The Mayfield Episodes

 

While this story ins't about intergenerational relations, there are instances where they are part of a character's background. No explicit depictions of such contact exist in the story, but the characters experiences need to be expressed. This chapter mentions one of these unfortunate incidents. 

 

EPISODE 2

THE THREE KEYS

 

 

 

 

Aiden checked his baseball bag for what he thought was the millionth time but was really the fifth time. “I think I have everything, Horace,” he told his bemused stuffed Donkey. “I’ve double checked it with my list, and I read everything out loud to you. I should have everything. I even put my jock and cup and sweats and practice shirt and practice sweatshirt in. My cap is there, my glove is in the bag, my bat is in my bat bag. I am so ready for the first practice.”

 

The first practice wasn’t until Tuesday, but Aiden planned to take his equipment to school on Monday. Coach Randall (yes, that Coach Randall—the varsity basketball coach, who is now the JV baseball coach) and Coach Eklund, the varsity baseball coach (who was back even though he’d said for the hundredth time that he was going to retire from coaching) were having a team meeting on Monday. Actual practice would start on Tuesday and, looking at the forecast, Aiden felt it would be outdoors. The coaches said they had set aside space in the equipment shed at the baseball field where the players could keep their bat bags and gloves. Aiden was going to keep the rest of his gear in his gym locker and take it home only when it needed to be washed.

 

Even though he was only a sixth grader, Aiden felt confident that he would make the JV squad. After all, he had made the basketball team with hardly any experience. He was an experienced baseball player and a good one. Eric, Noah, Marty, and Coaches Conner and Scott had all told him there was no question he would get a spot on the team.

 

“Just don’t let it all go to your head, though,” Connor told him gruffly. “Sitting around and thinking you’ve got it made could mean you sitting around all spring watching everybody else play.” Aiden had been happy when he heard that Connor would coach the Yard Goats for one more season. Connor decided to wait until fall quarter to start college for financial and personal reasons. Aiden’s dads had said more than once that the combination of Scott the good-guy coach and Connor the bad-guy coach had been good for the Yard Goats.

 

“Okay, Horace, I’d better get dressed,” Aiden told his donkey. Other than socks, he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. “I’d lier on my bed and hump you or jerk off and give you a nice show, but I want to be a little bit horny when I see everybody even though I know it’s hard to mess around at Miles’ house.” Aiden would be going to Miles’ twelfth birthday party that afternoon.

 

 

 

Eddie stood on the corner he often occupied on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue. His backpack was on the ground leaning against his right leg. He had been tired of carrying it on his back while he waited. He was hungry and needed money. Begging downtown hadn’t netted anything, so he used his last dollar to grab a bus north to his favorite corner. Sometimes it paid for a few meals, and sometimes he went hungry. Today he not only wanted a burger or something for dinner he also wanted some dessert.

 

His spirits lifted when a Blue BMW turned into the side street and stopped. Eddie picked up his backpack and walked over when he saw the passenger side window drop. A man with a well-trimmed beard who looked to be in his 40’s leaned toward the window.

 

“Hey, kid, do you need a ride anywhere?” the man asked.

 

“I dunno, maybe,” Eddie answered.

 

“How old?” Eddie knew what the man was asking and why.

 

“Twelve.” This time Eddie didn’t have to lie since today was his birthday, even if it didn’t seem like a birthday. He was tempted to lie and say he was thirteen, but he didn’t think he looked old enough yet and he was sure he didn’t look old enough in his crotch.

 

The man wasn’t as nervous as some, causing Eddie to think he’d done this before. “How much?”

 

Eddie told him.

 

The man offered Eddie half the amount.

 

“That sucks. I need more money for food.”

 

“For drugs, you mean. I’ll give you some blow for nothing.”

 

“Fuck you, I said food and I meant food.” Eddie gave him a price half-way between the two and the man agreed. “But I won’t take it up the butt.”

 

“Do you swallow?”

 

Eddie nodded. The man released the door lock and beckoned Eddie into the car. Eddie was always scared when he got into a car, but most of the men were as nervous as he was and were usually pretty nice to him. This one looked more pervy than most, but the pervy ones were usually the best. Eddie set his backpack on the floor between his legs. He tried to act cool when the man opened his pants and pulled out his hard cock.

