A Night at the Ball Park

Buy a three foot long pixie stick. Use your teeth to tear open the plastic straw. Tilt your head back and pour the sugar into a dune on your tongue. Swish the candy around your mouth in a tidal wave. Stick a purple tongue out at your brother. The game is just starting and Mom is encouraging someone to “knock the shit out of it”. Sit with the softball girls on the bench. Get embarrassed when they talk about your long eye lashes. Run away. Step in some chewing gum. Use a mud puddle to wash your feet.

Walk along the park fence and look for honeysuckle. Pull the chord on the flower. Drop its sweet tear in your mouth. Eat an ant, too. Be more careful with the next one. Look up at the scoreboard. Look down at your watch. Eat a hundred more drops. Wish you had a hotdog.

Take a matchbox car out of your pocket. Smell the metal. Spin the wheels with your finger. Drive it along the top railing of the fence. Make it jump the posts. Spot a trail leading through the bushes. Make sure your mother is not looking. Haul ass. Push on a crooked gate. Force the latch. Discover a playground. Ride the horse on the rusty spring even though you are too big. Lie on the cool flat of the round-and-round. Look up at the clouds. Have a daydream about Halloween. Enjoy this lonely weird place. Pull a kudzu vine off a swing set chain. Pick up a box of crushed Lemonheads and throw it in the trash. Sweep some leaves off the slide. Decide to keep this place secret. Stay a while.

Open your eyes wide to let in more light. Rub the chill bumps off your arm. Realize that you have stayed too long. Run back to the ball field. Feel relieved that the game has not ended. Search for your grandmother in the stands. Snuggle with her under a blanket. Eat cold chicken and talk about scary movies. Stand up when the crowd roars. Someone hits a homerun. You are sure it is Geraldine.

Tell Nanny you need to go to pee. Find your brother playing dump truck under the bleachers. Think he is filthy. Know Mom is going to whip his ass. Decide to play dump truck too. Fill a paper cup with dirt. Dump it. Repeat. Stick a long piece of grass in your mouth to look like Huck Finn. Spit it out when it burns you. Stink weed. Be more careful with the next one. Pick up two pennies, a dime and a hair bow and put them in your pocket… kid treasure. Ask your brother for some Redhots. He gives you some Good N' Plentys instead. Yuck…licorice.

The wooden planks of the bleachers bend heavily downward with the weight of the departing crowd. Both teams are on the field shaking hands. Grab your brother and clean up with a garden hose. Take a shortcut to the parking lot. Find your mother. The outer part of her right thigh is skinned up and bloody. She doesn’t yell at you for getting dirty. Geraldine gets in the back between you and your brother. Mom is taking her home tonight. It is dark and the summer air is blowing in warm through the little triangle windows on the car. The music on the radio drifts in and out until it is completely fuzz. Talk to Geraldine about her home run. Tell her that she is going to beat Hank Aaron’s record. Feel full when she laughs. Ask her to sing that Debbie Boone song. Fall asleep on her shoulder.