“And he'd come to fetch me
To see what they'd done
And we'd ride together
To kingdom come”
Johnny Cash, “I Hung My Head”

When I think back on how things went with me and ol’ Foul Ball, I’m actually glad I ended up where I am now. Where am I? You’ll see.

Foul Ball was my friend ever since I moved to Idaho. I used to live, well, I used to be alive, so that statement is somewhat awkward, but I used to live in Miami, Florida. It was a nice place, though I could have done without the rampant crime and the cat-sized cockroaches. Idaho was a nice place. It got cold in the winter, sure, but I enjoyed it. I was 12 when I moved there with my mother. Things were going well, and I had a friend named Foul Ball. Okay, that isn’t his real name, his real name is Douglas May. He got the name Foul Ball after a baseball game in second grade, when he hit nothing but foul balls every time he went up to bat. It was rather embarrassing.

We met in my German I class. I had talked to people for a few weeks, but hadn’t made any real progress getting a new best friend. I had stopped talking to my old best friend in Miami, after I found out that he stole a thousand dollars from my mom. Steal from my mom, you lose my friendship.

Okay, perhaps I should introduce myself, if for nothing else, just to get it over with. I was Justin Newhouse, a 26-year-old, who last saw freedom when I was 18 after my final confrontation with Foul Ball. It wasn’t a pretty one. I have a mother but no father. My dad ran off about a year ago, and hasn’t been seen since. I would tell you other information, like my birth date, or what I look like, but no one gives a rat’s ass. The only other thing you need to know is that I have a sister, who is a decade younger than me. Her name is Julie, and she was 16 when I bought the farm.

Foul Ball and I were in German I, as I already said. The teacher was a young redhead named Ms. Geller. She was dividing the class into groups of two to do an assignment together. She put me and Douglas May together. We went into some distant corner of the classroom, and started making small talk. Douglas was a nerdy type, about five foot five, and skinny. He had brown hair, and didn’t look particularly impressive. In fact, he looked like a geek. But I would survive. I wasn’t very good-looking myself.

“Hi.” I said to Douglas.

“What’s your name?” He asked.

“Justin. Justin Newhouse.” I said.

“Oh. I’m Douglas May. They call me Foul Ball.”

“Odd name. Do you play baseball?”

“Not since the third grade.”

“Oh. They have a tendency to keep nicknames, huh?”

“They do. Badly. The problem is that this is a small junior high school. There’s only about 200 kids total here.”

“200? In two grades? My middle school in Miami had three grades, sixth, seventh, and eighth, and it had over a thousand people.”

“I wish I went to a school like that.”

“No you don’t. You think you get teased here? There, you’d be lucky if they didn’t kick your ass every day.”

“That sucks.”

“And the drug problems are bad. I heard at the high school here people occasionally do marijuana.”

“Yeah, the bad kids.”

“In Miami, we have sixth graders doing cocaine. That place was insane.”

We continued chatting for a while, and we ended up not getting a single thing done on the assignment. We turned in nothing, and failed it. We didn’t care, as we had both found friends.

I went home that day, and talked to my mom. My sister was 3 then, and 3-year-olds aren’t the best conversationalists on Earth. So I told mom about my new friend.

The rest of the year went well. It turned out that you could take the person out of the inner city, but you couldn’t take the inner city out of the person. I got suspended twice for fighting. My grades suffered. I made snide remarks at teachers. I cursed constantly. Some of the girls looked up to me, thinking I was a badass. This continued into my freshman year of high school.

My first day of high school was spent trying to find my way around. I had German II first period, then Algebra I, English I, World History II, lunch, Gym, Art, and finally Drama I. Foul Ball joined marching band, and I didn’t, mainly because in Miami band members had the shit beaten out of them every hour on the hour. One band guy had his arm broken, another had his mother’s car get broken into and the radio was stolen, along with 250 dollars worth of equipment. I was scared to take Drama. However, Idaho is not inner-city, and I had nothing to worry about. I got in trouble a lot, eventually amassing 20 after-school detentions, which lasted 45 minutes, 9 3-hour detentions, 4 Saturday schools, none of which I actually attended, and 2 suspensions. Then, on April 29th, the rift between Foul Ball and me was made.

It was lunchtime. I was frustrated, having failed tests in Algebra and World History. I was ranting to Foul Ball. Just as I was shifting from the Algebra to the World History, a blob of mashed potatoes flew across the cafeteria and into my ear. I stood up immediately.

“WHO THREW THAT? WHO THREW THAT GODDAMN THING?” I yelled. A kid at another table laughed and pointed at me.