 

Fuck, Peter has a bigger cock than this dude, he thought. Probably knows how to use it better too.

 

“My name’s Alex.”

 

“Eddie.” That was all Eddie planned on saying. The dude was going to pay him to suck his cock, not to be his friend. He turned and looked out of the passenger window hoping the guy would cum quick since he was starving.

 

 

 

Another birthday was being celebrated at Miles’ house. Miles would turn twelve on Monday but was having a small birthday party with his friends on Sunday. With school baseball turnouts starting there wouldn’t be time for any kind of party until Saturday, so he elected to have a Sunday party and dinner.  His mom was going to cook up hot dogs, chili, and had made a macaroni salad. There was also a big cake ready to be cut up and served with ice cream.

 

Miles was well-liked in school and on his teams, but he liked to hang with his small group of friends. He invited Aiden, Mason, Trent, Gordy, Muddy, Brody, Collin, Kalie, and Nolan to the party. That was about the maximum the house would hold when the presence of Miles’ brother John and his friend Bryce was figured in.

 

Everyone, except Nolan, accepted their invitation. Nolan wanted to come, but his mother didn’t give him permission because there was school the next day and it was a long trip from Meadow Park to Mayfield.  

 

Muddy’s presence was a surprise, since he’d been avoiding most of the group’s parties and get-togethers for quite a while. The two boys Muddy was closest to were Mason and Miles, so it should have been no surprise that he accepted the invitation to Miles’ birthday party.

 

While Muddy was usually friendly at school and sat with the group at lunch more often than he didn’t, he was often aloof away from school. Nobody understood why, although Miles suspected what Muddy’s problem might be. Muddy liked his friends and wished he wasn’t so reluctant to do things with them, but he was afraid of being embarrassed.

 

The problem was that Muddy felt very self-conscious about the size of his equipment. Muddy had started hitting puberty at age nine. At age twelve his thick, six-and-a-quarter inch cock was bigger than his fourteen-year-old brother and almost as big as his seventeen-year-old brother. His balls hung low and he had more pubic hair than either one. While his older brother groused about having a preteen brother with a cock almost as big as his, his other brother thought it was cool. His cousins were duly impressed, but he couldn’t help feeling out of place. He didn’t feel like he was twelve. His body was bigger, he had underarm hair sprouting, and of course there was the size of his genitals.

 

His cousins, both male and female, liked having sex with him, as did his brothers. While his sister still made out with him on occasion, she treated him like she did his older brothers by not allowing intercourse between them. To her, sex between brothers and sisters was okay for little kids, but they were all in puberty now, which made it taboo. She told Muddy, once, that if he had the junk of a twelve-year-old she might still do it with him, but he was hung like a man and not like a boy, which made things different. At least his sixteen-year-old cousin Angela still went all the way with him, which kept him from feeling totally rejected.

 

The only Mayfield boy he did anything sexual with on a regular basis was Mason. Mason loved sucking cock, no matter what the size and maturity of his target. He never commented on how much bigger Muddy was than anyone. He simply sucked Muddy until his mouth was filled with Muddy’s cum and then he’d swallow and comment on how good it tasted. At Muddy’s insistence, he kept their sexual relations private. As much as Mason liked to blab, if he pinky swore to keep a secret, the secret would be kept.

 

Mason sucked Muddy at Muddy’s house, on rare occasions at his own house, at school, outdoors wherever he could do it; he’d do it anywhere that was available. Since middle school started, Muddy took the option of not showering after PE. He washed his underarms, put on a ton of deodorant, and kept others from seeing his junk.

 

The reason Miles had a suspicion about Muddy’s reluctance to go where nudity was involved is he had seen Muddy boned up at his house twice over the last couple of months. The first time was when Miles’ parents weren’t home, and John and Bryce were parading around the house with their cocks sticking out of their boxers and being obnoxious about how big their cocks were. The fourteen-year-olds gave Miles a lot of shit about being eleven and having no balls and maybe never would.

 

Muddy got tired of listening to them, opened his pants, pulled down his boxer shorts, and flashed his flaccid, yet impressive, penis at them. “This will be your brother soon and maybe he will be even bigger so leave him alone,” Muddy threatened. The teens oohed and aahed and asked Muddy if he wanted to fuck them. Muddy turned them down.

