Editors’ Note: “Faded Pictures” is a triptych of stories. We’ve included two here: “A Little Boy with a Bat,” and “Family Photos.” The third, “A New Cameo,” can be found in the print copy of issue #4. Please consider purchasing an issue to complete the set!

by Kenneth Kapp

A Little Boy with a Bat 

Steven Stanvic was moving for what he hoped was the last time. He was putting the old atlas in a carton when a picture of a young boy with a baseball bat fluttered to the floor. He couldn’t remember if the book was his or his father’s. He studied the photo, which was poor and faded. The boy was frowning at a bat that almost reached from the ground to his chin. He turned it over; nothing was written on the back. Some features looked vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t him.

I was always good at sports. That kid looks awkward, like he wants to say, “You want me to do what with this thing?” I was never pudgy and the ears stick out too much to be me.

He turned the pages thinking that one of the maps might trigger a memory, give him a hint if the book was his or his father’s. He flipped the book over and shook it to see if a note was stuck between the pages. Finally, he turned back to the first page to see when the atlas was printed. 1937. 

Could go either way. Dad loved taking me to old book stores. He could have gotten that for me as a birthday present. I was a brat; wouldn’t have been the first time I was told, “No present.” Maybe Dad put it on the shelf instead of giving it to me.

Steven put the book on the coffee table and went to get a beer. Something was stuck in the back of his head. He sat on the sofa and put his feet up next to the book. I can toss it; the maps are all dated. But I was born in 1938—close, no potato. 

He thought about hand grenades and horseshoes and how his mother had died in 1942. Dad raised me by himself. Never wanted to talk about those years. Real mad when I told him I was thinking of joining up and fighting in Korea. He turned pale and grabbed his chest. He started to say something and then changed his mind. Wouldn’t let me ever bring it up again.

Steven turned the atlas with his heel so it was aligned with the edge of the table. He talked to it. “Dad had said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ I knew somehow if I enlisted it would kill him. But he wouldn’t say.”

The talking helped. It was as if the book reminded him. The page with the map of France was dog-eared. A chill ran through him. He got up and went into his study, thinking a lot of newspapers have digitized their old archives. Good thing we’ve always lived here.

He sat at his desk and started his computer, Googling his last name along with the newspaper’s. Four items came up. The first, from 1937, was his birth announcement. He smiled. The other three were all obituaries. There was one for his mother and another for his father. The third was for a Pavel Stanvic who died on D-Day in Normandy. 

Steven was puzzled. He was not aware of any relatives in his father’s family, certainly none that lived nearby. He needed a stronger drink.  He was five when his mother died and had only a few vague memories of her. His father would say only that she took sick and was another casualty of the war. Steven had assumed that was because she still had family in Czechoslovakia but… 

He returned, clicked on Pavel’s obituary, and was startled to find his own name as well as that of his parents listed as Pavel’s surviving family. There was no photo with the article. He pushed his drink to the side and went to retrieve the faded photograph from the coffee table. Then he stopped, went back and got the atlas.

He pushed the computer back, making room for the atlas on the front of the desk. He opened it to the full-page map of France. Holding it up to the light he could make out a faint outline of where the picture must have rested for decades. He put the book down and studied the old photograph, beginning to see some of his father’s features in the little boy with a bat.

Family Photos 

Donny and Mike had met often enough at the homeless shelter on the northside to exchange names. Occasionally they would walk together and dumpster dive on collection day, sharing a shopping cart between them. 

Donny said, “Four eyes are better than two in them rich neighborhoods.” 

Mike was wary and insisted, “But we take turns on who picks first.” And added, “No hiding and anything we sell is 50 - 50.” 

On good days, things worked out nicely. Complaints were grunted and ignored and smells went unremarked. On bad days, Donny would grab the shopping cart and stare until Mike left to go out on his own.

Tuesday was a good day. They found several discarded shirts on top of one dumpster, each taking one at a time. Farther down the alley they came across several cartons that looked as if someone had been cleaning out the attic. They moved aside the two cartons of moldy old books on top of the pile.

Mike started to rummage through one box, pushing aside a broken toaster, miscellaneous plates wrapped in worn dish towels, and a burnt spatula, before finding a couple of spoons and forks at the bottom. As he was straightening up to announce his find, he noticed that Donny had hastily stuffed what looked like a book in his pack. He was about to complain, then figured he’d wait to see if Donny would say something. I’ll give him a chance and, besides, I don’t read much anymore.

