Nick woke up. It was dark. The air was heavy, heavy as ever. He had gotten drunk, terribly drunk the night before. Birds were singing. They were giving him a headache, an awful headache. Tweet, tweet, tweet. He wanted them dead, deader than dead. He wanted them to suffer first.

He was helpless, though. He had forgotten to buy cartridges for his .22. It was the .22 his best friend Pete had shot himself with, but Nick kept it, for luck. Two years before, Nick and Pete were drinking Whiskey Sours at Le Merde in Cherbourg. Pete had too many, stalked out, took Nick's .22 from the trunk of his Hupmobile, stuck the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

And missed, the sotted fool. Pete then got hysterical and screamed nothing in life was ever easy. So Nick helped him finish the job. The gendarmes arrived, weren't amused, but let Nick off with a warning: "Il est arrete un tres Americaine un cadeuax de tompre!" Best as he could figure, Nick translated this to: "Stop, you miserable American from eating chocolate cake so much."

Just three days before, Nick had bagged three quail with the .22. He had also shot a game warden in the knee, but escaped without a summons. A game warden can't chase you if he's got a bum knee that's also bleeding.

Nick lifted his head from the pillow and saw the droppings of his ruined life spread out before him. Girlie mags with respectable dames who had let themselves become floozies. Smelly socks, many without partners. Pillow cases so wrinkled even the laundry refused to touch them.

He looked in the mirror and saw a waste of a human being. The war had changed it all for him. He couldn't quite remember which war, but what difference did that make? War was war. Men were men. Men were in war. War was in men.

Just thinking about it made him think of Toomey. Just a kid. 18. Never had a chance. The Boche machine gunner had Toomey in his sights when he stepped off the transport. The bullet did what it was supposed to do. Toomey once had red hair, freckles, a fair disposition. Now all that was shark bait.

Nick asked himself, was it fair? After a while, he decided it was. He reasoned - it could have been me! This was life. It wasn't fair. It was just - life.

Which, these days, included softball. Nick liked the camraderie. The smell of leather gloves surrounding nicotine stained fingers. Metal alloy bats with only a memory of a ball leaving them for heights unknown.

And the stats. Oh, the stats. They defined you. Worried you. Made you into a man. Made you into a worm. Oh, the stats, hated, loved, revered. Like a roll call of honor. Or ignominious disgrace.

Nick was hitting .405. Respectable. His SLOB was .453, which sounded okay, but was actually pitiful. Luckily, no one would ever know what in hell SLOB really meant. Nick had never struck out. He had never sacrificed. The symbolism of this last fact was too much to bear. Could he have sacrificed and saved Toomey? War was hell. Hell was war. Was a man supposed to take a bullet just so somebody could get to second base and possibly score?

The fact is, if anyone had asked whether Nick wanted to play softball or shoot helpless, small birds, the answer would have been "shoot helpless, small birds." But no one asked. No one ever asked anymore.

Still he, felt like a guy amongst guys. Maybe even a man amongst men. For like him, each of them struggled to define that tiny plot of greatness all men were positive those on high had entitled us to. So each Saturday, this Saturday, he went out and he played. They all did.

The grass was wet. The softballs old and soft. Life was short, but the game itself was seven innings long. Except when they went nine.

Through some ancient formulaic ritual, teams were formed. The weak against the less weak. Kind of like life itself. The less weak won all the time.

Nick stepped up to the plate.

And hit a looping line drive over the first baseman's head. The ball was fair. Inside the orange cone. The ump called it foul. So Nick slugged the ump right in the kisser. Pow! The ump barely budged. In fact, he smiled. Then he feinted left and hung a vicious uppercut on Nick's jaw that was going to feel raw for a month of Sundays. Kapow!

Nick thought of destiny. Then he thought of luck, bad luck, horrible luck, the worst luck on Earth. Then he thought of Toomey, the poor bastard. Shark bait or no shark bait, worm food or not worm food,Toomey would have enjoyed this softball game. It was simple. It hardly moved. Even a dead guy could make it to first if given half a chance.

At least in this game he could.