“Haha, loser.” He said. I walked over to him.

“You got a problem, bitch?” I said. When it comes to confrontations, I am not the most articulate person in the world, but articulateness is not intimidation.

“Hey man, I was just joking.” He poked me in the stomach with his finger. I took his finger and snapped the bone in half in one move.

“Ahhhh, you moron! That hurt!” He put his hand around my neck. I snapped. I punched him in the face and then in the stomach, and kicked him repeatedly. Every kid in the cafeteria ran to me, and teachers had to try to reach us. Eventually I felt the principal pull me away, and I was in the principal’s office.

The kid’s name was Lawrence Salinas. He was a sophomore, and had a bad case of ADHD. Now he also had a ruptured spleen, three broken ribs, a broken index finger, and a concussion from where I kicked him in the head. Needless to say, I was expelled, and would not be allowed to return to school for my sophomore year. Then, after the next school year was up, I would return as a sophomore, one grade behind Foul Ball.

I spent that year off mostly playing video games, and I eventually found the kids at the high school who smoked pot, and I started spending more and more time stoned. I got in trouble with the police a few times, for fighting and drug offenses, but things worked out.

Foul Ball had become a teacher’s assistant for the elementary school kids. He also started babysitting, and baby-sat Julie several times.

Finally, the year off was over, and I had once again amassed a huge amount of offenses, this time with the cops. I had smoked pot more times than I could count, and had lost my virginity five times over. Seems Foul Ball had as well, as I’ll soon tell.

Foul Ball was now a junior in high school, and was glad to see me. I had a nasty scare at lunch the first day back. This school year, they started having two lunch periods instead of one. I was afraid of having a different lunch period than Foul Ball. I went to the cafeteria, and didn’t see him at first. I looked around, and still didn’t see him. Finally, five minutes into lunch, I found him. We sat together, and he told me about his experiences with the kids he worked with. I told him about what had happened to me.

My sophomore year was a learning experience. I got involved a couple of extracurricular activities, and started to make some more friends. My grades also improved, from Fs to Ds and Cs. My friendship with Foul Ball continued, and I made it the whole school year without getting suspended once.

But Foul Ball had gotten rather involved in marching band. I started my junior year, and found Foul Ball sitting at lunch with his band friends. There was no seat for me at the table. I was not pleased. I spoke to Foul Ball.

“Hey Foul? Why no seat?”

“You? Justin, don’t you have anyone else to sit with?”

“You know me. Friendless. Now can I sit here?”

“No.” Said one of the band guys.

“Nope.” Said another.

“Piss off.” Said yet another.

“Sorry, dude.” Foul Ball said. I shuffled off.

Needless to say, my junior year was miserable. I had no friends, and nowhere to sit. Most of the school avoided me because they considered me too insane and violent. The stoners had all either graduated or dropped out. (Most, surprisingly, went on to college. My best dealer is now a mechanical engineer working in Abu Dhabi.) I ate alone, and was an outcast. Foul Ball continued to have success, eventually having his marching band make it to the state championships. He also bought a new Mustang.

Eventually, the year ended, and I became a senior. Foul Ball graduated, and went to a local college in my small Idaho town. It was uneventful, until January 18th of that year.

“Hi, Justin.” One of the band guys said to me. It was the one who told me to piss off.

“What do you want?” I sneered.

“Just wanted to talk about Douglas.” I had to stop and think for a second who Douglas was, having called him Foul Ball for so long.

“Well, he’s been doing well in college, but he’s gotten a little weird.”

“He always was a bit weird.”

“Well, he’s gotten really weird.”

“Like, how weird?”

“Like, he exposed himself to an eight-year-old weird.”

“Oh well, that’s nothin-wait, what?”

“He’s been banned from the kid programs. Seems he’s done a few sex stuff with the kids. So yeah, if pedophilia counts as weird, then he definitely fits the bill.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought you should know. I’ve been trying to get the word out to anyone I know who has kid siblings or stuff like that.” My stomach got the tightest knot in it known to mankind. I thought of Julie.

“Don’t tell anyone this, but I am going to take that traitorous little shit and make him wish his mother had found a decent abortionist.”

