"Pinky swear," Will performed a like gesture and they shook on it. Winton wiped his palms together a few times. He vanished from the shoulders down as he picked his way through the thatched blades in the beating heat. Nearby, a fat flightless insect began its mid-afternoon song as though it were trying to imitate the sound of a stick dragging across the open mouths of an endless line of metal cans, several frantic yards at a time. "I think I last saw it near the middle of the yard," Will shouted, his thoughts racing back to several nights ago. Winton trundled on hand and knee for several more feet before sitting up.
Winton and Will were peas in a pod again. Winton was a bit older and wiser than Will, having been away for the past two months at Ridge Lake Athletics Camp. Not only was it the only sleep away camp offered in the off track town of Lerner, Maryland, and not only did you have to be a member of at least one of the local pee wee teams to go, but it ran for a whole six weeks with no parents, aside from coaches, around to supervise. As far as Winton and Will were concerned it was where boys became men. It was where a man learned to make fire and bow hunt and where bravery and courage are both forged and galvanized. Will's mom could afford the admission fee, but she never brought him to enough team practices to qualify so he stayed at the little turquoise colored, vinyl sided, ranch home on Boxer Court, waiting for Winton to get back, and was overjoyed for that wait to be over.
"Winton," Will shouted, his voice bounding across the wide, sun baked, cul-de-sac,"think fast!" The pitch was well within Winton's ability to stop it, but he gave a little backward stumble anyway.
"So," Winton began, mopping his brown skinned brow with the back of his dusty hand before giving the ball an easy toss back, "how've things been here. I feel like I just left," he laughed as Will went fully outstretched in a vertical hop to grab the arcing softball with his weather beaten bright red fielder's glove. "Everything looks the same, you know? But it's been like six weeks."
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Will gave a little grunt as his tan stained sneakers landed in the dry, sandy, grass of the front yard in front of the squat little rectangle of his mother's house. "It's been forever though. I big plug of stuff happened while you were away. You totally missed it!" He bit off the last bit of the sentence as he heaved the scarred ball straight at Winton in his best imitation of his pitching hero, Johann Santana. Winton dropped down to his knees like a catcher for the Mets, his hand whipping up to snatch the speeding ball out of the air like a pitch gone high and wild. "Hey, I threw that right at you, goofus," Will fumed a little, "you don't need to get all fancy with it." Will popped his glove off his left hand and slipped it under his armpit, freeing his fingers to swipe at the salty sweat beginning to creep down from his eyebrows into the corners of his eyes.
"I know, I know. But if you don't challenge yourself you don't get good, bonehead," Winton honked back, tossing the ball easily from one hand to the other while Will used his t-shirt to wipe away the grit he deposited on his face trying to wipe away the sweat. Winton lived directly across from Will in a pale yellow vinyl sided rancher with his mom and dad. They couldn't afford to get him a good glove, but his talents often let him get by without most of the necessary equipment. He lobbed it back intentionally missing Will by several feet. Frantically Will shoved the red and black thonged glove back on his catching hand and held it aloft to shield his eyes from the sun and clouds overhead. He shifted a few feet to the left, then a few feet backward.
"Winton!" He huffed with exasperation as the ball plopped into the brittle high grass of Mr. Ambroses lawn and rolled into obscurity. Will gazed into the thicket of criss-crossing matted blades of brown grass and shook his head with a slight air of despair. He scratched his tan chin a moment.
"I see I totally missed Ambrose not cutting his grass ever, as usual," Winton laughed, trotting over to join Will. "Well, I'm wearing shorts so I'm not going to go get it," the grass, though brown, continued growing year around at Ambroses place and the local public works in Lerner had to come cut it because Ambrose never did, but they did not come at all during the time Winton was gone.
Will bent down and rustled his free hand through the knee high thicket. "Its like barbed wire and ants," he groused pulling his hand back. His palm felt sappy. "I hate Ambrose. The city should just come knock his house down," Ambroses ranch was just like the other five sagging matchboxes in the cul-de-sac, only his siding was wood. The paint was chipping off like thousands of scabs chipping off of a scraped elbow.
"I can't believe this. I've been back for less than an hour and we lose the ball. Great job," Winton turned about and sat on the curb in a gust of disappointment. He picked at little bits of twigs, shreds of paper, and pebbles in the gutter.
"It's not my fault, Winton. You know I can't catch it when you throw it up in the sun like that," Will was not discouraged by the thicket nearly as much as he was inwardly beginning to feel shaken by Winton's intransigence and ignorance of what transpired while he was away.
"Well, how else are you supposed to get good at baseball if you don't ever do the hard stuff."
"I do the hard stuff all the time!"
"Yeah, and you doing the hard stuff is why you never play, right?" The words hung in the air with a weight neither of them were comfortable with, but both were familiar with, however unspoken they were before that moment. "I mean, I always have to help you at football and baseball. I was just trying to help you now."
