Slippin' into Darkness

Начало книги

There’s the windup, and here’s the pitch: a beer bottle flew through the night air and exploded against a granite cross. Shards of broken glass knifed the soft earth. Cold liquor rained down on clipped blades of cemetery grass, shivered, and formed fat tears.

The pitcher stood on the mounded grave of an insurance salesman who had expired in 1992, exactly sixty feet, six inches from the granite cross. He smiled, appreciating his skill. Half in the bag, but he was still putting them over straight and hard with a strong arm. Dead solid strikes, one after another, each bottle shattering against the center of the granite crosspiece…the cold hard strike zone.

Graveyard baseball was the name of the game. No men on base. Rounded mounds for first, second, and third; the graves of a telephone solicitor, a war hero, and an infant born without a brain. Not exactly a million-dollar infield, but the infield didn’t matter when the pitches were flying straight and true. Every bottle right on target. A cancer-serious no-hitter.

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