This is chapter 2 to the novel I am still in the process of finishing. If you would like to read chapter one, the link is below.
https://steemit.com/book/@diezeldiddy/the-book-i-wrote-manifest-destiny-chapter-1

2

Nancy was the first person I had killed, well so far; though I don't anticipate another. I never set out with the purpose to kill, but for serious offenders it seemed the only fitting punishment. The only punishment for their transgression. The original sin being September 21st, 1978. The memory played vividly on my drive home.

I had just made the varsity baseball team as a freshman and was at a typical after school practice. They mostly comprised of scrimmaging, batting practice, and simulated scenarios. I liked my teammates for the most part, but with the age gap I had trouble fitting it. The hazing and purposed exclusion on account of that difference didn’t do much to help.

We were in the middle of a simulated game. I had just rocketed a double into the right field corner and proudly held second base. I was leading off second just tingling to steal third. The pitcher eyed me down….debating whether to try for a pickoff. No doubt he wanted too. The best pitcher on the team just gave up a double to the freshmen, his pride was a little bruised. I could sense the shortstop creeping behind me. I wiped my hands together letting the dry dirt create a dust cloud in front of me. I was taunting him, but despite a few tense seconds and a couple tense stares, he started his motion.

“Nick, can you come over here for a minute!?” My coach yelled from the dugout effectively stopping the game. What could possibly be urgent enough to warrant stopping the game? He could've at least waited until the innings switched. The pitcher whirled around letting out a heavy sigh. I reluctantly began to trot across the infield.

“Got lucky,” The pitcher Mike sneered as I passed. Had we kept playing I would've showed him luck had nothing to with it. Probably still earned myself a surprise hazing sometime in the coming days.

I saw my dad’s friend Officer Luke Murray standing next to coach Patel. Fear grasped my chest as I thought somehow, he found out about the drinking party I had participated in last weekend. My terror only persisted for a few fleeting seconds as the long look on his face told me there was something different this time, almost something worse. He looked at me with a sorrow that was puzzling.

I stood facing him. The clean pressed dark blue uniform absorbing the rays of the hot fall day. The reflective gold badge displayed proudly on his chest radiated the uv rays back onto my retina. I turned my gaze down toward the ground. He was shifting his weight back and forth like he was uncomfortable. Maybe it was the heat.

“Son,” he began with heavy sigh. I lifted my head to looking for eye contact, perhaps providing a glimpse of where he was going, but his eyes were looking anywhere but me. They darted first to the left, then upwards, then down. All the while searching for words, beginning and starting his sentence three times before finally spewing forth his pain.

“Someone broke into your house this afternoon. Your father came home for lunch and well…..eh em... the intruder stabbed your father in the chest….. He died on his way to the hospital, I’m sorry”.

My world stopped.

“What?...But...No-n-no, you’re lying"!

“I’m sorry, I wish I was” he leaned in for a hug, but I collapsed to the field in utter disbelief. The crippling came at the hands of a sentence so unfathomable that replaying the words in my heads no longer sounded like English. Once my paralyzed mind confirmed that it was reality, I started sobbing. I blubbered like I never had or have since. I kneeled on the field for what felt like hours as my world melted around me. I had no control. A few teammates tried to console me, but I had already receded within myself. They didn’t know. They all had fathers to go home to; fathers to play catch with; to watch sports with; to grill out with and cheer on the team with; to give advice about girls with; to teach them how to become a man; to love. To love every moment spent with them. To have such childlike glee when they talk because when you see them, you see a part of yourself. That part of me was ripped out and died on that field that day, a part I will never recover, the best part.

“Leave me alone!” At that point practice was ended and Officer Murray ushered me into his car to drive me to my mother waiting at the hospital. On the way he tried to console me, but I was gone, zoned out, numbed into the abyss of my subconscious. I was sad, angry, but mostly scared. Scared that I had lost my life, and I would never regain that…