Chapter 28: Banned from Walmart

Monday May 2

Mom was subdued when I entered the kitchen. I just went up to her and held her. I didn’t say anything; nothing seemed right. She finally pulled back, still in my arms, and looked up at me.

“David, you can’t know how proud of you I am. You account for far more of my grey hairs than you should, and there are times you act like the goofy kid I still want you to be, but you’re growing up.

“Your dad and I talked a lot last night, and I understand why you handled those women the way you did. I hope it turns out okay. I even understand why you didn’t tell me in advance. Just please try not to put me in that position again, okay?”

All I could do was nod. My voice seemed to have gone somewhere else. I pulled her gently back into a hug.

“What I hate most is that you have to do something like that. When did it become okay for them to try to set you up like that?” Mom asked.

I shook my head. I wished I knew.

I was moody most of the morning. It bothered me that people could be so deliberately uncaring of other people’s lives, and that they had no problems at all sacrificing others to their agendas.

Dad told me Ms. Dixon had called him last night and they’d talked about what happened. She was going to get my brain trust of her, Frank, Fritz and Mr. Morris together and review the footage we had, and someone would talk to me tonight. She told him she’d have advised me to cancel the interview then and there, but she also understood it had come up fast, and she appreciated my thinking on the fly. Ms. Dixon complimented me on the way I’d set it up so we’d have an accurate record of what had transpired.

She wasn’t the only one who wondered if it could’ve been handled differently. I kept replaying last night over and over again, and wondered how it would have played out if I’d just done this, or if I’d done that. I’d almost canceled the interview myself, but the thought that they just would’ve figured out some other way to ambush me was the reason I hadn’t. Still, I absolutely hated that I’d put my mom through that.

Finally, I remembered what Pam had taught me, and what Zoe was teaching me. I’d done the best I could, and the interview was over, for better or worse. I had people, professionals I relied on, getting us as ready as they could for the likely next steps. There was nothing more I could do at the moment, so it was time to put it behind me and move on.

Easier said than done, but I kept close to my friends. They could see something was bothering me, but when I told them I couldn’t talk about it, they honored that—and tried to cheer me up, mainly by telling ‘stupid boy’ stories to each other. I never thought I’d appreciate people so much for making fun of me. Especially my best friends!

Tonight was our first Sectional baseball game. We were playing Waterloo, located about two hours southwest of us. Their mascot was also the Bulldogs. Unfortunately, that was all I knew about them.

At lunch, I was talking to Pam, Tracy and Cassidy when Tim sat down next to me with a big grin on his face.

“Wolf is banned from Walmart,” he announced.

“Say what?” I asked, not believing my ears.

I saw other people coming to join us for lunch, so I held up my hand to hold off Tim having to explain himself a hundred times. Wolf came in, and I made Yuri move so Wolf could sit across from me.

“Let’s hear it. How did you get banned from Walmart?” I asked, catching everyone’s attention.

Wolf shut his eyes. I was sure he was counting to ten before he killed Tim for ratting him out.

“It was all a misunderstanding and an accident. It’s no big deal,” Wolf deflected.

“I have video,” Tim said, bouncing up and down in his seat.

No one wanted to hear Wolf’s side of the story if we had video. The video showed an aisle with toys, at the end of which was a huge display of multi-colored rubber balls about the size of a basketball. The balls were held in an eight-foot-high wire display bin that had a trough at the bottom where you could pull them out. It was about two-thirds full. The top was open so they could fill it from there.

“So, what’s the bet?” Wolf asked on the video.

“Five dollars says you can’t make it into the top of the basket from here,” Tim replied.

“That’s too easy,” Wolf said.

“Then make it,” Tim prodded.

“Okay.”

“Hang on, I want to get all this,” Tim said.

The camera jiggled as Tim moved back to the end of the aisle. Wolf launched the ball and turned towards Tim, with his back to the display, with his hands up as if it were a sure thing. At the end of the aisle, a large black woman stepped in front of the display just in time for the ball to smack her on the side of the head. I watched in stunned silence as her front foot went up and she went down in a heap, like she’d slipped on a banana peel. The ball had knocked her wig off!

