Second Chances by Don Robishaw

    Four young girls sit on a dilapidated porch attached to a gray Cape Cod with worn and falling shingles waving to their Dad in the gravel driveway. The oldest cups her hand and whispers, “Looks like Mama’s pissed off, again.” A white T-shirt, a red bandana, and a pretty blond with gray streaks. The sole of Ellie’s rainbow-stained white shoe and her back rest against the faded gold Camaro. 

Rocky Midnight, her husband and professional minor league baseball player faces her with arms folded, head down . . . looking sad.
 “Twelve years, falling for your shit. Can’t take much more.” The mortgage payment is past due. Tears drip from her blue eyes. “Find a real job. Your family or the dream? Gave mine up for you a long time ago.” Arms folded across her chest, too. She looks miserable, though. 
    “Honey, sober one year now. It’s the big show this time,” says Rocky.
    Ellie’s eyes widen . . . she knows it’s his last chance at the dream. “Great, you stopped drinking. That doesn’t feed the kids. They’re tired of the taste of hot dogs and beans. I’m taking your suit to the cleaners. Back to the therapist’s and lawyer’s office Wednesday morning. Don’t forget.” Those frustrating years of listening to bullshit have added up.
Ellie pushes off the Camaro and asks, “What shit-hole this time?”
America’s highways and the old Chevy, bought with a signing bonus out of high school, have taken him to scenic Scranton, awesome Aberdeen, heavenly Hartford, Trenton, Allentown, and Tulsa-town too. 

Rocky says, “Honey, it’s not any of those one-horse-towns. It’s Boston.” 

He stayed positive through those years, even when his drunken father would say, ‘you’ll never amount to shit, kid.’ Last time his father said that he hung himself an hour later under the old Oak tree in the yard. 
    “Good luck,” Ellie says as he gets in the car and she returns to the smell of oil-based paints. Colors run in rivulets down the palette, dislodged by tears running down her cheeks. She leaves a hollow abyss between the four girls on the canvas. Sadness and disappointment fill her artwork these days. 
Ellie once had a scholarship to Rhode Island School of Design. Rocky told her, ‘If we chase two rabbits, we won’t catch either.’ She agreed. 

                                                        *                                                 
    It’s the second occasion in his pitiful career he’s on the pitcher’s mound as the starter for the Boston Red Sox Major League team. Sober this time. He’s waiting for the umpire’s traditional call to, play ball. 
    Two men, slower than usual, walk towards the mound as Rocky tosses a baseball back and forth. The manager speaks, “Sorry son, we have to bring everyone into the clubhouse.” They signal players to come in from the field. 
The umpire says, “Well, it was bound to happen. We can’t take the risk any longer.” The commissioner, owners, and feds suspended the season because of the pandemic. “You're out!” Rocky closes his eyes. . . 

                                                        * 

Rocky opens his eyes. . .  He removes his blue cap and swipes his forehead. Rocky never takes his cap off.  But wait, wasn’t that last year? It’s 2021. Scientists discovered an advanced quick-acting vaccine. There will be baseball today. Ten percent attendance is better than zero.                                                    

His five biggest fans cheer from behind the dugout. Hot dogs taste better at Fenway Park. Messy faces -- girls love em’ with all the fixings. Ellie smiles as she drains a foamy sixteen ounce cup of draught beer. She stands, removes her cap with the red B on the front, waves it in the air, and with white foam covering her upper-lip screams, “Love ya, Captain Midnight!”

Before Don Robishaw stopped working to write, he ran educational programs for homeless shelters for thirteen years. 

Don's also well-traveled, using various ways and means: Sailor, Peace Corps Volunteer, bartender, hitchhiker, world traveler, college professor, and circus roustabout.

His work has recently appeared in, The Rye Whiskey Review, Drunk Monkeys,O’ Dark Thirty, Literary Orphans, Crack-the-Spine, The Remembered Arts, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, Flash Fiction Magazine, and others. His chapbook, ‘Willie’s Bad Paper Odyssey’ was a semi-finalist in Digging Press 2018 Summer Chapbook Contest.

He like to write poetry, satire, tragedies, and gritty fictional tales — of men and women from various backgrounds — that may have sprouted from a seed, from his past.

Many of the characters he developed have been homeless, served for periods of time in the military, or are based upon archetypes or sterotypes he's met while on the road.