Through Their Strange Hours

By Kent McDaniel

Through Their Strange Hours consists of four stories set in southern Illinois between 1958 and 1970. The stories involve baseball, Famous Monsters, cats, rock & roll, Elvis, The Beatles, Micky Mantle, and love. They involve, too, The Prophet of Doom, blight, brawls, drugs, Vietnam, busts, betrayal, and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kent McDaniel
• Release date: Jan 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301879304

Kent McDaniel

Kent McDaniel is a writer and musician, who lives with his wife Dorothy in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, around which he can often be found ambling. His short stories have appeared most recently in Allegory, Palo Alto Review, Iconoclast, Downstate Story, and Rambunctious Review. If not writing, playing guitar, reading, or listening to sports talk, he’s probably watching some ball game.

Book preview

THROUGH THEIR STRANGE HOURS

By

Kent McDaniel

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Donald Kent McDaniel

Publication Credits

At the Edge of Town appeared originally in Chaffin Journal as The Baseball Card (2007)

Honoring Mike appeared originally in Blue Lake Review (2011)

Acid Casualties appeared originally in Iconoclast. (2008)

Through Their Strange Hours appears here for the first time.

Cover design by Rita Toews.

Cover photo: Statue of George Rogers Clark at Fort Massac State Park in Metropolis, Illinois.

This tiny tome is dedicated to Bracken’s Army, with many thanks for the critiques.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

At the Edge of Town

Honoring Mike

Through Their Strange Hours

Acid Casualties

AT THE EDGE OF TOWN

It was a long quiet block lined with one-story wood houses. At one end it met Route 45, the town’s only four-lane street, which turned ninety-degrees there. Down the street a boy rode a bicycle toward Route 45. Not yet a teen, he was small for his age, wiry, and wore jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, and a Yankees ball-cap. Sandy hair showed from under the cap, and a baseball glove hung from the handlebars of his red bike.

He was on his way to spend his whole allowance, fifty cents, but he didn’t expect to get what he wanted. He hoped, though. Sooner or later, he told himself. At the intersection, he crossed, and leaned his bike against a cement-block building. It was white-washed, and a green awning hung in front lettered in white Julie’s Sweet Shop.

Leaving his glove on the handlebars, he went in the dim shop. Just inside, a glass counter stood, shelves loaded with penny candy, glider airplanes, vampire fangs, other treasure. A gray-haired woman with glasses strolled behind the counter from the kitchen. She waited till his eyes wandered to the news-stand and wall of paperbacks on the left, then sauntered over. In a French accent she growled, You want something today, Joe?

He pointed. Three packs of ball cards. And two balloons, red and blue. Julie dropped them on the counter. You and your cards. She didn’t smile, but almost.

Outside by his bike excitement and dread came over him. Back in his closet two shoeboxes held his baseball cards, divided into teams, bound with rubber bands, probably a thousand cards, none of them the one. He wanted one player, and it wasn’t Ted Williams, Whitey Ford, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra, or Hank Aaron. He had them and more, but the greatest player on the greatest team ever eluded him. What kept him buying wasn’t the pink bubble gum. It was that he had never, ever bought a pack with the slugger to beat all sluggers, the home-run king, Micky Mantle of the New York Yankees.

He opened the first two packs: a Don Drysdale and a Peewee Reese, but most of the players weren’t much. Sighing, he peeled the green and red paper from the third pack. Almost, he put them away without even a look, but he turned them over. He took a deep breath. Right on top, there was Micky Mantle! Never in his ten years had he felt like this. The back of his eyes throbbed, and sight came in quick pulses. For a minute he stared. Then with a shout, he whipped off his cap and flung it high. As it hit, he scooped it up like a fast grounder and hopped on his bike.

A block away, down another quiet street, stood Central School, and he raced toward it. He flew down the hill beside the school, whooping, arms out straight over the street. Grabbing the handlebars, he fishtailed to a stop at the bottom. He turned right and pedaled like crazy. At the last second, he braked in front of a small house mid-block. He jumped from the bike, ran with it into a shallow yard, and threw it down. He bounded up a couple cement steps, and rapped on the door of a glassed-in front porch. In the corner a snub-nosed boy with short black hair looked up from his Famous Monsters and