“Oh, shit!” Tim could be heard saying.

Wolf turned around and froze. She got up and came after Wolf with her oversized purse. You could hear Wolf apologizing as Tim cracked up. The older woman was beating the crap out of him. Then Wolf got smart and made a run for it. When the video ended, I looked at Tim.

“You have to send that to me. No one will believe me unless I show it to them.”

“Don’t you dare,” Wolf warned.

He heard my phone ding, and you could see his resignation. I was happy my mind was off other less-pleasant subjects.

Because we were hosting the Sectionals, basically a tournament, there were four games today. We were scheduled to play in the last game. It was fun to see all the different fans excited about their team’s chances. I went to the hospitality tent to eat because I could smell charred meat from the minute I walked out of the building. When I poked my head in, I saw there were pork chops on the grill.

“David, come join us,” Mr. Sullivan said.

It looked like several of the boosters had taken a break and were eating. I sat down, and magically a plate of chops, potato salad and green beans appeared.

“We finally sold all our tickets and raffled off your car,” Mrs. Sullivan announced.

That meant they’d sold $100,000 in tickets.

“What are your plans for the funds?” I asked.

“We want to work on the baseball field, the wrestling team could use new mats, and the pool has to be drained and worked on. We want to kick off a new round of fundraising and use that money for other projects. Our goal is to have the best high school sports facilities in the state,” Mrs. Sullivan announced.

“When you get started, call Caryn. I’m sure I can help out.”

“I’ll call her tomorrow,” Mrs. Sullivan said.

“Who won the car?” I asked.

“A teacher at Washington. It was funny to see a sixty-year-old sporting around in it.”

One of the games must have finished because there was suddenly a rush and the boosters had to get back to work. That was when Jeff Delahey, my favorite reporter, sat down with a plate of pork chops.

“How come you’re not pitching today?” Jeff asked.

“To be honest, I never even thought of that. Bryan Callahan will be starting today.”

“I just figured that after your last outing, you’d pitch today.”

“I was lucky. I’m not really prepared to pitch.”

“Are you now the ‘Bad Boy’ of baseball?”

I gave him a funny look. Where was this coming from?

“It just seems you must be doing something to piss off the other teams. Why else would they be throwing at you? I mean, St. Joe decided to chuck their season in exchange for plunking you four times,” Jeff said.

“Five,” I corrected.

He raised his eyebrows. He was right; I’d been a cocky jerk. I had to remember there was a fine line between being confident and being an ass. Eastside, who we played before St. Joe, was a bunch of ass-hats. I didn’t really care what they thought.

We had our own history with St. Joe. They’d hit one of our teammates and I’d charged the mound, which resulted in their star pitcher being knocked out. I mean literally knocked unconscious. His dad had stepped up and said it was a fair play. He’d actually thanked me for my restraint because I hadn’t pounded him once I figured out he couldn’t fight back. What added weight to his assessment was he was the assistant baseball coach at State.

What Jeff had pointed out was that I was in the middle of both incidents. I was just lucky that fights hadn’t broken out. There wasn’t anything I could do to change the past, so I decided to tone everything down moving forward.

“Off the record, I probably shouldn’t have done it. Between the theme music and my comments, I was partially responsible for it all getting a little dicey.”

“How about on the record?” Jeff asked with a smirk.

“I have no idea why they were mad at me, it was just baseball.”

“Should I insert how good they were and how God was involved?” Jeff asked.

“It would save us both some time.”

“How bad are you going to beat Waterloo today?”

“I have no idea. I really don’t know anything about them except that they’re good enough to have won their regional and they’re also the Bulldogs.”

“So does that mean you’re going to win?” Jeff asked.

“Sure, why not.”

Waterloo had come up in the first inning and scored one run on three hits. It looked like we would need our offense to keep us in this one today. I came out of the dugout and our crowd went quiet. Dang it! I saw Alan stand up and give me a dirty look. He had his boom box and I heard the beginning of Thunderstruck. I will give our crowd some credit; someone had worked with them to get them swaying back and forth in time.

