Chapter Fifty Nine

A little walk in the woods... a shortcut. It was ok for me to take the path off the road into the dark forest. I was not afraid and besides that I could see everything in front and behind me.

The back of my head had an itch. When I reached around to scratch it I could see the palm of my hand. Pretty neat, eh?

When I ran into Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time, I was very excited. He was dressed in his Yankee uniform, his pantlegs knee high and tucked into his stockings. In one hand he held a giant, smoking cigar that smelled like a burning cat. He was using his free hand to balance his weight on a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He looked like he was posing for the cover of Life magazine.

"Marty! How nice of you to drop by!" He took a step towards me with those tiny feet making short strides. The cigar flew into his mouth as he shook my hand so hard the skin on his face fluttered. "I've been really looking forward to meeting you!"

"Are you kidding me? I never thought I would ever shake the hand of the Bambino! Not even in heaven!"

"There's a damn good chance you'd never shake it there Clark." He let out a belly laugh that shook us both. I laughed along with him, not really knowing which one of us was the least likely to reach the pearly gates. "Come over here a minute, I've got something to do."

I followed him to a clearing in the thick, dark, green woods. A streak of sunlight found the only gap in the trees and was shining down on a white box about the size of corporate trash dumpster. On the front of the box was the painting of a frown-faced clown with a daisy drooping from his ramshackle hat. The tragic comedians image was on top of a large red circle, outlined in white, another outline in green, and a black border. This combination seemed familiar to me but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

A horrible racket was coming from inside the box and it's lid jumped and banged like a large animal was inside trying to get out. The Babe stood with his legs parted like the Eiffel Tower, his bat lying on his shoulder.

"So what's in the box...Babe?" I asked playfully.

"It's the Devil." Babe spoke through his bouncing cigar.

"Ha! Do you mean Satan?"

"One and the same."

I was skeptical. "The Prince of Darkness is right there in a wooden box, here in this forest outside Louisville Kentucky?"

"Can you think of a better place for him?"

"What's keeping him in there?"

"A Yale padlock."

Sure enough, a Yale padlock was affixed in the loop of a flimsy metal hasp that had 6 screws fastened into the wooden lid and front. 3 on the splintering top and 3 on the cracking front.

"You know you can shoot a bullet into a Yale padlock and it won't open. I saw it on TV."

"Yea, that's a good lock alright!" The growling and spitting of the Devil was nauseating to me and getting louder by the moment. "I'm just a little concerned that the greatest source of evil on the world is trapped in that wooden box and the only thing between him and the rest of the world is that poorly made hasp there...Babe."

"I know, it seems a little flimsy doesn't it?" His eyes twitched nervously towards me and then back to the clown face.

"What's the Devil doing in the box to begin with?" The noise from inside got louder and the wood was starting to buckle.

"Do you know who Red Skelton is?" I nodded knowingly. "He tricked him in there. Made him think it was a giant case of cigarettes. The Devil's favorite brand. When he leaned in to grab a carton, Ole Red pushed him in and locked the lid. He called me to help him watch the thing and I've been here ever since."

"You're shitting me!" I would never had said "shitting" to Babe Ruth in my right mind. I recoiled a little from my own crudeness. Babe didn't flinch.

"It's true. Red was pretty disgusted with the guy and the way he ran things down in hell. He decided make the afterlife a better place."

"Red Skelton?"

"Look at the clown he painted on the front. That's him! He painted that there, just to stick it up Belezabub's heinie."

With a bang as loud as a shotgun firing, the screws flew out of the wood and the lid swung open wide. A large greenish creature with a mouth the size of a Yule log and teeth of a mountain lion poured from the opening. Growls and obscenities bubbled from his throat. His eyes shot flames onto his battered and bruised cheekbones. His arms stretched out wide as he spread his grimy fingers and wiggled his long, pointed, curled up fingernails. The horns on the top of his head wriggled like fishing worms and his tongue, long and forked, snapped like a bull whip.

The smell of death and sulfur filled the woods. My heart was pounding out of my chest in 3/4 time...Up tempo.

Just as Satan began to close his claws on the Babe's head, Ruth pulled the Louisville Slugger back behind his hat. In classic form, Babe Ruth hit a 500 foot homer over the center field bleachers in Wrigley, right into the Devil's jaw. His front left foot lifted, toe first, as he turned the bat into imperial ruler of hell.

The club, striking the face of evil, made the sound of a thousand railroad cars crashing into the audience at a Megadeath concert. Sparks like those from a welders torch spewed from his nose as he fell backwards, into the box. Little yellow birds circled his head.

Babe closed the lid and produced an old fashioned screw driver from his back pocket. It was 2 feet long and had a rotating screw machine in it's middle. He replaced the hasp and set the screws by pushing the device inwards towards the wood. Each screw took one quick motion. Six times he did this, and put the driver back in his pocket. Pulling the cigar from his mouth, he turned to me. "So, let's talk Marty."