Bat Catching, George Verongos [good books to read in english .TXT] 📗

“bat killer” was being passed to me I was wondering how I could avoid the bat grease smeared all over the butt end. I glanced at my dad who was taking a slurp of beer like it was hot coffee and looking at me through squinted eyes. I had to remain cool and project confidence at all times but I didn’t want to touch the bat goo. Come on man think, think! What kind of gifted and talented student are you? THINK! Then I saw the big gulp cup that one of the neighbor ladies left over here. She was pregnant and not drinking alcohol so she brought over a soda. So in a total MacGyver moment I told Jeff to hand me the cup. I dumped out the flat warm soda with a wet splat and slipped the empty cup over the juiced end of the instrument and folded it around to fit every corner and knot.
I glance again at my father, we locked eyes, he had a look of restrained hopefulness from my ingenious cup maneuver. Things were going my way and I felt good, if I had a bandana I would have wrapped it around my head ceremonially like a noble Samurai. I hoisted my weapon into the air (queue the Vangelis track) and began to fluidly wave the instrument as if it were an extension of my arms, my heart, my very soul. I concentrated on making the hanky flap in a rhythmic manner like my dad had. I also kept it “flying” in a circle and in a matter of 10 seconds a few bats started circling the hanky. I heard some whispers and mumbling but no one said anything louder than that. My father even refrained from coaching me and more importantly he wasn’t heckling me or calling me stupid or a girl. This meant he was truly impressed or so loaded he didn’t know what was going on but I was hoping it was the first one. Then he produced a secret weapon to make my success even more elusive. He produced and cigarette and lit it knowing full well that the smell of smoke would repel the insects and the bats that ate them. Oooooohhhh that was sneaky but I couldn’t show any signs of cracking I had to keep my confidence up. Luckily there was a breeze so the smoke from my dad’s trusty Pall Mall was being wafted over his head and carried up behind him away from the kill zone. Now I was kind of stuck because so far things had gone my way and I was faking it pretty good but it was time to start taking some swipes at the bats to knock one out of the air but that seemed to require motor skills and spatial estimations I just wasn’t capable of. Video games had started creeping into my life a couple of years earlier when I discovered the concept of arcades and just applied the same logic used in video games that I had not yet grasped the techniques of. I spazzed. Hey it got me through many a level of Virtua Fighter and Mortal Combat in the future. I just made some random thrusts with all my might and then…a hollow PLONK! I GOT ONE I GOT ONE!! I was screaming at myself in my brain but on the outside I remained calm and cool. I must have looked so good, like some kind of natural, if bat hunting with a stick and a booger infested hanky is something you can naturally be good at. The bat fell like a brick, no flitting fluttering spastic ballet of death, no graceful transition into the bat afterlife, no ceremony or procession to remember his bat-life by, just a PLONK then a FLONK as he hit the sidewalk. My admiring on lookers gasped with shock at my hunter instincts and flawless execution of skill.
“Look at the size of that thing.” Said the teenage boy that didn’t try to catch a bat.
“Gross, its hairy!” said Sophia.
“Whoa, you killed it in mid-air.” Observed Jeff.
Great it’s dead already so I won’t have to crush it, and it was really big, twice the size of the one my father caught. Ha! Whose the big man now? Not only was my bat bigger than his, but I administered a fatal blow in flight to swiftly put an end to its life. Everyone was impressed as they gathered around the carcass of the great winged beast. I relaxed a bit and held the “bat killer” to one side while it rested on my sneakered toe and I let a faint smile of self-satisfaction leak on to my face. My mother opened the front screen door out of curiosity and asked,
“Did he get it? Is it dead? Who wants ice-cream?” I looked over at my father who hadn’t moved and was taking a drag from his secret-weapon cigarette but it was an over hand drag, you know the super manly hold where the cigarette is pinched between the thumb and the index and forefingers. He was trying to hold onto his own masculinity and outwardly claim it through his cigarette hold. Then threw the unfinished smoke to the ground (which he would never do, he would normally smoke his filter-less Pall Malls down so far that if you were to look at his ash tray you would think they were roaches) and walked towards me. I was a little scared because I couldn’t tell what was going on in his brain. I didn’t think he was stupid but sometimes he was very instinctual like a T-rex and the mix of beer and excitement made him seem very prehistoric right now. Was he proud of me for being so awesome on the hunt or was I too good and made him look bad in front of his audience? It was anyone’s call at this point and all I knew was that I couldn’t go back now. As he approached me I wasn’t sure what he was going to say I pretended not to see him or at least not react to his approach.
