2024 Online Fiction Contest Finalist: Brine

By Connor White

When Walt pulled the van into a parking spot beside the baseball fields, the Watkins kid was standing out in centerfield, unaccompanied, a cigarette dangling from his lips and a mitt hatted on his head as he beat the carcass of a dead raccoon with a stick. Walt’s daughter Joy and the rest of the team, crammed together in the back seats, waited patiently for a command. A few of the kids were small enough that their sneakers dangled above the van’s carpet. An anger clogged Walt’s throat. Watkins had been chastised the previous practice for playing with the festering remains. Seeing the van, Watkins dropped the stick but continued to puff on his cigarette. The baseball fields weren’t far from the Great South Bay, and in the humidity, a gray plume of smoke wavered about the boy’s head.
           “Okay soldiers,” Walt said, “let’s play some ball.” 
           They picked up their gloves and hopped out. Walt dragged a paint bucket full of browning baseballs to home plate and threw down a duffle bag of catcher’s gear. Joy ripped into it and strapped on the equipment. The kids snatched balls from the bucket and took to the field, playing catch. All the adjacent fields were empty. The other teams must have canceled their practices. Walt wanted to cancel too, but he had no good excuse. By the time he marched across the diamond, the cigarette in Watkins’s mouth was burnt to the filter. At his feet was a pulverized pile of fur with four paws and a snarling head. 
           “Where’d you get ‘em?” Walt said. “Fork over the pack.” 
           Watkins took one last drag and tossed the butt. 
           “You swipe one from your mom? Should I tell her you’re stealing cigarettes?”
           Watkins stood there expressionless, looking up at Walt. 
           “One cigarette leads to a hundred. It’ll stunt your growth. You want that? When you’re eighteen you’ll be the same height as nine.”
           Walt thought he might be getting through to the kid. Placing a hand on his temple, he lifted Watkins’s eyelid with his thumb and examined his pupil, curious whether a little marijuana had been sprinkled in with the tobacco. By the insolent look Watkins made, Walt felt an urge to smack his cheek. He hadn’t smacked a child since he was a child himself. It was no wonder Watkins’s father dropped him early at the field and took off, only to return thirty minutes after practice ended so that Walt or assistant coach Tim were forced to stay late. 
           “Positions, soldiers,” Walt said. “Watkins, take third.”
           Watkins complied and sprinted to third base. Walt wanted to complain to Tim about Watkins, but Tim was late. The kids made their fielding formation and Walt took to the plate. 
           “Ready, hun?” Walt said. 
           Joy nodded and squatted. Statuesque at times in her dedication to form, his daughter swayed to keep her knees loose, waiting to catch and make the play and, Walt liked to think, to show off a little for her father. 
           Walt motioned for the pitcher to lob one. Starting with first base, Walt knocked the ball to each position, sweeping counterclockwise until he reached third base. He grounded a ball to third. The ball bounced off the abandoned base and came to a rest in the crabgrass. Watkins had left his position. 
           “Where the hell did Watkins go?” Walt called out to the team. 
           The team shrugged as the shortstop rushed to retrieve the stray ball. 
           “Maybe the bathroom?” Joy said. 
           “There’s a reason we use the buddy system for bathroom trips,” Walt said. “You all need to let me know before you go running off.”
           An SUV drove up. Tim got out and lumbered over, offering Walt a soda bottle. 
           “Anything good in it?” Walt said. 
           “Bit o’ Kentucky,” Tim said. 
           Walt had his own but took a gulp of whiskey anyways and handed it back to Tim. 
           “Where’s Little Tim?” Walt said. 
           “At home, faking a stomach ache.” 
           “Caught Watkins with a cigarette. He ran off to the bathroom without a bud. Probably puking his guts out from the nicotine.” 
           “The kid’s a scrubby little piece of shit. Needs a good smack if you ask me.” 

