Before every game, Dalton Kissinger would arrive early and run exactly three laps around the baseball diamond. Following that, he would take his hat and flip it in the air, attempting to move his neck so it landed directly on his head. It normally took around five tries. Last, just before the game began, he would buy an order of fries, sprinkle pepper on them, and eat every last fry. With these three rituals, Dalton Kissinger ensured that he would play a good game.
He got fries from a place up the street and brought them back to the locker room. Dalton kept a pepper shaker in his duffel.
Today, the pepper shaker was not there. “Hey, Wesley?”
“What’s up?”
“I can’t find my pepper shaker.”
Wesley was their second baseman. “Oh, sorry man. Last game you said you’d used the last of the pepper and threw the shaker out. You wanted me to remind you to get more pepper before today.”
“And why didn’t you remind me?” Dalton asked hotly.
Wesley hesitated, then laughed nervously. “Well, I didn’t ask anybody to remind me, I suppose.”
“I’m not messing around, Wesley! This is serious! I gotta get pepper on these fries, or I’m not gonna play well!”
Frankie came to Wesley’s rescue. “Is there a store you could run to?”
“I don’t have time!” Dalton insisted. “I was sure I had pepper in my bag!”
It was Luis’s turn to intervene. Luis was their best hitter, their star player. “Dalton, it’ll be alright. I understand that you’re upset. Plenty of us have our silly little rituals, but we’re up this season.” He slapped Dalton on the back. “If we lose the game, we’ll blame you and move on.”
That got half the team laughing at him.
Luis continued, “But after, we’ll still be up for the season. Alright? Eat your fries with just the salt this time, and get out on the field and lose for us. Let’s go, Lizards!”
Dalton saw no use in protesting. Not hungry in the first place, he threw his fries in the trash and got ready for the game.
He went to the outfield. The opponent’s first hitter struck out. Their second hitter got a single. Their third hitter struck out. The audience wasn’t giving them any love for it.
“Not too bad!” Eddie joked to him, their left fielder.
Dalton wasn’t encouraged. There was plenty of time for the match to go south.
The opposing team finished their first inning with one run. Time to see how Dalton’s batting would go without his peppered fries. The crowd was chanting, “Let’s go, Lizards! Let’s go, Lizards!”
Frankie hit a single. Bill hit a single. Luis brought them in with a big home run, to grand applause from the audience. Dalton could see all of those people up in the stands, cheering and expectant. He was going to strike out. Well, they were already up two runs. Maybe it wouldn’t come crashing down until the next inning. Or the ninth inning.
Dalton went up to bat. The pitcher threw and Dalton swung. One strike.
Someone on his team shouted from behind. Dalton didn’t hear the words, but he heard the laughter that followed. Whatever. Let’s get it over with.
The pitcher threw and Dalton swung. Two strikes.
Dalton shook his head. He sighed and raised the bat.
The pitcher did not throw. He was looking up over Dalton’s head. He looked frightened.
Dalton didn’t know what was happening, not taking his eyes off the pitcher until he heard shouting.
Up in the audience, chaos was unfolding. People were scattering and screaming at the top of their lungs. A loud cracking was ringing out.
Dalton was staring up at the audience in confusion for an uncertain amount of time before someone grabbed him by the arm. It was Luis.
“Get off the field! Run!”
“What?” Dalton asked.
“It’s a shooter! There’s a shooter in the audience!”
Luis’s words didn’t make sense to Dalton, but he ran with him anyway. The screams of the audience faded as they went to the locker room at a trot. It was only then that Dalton’s brain snapped back into line.
“What was that?” Dalton asked breathlessly.
The rest of the team was in the locker room, safe and pale and shaken. “Shooters,” Wesley said. “There were at least three of them. Maybe more.”
“My god,” Frankie said, staring at his phone. “It’s a terrorist attack. An organized terrorist attack.”
Dalton uttered, “What did I do?”
Everybody looked at him when he said that, but at the same time, they were trying not to meet his eyes.