 

Later, he felt bad about exposing himself and asked Miles not to tell anybody what he saw, that he didn’t want his friends to know how big he was. To be fair, Muddy pulled down his pants, pulled out his cock and jerked off, so Miles wouldn’t have to ask to see it. Miles was impressed by the size of his friend’s cock as well as the large load of cum he shot.

 

The second time was a couple of weeks ago when Muddy and Mason were in Miles’ bedroom. Since nobody else was home, Mason took off his clothes and lay on Miles’ bed, playing with his three-inch boy tool. Mason never asked for permission to get naked in those conditions, figuring if nobody wanted him to take his clothes off they could tell him.

 

“Why don’t you guys take your clothes off?” Mason asked his friends. Knowing what Muddy’s feelings were about getting naked, he gave his friend a glance. Miles was surprised when Muddy unbuckled his jeans and followed his lead. He didn’t know that Mason saw Muddy’s boner frequently and he quickly learned all about Mason and Muddy’s sexual experiences with each other.

 

Soon the three of them were jerking off together on the bed.  As much as Mason wanted to suck off Muddy, he wanted to watch him shoot even more. Miles came first, squirting three clear drops on his belly which Mason quickly lapped up. He loved the sweet taste of his best friend’s cum.

 

Muddy was next to shoot. He left wads of thick cum from his pecs down to his pubic hair. While Mason was cool with everybody jerking off instead of letting him suck them, he wasn’t about to pass up a chance to taste Muddy’s cum. He knelt over his friend and lapped the cum off his torso with the fervor of a kitten licking spilt cream off the floor.

 

Other than talking about the subject, there was no sex at Miles’ birthday party. There simply were too many kids in too little space to find any kind of privacy from Miles’ parents. Nobody cared, though. It wasn’t their first party without anybody having sex and it certainly wouldn’t be their last.

 

After dinner, the partiers sang Happy Birthday and sat down with their cake and ice cream. Muddy sat next to Mason and started one of the conversations about sex.

 

“When can Mudrak fuck you?” he asked.

 

“When my butt is big enough to take that big thing of yours,” Mason replied.

 

“You always say that.”

 

“Because it’s true.”

         

“This is why I don’t like being naked around everybody like Aiden and Gordy and Trent. They will look at me like I am weird.”

 

“That’s because you are weird. Just get naked and jerk off with everybody like you did with me and Miles the other day. Nobody cares about how big you are and how much hair you’ve got. We all like you because you’re cool and I like you even more because you let me suck lots of cum out of you.”     

 

“Maybe soon,” Muddy said. “You tell me you stick things up your butt, so you can stick Mudrak’s cock up your butt.”

“Your penis is bigger than what I put up there. Besides, if you cum in my butt then I can’t taste it and you’re cum tastes totally awesome. If we could, I’d like to go after some right now.”

 

“Tomorrow after school, you can.”

 

“We have the baseball meeting tomorrow,” Mason reminded him.

 

“Then after the meeting.”

 

“Then we’re both going to be starving. So, let’s do it at lunch in the usual spot before we go into the lunchroom to eat.”

 

“I will see you then.”

 

As the party ended Miles asked Aiden if he had started getting his stuff ready for practice.

 

“It’s all ready. I’m taking it to school tomorrow to store it,” Aiden told him. “I bet you haven’t started with yours yet.”

 

“Figures. You’re always so organized. And yeah, I haven’t started, but I bet you’re the only guy in the room who is all ready to go to practice.”

 

“Nope, I know that…”

 

Miles stopped Aiden. “Don’t tell me—Gordy is ready too.”

 

Aiden grinned. He and his friends knew each other too well.

 

 

 

 

Eddie woke up as the sky started to lighten. Blue was still asleep beside him. Eddie didn’t know Blue’s real name, but he did know that he was fifteen and had been a street kid off and on since he was eleven. Blue was his mentor on the streets. They shared a sleeping bag and a tent, which right now was pitched in a homeless encampment. They would probably spend most of the day close to each other knowing that if the authorities caught them, they’d be separated and sent to a home of some kind.

 

“Not that it’s the end of the world,” Blue had told Eddie more than once. “They’ve never been able to keep me in one of those shitholes for long.”

 

“Me either.”

