiful than the amputation.

He rested for a few minutes and watched us pick teams before we took our positions on the ball field. Jack strained to lift himself from the bench and onto his crutches. He hobbled away and out of our memories, erased from existence by a preventable infection, but I now choose to write a different ending.

Somewhere in the English countryside, I see a castle, an imposing edifice, standing tall on a hillside, and archers and knights have gathered in the fields below. The archers launch flaming arrows into the funeral pyre of their departed king as the knights kneel in silent prayer. Church bells toll and villagers raise cups and goblets in honor of “Jack the Benevolent,” taken from them all too soon, and in the town square, a statue of Jack is unveiled, and he is young, and he is standing on two strong legs, and his face is void of disfigurement, it is handsome and brimming with the confidence of a man who has lived his life to the fullest.