Monday, March 28, 2016

Two Outs in the Sixth Inning

     This was the first draft of my third workshopped story for Fiction Writing. I was mostly concentrating on the contrast of lightness of the ballgame with the darkness of Carol's impending death, and also on the internal monologues, using as little dialogue as possible, since most of my stuff tends to be dialogue heavy. Several classmates said it was their favorite story they'd read all semester.

     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. 

No comments:

Post a Comment