two micros
by Jack B. Bedell
The Private Investigator Works a T-Ball Game
The score is 17-2, but she’s not supposed to know that. Actually, no one is supposed to know that now that this league’s banned scoring. She’s there to get some film on the black-and-gold team’s coach. He’s a defense attorney who’s supposed to have severe disk damage at C3-5 after a fender bender, but you’d never know it from the way he’s laying into his wife behind the dug out, waving his arms around over his head like a traffic cop and screaming in full throat. The giant pile of empty Evian bottles strewn around the team cooler leads the investigator to believe the wife’s chosen to hydrate the boys with a higher quality of H2O than these losers deserve, and Coach is evaluating her decision in front of all the parents, the park staff, and most importantly the investigator’s steady cam. This decision, the one to get filler AGAIN, the BES and Brazilian laser treatments, and just about everything she’s wearing. All framed perfectly in the investigator’s 2x2” viewfinder. Twenty whole minutes at this point full of gesticulation, yelling, and unsafe blood pressure levels with no waning in sight. All the while, the black and gold have gone three-and-out twice with the opponent’s “pitcher” getting all six outs on his own, catching bloopers and chasing down runners without ever making a throw. League rules state each team has to bat through their entire line up before the ump can call the game, so the investigator settles in for a long one with her camera focused on the circus behind the bench, a cold pickle in hand, and enough bottled water of her own to make it through all the heat. On the field, the black-and-gold team are drifting rudderless while more runs tick on the scoreboard like the seconds on the investigator’s camera screen. With all this footage in the can already, the only thing left for her to wonder about is just how far past 50 the score will go before the black and gold get their 27 at-bats. Or whatever else it is they have coming.
The Private Investigator Loves a Rainy Day
A rainy day isn’t the same as a day off. Days off are haunted by work she could be doing, or by work someone else is doing for her that she still has to hear about. On a rainy day, no work exists at all. No matter how expensive her camera is, it can’t film through water flowing over window glass, at least not clearly enough to make a lawyer or insurance adjustor smile. No, a rainy day is more like a vacuum of time where real stillness is possible. A little taste of eternity where there’s no reason to expend energy, no energy to expend, actually. No need to move, or direction to move in. The private investigator loves a rainy day for its total lack of expectation, for its complete absence of need. Which should never be confused with absence of desire.
Photo of Jack B. Bedell
BIO: Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s had work collected in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Ghost Forest (Mercer University Press, 2024). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.