 

“I still can’t believe what you charged that perv on Sunday. Dude, you gotta charge more bucks. Cute, sexy dude like you can get what I told you. Those guys love hairless little preteens like you.”

 

“I want to make sure I get money for food. If I want too much, they drive away.”

 

“If you charged more you could get booze and drugs and shit, too.”

 

“I just want food,” Eddie insisted. When he first met Blue after running away in January, he got wasted as often as he could with him on booze and weed. He soon found that when he got wasted some of the men in the camps tried to molest him, but Blue looked out for him. That didn’t keep them from pulling his pants down and copping feels before Blue got physical with them, however.

 

Eddie finally decided he’d have to quit the drugs before he got totally hooked and ended up being some old homeless bastard’s fuck toy. He didn’t mind Blue fucking him, because Blue was cool. As far as men went, he’d rather end up in a nice bedroom with a perv willing to pay him than deal with the dirty, smelly pervs who lived around him. 

 

 

 

Even though the weather was cold and drizzly, Aiden was in his element as soon as the first practice started. He’d run many of the drills before and felt comfortable doing anything on the field. Coach Randall and Coach Ecklund worked them hard but were what his pops called professional. Aiden interpreted that as meaning the coaches knew what they were doing, worked everybody hard, and worked everybody fairly. Middle school baseball was going to be even more fun than basketball because baseball was his favorite sport.

 

That evening, Aiden received a text from Marty. “Hey, little bro, I got sent down to Tacoma today, but I knew it was coming. Being at AAA rocks and playing close to you is going to rock even more.”

 

Aiden quickly answered. “congrats, bro. ur gonna be with the mariners real soon.” Marty usually used correct punctuation and grammar in his texts and chided Aiden for not doing the same. As Aiden saw it, texting was different from school work and from writing his stories. He didn’t have time to make everything come out right and neither did his friends—his school friends that is.

 

But the thing that he did have to make come out right was the creative writing story he was composing for English. The topic was a story about somebody learning that somebody they thought was real, actually wasn’t real. Like Santa Claus for example.

 

As he often did, Aiden changed the premise to suit his own creative ideas. He decided to write his story about something the protagonist didn’t think was real but was real. His story, titled “The Real Unreal Dragon” was about a boy who had a stuffed dragon that ended up being a live dragon.

 

“Sorry it wasn’t about a stuffed Donkey,” Aiden said to Horace. “But Donkey’s don’t fly and don’t breathe fire. Just remember, if they don’t breathe fire, it does mean they are cooler than dragons though.” Aiden giggled at his plays on words and went back to typing.

 

Even though Mr. Lawrence had marked him down and criticized him for not following his creative writing assignments to the letter, Aiden continued to do so. His pop had talked to Mr. Lawrence more than once about being less strict with a creative writing assignment, which he thought should be graded differently than an objective essay.

 

Aiden agreed. While he did stick to the exact assignment on essays, he played it much looser with his creative writing. When he was happy with what he had so far, he read it out loud to Horace. Then he clicked print, went to his pop’s office, took his story out of the printer, and went downstairs to show his dads. When his pop told him it was his best story ever and brushed away a tear after reading it, Aiden knew he had a winner, no matter what Mr. Lawrence might end up thinking.

 

MONDAY, MARCH 24

 

 

 

Coach Ecklund had the bleachers in the gym pulled out at the end of practice. A steady rainfall had necessitated an indoor practice. He and Coach Randall were thankful that they’d made it through the first week without needing an indoor practice. In this part of the Great Pacific Northwest, March means rain, as well as April and usually May. They dismissed the players who had made varsity and asked those remaining to sit in the bleachers for a meeting.

 

He told the players that he would be meeting individually with each of them in the gym before school. He thanked everyone for trying out for the team and encouraged them all to play on a summer team.

 

“There are thirty-one of you sitting in front of me,” Coach Ecklund said, “and between the remaining open positions on the varsity and the positions on the JV team, by league rule I can keep nineteen of you. I will ask a couple of you to stay on as non-roster players to fill in a roster spot if somebody gets hurt or, heaven forbid, quits the team.”

 

He didn’t mention anybody getting kicked off the team, not that he hadn’t asked players to leave during his long coaching career. It was a rare occurrence. And the way he saw it, anybody he removed from the team had essentially quit because of his actions.

 

 

 

“I made the varsity softball team,” Kalie told Aiden when he sat next to her on the bus.

