The Reasonable Doubt
"I remember when it all started."
The kids, with their grimy, expectant faces, shivered, collectively. I half-expected the returning wave to sweep me up off my seat on the log, out of range of the camp fire, and into the darkening woods. It didn't, instead the tide simply settled, quieted, so that only the crackle of the campfire and occasional gunshot ringing out, over the hills.
"It was June, or so. I would love to say it was a June like any other June, and I probably could, but there were important ways in which it was different. The atmosphere was charged, I tell you. But it was only dogs and wild animals who could sense it, at this stage. To the rest of us, well, it was just an exciting time to be alive, a time full of, we thought, promise.
If I were to pick a real beginning, I would probably pick Teddy Ballgame. Now, this is before even my time, here. Teddy, who, so far as we know, is still frozen somewhere, Of course, in the great big mess when the Alcor facility was raided back in '15 at the height of the Troubles no one quite knew what was going on, so the rumors of his body and head being carted off to some secret, very cold location could very well be true.
Before all that, Teddy was the greatest hitter who ever lived. He played for the Boston Red Sox, in what used to be Boston, Massachusetts. I'm sure I've told you about that. At any rate, Teddy was a great ballplayer, but had his issues with the media of his day in good old Boston. They tended to pry a bit too much into his personal life, he thought. And so it began. Name-calling, back and forth in print, and the deal was sealed. We wouldn't know that, of course, until many, many years later.
Which is when the violence started. But I'm getting ahead of myself."
I took a long, slow sup from the tin mug in my hand. The circle of kids were just outside the fingers of brightest light, eyes glinting as flames leapt and receded. Perhaps I was too close to the flames. Or perhaps they were more comfortable taking in my eye patch, the ragged sandpaper-looking scars along the side of my face and down my neck, my warped left arm that looked just slightly... off, from a distance, in which they could stare and not be noticed without some hard staring of my own.
I coughed as the water went down.
"So it was June. And just when you thought nothing could go wrong, it did. It all did."
To be continued... yes, I realize this is a serial starting anew, smack dab in the middle of another one... we do that sometimes... why, I don't know, it just happens. And here it goes, it's happening to you, and us, right now. One or the other will be continued next week...
disclaimer:
We're slightly late this week. In part due to a national holiday here in the U.S., and in part due to sheer laziness. Or matters of immense importance.
One of the two. I would choose the latter explanation, if I were you. And it's not even really an explanation, so much as it is a vague excuse. Or something. Anyway. Enjoy the full issue. This week out on the Wednesday.
This is also not continued from last week, which we will be getting back to, I swear.
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