“What did I do?” he repeated.
One week later, after the body count was confirmed to be over one hundred, Dalton Kissinger began a fundraiser. He announced the fundraiser online, with a goal of netting a hundred thousand dollars to provide for the families of those killed in the terror attack.
A few hours after the announcement, Luis sent Dalton a text. “I heard about the fundraiser. I think it’s really great what you’re doing!”
Dalton hardly read the message, his gaze glued to his computer screen, waiting for donations to come in. Stiffly, he messaged Luis back. “Thank you. This is important to me.”
Another hour passed, and Wesley texted him much of the same. “I’m proud of you. It’s great that you’re using your platform to do this for the families.”
“Thank you,” Dalton texted back. “This is important to me.”
Frankie messaged him next. More of the same.
“Thank you,” Dalton wrote. “This is important to me.”
Eddie sent a text that was a bit different. He said, “You know, nobody blames you for what happened. We were just joking about the pepper thing before the game.”
“Thank you,” Dalton responded. “This is important to me.”
There were no games coming up. In light of the terrorist attack, the remainder of the baseball season had been postponed for at least a month, if not longer. That meant Dalton had time on his hands to watch the fundraiser. Reloading the page, reloading the page, reloading the page.
After twenty-four hours had elapsed, the fundraiser had collected a little over four thousand dollars. Less than five percent of the donation goal.
Dalton decided to film a video.
“Hello. It’s me, Dalton Kissinger. As you by now know, I’ve set up a fundraiser for the families affected by the… tragic terrorist attack that occurred during the last Lizards game. The final count from the incident was one hundred and twelve deaths and over five hundred injuries.”
He had tears in his eyes, visible on camera.
“I need to help these people. I’ve got to get money to these families. I have to do something. Because in a way, I am responsible for what happened. If it weren’t for me and my team, those Lizards fans would never have been in the stadium. If… If I had been better, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Dalton blinked at the camera, losing his train of thought.
“Before every game, I have rituals. I run around the diamond a few times. I flip my hat onto my head. I get an order of fries from a fast food place near the stadium, and I put pepper on them before I eat. Every game, I do these things. And I didn’t have any pepper. That’s what happened. I didn’t have any pepper to put on the fries, and then this happened.”
He stopped for a moment to breathe trembling breaths.
“If I had put pepper on my fries, those people would be alive. None of this would’ve happened. I know it sounds crazy, but I think it’s true. Every time I did my rituals, I played well. And this happened when I was at bat. I did this.”
Dalton puffed air out of his nose. He wiped his tears.
“Please, donate with the link below. These families need all the help they can get after the… the… the tragic deaths of their loved ones. Please donate below. Please.”
He swallowed.
“Go Lizards,” he finished.
The video was posted online. It did not get a very good reception.
Not only did Dalton fail to increase the number of donations, he became a source of mockery across the internet. How dare he say that those people died because he hadn’t sprinkled pepper on some fries? What kind of lunatic thought that these rituals could stop a terrorist attack? Didn’t he care about the real villains here?
Dalton got a package in the mail the next day, from someone he didn’t know. It was a bulk delivery of ground pepper.
He got another package the day after. A big pepper shaker shaped like a baseball player.
The next day, more ground pepper, an even larger bulk delivery than the first one.
By the end of the week, he had more pepper than he could fit in his cabinets. The fundraiser remained at only ten percent of his donation goal.
So Dalton Kissinger went back to social media and made another video.
“You can’t change the facts. And these are the facts. I always put pepper on my fries before a game. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and this was the one time that I failed to pepper my fries.”
He was crying harder this time around. He didn’t care.
“I killed those people. Their deaths are on my hands. So please, give to my fundraiser. I need this. And stop sending me pepper! I don’t need any more! I have a lifetime of pepper now! Okay? You can stop!”
He was breathing hard, his shoulders moving up and down.
