Old Glory and the Commonwealth's flag had both been neglected and left up, of course, because the flagpole was not on government property. Instead, the twenty foot-high pole stood at the center of three Little League-scale baseball fields.
Although the Major League World Series had been played out just a fortnight ago, the trio of diamonds had not felt the grind of little plastic cleats since the Eastbridge Youth Baseball League's season ended in early July. Only the occasional dad and his boy playing catch or dogs and their owners had made use of them.
The surrounding maples and elms had already reached their maximum color two weeks ago and were even now laying down a fiery carpet on the once-verdant outfields. What relief there was from the increasingly bleak tree line was provided by scrub pines. From the highway beyond them, car headlights flickered through the dull foliage like fireflies.
The tall man standing beneath the listless, tattered flags decided that perhaps it was best to leave the flags up for several very good reasons:
It would always irk Jack Gallagher to occasionally see some rummy of a school custodian or an obese postal worker lower the flag then ball it up against their stomachs as if it were a filthy sheet. Treating the Stars and Stripes in such a manner on the color guard at Coronado would've resulted in an immediate, one-way trip to Portsmouth, followed by a BCD or dishonorable discharge.
Only once had Gallagher ever seen a civilian treat the flag with as much proper respect as a lone man could give it and he immediately made him as former military, maybe even a Marine. His hair had been cropped close to his skull and he walked with a gimp. The man, without making a show of the procedure, had gravely and delicately taken the colors by the free corners then disengaged the left side from the rope, folding it into a square instead of the tight and neat triangle made by color guards. At no time had the flag touched the ground.
Jack, cloaked in the shadows, looked out at field number two, the best one of the three. Two was the only one with a real backstop, the others having badly deteriorated plank walls that were painted hunter green, and, above them, ripped netting behind home plate. The fields had seen countless Little League, Babe Ruth, and informal sandlot-type games in its twenty-two years. Home plate curled up at both sides as if surrendering to the preparatory pounding of thousands of batters. The pitcher's rubber, by contrast, resembled a frown, owing to both its sides being beaten down by rightie and southpaw hurlers.
Jack Gallagher wondered how many heartbroken kids had trudged off the Williams Memorial Park after an unsuccessful bid for victory. Jack was well acquainted with the feeling of loss and defeat- He'd played Little League at ages eleven and twelve the year the fields were dedicated (not to Red Sox icon Ted Williams, as many townies persisted in believing, but to a now-forgotten local patron of baseball who'd died a quarter of a century ago).
The field was indeed a field of dreams, as Hollywood would've had it. To any eleven year-old, the promise and thrill of a brand new ball field was like a new frontier to a Renaissance explorer. The pitcher's rubber was as white and straight as a movie star's teeth and the equally fresh home plate stood in dramatic relief against the fresh red clay of the infield. The sod making up the outfield had just taken root and was freshly designed with the crosshatch tracks from a riding mower. Jack and eight other Orioles had the honor of being the first team to take the field on number two and the fact that two other home teams shared the honor on their respective fields did not diminish the importance of being first to take the middle, and best, field.
They'd lost that day, as they would in the playoffs. The fifth grade participants would eventually get over it, graduate school, get married, and watch their own kids play in Williams Park. Jack would, as well. Of course, not even losing the Major League World Series could compare with the heartbreak that was Jack Gallagher's.
The man leaning on the whitewashed aluminum flagpole looked at his watch, silently noting that Art and Bob were late. It was also getting dark earlier than expected before lazily remembering that daylight savings time went into effect at the fictional hour of two o'clock that morning. Many things got past Jack these days, but never the important things.
Had it been three years ago, already?! '98… '97… '96… yes, three years, by God, since he had last played ball here with Gerry, then five, his oldest boy. Because of his extreme youth, the little tyke was relegated to the T-Ball league. But even the other coaches agreed with Jack that Gerry Gallagher was almost ready to play in the eight year-old instructional baseball league. He wished he could have more days like those before sadly realizing that he never would, ever again. Not after tonight.
The fat echo of the rope hitting the pole brought Gallagher's attention back to the limp American flag. The empty clang served to illustrate to Jack the hollowness of American ideals, ideals for which he'd killed men he didn't know or ever would. The decrepitude of the once-promising field only reinforced the cynical image. Everything was falling apart, ideals were jokes on morality, and not even the few who gave a shit could do a fucking thing about it. It was "progress," "the way things were."
Not tonight, he thought, just as a set of headlights bleached the pitchers mound a ghostly white, sending up Jack's elongated shadow between the rubber and home plate. Mainly for show, Gallagher again looked at his watch, scowled, and flicked his Winston cigarette against the backstop, producing a brief fireworks display.
The yellow nylon rope clonked against the cold aluminum pole as if beseeching him to come back. The wind riffled through the thin and jaundiced remains of the pansies, cosmos, and black-eyed Susans planted at its base as Jack Gallagher slipped into the Ford Crown Victoria and left with the other two men inside.
"In the Navy," he said, "you guys would've been up for a Captain's Mast for being this late."
"In the Navy, we'd be walking the plank for what we're about to do," said the driver, a large black man named Art Beck, who took up almost half the Ford's front seat. "You nervous, Jack?" He was wearing a Massachusetts Department of Corrections uniform.
"What do you think? That I'm a professional terrorist who does this 40 hours a week?" Jack, as with his cohort in the backseat, Bob Haynes, both wore Brooks Brother's three piece suits. The buttoned down, Republican garb made Jack's quip all the funnier.
The soft laughter in the car belied the tension that all three men felt as they drove to the Grafton Hilton ten miles away, where Massachusetts Senator James Forrest was staying.
The flagpole continued tapping out its lonely message. Three clinks, three longer clonks, followed, in an amazing coincidence, by three quick clinks. SOS.
Enjoy! Let me know what you think. My email address is Crawman2@Yahoo.com
The sultry wind tapped out a lazy, intermittent Morse code against the flagpole. The series of hollow clonks made for an inscrutable message intended for no one without a gift for abstract irony.