‘Ayaahhayaayaayaa ... THUNDER! Ayaahhayaayaayaa ... THUNDER! Ayaahhayaayaayaa ... THUNDER! Ayaahhayaayaayaa ... THUNDER!’

I had my own smirk on my face when Alan suddenly realized my mom was standing next to him. Everyone began to laugh when the music suddenly stopped and he was pulled out of the stands by his ear. He was about to face my mom’s wrath. I reasoned that it couldn’t happen to a better guy. The Waterloo team didn’t really react. They hadn’t seen our little bit of showmanship before.

Their pitcher had a huge windup that I’d watched while they were warming up. He threw all of his pitches with the same windup, but moved around on the rubber for each type of delivery. When I settled into the batter’s box, I saw him put his foot in position to throw me a curveball. On the release, I saw it was short and his curve bounced across the plate. If he didn’t get that fixed, it would be a long night for him.

He moved his foot over, and that was his stance for a fastball. The umpire today had done a few of our games, and he tended to allow high fastballs to be called strikes. So when I saw it was high, I swung and slapped the ball over the third baseman’s head. Coach Herndon, at first, waved me to second. Halfway to second, I looked over at Coach Haskins to see if I needed to slide or if I could stand up for my double. I was shocked when he waved me to third. As I approached third, he put on the brakes and indicated I should slide. I was safe.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It bounced off a fence post and the outfielder took one in the face. It took him a moment to gather himself,” Coach Haskins related.

That was why we backed each other up in the outfield. The center fielder should have been there to prevent me from taking the extra base. It turned out it would have saved them a run. I scored on a sacrifice fly, which would only have gotten me to third, if they’d played defense correctly.

In the next inning, they put two more on us. Before we got up to bat, I told my teammates what to look for at the plate. Knowing the pitch was a hitter’s dream. Unfortunately, we didn’t capitalize on it. All three of our batters hit the ball at someone.

The game settled down then, and my next two at bats I’d gotten on. The first was a single and I died on base. I hit a double my third time up, and advanced to third on a wild pitch, but was left stranded again. It was the bottom of the seventh, and we were trailing 3–1. When I came up, there was a runner on first and Coach Haskins gave me the sign to swing away. At the same time, their coach came out and signaled for their relief pitcher. I think he’d seen enough of me hitting his pitcher. I was a little disappointed my guys hadn’t hit him as well as I had. Most of that could be attributed to their superior defense. They’d made some outstanding plays to rob us of hits.

I dug in and made sure my stance was right. My first pitch was a ball so far outside I couldn’t have touched it with the end of the bat, but it was called a strike. I didn’t say anything, but even the catcher gave me a look. He knew it was a ball. The second pitch was a curveball that was very low. I looked at the umpire to dare him to call that a strike. The third pitch was a changeup that found itself right in my sweet spot. I was a little ahead of it, but I launched it down the third base line to tie the score at 3–3.

Their relief pitcher loaded the bases but was able to get the last two batters to strike out to get them out of the inning.

In the top of the eighth, one of our freshman pitchers walked the first guy up. That was when Moose called for a pitching change. I was shocked when he called me in.

“David, I just want you to throw the heat. Get us to the bottom of the eighth so we can win this,” Moose encouraged.

I was grateful the umpire gave me a couple of extra pitches to warm up since I’d come in from the field. Johan trotted out so we had our signals right.

“This guy is being a little loose with his strike zone both high and outside,” Johan said.

“Why don’t we try not to actually throw strikes then? No need to give them anything to hit.”

“Careful with the baserunner,” Johan reminded me.

“I’ll take care of him,” I said with a smile.

The Waterloo batter stepped into the box and made a big show of digging in with his back foot. He was excited to see me throwing fastballs as I warmed up. I got set in the stretch and glanced over my shoulder. I saw the runner take a good lead. I thought that was awful brave, considering he’d never seen my move to first. Well, he was going to see it.