They ran through a scrimmage. Children circled the bases and relayed the ball in zigzagging arcs over the field. The dusty smell of sunbleached dirt was pleasant to Walt’s sinuses. It reminded him of childhood. 
           Enrolled in Bayswater, Queens Little League at four, Walt loved to sit in the outfield in between plays and shovel up the sandy soil with his mitt and pour its cool grains over his face. The only sour memory of Little League was the Thursday afternoon in Bayswater when Matty, a four-year old from the tee-ball team, disappeared. Practice was canceled. Coaches and parents combed the fields and parking lot for Matty. Police were called. An amber alert was put out. As day turned to night, fears grew. It wasn’t until the next day that a groundskeeper, weed whacking around the bathrooms, noticed that the lid to the septic tank was off and found him. No one knew why the lid had been left off. It had been over a year since the septic tank was serviced. A kid that age couldn’t have opened it on their own. 
           Walt scanned the field. Watkins was still missing. 
           “Tim, did Watkins come back from the bathroom yet?” 
           Tim shrugged and hit a ball into left field. 

The small cinder block building that held the bathrooms was ten degrees cooler than the temperature outside. A faint breeze blew out as he entered. 
           “Watkins, where you at?” 
           He checked the stalls but they were all empty, so he went around to the women’s room.
           “Anyone in there?” 
           Only the noise of a leaky faucet was audible. Watkins was gone. 

The team was drilling: throwing and catching. First to second, to third, to Joy at home base. As Walt returned, Joy passed the ball to him with a perfect lob that landed right at chest level like he’d taught her. The rest of the team was in the outfield. Tim batted to them. 
           “Watkins is missing,” Walt said. 
           “He’ll show up,” Tim said. “Probably hiding. That little prick.” 
           “Has anyone seen where Watkins went?” Walt called out to the team. 
           “I saw him go to the creek,” Joy said. 
           “And you didn’t think to tell me?” Walt said. 
           “It’s tattling.” 
           He was glad Joy wasn’t a tattler, but now he had to go chase down Watkins. Tim certainly wasn’t going to do it. Tim assumed it was all fine, that the kids would naturally herd back together at some point. But one always wandered off alone, oblivious to the dangers of the world.
           “Jesus Mary Christ, if someone wanders off, tell me next time.”