“Hey, Donny, find anything? Got these spoons and forks, want any?”

 “They silver or something we can sell?”

“Nope.”

“Then nope neither. Can’t tell who’s been using them.”

That night at the shelter Mike watched when Donny went into a corner of the common room after supper and snuck the book out from his pack. He could see that it was a floppy book of photos. Not any prize they could sell. He was glad he hadn’t made a fuss. If there were any dirty pictures, he was sure Donny would start bragging.

A few days later at breakfast, Donny pushed a photo of a family, all stylishly dressed, in front of him. “That’s my family. I took the picture when I was a kid. Thought I’d show you. That’s my older brother. He was killed in the war.” Then he snatched it back and put it in his pack.

They went their separate ways for a couple of days. Mike was jealous. Donny should have shared that photo album. Two hours later he was thinking his father had a suit just like the one in the picture. By late afternoon he was convinced that it was his family album. Donny stole it from me!

They met back at the shelter. When it was lights out, they found flop beds next to each other. In the middle of the night Donny was cursing up a storm and ripping out pages from the album. Other men had already started shushing. Mike whispered, “You OK?”

“Yeah, yeah. Fuckin’ family had it coming, leaving me like that. Fuck ‘em!”

“Go to sleep, Donny, you’ll feel better in the morning.”

Donny wasn’t much better in the morning. He came to breakfast waving his coffee cup and a handful of photographs. “They did it to me. It’s their fault I’m here. Bastards!”

Mike tried to calm him down. “Hey, good guy. What say we go out together? Bet’ll be good pickings today, just like last week.”

Donny shot him his middle finger and said slowly, “I…don’t…think...so!”

That night they slept at opposite ends of the large bedroom. In the morning, Mike noticed that the photo album had fallen out of Donny’s pack and was lying under one corner of the bed. He got up to wash and as he went by, kicked it under the center of the bed.

On the way to the bathroom, Mike passed Donny who was busy talking to himself but nevertheless broke off his diatribe and muttered, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!”

When Mike returned to his bed to pick up his things after breakfast, he noticed that Donny was gone and the photo album was still under the center of the bed. He looked around and when no one was looking retrieved it, rushed over to his bed, and stuffed it in his pack. He practically skipped out of the shelter and headed south, telling himself that Donny will have forgotten about the pictures before the day was out.

It was a full day’s walk to the southside shelter, with detours for food and scavenging. Mike was one of the first there and smiled when an old friend, Pete, showed up fifteen minutes later.      

“Mike, long time no see. Where you been at?”

“I’ve been up on the northside, thought I’d check it out before the weather gets too cold.”

Pete started to laugh and then his smoker’s cough took over and he fought to catch his breath. Mike hit him on the back and looked around. “Hey, any of you guys got some water?”

No one came forward although a couple of them shrugged and looked guilty. Probably got a sip left in some hip flask. Wouldn’t help him anyhow. Pete’s cough stopped by itself. 

“Sorry, Mike, been planning to give them up. You know how it is. You’re walking along looking for stuff, see half a fresh butt in the street and say to yourself, man, with the price of cigarettes being what they are now, can’t let this one go. Guy’s entitled to some simple pleasures. You’d think.”

“You’d think.”

The doors opened and the men filed in, most of them not bothering to look at the menu posted on the wall to their right.

“Southside much the same, Pete?”

“Yeah, wouldn’t surprise me if all of a sudden the signs were back up in Polish. Same old ladies in babushkas pushing grandkids in buggies like thirty years ago. Not much junk to find. Streets too clean. But I got my regular stops, people needing a little work done around the yard, cleanup. Stuff like that. Get a meal and a couple of bucks. You want, I can buy us a six-pack, meet in the park late afternoon like before.”

“Be nice. Why don’t you give me a couple of days to settle in. Weather’s nice, I’ll take you up on that offer. Get lucky, there were a couple of stores I worked last year. No complaints so maybe they’ll throw me something too. Different up on the northside. People there want professional help. But the pickings are better. I’ve got a couple of extra shirts I’ll show you later. You can have one. The price is right.”

“Yeah. Maybe, but I doubt they’d want us on that show.”

Two days later, the weather cooperated and Mike and Pete were sitting on the grass hidden behind a crescent of lilac bushes. They were nursing their second beer when Mike reached into his pack and took out a dozen photos from a brown paper bag.

“Hey, Pete, did I ever show you pictures of my family?”

(Click here to read an interview with B&G #4 author Kenneth Kapp!)