 

“Congrats. I’ll find out how I did before school, today.”

 

“You know you made the team.”

 

“I guess. I still think you should have turned out for baseball.”

 

“Maybe next year. I want to at least play another year of summer ball first. Besides, Brittany and I are the only sixth graders to make the varsity, and that’s pretty special.”

 

“Yeah, it is.”

 

Aiden looked over at the two freshmen sitting across the aisle. He saw that the boy had his hand inside the girl’s pants. He looked at Aiden, winked and nodded his head as if to say, Ain’t you gonna follow my lead? The two teens had gotten much bolder about getting some feels in since they’d watched Kalie fondling Aiden’s junk.

 

Sensing movement from Kalie, Aiden turned his head and gave her a look that said, Don’t you dare. She held back, but let Aiden know she’d get him before the week was over. Then she saw what the freshmen were doing and said, “He’s feeling her up. You can do that to me, you know.”

 

“I’ll let your boyfriend do that.”

 

“Yeah, but he doesn’t ride the bus,” Kalie giggled.

 

After getting to school, Aiden headed to the gym first thing. There was a short line that was moving quickly. Aiden noted that the boys going in didn’t come out through the same door, which he thought was a good move by Coach Ecklund.

 

He stood behind Taylor Moore, a seventh grader, who’d played some rec ball and was turning out for the school team for the first time. Everybody liked him, but nobody expected him to make the team. He didn’t make the cut but was asked to stay as a non-roster player. He accepted the offer.

 

When Aiden stood in front of Coach Ecklund and Coach Randall, he was surprised as to how nervous he felt. Coach Ecklund did the talking. “You did a great job, Aiden. You hustle, play smart, KMS, and concentrate on what you’re doing. You’re going to be a real asset to the JV team this spring. From what I’ve seen in our tryouts and last summer, I think you have a real good chance of being a varsity player as a seventh grader if you work for it.”

 

“Thanks, coach. I’ll always try my hardest.”

 

“We have no doubt about that,” Coach Randall said.

 

The coaches were impressed that Aiden hadn’t let the fact that his father was the high school varsity baseball coach give him a sense of privilege. He worked as hard as anyone turning out and was not afraid to get his uniform dirty. They agreed between them not to share this observation with Aiden.

 

By lunch, everybody knew who’d made the team. All of Aiden’s friends made the JV team, plus Trent made the varsity. Other Yard Goat players to make the team were Yonder Sanchez, who was a swing man who would suit up varsity as needed, Kenny Gray, Jared Finn, and Russell. Everybody at Aiden’s table agreed that Russell might self-destruct under Coach Randall, who was very demanding.

 

The first practice for the final teams would be that afternoon. It was drizzling off and on outside, but the coaches said practice would be outside if the fields weren’t too wet. While rain didn’t stop a Titan from practicing, nobody would play baseball on a soaked field.

 

 

The Titan JV team had its first game of the season at home on Tuesday afternoon. They played the Chinook Totems who were also playing their first game of the season.

 

At the end of their practice the day before, Coach Randall reminded them that they were a talented group of ballplayers. “But, you are also a young group of ballplayers. The fact that nine of the fifteen players on our roster are sixth graders reveals that fact very plainly. Remember, for some games a seventh grader or two might be called up for the varsity game, which will make us even younger.

 

“The caliber of competition is going to be tougher than many of you have seen in summer ball; not because the opposing players are better or more talented than you, but because they are older and more experienced.

 

“But there are ways to catch up. As Coach Ecklund and I have been drilling into you, hard work, hard work, and hard work will lead to ICE which will lead to good results on the field. I know you can all tell me what ICE is.”

 

“Intensity, Concentration, Execution!” the players yelled out in unison. Coach Randall dismissed the meeting.

 

The game played out about the way the coaches expected it to. The Titans played hard, at times they played brilliantly, but over the course of the game their age and lack of experience showed. The Totems ended up with an 11-4 win over the Titans.

 

Aiden started at third base and came in to pitch in the top of the fourth inning with the Titans trailing 8-1. Even though he was a seventh grader, Yonder Sanchez, who started at pitcher, did not look good. He had problems throwing strikes and when he did throw a strike it was a pitch up in the zone and down the middle of the plate.