A hedge formed the back border of the field. Behind it, a creek dribbled south to the bay. The kids, off in the distance, ran about the diamond. Their high-pitched voices hooted and hollered. They would be okay supervised by Tim for a short while. Joy stood up from home base and waved to her teammates, compelling them to hustle as a batter rounded third. 
           Sweat beaded down Walt’s face and wicked off the hairs of his mustache and beard. The mixture of perspiration and sunscreen stung his eyes as he ducked through the thorny brush. Branches whacked him in the face. Thorns caught on his jean shorts and scratched his legs. At the creek he found a mitt. Watkins was nowhere in sight. Turning to search the bushes, Walt slipped and stumbled backwards, splashing into the muck of the creek. 
           “Goddamn motherfucker.” 
           Cold water soaked into his sneakers. Caught in an eddy several yards downstream was a pack of cigarettes. Already wet, Walt slogged through the decomposing leaves and sandy banks to the floating trash. Menthols. The plastic wrap still encased the empty cardboard box. A branch cracked ahead, and a boy scurried around the bend. 
           “Watkins!” Walt said. “Don’t run.” 
           He waded along with the current. A school of guppies fled under the shadow of an overhanging bush. He’d been having recurring nightmares of Joy sprinting across a giant asphalt parking lot, ignoring his calls and pleading to stop and come back to him. And no matter how hard he pumped his legs, he couldn’t close the gap. The dream ended with Walt slumped to his knees in exhaustion as he watched the speck of his child finally dip below the curve of the earth. 
           The nightmares had started his first night alone in the house with her. That morning, Maggie had moved out to her sister’s, leaving behind a hollow sound in the walls. It wasn’t the first time she had left him alone in that house. He should have been used to it. But in her absence, an ethereal echo reverberated through the bedroom and deep in his chest. He awoke screaming into the quiet of his room. Joy came in crying. Walt held her for an hour and tried to reassure her that everything was okay, that she was safe with daddy. Though, rattled from the dream, he didn’t believe his own words. 
           The wind picked up. On the horizon, a storm cell pulsed with slivers of lightning. Further downstream, the creek widened and grew shallower. As the stream opened onto the shore of the bay, Walt noticed a child’s sneaker print in the sandy bank headed toward a lighthouse. 
           Atop the black and white striped tower, Fresnel lamps spun back to back, sweeping their rays over the interior of the mainland and out across the bay. Dusk had set in. It was afternoon when he’d left the baseball fields. He hadn’t realized he was gone so long. Joy would be worrying about him. From the ground he could see Watkins’s silhouette standing behind the glass in the lantern room. A penumbra in the boy’s shape casted onto the chop of the bay with each turn of the lantern. 
           “Get down from there,” Walt yelled up. 
           Watkins remained. Walt clawed up the sand dune to the lighthouse. The heavy iron door at its base rocked open on creaking hinges. It led to a rusted spiral staircase. He clambered to the top of the lighthouse, the metal framing rattling below his feet, its massive gears rotated and steadily spun the base of the lantern. The intense brightness, when he emerged into the lantern room, was overpowering. Yearning for light, thousands of insects clung to the outer glass of the windows. He felt immeasurably far from Joy. 
           Walt stepped out onto the gallery deck. Heavy winds pushed him about. He held onto the railing and looked over the edge at the rocky ground below, hoping he wouldn’t see Watkins’s body there. From the darkness, a cloud of bats flashed into existence. They arced through the beams of light and feasted on the quarry drawn in by the lighthouse. A veil of wings spiraled by. More and more joined the feeding frenzy. The colony’s cyclone grew denser as the gyre flew in sync with the lanterns. 
           He leaned into the torrent of wind that threatened to blow him off and called for Watkins. Creatures flapped and buzzed around him. Over the noise, he couldn’t hear his own voice. Watkins had given him the slip. The mass reached critical density. Bats collided in midair and crashed and rolled onto the deck with broken necks. Walt shielded his face with his arms and fought his way back inside the lantern room. The windows shook with impacts as he retreated down the staircase. 
           Across the dunes he called for Watkins and assured him, wherever he was, that he wouldn’t tell his mom about the cigarettes. His voice grew hoarse as he screamed the boy’s name. If Watkins’s parents had only given him more of their time—thrown the ball to him between practices like other parents did, arrived early to pick him up, fearing his loss to the dark, toxic pits of the world—he wouldn’t have run away. 
           “I’m not mad,” Walt said. “We’ll put this all behind us, if you come out from hiding.” 
           Under the faint glow of the moon, he spotted a piece of fabric floating in the water. A shirt. He dove into the freezing bay and swam toward it. The current pushed against him. If he didn’t come back with Watkins, what would Joy think the next time he held her after a nightmare and told her that she was safe? 
           Using his last reserve of energy, he dunked his head and kicked and slashed his arms through the water. An undertow sucked at his feet. He surfaced gasping for air. The shirt had disappeared. He flailed in the black water, hoping that by chance he’d grab an arm or a leg. His own swimming became labored. Nearing exhaustion, he angled his body toward shore. 

A single car remained in the parking lot. Its headlights were on, and the whole team, aside from Tim, was perched on the hood and in the doorways. A boy danced on the roof, howling like a wild animal at the moon. Watkins bounced on the spring in the roof’s sheet metal and punched at the air before hopping off with a karate kick. 
           “Where’s Coach Tim?” Walt said. 
           Joy exited the driver’s seat and touched Walt’s damp shirt. 
           “Dad, you okay?” Joy said. “Why’re you all wet?”
           “Everyone get in the car,” Walt said. 

