They were using the tennis ball
today. They usually alternated between that and an oversize softball that Bill Raye
called a “cabbage ball,” due to its size and general mushiness. But since they
had the tennis ball, they had the gloves out. She smiled, listening. Last
summer she had felt good enough to sit on the porch and cheer them on. The
Bulldogs were hitting, they were losing 2-0 to the Alley Cats, according to
Allison’s chalkboard scorekeeping, and it was the fourth inning. They usually
played six, unless something unexpected happened. She liked to imagine that her
grandson in Wichita played ball with other kids he knew, and he enjoyed hearing
about these neighborhood games, so she tried to remember everything she could
about what happened. Carol just really lacked the energy right now to write a
letter. So she just sat and watched the window instead.
Jocelyn slapped a ground-rule double, planting herself
firmly on the pizza box that was second base. Now Aaron was up at bat; his
younger sister Amanda was pitching for the Alley Cats. Mandy tossed two of her
elevator balls for strikes, then wound up and struck him out with one of her
blazing fastballs. To the players, Carol was just some older lady who liked
baseball. She used to have a dog named Sassy, but not anymore, and she let them
use her yard as a field, so that was cool. She was sick more often now, from
something that had to do with eating too much crab dip.
Carol had given Sassy to Amanda’s family since she was too
sick to keep a dog. She’d always liked kids. Maybe that was part of why she
became a librarian. Of course, once the cancer came she had had to give that
up, but… So now she didn’t get out much. Sometimes she fixed them some cookies
if she felt well enough. They were just store cookies from Dollar General, but
they didn’t seem to mind. Hmm, cookies sounded good. She walked into the
kitchen and took two out of the package, pulled a glass off the shelf and set
about enjoying her snack.
Except that she didn’t.
The half-gallon container was too heavy to pick up. So she
ate one of the cookies dry and left the other for later.
Alley
Cats at bat now, David was facing Rich’s pitch. Rich let the neon yellow ball
go into one of his loopy slow-motion flight patterns. The bat swung around and
connected for a pretty solid line drive, and David reached the first-base
Frisbee easily. Sarah Kate scooped up the ball on two hops and threw it to
Danny.
Bill
sat on his deck, watching the game from his perch in left field. Cars seldom-to-never
came down the cracked concrete of Fourth Street, so the outfield stretched
across the road and into the Raye’s backyard. The dogs were barking their fool
heads off like always; he ran them inside through the screen door. They were a
nuisance, but Barbara enjoyed having the little yappers around, so that was
that. The kids knew they could just slip inside if a foul ball landed inside
the fence, as long as they didn’t let TieDye or Taz out. Not that the dogs
would want to run loose, they were
too used to their sedentary lifestyle, but it gave the kids some boundaries,
which was good for ‘em. Mandy was at the plate right now, Rich’s throw had even
less backspin than normal, which wasn’t much to begin with. In other words, it
was so slow that Bill probably could’ve pounded that throw. Point was, she got
her bat off her shoulder and socked that
tennis ball across the street and off the Raye’s roof. It shot twenty feet
skyward before coming down on the weathered maroon paint of the deck.
Barbara stepped out onto the deck to see what was going on.
“Home run, honey?”
“Yep. Mandy Chapman.”
Her cousin Steve was going nuts, while Allison updated the
scoreboard to now read Alley Cats 5, Bulldogs 0. Bill had nicknames for some of
them, Steve he always called Bob Costas, due to his tendency to
enthusiastically announce the progress of these ballgames. Mandy tripped over
her shoelace between second and third, then picked right up and ran home. Bill
tossed the ball back into the outfield, and after half an inning more, the kids
in yellow T-shirts headed home with frustrated expressions, while the kids in
the black T-shirts looked pleased with their afternoon’s work.