Will sighed, his eyes locked in the palm of the red glove his mom bought him. Winton couldn't afford a lot of the basics, but Will knew why he always played. "Whatever. Forget it," excuses for the now lost ball began marching through Will's mind, but nothing suitable came up. Winton could do anything because he was so talented and Will was not. "I'll just tell my mom you borrowed it for practice next Thursday so you wouldn't forget," with a little hop, Will dropped from the curb to the street and began shuffling to his house. Excuses still marched, but behind the excuses grew the solidifying taste in the pit of his stomach of the air when he opened the cage of his dead hamster years ago. Mr. Ambrose was in that white tomb somewhere and any amount of trouble was better than getting any closer to that husk, ball or no ball.
"Hey, Will," Winton popped to his feet and trot over to where Will was slowly making headway to his soon to be frustrated mother, "wait. Look, what I said, you know what I meant right. You're not going to tell on me are you?"
The thought had not crossed Will's mind, but even thinking about it now seemed silly. The indefatigable, the super human Winton was not to be told on. Men don't get told on. Besides Winton went to camp. That made him responsible. Will would be the liar if he tried to tattle on him. "No, well, maybe," an idea struck Will's mind. "If you go get the ball I won't tell on you for what you said, and you can keep it too as long as I get to play with it whenever you do." Winton weighed the wager with all of the shrewdness of a man weighing the pros and cons of going to the dentist versus wearing the prank toy teeth he got last Halloween for the rest of his life. He had no baseball of his own and Will had a ball, but also had a whole heap of trouble on his hands. The thing sounded like a compromise to both of their ears, but for Will it was two birds with one stone. Winton nodded agreement and held out a closed fist, pinky finger extended.
"Pinky swear?"
"Pinky swear," Will performed a like gesture and they shook on it. Winton wiped his palms together a few times. He vanished from the shoulders down as he picked his way through the thatched blades in the beating heat. Nearby, a fat flightless insect began its mid-afternoon song as though it were trying to imitate the sound of a stick dragging across the open mouths of an endless line of metal cans, several frantic yards at a time. "I think I last saw it near the middle of the yard," Will shouted, his thoughts racing back to several nights ago. Winton trundled on hand and knee for several more feet before sitting up.
"I don't see it!"
"Keep looking!" Last Thursday night, or was it Sunday night, Will was dragging the kitchen garbage to the curb. The sky was remarkably starry. There was an owl some distance away, but it did not spook him. Nature rarely did, but the Ambrose place always seemed out of place beneath the dome of evening and day lit sky. Like a tear in nature that was spackled over with a wad of wet toilet paper and hasty dabs of brushes here and there; a wad of always drying paper that is pinched onto a razor cut to stop the bleeding but never quite able to heal the wound back to rightful state. The scraps of white paint clinging to the insect eaten siding were breathing, actually respirating, like some kind of bellows, that night; a bellows connected to what kind of furnace Will could only cringe to imagine, and he had already begun to do so though his mind dug it's heels against the mass of the stomach churning thoughts. He stood there for long minutes that star filled night, watching the Ambrose place as it rose and fell, the dark, front facing, windows eyelessly watching him.
A warm breeze caught him across the cheek and it was damp with life though the grass all around was bone dry. It was a moisture like he touched with his fingers when he over turned rocks in spring, only it had the greasy strings and fibrous thickets of loose chicken meat to it. The same knots he tasted when he opened his hamsters death ridden cage so long ago. The entire building seemed to settle closer to him and fill his field of vision until it was mere feet from his face. A single explosion of sound like an entire dresser drawer falling flat on its face rocked Will to the soles of his bare feet that night. A single thunderous clap so loud he felt it in his lungs more than he heard it and his entire body flinched away as though the breathing heap of tatters had rushed forward and slammed him full in his small chest and nearly crushed the life out of his body, right out through his ears. There was not a sound from that plot since then, but if there was Will wouldn't have known. He always took the trash out by daylight or not at all.
"I think I got it," Winton's words drifted into Will's ears as if through a sea of cotton balls. Somewhere in the Ambrose place was death. "Hey, Will! Heads up," the ball banged into Will's sternum and rolled down his lap, taking a pair of bounces back toward the thicket of 344 Boxer Ct. "Get it, you bonehead," Winton shouted, finally snapping Will back to the present. Will rubbed his eyes and cast about for the ball, finding it a few steps away. He gloved it and looked up, still a little bit dazed.
"Hey Winton," he started,"wasn't I standing way over there when you started looking?" Will was now standing directly in front of Ambroses white washed walk way, his somewhat shaky hand pointing to his own driveway dozens of feet away.
"I dunno," Winton replied, hopping gingerly back to the safety of the street, "but I do know that stuff itches like crazy," he smiled as he crossed his arms and scratched at both of his elbows simultaneously. They stood quiet a minute, Will absorbed and Winton very itchy. "So I think I'm gonna go home. I need a shower and my mom and dad want to have dinner soon, probably."
"Okay," Will assented, popping his glove off of his hand. A damp tongue of wind licked the back of his neck, as he turned to walk to his own house. The hairs on his forearm tensed, and refused to relax again. "Say, don't forget the ball," he offered in a cracking voice and tossed the ball with a couple of bounces to the retreating, scratching form of Winton.
"Thanks," he laughed, then, pausing a moment continued, "I'm glad to be back!"
Will wheeled around one last time, throwing a quick wave with his fielder's glove as he skipped doubly fast to his front door and shut the screen. He cast one last look across the street before closing and locking the door. "I'm glad you're back too."
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