I stepped off the rubber and snapped a throw to first. I was sure I got him, but the first base umpire emphatically signaled safe. The runner had eaten dirt to get back in time. Jim made a motion as if he threw the ball back to me. The runner stood up and cleaned the dirt off his face and uniform. To do that, he stepped off first base for just a second. Jim tagged him.

The umpire signaled ‘out,’ to the disgust of the runner and his coach. Saturday night during the baseball game on TV, they’d had a rain delay. During it, they showed trick plays. Jim told me that if he got a chance, he was going to do the hidden ball trick. They showed one base runner get caught twice in one game. They got caught up in the routine of the pitcher tossing the ball and the first baseman throwing it back. They assumed the arm motion meant the ball had been returned to the pitcher. It was a good lesson to always call time if you planned to step off the bag.

With the go-ahead runner off the base path, I could focus on pitching. It also meant I might only have to face two batters and not three. The first batter dug in again to make sure his back foot was planted. I think he saw himself as a power hitter. I threw three straight fastballs outside where he couldn’t possibly hit it. I smiled when on the last one he exploded and yelled at the umpire. Everyone could see they were outside, but he was calling them against us, too. As a batter, you had to adjust.

Their next batter was a smaller kid. I threw my first pitch in the same spot as my last three, but the umpire called it a ball. I wondered if he adjusted his strike zone based on what he thought someone could hit. I inched the next pitch in a little and it, too, was called a ball. Well, crud, I might actually have to throw a strike. I decided to throw the high fastball and see how the umpire called that.

The ball was just under the kid’s chin. The crafty little shit did what I would have: he stood up. Moose had been working with me to make adjustments in my swing with my legs. Normally I had my knees bent and was on the balls of my feet when I was in my batter’s stance. Moose had shown me how to straighten my knees to move my swing up a few inches. The key was it kept my swing the same so I could hit with power. This was preferable to lifting my hands to reach the ball. When I lifted my hands, I tended to change the motion of my swing so it wasn’t as level. That resulted in my swing angle to go upwards, causing pop flies.

With as hard as I was throwing, even a smaller boy, like the one I was facing, could hit a long fly ball. I watched as the ball sailed to center field. Dan Ball had taken my place in center. I watched as he turned and raced back. I thought he might have a chance. I heard Milo Bauer call “fence” to warn him that he was close. Dan slowed and prepared to play the ball off the fence. Instead, the ball hit the top of the fence and bounced over. My first thought was that if it were me, I would have caught it, but Dan did what he’d been trained to do.

I tipped my hat at the kid. He had the biggest smile on his face. I knew that feeling, and now I knew what it felt like to be the pitcher on the other side of it. His teammates cleared the bench to congratulate him.

Johan came out to see if I was okay. I sent him back and we faced the next batter. I struck him out on three pitches.

We couldn’t do anything in the bottom of the eighth and ended up losing 4–3. I stopped our line to shake hands when I found the kid that hit it out on me.

“Hey, great job. I saw the adjustment you made at the plate to give you a chance,” I said.

“That was actually my first home run. I hope I don’t face anyone that throws as hard as you do the rest of the tournament.”

“Do me a favor: win this, so I can at least say we lost to the best.”

“Thanks. We’ll see what we can do,” he said, and then we continued shaking hands.

After the game, the whole team signed autographs. The batboys handed out stacks of baseball cards. When we were done, we went to the locker room. Moose had a plaque that he held up.

“In my twenty-seven years of coaching at Lincoln, I’ve only won eight of these. This proclaims this team as Regional Champions. Next year I want to win State,” he said, to our vocal approval.

“I also want to congratulate three players. Jim Ball, Johan Bauer and David Dawson were named to the All-Conference team.”

That caused more whoops of approval.

“Finally, I just got word that we have an All-State Player of the Year in our presence. David is the first player to win Player of the Year awards in football and baseball in the same year in our state,” Moose said with a big smile.

I had absolutely no idea that I even had a chance at All-State, let alone the Player of the Year award. Moose showed me my final stats. I’d hit for a .435 average, on-base percentage of .558, and slugging percentage of .741. That was accompanied with 17 home runs, I’d only struck out 8 times, and I had 9 stolen bases.