The jerseys were Barbara and Carol’s idea after the kids
were wistfully picturing how “official” their teams would look, so they got
together and went to Michael’s or Hobby Lobby, well, one of them other crafty-type
stores; then they screen-printed the team names and numbers onto the front and
back. The jerseys were a huge hit; and there was a bunch of thank-you letters
and pictures mailed to both houses. Their fridge was already covered up with
pictures from the grandkids, but a couple of the baseball teams’ drawings had
found display-places, too. And Carol got a huge kick out of it, which she like
as not needed a great deal. Her treatment wasn’t going too well, and she hadn’t
been out much for about a week. Since she’d worked at the library, almost
everybody in town knew her, and while it was agreed that she could be a handful
– specially after moving over to the Methodists after being part of the PH
church ever since her divorce – still, town opinion held her in decent
standing. She was part of the fabric of the town; she was Good People. And if
you were Good People, then you were gossiped about, certainly, but it was done
kindly. And gossip was just what everyone did when it wasn’t football season no
longer, that’s been the ways out-of-the-way communities got their recreation
for goodness knows how long. Just part of the rules. Like when Jocelyn’s family
moved into town four years ago and her mother called the police department
asking if fireworks were allowed on Fourth of July. Pete popped the top of a
Diet Coke and drawled, “Well, ma’am, it’s technically
illegal, but nobody follows that rule, so you may as well go ahead.” Like
how everyone knew to hunt up those Mullin cats Lewis & Clark at the Lange
house when they got loose. Sarah Kate’s fur allergies kept her sneezing for
four days afterwards, but cats have their own minds and will be their own
masters.
Barbara stepped across the street to deliver one of her
fudge-pecan pies to Carol, and they’d probably chat for several hours over
topics as silly as “why boys didn’t seem to like brown-haired girls any more.”
He’d huffed in disgust when he once overheard this conversation, but danged if he hadn’t wondered the same thing since
on occasion!
A couple days later, the teams got together again for
another game, using the cabbage ball this time. That meant pretty much
whichever side made less errors would win; as the size of the ball made it hard
to hang on to. There just isn’t really anything to compare it to, sixteen
inches around made for a weird – what was that big math-related word? –
circumference? Danny readjusted his cap and got into position covering second
base. Rich was stuck at home cleaning his room, so Sarah Kate was pitching
instead. In the first inning, she struck David out and forced Mandy and Kristy
into weak little grounders. With Jocelyn at first base, everything was caught
cleanly, and that was the first inning. Chris pounced on a line drive down the
third-base line in the second, and still nobody had scored yet by the third.
That was when Ranger decided to join in on the fun. He loped(Danny liked that
word and used it whenever possible) onto the field and began covering everyone
in sloppy blue-heeler kisses. And then Sunshine the beagle puppy from two
houses over dug under the fence and joined in. That set off the Raye’s Lhasa
Apsos even worse than usual; and once they got started the Haworth’s Labs and
the Byars’ German shepherd got started howling, too. That took a while to sort
out, and then a bunch of runs were scored, with the Bulldogs leading 8-7 a
close call degenerated into a loud argument. Carol was feeling better today,
she was watching from her front porch.
“What happened, y’all?”
They explained. Danny had tagged Kristy out at second, but
she said her foot was already touching the base, since it grazed the corner of
the box.
“You guys know how to settle this.” Carol looked vaguely
disappointed with them – it was a hard expression to understand, Danny thought.
Most grown-up expressions were. Something like they wanted to cry, or smile, or
yell a lot of cuss words whenever they thought nobody was around. Maybe all of
those at the same time, if that was even possible. It was why he tried to stay
out of the house as much as possible. Dad and Mom were always arguing about
something, it seemed like, or they were worried about money, with the rent due
in a couple days and Dad without a job, really. It was a lot simpler whenever
the gang got in fights about calls and stuff; Carol had decided that
Rock-Paper-Scissors was how those close plays would be figured out. Maybe
that’s what grown-ups needed.
“Rock, Paper, Scissors, SHOOT!”
Danny threw paper, so did Kristy. They tried again. They
both threw scissors that time. He threw scissors again on the third try, and
Kristy threw a rock. Rock smashes scissors, of course, everybody knows that. So
she was safe.
He wasn’t exactly sure what “cancer” was, but it was
something pretty bad, he knew that. Usually you had to be kind of old to get
it, but sometimes there were stories about teenagers who had it, or even kids.
Anyway, it sucked the life right out of you, is how Carol explained it. He’d
asked Bill about it once, and didn’t really get a good answer. Instead he just
shook his head and asked whether he remembered when Mandy and Aaron’s dog was
run over. Danny remembered that, yeah. Copper had just sort of laid there a
while, and kinda whimpered; he’d been over there that day, and all three of
them bawled their eyes out til it didn’t seem like there was any room for
anything else inside. Copper tried to lick the tears away, but it hurt too
much, so she just set her nose on Aaron’s leg and watched. Then, eventually,
she just….wasn’t there any longer. Bill had said that cancer was a little like
that car that hit Copper; and so, bit by bit, Carol’s body wasn’t working right
anymore. It was confusing. Where would they play ball if she wasn’t there
anymore? Her house would have to be sold, probably, and what if whoever lived
there next didn’t like kids? Wouldn’t let ‘em play ball in their front yard?