The children piled into the car and buckled themselves in two per seatbelt. Watkins lay on the floor between the middle bucket seats. Joy sat next to her dad up front. She switched on the stereo. Music pumped through the speakers in hectic rhythms not quite loud enough to drown out the grating chatter of the kids. They asked too much of his soul, these children. He tried to ignore them, but their little voices buzzed like gnats in his ears. 
           Joy kicked her feet in beat to the song. His love for her was unspeakable. 
           “No matter what happens,” Walt said, “remember that we’ve made it a long way so far.”
           “Can we get frozen yogurt?” Joy said. 
           “Goddamnit, of course. Anything you want.” 
           The team cheered. He needed a stiff drink. When he turned the ignition and shifted the car into reverse, there was an abnormal rumble. The welds of the chassis might have come loose. He didn’t want to move for fear that it’d all collapse on the parkway into a thousand pieces, scattering shiny and wet fragments of his kids across the last tulips of spring blooming across the median. For a moment it paralyzed him. But then a burning smell filled the car. Tobacco. 
           “Let’s go to the candy store,” Watkins said, reaching over and rolling down the window to exhale. “Candy’s better than frozen yogurt.” 
           “Shut up, Watkins,” Walt said. “I don’t wanna hear another fucking peep from you.” 
           Joy blushed in embarrassment. In the rearview mirror, the kids forced smiles. Walt started to drive. He didn’t even like baseball. When he showed up with Joy to the first day of practice, no one else was there to coach. 
           “The air tastes like salt,” Watkins said, licking his lips. 
           “What did I just say,” Walt said. 
           “You know, table salt contains iodine. . .” 
           “You’re pressing my patience.” 
           “. . .but we don’t need iodized salt here.” 
           “Oh, and why’s that, smart ass?” 
           “The ocean air,” Joy chimed in. “Salt air, Dad.” 
           The first baseman spoke up, “The iodine enters through our lungs.” 
           Watkins leaned over Walt’s seat and said, “Our teacher told us that iodine prevents goiters. You’ll rot from the inside out coach, but it won’t be goiter.” 
           “That’s enough,” Walt said. “Please, that’s enough.” 
           Through the mirror, the kids watched Walt intently. They expected him to carry them safely along, to supply them with treats. He didn’t know if it was possible. Did they think he performed miracles? 
           “No goiters for us,” Joy said. 
           “That’s reason to celebrate, isn’t it?” the shortstop said from the backseat. 
           Watkins said, “Take any chance to celebrate, my Pop says.” 
           “Your father’s a junkie,” Walt said. 
           “We’re under no delusions, Dad,” Joy said. 
           “We didn’t ask to be here anymore than you did,” Watkins said and tapped his ash out the window. 
           They turned onto the parkway. He wanted the team to know that he’d tried his best but words escaped him. In the right lane ahead, a series of flashing emergency vehicles forced them over. Walt slowed to gaze at the wreck. Paramedics loaded a crying man onto a stretcher beside an overturned sedan. Crystalline grains of windshield were splashed over the road. They crunched under the wheels of the van. A small black tarp covered a lump on the shoulder. 
           Watkins passed around smokes to the team. Walt didn’t object when Joy took one. In the mirror, he noticed one of the boys struggling to light the filter end of his cigarette. Joy reached over and righted it for her teammate then cupped her hand over the flame as the boy tried again. Watkins tapped Walt’s shoulder to offer him a cigarette as well. He took one. With the windows rolled open, they let their smoky breaths swirl out into the brine of night air.

About the Author:
Connor White is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD Candidate in English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is a writer of fiction, poetry, and essays. He has taught writing at the University of Iowa, The Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and at the University of Tennessee. His work has appeared in The Southern Humanities Review, Monkey Bicycle, Postscript Magazine, Clarion Magazine, The Des Moines Register, Guesthouse, Flyover Country Magazine, and Aurealis Magazine. His work has received support at the Key West Literary Workshop, and in the summer of 2023 he was a Visiting Artist and Scholar at the American Academy in Rome. He is currently at work on a novel and a story collection.