“AAAHHHH, it moved!” yelled my sister’s friend, the girl that was now paying way too much attention.
“No it didn’t. It’s dead.” Said the boy that did try to catch a bat. They were still huddled around the corpse.
“AHHH, it moved again! Didn’t you see that?” said observant girl.
“It did, I saw that.” Said Sophia.
“Me too.” Said Jeff then he turned around to me and said in a quiet voice as if he could see into the future, “George, it lives.”
“What?” I replied in disbelief as I ran over to the deathwatch circle. Just at that moment a most horrible high pitched screeching started emitting from the bat and it started to flap one wing vigorously (it seemed that the other was broken) which caused it to start sort of spinning around like the amateur break dancer it was. I just stared at it as it seemed to stare back at me and chaos erupted around me. My sister and her friend were screaming as Jeff retreated to the higher ground of the front steps and the two boys had jumped back a bit and were engrossed in their own exchange of expletives and expressions. There I stood watching the great beast fight the inevitable darkness. I pleaded with it in my mind, “Just die already, won’t you? It is the easiest way. I’m sorry but it just has to end. I mean what kind of life is there for you now after your accident. If you don’t die now then I will have to kill you and I’m not too excited about that. Come on just go toward the light, that’s it.” The screeching intensified and a few more teenagers had arrived ready for a mid summer’s night make-out misinterpreting all the screaming as Ghost In the Graveyard screams but soon joined in the present excitement. As the newcomers were being filled in and the level of cacophony increased I was trying to accept my fate. I spread my feet to shoulder width and raised my weapon to hover ominously over the wounded furry giant. What was I gonna do. I can’t squish this bat. I know. I’ll save it. Yes I will nurse it back to health and name him Harry. He could be my pet I could get him a leash and we could have nightly flies around the neighborhood, or maybe he could be like a homing bat. He would forgive me and love me and I would love him and take care of him forever. Or at least take it to the vet or make it comfortable in its demise. But this would not satisfy my father, it would really piss him off and he would never talk to me again but it is the right thing to do. I can reverse the damage I have done. It’s like when a cop shoots a criminal and then calls for an ambulance. The cop had to shoot him but he didn’t have to kill him. I’m like the cop, I had to arbitrarily thwack the innocent bat out of the sky but I don’t have to splatter it. Wait that defeats the purpose of this whole thing. I wanted to make my father proud so he wouldn’t think less of me. I can’t do the right thing now, it would destroy my relationship with my dad for sure. This is too much morality for a 10 year old to deal with. I wish some one would just tell me what to do. Please just tell me. I can follow directions. SOMEBODY TELL ME!!!!! As I stood there in position poised to bring a violent unwarranted end to the drama I was visited by a demon. My head was enshrouded in a thick musky stew of stale sweat and rotting hops. I could even smell the smokiness of his singed skin. Just as I began to feel his presence close to my left ear all the background noise seemed to all but disappear except the screeching. I heard his serpentine tongue slither out of his mouth and flicker over his lips as he prepared to speak. And then in a voice that resembled what Barry White would sound like fronting a Swedish Death Metal band he said,
“Do it.” Then suddenly the screeching stopped, the conversations stopped, and everyone’s eyes turned towards me. There I was, the murderer caught red handed with the butt of my weapon planted firmly in an extra large smear of bat goo with my father hovering over my left shoulder. Just then the screen door swings open and there’s my mother with a gallon of ice cream and a stack of cones, “Ice cream anyone?”