“Fine. I get it. This is my fault, so I have to pay for it. Forget the fundraiser, then. I’ll pay for it myself. I’ve got money to spare. I’ll donate to the families. I’ll empty my bank account if I have to. I have to do this. I killed them and… I… I can’t get away with it. I killed those people, and I have to pay.”
He tried not to sob.
“G— Go Lizards.”
Dalton didn’t watch for the response online. He posted the video and didn’t look back. He went to his own fundraiser and poured money into it. He met the donation goal. And then he donated more.
He donated more. And he donated more.
He got a new credit card. He donated more.
He got another credit card. He donated more.
He sold one of his cars. He donated more.
Unannounced, Luis came knocking. “Dalton? Dalton!”
Dalton answered the door. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk.” Luis peered past Dalton, gawking into his home. “What’s with all the boxes? You’re not moving out, are you? Tell me you didn’t sell your house!”
“Hm?” Dalton looked over his shoulder. “No. It’s pepper.”
Luis froze. “It’s what?”
“No, no, I didn’t ask for it. People keep mailing me big boxes of pepper. I can’t make them stop, but I don’t want to throw it out either. Do… Do you want some?”
Luis opened his mouth. “Um. Sure. I’ll take a box of pepper. Yeah. I’ll help out.”
“Why are you here?” Dalton asked.
“Can I come in?”
“Why?”
Luis forced a smile. “What, you don’t want me to see inside of your house? Are there really that many boxes of pepper in here?”
Dalton yielded, letting Luis inside.
Luis was pointedly ignoring the many boxes scattered around the living room. He sat on the couch. “Let’s talk, Dalton. This fundraiser thing is getting out of hand.”
“I ended the fundraiser,” Dalton said. “It met the goal.”
“Yes, and I’ve heard rumors that you are the one who did most of the donating. And I’m told the donations didn’t stop there.”
“No,” he said awkwardly. “The donations did not stop there.”
Luis gestured emphatically. “Well when are they going to stop?”
“When it feels right.”
“You’ve gotta move on, Dalton. You didn’t kill those people. You know that, deep down, don’t you? I’m not going to watch you drive yourself to bankruptcy because you didn’t put pepper on some fries. It’s insane! The guys are convinced that you’re going to quit the team!”
Dalton didn’t respond to that.
“And you aren’t quitting, are you?” Luis pushed.
Dalton looked away from him. “I can’t risk hurting more people,” he answered.
“Are you traumatized? Is it PTSD? Is that what’s happened to you?”
“It’s my fault that those people died!”
“It is not! People died because they got shot by terrorists! The pepper has nothing to do with it! Stop donating money! You’re losing your grip!”
“People are dead. How much is a human life worth?”
“What?”
Dalton asked it again. “How much is a human life worth?”
Luis threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know! I’m not a philosopher! A million dollars? Maybe only a few thousand! Maybe we’re a burden on this planet and a human life isn’t worth anything! There’s no answer to your question! Just stop donating! It’s simple as that!”
Dalton said, “I’ll stop donating when it feels right.”
Luis was incredulous. “Will it ever feel right?”
“I don’t know.”
Luis gave up. He got off of Dalton’s couch and stalked out of the room. “Get rid of this pepper, Dalton.” He kicked a box for emphasis. “It’s only a reminder of what happened.”
“I can’t get rid of it,” Dalton said tiredly.
“Why not?”
“They’ll just send me more.”
Luis stared at him. He looked defeated. “I don’t know how to help you,” he admitted.
Dalton dared to ask, “Can I have some money? Not a lot. I just need a little.”
Luis looked at the boxes of pepper. He looked all around the house. The boxes were peeking out of every room. “Is this really all pepper in the boxes?”
“I can’t run from it. They think it’s funny, I think.”
“But can’t you…” Luis struggled. “What if… Can you move to another address?”
“I can’t run from it,” Dalton repeated. “I can’t run.”
Joseph Evergreen is a novelist primarily writing science fiction and speculative fiction for both children and adults. His stories have appeared in HamLit, Piker Press, and Underside Stories. For more of his work, visit josephevergreen623.wordpress.com