What if they had a big scary mountain of a dog, like that man in that movie
from Eagle’s Nest video store?
Later he was up at bat, and he got a good chunk of Sarah
Kate’s pitch. The ball sailed into the outfield for a clean base hit – wait,
what? Mandy was yelling and pointing at something, ohhh. He had thrown the bat; which everyone knew was an automatic
out because Carol said so. That rule had been put into place so nobody would
get hurt, after that happened one time when Lee flung his bat and it sailed
into Sam’s ankle.
Anyway, they ended up winning 10-7, so that was a good
thing. Some of them walked down to Shuttle Stop for a candy bar or bag of chips
and a pop. They talked about books they were reading for the library’s summer
reading program, and what older siblings were doing. Being a teenager seemed
awfully dramatic and unpleasant and confusing. It probably wasn’t exactly like
the movies explained it, but some didn’t seem that far off, either. Danny was
glad he wasn’t a teenager yet.
Dear Kevin,
Things
are going well here. Are you all planning anything for Fourth of July? Planning
on having an army-man battle in the driveway again, maybe? I haven’t felt too
well here lately, but today I felt good enough to watch the ballgame. The Dog
Club interrupted it for a while, and then Danny and Kristy had a fight over a
tag at second base. She was safe, but the Bulldogs ended up winning today 10-7.
Have you been to any Wranglers ballgames this season yet?
The
hummingbirds haven’t been eating too much, I guess it’s just been too hot. The
Mullin cats (Lewis and Clark, you know, they belong to Kristy) came over
yesterday before wandering over to Sarah Kate’s. They just plonked themselves
down on the front porch and gave themselves a very thorough bath. In between
their toes and everything. Then they took a nap in the sunshine, drank some
milk I set out for ‘em, and scattered when Fred came by with the day’s mail.
That reminds me – I need to go check the mailbox.
Okay,
back now. The paper came today, looks like the teenagers from church are
excited about camp coming up in a couple months, and they’re holding a car wash
to raise money for that. One of the high school juniors won a trip to
Washington, D.C. with a bunch of other kids from all over the state. I read
about it in the paper last week; seems like it’ll be a really cool experience.
Just imagine – seeing all that history up close! They’re gonna meet some
of our Congressmen, go to George Washington’s house at Mount Vernon, see all
those memorials to guys like Jefferson and Lincoln, and even go to the
Smithsonian museum! She’s going to keep a journal of the trip and the paper’s
going to print it, so the rest of us can know what it was like. That’ll be in a
couple weeks. Here’s a funny clipping for you guys to laugh at (from the police
reports) – "At 10:15 p.m. Alverson and Mitchell investigated a report of
breaking and entering on West Chincapin Street. A caller said someone broke
into the house. It turned out to be the caller's brother who got in the house,
no charges were filed." Or this one: “Holmes investigated a report of a
suspicious vehicle parked under the Collyge Street awning at the elementary
school at 8:30 p.m. The owner put it there to protect it from the hail and the
thunderstorm."
My
friend Barbara came over the other day with one of her fudge-pecan pies, it
sure was yummy. We talked for a while, her husband Bill’s blood pressure isn’t
acting right, so they’re not sure what’s going on with that, exactly. I’m gonna
go to the doctor again for more chemo tomorrow, and if I feel good enough, to
the store this afternoon and then into town to run some other errands. Hope you
can visit soon.
Love,
Mimi
Somebody had once asked her how come she cared about the
neighborhood kids so much, or why she specialized in children’s literature when
it came to the library; in reply, she’d quoted C.S. Lewis’ preface to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe: “Someday,
you will be old enough to read fairy tales again.” The kids were engrossed in
their game; which was how things ought to be. There were a lot of educational
things they were learning without realizing it: conflict management, dealing
with what life gave you, focusing on a larger goal than any of them could
accomplish by themselves. And they reminded her to treasure the mundane:
cookies unexpectedly, sunshiny days, a base hit, a caught fly ball. Yes, she
was going to die soon, certainly by next summer, but the kids had their lives
ahead: High school, dating, divorces, college, kids, marriage. She wasn’t that important
to them; they’d forget about her. But maybe someday they’d remember. And these
games wouldn’t last forever, either, once the kids started hitting puberty. But
for now, the game continued.
