The Regulators

Ha

Gary reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bag of sunflower seeds-if you have to ride the bench, he has discovered, sunflower seeds help to pass the time. He has become quite adept at cracking them with his teeth and chewing the tasty centers even as he spits the hulls on to the cracked cement of the dugout floor with the machine-gun speed of a major leaguer.

“I gotcha covered,” he calls back to the Reed twins, hoping the sweet little redhead will be impressed by his animal-taming prowess, knowing this is a dream so foolish only a kid between his freshman and sophomore years in high school could possibly entertain it, but she looks so wonderful in those cuffed white shorts she’s wearing, oh great gosh a'mighty, and when did a little fantasy ever hurt a kid?

He drops the bag of sunflower seeds down to dog level and crackles the cellophane. Ha

Ha

Gri

“Thanks for getting the Frisbee back,” Dave says.

“No problem.” He nods toward the redhead. “Who’s she?”

Dave laughs, not unkindly. “Never mind, little man. Don’t even bother to ask.”

Gary thinks of chasing it a little, then decides it would probably be better to quit while he’s ahead-he got the Frisbee, after all, and she applauded him, and the sight of her bouncing around in that little halter would have gotten an overcooked noodle hard. Surely that is enough for a summer afternoon as hot as this one.

Above and behind them, at the top of the hill, the red van begins to move, creeping slowly up on the corner.

“You coming to the game tonight?” Gary asks Dave Reed. “We got the Columbus Rebels.

Should be good.”

“You go

“I should get a couple of i

“Probably not, then,” Dave says, and yodels a laugh which makes Gary wince. The Reed twins look like young gods in their cut-off tees, he thinks, but when they open their mouths they bear a suspicious resemblance to the Hager Twins of Hee Haw.

Gary glances down toward the house on the corner of Poplar and Hyacinth, across from the store. The last house on the left, as in the horror movie of the same name. There is no car in the driveway, but that means nothing; it could be in the garage.

“He home?” he asks Dave, lifting his chin at 240.

“Du

“You scared of him?” Dave asks Gary. He’s not exactly taunting, but it’s close.

“Shit, no,” Gary says, cool, looking at the redhead, wondering about how it would feel to have a package like her in his arms, all sleek and springy, maybe slipping him a little tongue as she snuggled up to his boner. Not in this life, Bub, he thinks again.

He tosses the redhead a wave, is outwardly non-committal and inwardly overjoyed when she returns it, then sails diagonally down the street toward 240 Poplar. He’ll deliver the Shopper on to the porch with his usual hard flip, and then-if the crazy ex-cop doesn’t come charging out the front door, foaming at the mouth and glaring at him with stoned PCP eyes, maybe waving his service pistol or a machete or something-Gary will go across to the E-Z Stop for a soda to celebrate another successful negotiation of his route: Anderson Avenue to Columbus Broad, Columbus Broad to Bear Street, Bear Street to Poplar Street. Then home to change into his uniform and off to the baseball wars.

First, however, there is 240 Poplar to get behind him, home of the ex-cop who reputedly lost his job for beating a couple of i

At the top of the hill, the red van-if that’s what it is, it’s so gaudy and customized it’s hard to tell-turns on to Poplar. It begins to pick up speed. The sound of its engine is a cadenced, silky whisper. And what, pray tell, is that chrome gadget on the roof?

Joh

Arrows of sun glint off the bright red paint and the chrome below the dark windows, arrows so bright they make Joh

Next door to Joh