Moose and Coach Haskins both offered to work with me until I left for my movie to help me get ready for Under 18 USA Baseball tryouts. I really appreciated their offer.

When I got home, Caryn was there along with Mom, Dad and Fritz. They were ambushing me with a conference call with Frank, Ms. Dixon and Tom. In a way, I was glad for the ambush because I hadn’t spent any time worrying about it before it happened.

“David,” Ms. Dixon started, “we’ve all been through every video and audio recording we have from yesterday, and we walked through it with Fritz and with your parents. We have some ideas, and a couple of ways we can prepare, but a lot of it depends on the strategy we go with.

“Tom and Frank have different ideas on how we set ourselves up to handle this situation. I have my own thoughts, but I want them to present theirs first,” she said.

I sat back with Mom and Dad. We listened as first Tom, then Frank outlined their approaches.

Tom basically wanted us to sit on the information and let them publish, then take them to court and surprise them with our own recordings. He wanted an airtight judgment against them.

Frank was more concerned with the PR aspects, and with my image and reputation. He wanted to release everything right away and to try to get the media to go with our message, which was that unscrupulous independent journalists were manipulating the facts so they could get a big payday. Then Ms. Dixon chimed in.

“David, I want to preface this with a little more information. I did a very thorough background check on the two women involved. The videographer who called herself ‘Bridget Anderson’ is, in reality, Hillary Stamford. She has been very active in the radical wings of the feminist movement for several years. More importantly, though, she has a criminal record, which may account for her using a different name. Specifically, she’s been arrested for two criminal assaults, and has one conviction as a result of a plea bargain. She’s currently on probation for one of them, and her latest stunt, if we can turn it into a criminal action, would violate the terms of that probation.

“She also has two restraining orders against her, one of which is on behalf of a rather engaging couple who were targeted because of the wife’s outspoken beliefs in a strong family structure. I have arranged to get copies of her criminal records, as well as her mug shots.

I heard some papers rustle over the phone, and Ms. Dixon cleared her throat.

“I believe our strategy should be based on what our overall long-term objectives are. Those objectives are, first, to maintain your good reputation. Second, you want to maintain good relations with the media. Third, it is in your best interests for stalkers, ambushers, and people in the media to be aware there will be negative consequences if they misrepresent you or try to manipulate the situation to portray you in a bad light. The last objective is the only one where legal actions, or the threat of one, even come into play. You’re certainly not going to get money out of an independent video journalist. Almost all of them operate on shoestring budgets.

“I’ve identified four different ways they might try to damage you, and I believe they’ll try to use all four if given the chance. The first is to portray you as someone who denigrates women’s rights and the feminist movement. Second, they’ll try to portray you as a rapist. Third, they’ll attempt to portray you as abusive to females. Finally, they’ll go after your amateur standing with the NCAA.

“The last one is the easiest. Mr. Morris wants to send the NCAA caseworker the video excerpts that relate to your sports activities, in advance, and to discuss it with him. I completely agree with his thoughts.

“With respect to the others, I think we should do what the military strategists do, and prepare for every contingency or combination of contingencies. When Frank is called for comment, we’ll find out for which particular issue the comment is being requested, and forward a clip showing what was actually asked, and what the actual answer was. In addition, we’ll send them the video and audio recording of the women’s conversation by their car, which will clearly show malicious intent to defraud. And next, we’ll send them information on the videographer’s arrest record and mug shot.

“At the same time, they’ll be politely informed that they now know the information in the video is false. Deliberately publishing it with that knowledge would be libel on their part, even if David is deemed a ‘public figure,’ and we’ll politely let them know that we will go after them if our hand is forced.”

Frank piped up at this point.

“David, if you’re okay with the broad-brush approach Ms. Dixon outlined, leave it to us to polish it up. We have to turn the message into a ‘Look at what some unscrupulous independents will do’ message, and try to get the media on our side. I’m a little leery of threatening lawsuits, and the media tend to circle the wagons to protect their own, but I have some ideas for a few carrots we can offer to get our story out there fairly. Let Ms. Dixon and me work on this. It’s what you pay us for, and we won’t let you down.”