 

When Aiden had played for the Knights and Yard Goats, he played on a field where the pitching rubber was 46 feet from home plate and the distance between bases had been 60 feet with the Knights and 65 feet with the Goats. The middle school JV field was bigger, with the rubber 54 feet from home and the bases 80 feet apart. The varsity field was bigger yet since the varsity played on a full-size baseball field: The rubber 60 feet six inches from home and bases 90 feet apart.

 

While Aiden had practiced using the longer distance on his pitching setup at home and had pitched from the same distance in practice, it was much different doing so to live batters in a real game. Yes, he’d pitched in some intrasquad scrimmages, but it was not the same as being in a game.

 

Aiden gave up two hard hit singles and a double to the first three hitters, which ended up scoring two quick runs. Larry could see the frustration on Aiden’s face. He was obviously having trouble adjusting to the bigger dimensions.  Coach Randall came out of the dugout for a mound conference with Aiden and Max Robinson, who started the game at catcher.

 

“Aiden, you need to pitch smarter. You have to remember you can’t blow your fastball past most of these hitters, at least not yet. I’ve seen you pitch and I know you’re a smart player. It’s time for you to do what you know instead of trying to overpower everyone.”

 

After the coach left, Max gave Aiden a hard swat on his butt. “Kick ass, boyo.” Max had moved to Mayfield at the start of the school year and Aiden hadn’t really gotten to know him until baseball season started. He found himself liking Max, who called most of his teammates “boyo” during practice. Max was proving himself to be a good catcher.

 

Taking a deep breath, Aiden toed the rubber. He knew when he was warming up that things didn’t feel right. Before coming set, the answer as to why popped into his mind. When he pitched for the Yard Goats, he almost always started, which meant he was in his pitching zone when he arrived at the game site. Because he was pitching in relief, he had never put himself into any kind of a zone. He took another deep breath and looked in for his sign from Max, knowing he was going to have to deal with the problem later. Right now, he just needed to focus.

 

After striking out the next batter on a change-up, Aiden felt like he could breathe again. The strikeout erased many of the doubts he had about being good enough to play at this level. When the next batter flied out to left field and the one after that grounded to short, Aiden once again felt like a pitcher. He walked to the dugout knowing he needed to talk his problem over with Marty, whom he would see on Monday when he and his dads went with Gordy and Nolan to the Tacoma Rainiers game.

 

The score was now 10-1, but the Titans scored two runs in the bottom of the inning. One of them scored on Aiden’s first school baseball base hit, an RBI line-drive single to center. Now he was even more sure he belonged. Aiden pitched one more inning, walking the second batter but allowing no runs. Kenny Gray pitched the seventh inning, giving up a run and the Titans scored in the bottom of the inning for the final 11-4 score.

 

FRIDAY, APRIL 4

 

The Titans’ first road trip of the spring was to Evans Middle School, which was about an hour trip each way. The girls’ varsity team would be on the same bus. It was the league’s policy for the JV boys and varsity girls as well as the JV girls and varsity boys to travel together. The boys’ JV team and the girls’ varsity would be playing at fields in two different locations.

 

Things didn’t work out well for the baseball team. Collin started the game and by the time Barry Bender came in to relieve him, the Titans were down 5-0. The final score was 14-2. The game was called after four-and-a-half innings because of the 10-run rule.

 

Aiden didn’t start the game. He entered the game in the top of the third as a pinch-hitter for Brody and struck out. He played second base in the bottom of the inning and had the ball go off his glove for an error on the first ball hit to him. It had been a bad game for Aiden as well as for the team. The Titans were 0-2 and had been beaten badly in both games.

 

“We really sucked,” Aiden told his dads at dinner that night. “And I sucked as bad as anybody. I thought Mayfield was always great in baseball.”

 

“You are a really young team, as I know you’ve been told. Things will improve. Just give it time,” Larry told him encouragingly.

 

“Well, the varsity is 2-0, so that’s good. And the Mustang varsity is 4-0,” Aiden said, referring to the high school varsity. “I just wish we didn’t suck so bad.”

 

“Aiden, you’re going to suck as much as you want to suck. Spring break is here which means you have a week to check your attitude and start being positive.”

 

“That’s what Marty said. Plus, he gave me some ideas how to get my focus for when I don’t start, like when I come in to pitch in relief. Or like today when I pinch hit and went in the field and was a total suckfest.”