That evening, I talked to Julie, and she confirmed that yes, Foul Ball had tried to molest her. I say tried, because she just laughed when Foul Ball whipped it out. That night at midnight, I stole my mom’s pistol, and walked in the freezing cold to Douglas’ house. I looked in the driveway, and saw the Mustang he was so proud of. I encountered a locked glass sliding door, and threw caution into the wind. I knew where his bedroom was, and I fired a shot into the window. I then took the charcoal grill, set it on its wheels, and threw it as hard as I could into the glass door. It shattered into a million pieces. I walked in, and set the laser on my mom’s gun. A red dot appeared on the wall. I kicked in Douglas’ door, and saw him standing there in a bathrobe.

“Justin?” He asked.

“No shit. The hell do you think you were doing? Trying to mess with my sister? She’s what, 8? You sick sack of shit. You abandoned me like trash, and now you constantly bug little girls.” I ranted.

“Dude, can’t we talk this out? I know I did some bad stuff.” I snapped again, and shot Doug in the thigh. He fell to the ground.

“What is wrong with you? Why are you doing this? Don’t you think you’ll get caught?”

“To hell with that.” The red dot appeared on his forehead, followed by a red dot of blood.

Outside, it began to snow.

A neighbor had heard the gunshots, and called the police. I ran out the door, and managed to evade the cops, and got back home. But it was all futile. Two days later, I was arrested in the middle of AP German Literature, and charged with first-degree murder. I was 18, and thus would be charged as an adult. Even worse, I was eligible for the death penalty. My lawyer said I probably wouldn’t get sentenced to that, as the person I killed was a known child molester, and juries have little sympathy for types like that.

The lawyer was wrong. I stood there in the courtroom. It had been a year since I killed Doug. My mother and sister sat there with me. The jury was out for only an hour. They came out with the verdict.

“Jury, have you reached a verdict?”

“Your honor, we find the defendant, Justin Eric Newhouse, guilty of first-degree murder.” The sentence came six weeks later.

I was going to be executed. They asked me what my options were for execution. I could either go for lethal injection, or firing squad. I decided to go out with a bang, forgive the pun.

“Firing squad.” I said. Idaho law said that I would be shot only if lethal injection was “impractical”. Well, it turned out to be impractical for me. My veins were rather deep in me, and since I had requested the firing squad, they would take any excuse to let me have that option.

The appeals process took a total of seven years, one month, and fifteen days. I was 26 when they finally led me down the Green Mile, and outside into the yard where they would shoot me. It wasn’t like I pictured. I imagined that I would be mowed down by a dozen guys armed with machine guns. Instead, I would be seated in a seat, and five guys would shoot me in the heart. There would even be a target placed over my chest. Gallows humor I guess, once again, forgive the pun. One of the five gunmen would get a blank shot.

My last meal consisted of sparkling apple juice, filet mignon, and lobster. A handy tip is, if you ever find yourself on death row, for your last meal, order the lobster. It’s cooked like nothing else on this planet. Two bites into it I was worried that the governor might call and give me a stay of execution since that would mean I wouldn’t be able to finish the lobster. I know this seems like weird things to be thinking, but you try being rational when you’ve got an hour to live.

So I ended up in my own style of the mercy seat, and I saw the guns aimed at me. It was then that I saw Douglas. He was on the roof of the building I was looking at. I noticed I didn’t even get a blindfold.

“Hello, Justin.” Douglas said.

“What? You can’t be real. How are you alive?” I wasn’t actually saying this, just thinking it. But Douggie could apparently read my mind.

“I’m not alive. And soon, you won’t be alive either.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“You are like you always were. You’re what, 26 now?”

“Yes. And because of you, I’m going to die.”

“Oh relax. I’m having a good time here.”

“What?” I then saw Doug’s Mustang. He was driving what looked like a ghost Mustang. I then realized he was a ghost.

“It’s true. I have some good news for you, Justin.”

“What’s that?”

“God forgives child molesters. Even if you don’t.” Doug said.

“Wonderful. Just and loving.”

“Well, I have more good news.”

“Eh, tell me.”

“He forgives murderous thugs as well.”

“So I’m going to Heaven? My mom always said I was bound for Hell.”

“God loves us all, Justin. He’ll forgive you, just as he forgave me. And don’t think now I’ve forgotten you, me having been dead for several years.”

“I noticed you came back for me.”

“Well, here it comes.” I looked up. The guns were drawn. Ready. I smiled at Foul Ball. Aim. I hoped for forgiveness for my crime. And in the last instant, I knew I would get it. I would be at peace.

Fire.

And now I was staring at Foul Ball. He took my hand, and pulled me into the Mustang. I wondered, what now? And a second later, I knew.

We’ll ride. Foul Ball and I, we’ll be in our Mustang, friends forever, and we will drive forever unto eternity.