“Give me a second,” I said, then hit the mute button and turned to Mom, Dad and Caryn.

“I agree with Ms. Dixon about the priorities, and I agree the strategy has to be designed to meet our objectives. I’m a bit miffed at Frank for not doing some background on these two, to begin with, but now’s not the time to say it. He’s got to know how I feel about this, and I think he’ll bust his butt to make this turn out right. Are we agreed?”

Mom and Dad both nodded. I unmuted the speakerphone.

“Ms. Dixon, Frank, go ahead with your planning on this and work together to fine-tune everything and to be prepared to respond quickly to whatever comes up. I agree with the objectives and with the basic strategy. It’s going to be up to you to make it work, and I’m counting on you.”

“Frank, because the PR concerns are the biggest ones, you have the lead, but I need you and Ms. Dixon to be working closely together on this to craft the best responses possible. If you can’t agree on something, let me know, but please try to work through disagreements or to find a way around them.”

Mom piped up, startling me.

“David’s got a lot on his plate and doesn’t need this distraction. Keep me in the loop on what your plans are, and on what’s happening as it happens.”

She turned and saw my raised eyebrow. God, I loved mastering that look!

“What?” she asked. “You always call me ‘the mama bear protecting her cubs.’ This time I get to act the part.”

We all chuckled at that and ended the call on a high note.

Tuesday May 3

I’d forgotten to turn my alarm on since I hadn’t planned to run today. I’d decided to take a break from constantly working out for the remainder of the school year, and after everything that had gone on over the last two days, I needed the break badly. I also had finals next week and Prom this weekend. I owed it to myself to relax for a little bit.

I was awakened by a girl’s gasp. I was of course naked, since that was how I slept. My bare bottom was on full display. I tried to think who would be shocked, and then realization struck.

“Megan?”

When I turned to look, she was red-faced, but made no move to leave.

“You do know there’s an intercom?” I asked.

“Peggy must have forgotten to tell me. Uh, breakfast is almost ready.”

Peggy was a bad girl, and I might have to spank her cute little bottom. Thinking about that caused someone to wake up and begin to stretch out. I jumped out of bed and made a dash to the bathroom before it got interesting. Megan worked for me, and while the little pixie of a girl was cute in her bespectacled, librarian-like way, she was off-limits.

When I came out of the shower, I saw that Duke had bailed on me and gone to the house with Megan. As I went downstairs, the gate opened and Fritz pulled in. Part of the fence project was additional parking on the side of the garage. Fritz pulled his little Honda to the back spot.

“Breakfast is ready,” I told him as he followed me into the house.

Everyone was seated at the kitchen table. Mom brought Fritz and me each a bowl of cheese grits with sausage crumbled in it. It was something I’d brought back from Georgia, and we had it about twice a month. Little David was flirting with me and held his arms out. I lifted him out of the high chair to hold him. He was about six months old now and was starting to get a personality. He almost always seemed happy.

“What happened with Alan?” I asked.

“I took him home to his parents. He’s getting a little mouthy for my taste. His parents agreed, and he’s grounded until school is out. I told them how I took your debit card, phone, tablet, and car keys. His dad mentioned his gaming account needed to be frozen. By the time I left, he regretted challenging me,” Mom said.

“Does that mean he can’t go to Prom?” I asked.

Funny how this time last year I would have worried about him, but now I just thought about how it affected me. Not that I was becoming self-centered—I think everyone is to some extent—it was just that emotionally, I didn’t have friendship feelings for him anymore.

“That’s exactly what it means. You’ll just have to find another date for Emma,” Mom said.

Mom had met Emma Stoned in LA on set and liked her. By now, I’d half-expected Kara to bail on me. If she had, I would be more than happy to take Emma.

“I’ll put Tracy on it. I would suspect most everyone has dates by now. I heard even Phil has snagged himself a date,” I said, and looked at Dad.

I’d been teasing him that Mom must be the common denominator in Greg and me being able to attract girls because my half brother had zero skills in that department. Dad gave me a smug ‘I told you so’ look.