 

“Like I said, son, it will all take time.”

 

“Nine o’clock practice is just dumb,” Aiden groused when his alarm went off.

 

“Not if we want to see the Nooner,” Gordy grumbled as he turned onto his back.

 

“Yeah, I know. But maybe they could have had the game later just for us.”

 

“Then it wouldn’t be a Nooner.”

 

“Yeah, but there also wouldn’t be a nine in the morning practice.”

 

“Sometimes you get really weird, Aiden.”

 

Aiden went into subject changing mode. He had been trying use nonsense to be funny, but he should have tried it on somebody else. Gordy never had been one for nonsense. “Did you have fun last night?”

 

“Yeah. You humped me like crazy. Is that what doing Nolan’s butt is like?”

 

“I don’t know, I haven’t done it yet. He’s only done mine so far.”

 

“Are you going to do it?”

 

“We’re going to do it. It just has to be at the right time and the right place.”

 

“Where’s the right place?”

         

“His house. But his parents never leave us alone there, especially his mom. That makes it hard to get naked and have sex.”

 

“Well, I’ll tell you this. As much as I like Kalie, you’re still a way better kisser, and last night was your best kissing ever.”

 

Aiden gave Gordy a quick kiss on his lips. The two boys got out of bed to dress in their practice garb. They didn’t see any reason to shower, even if they both had some of Gordy’s dried cum on them. Nobody was going to notice it during practice.

 

As Gordy got out of bed, Aiden admired his naked body. Even though Gordy wasn’t his boyfriend like Nolan was, and even though he was into girls, he was still Aiden’s best friend next to Nolan, and he was still sexy and beautiful in Aiden’s mind.

 

The sun was out, but practice was chilly. Most of the players (Aiden was one of them) wore long-johns under their sweats and wore sweatshirts and hoodies. The most important part of practice may have been Coach Randall’s pre-practice pep talk.

 

“I’ve told you guys that you’re good ballplayers. But I’ve also told you that you’re young and inexperienced. The dimensions of the field are different than what you’re used to, the caliber of play is different, and most of the teams we play will be older. I think what I told you has been working on your heads, but not in a good way.

 

“You guys went into our first two games defeated before the first pitch. The part you seemed to have missed is that you’re talented ballplayers. You’re Mayfield players, and Mayfield baseball players play to win—every pitch, every swing of the bat, every play, you go about your business like the winners you are.

 

“That starts this morning. It’s cold, a bit windy, maybe too early in the morning on a non-school day for some of you. But, it’s not too cold to work hard, not too windy to work hard, and it’s for sure not too early to work hard. So, gentlemen, let’s get out on the field and work hard.”

 

The boys jumped off the benches they were sitting on with loud whoops and had their best practice of the year. Aiden heard the mantra he’d heard from his dad and from Marty; the three keys to success are hard work, hard work, and hard work.

 

After practice Aiden, Gordy, Miles, Mason, and Trent went to the high school field together. They were met there by Lenny and Lance. The seven boys found some empty seats high in the grandstand behind the third base dugout. The high school stadium would soon be full. The Nooner was a big deal in Mayfield. Many work places closed down, some businesses closed down or operated shorthanded, students at the high school got there early to secure good seats, and mothers brought their younger kids.

 

The Mayfield Mustangs would be playing the Coulee Shockers, who were a power on the east side of the mountains. Coach Fitzgerald and Coach Sanders always worked to schedule a top team for the game. They wanted the game to be a challenge and to be entertaining for the Mayfield citizens. They succeeded with this game. The game was tied at 4-4 after seven innings, sending the game into extra innings. The Shockers scored a run in the top of the ninth inning. The Mustangs answered with two runs of their own in the bottom of the inning for an exciting 6-5 win to improve their record to 5-0.

 

The Friday and Saturday practices were as productive as Thursday’s had been. They may have been even more productive because the players became more accustomed to practicing at a more intense level than what they were used to. Considering they had worked hard before, the new level of ICE surprised not only them but their coach as well.

 

The Titans were a bad 0-2 having been blown out twice. But they had ten games left and they were determined to work hard and be the best they could be for every remaining game.

 

The last ten regular season games for the Titans will be chronicled in the “Titans” mini-series.