though I doubt I’ll want to. There’s a mirage lake in the street that almost looks worth fishing. The mailman’s jeep is in it up to the hubs. Everywhere I turn the air is watery, wiggling upwards. The whole world looks warped. I hope steelhead like weather like this. The local animals and people sure don’t. The whole neighborhood has disappeared except for one small bunch of starlings, who are running through a sprinkler like a bunch of ugly little kids might. They act just like kids, the starlings do, till one of them stops to eat a bug. But come to think of it, some kids will even do that. There’s this kid at school, Meredith Starr, who’ll eat flies for a penny apiece till he’s had three, then with the three cents he buys an extra milk to wash down his lunch. It looks so awful when he snorfs them that you can’t help laughing, but it’s actually kind of sad, I guess. Meredith is one of these kids who smells but can’t help it. He was born without a dad and his mom’s too crazy to cook, so he eats about a ton at school. I give him everything from my lunches I hate, which is called Charity, which is something the Babcocks tell us at Sabbath School always to give to wretches like Meredith Starr. I’d do it anyway, though, since he really seems to want it, and when it’s pukey stuff like eggplant or mashed cabbage it’s fun to watch. He can gulp it down almost as fast as Gomorrah.
The mailman is feeding a row of boxes two blocks down the street, up to his hood now in another fake lake. Even the shade is hot and bright: I think the sunlight must be bashing the top side of everything so hard that some dark-colored version of light is starting to leak clear through. It would scare me to hook a steelhead. I’ve never caught a fish, except minnows by hand, so I hope I just catch a trout. Everett caught a steelhead once and wasn’t a bit scared, but he’s not scared of anything except Grandawma’s dead family, and maybe Mama’s dead dad. I might not be scared either, except last summer Irwin brought a catfish home from the Columbia for a pet, and the first time I tried to pick it up it spiked me so bad my hand got infected and hurt for three weeks. I was glad when the chlorine in our water finally killed it, though it made me sort of wonder why it doesn’t kill us. We buried the catfish by the trash burner, and Irwin made a wood cross for it, and a sign that said: HERE LIES TYRUSCOBB JUNIOR. That’s what Everett said to name it, since Tyrus Cobb Senior liked to spike people too.
I open the mailbox. A letter from Everett, addressed to me! Postcards from Irwin and Pete! The commercial! It must be over!
Run!
T he screen door slams behind me. I try to dial a wider opening into my eyes, but the TV’s so dim compared to outside that the ballplayers look like ghosts. I tell Papa we got mail from the Three Stooges. He says, “Great!” but just goes on watching the game. When my eyes finally adjust, though, I see why:
Roger Maris is up, no outs, top of the ninth. Maris homered in the third with nobody aboard. That’s the only mistake Mudcat Grant has made all day, Papa says. And even Maris’s homer was just a routine fly, he says, except for a hard wind gusting into right. I can’t wait to see the other Wind, I tell him. The river, I mean. No, it won’t be too windy there, he says when I ask him, it’s just called that. Yes, it’s sheltered, he says, it’s in a deep canyon. Yes, there are trees in the canyon, and yes, there will be steelhead, but that doesn’t mean we’ll catch one. Spikes? Like who? No, they won’t have spikes like Ty Cobb. No, not even the bucks. No, no antlers either. Yes, it’ll be great, he says. QUIET! he says. He says he’ll only answer baseball questions from now till the game is over.
The score has gone:
NEW YORK: 001 000 00 …
CLEVELAND: 100 010 10 …
Roger Maris takes a ball, then a strike. His hair’s so short the sides of his head look like wads of
The mailman is feeding a row of boxes two blocks down the street, up to his hood now in another fake lake. Even the shade is hot and bright: I think the sunlight must be bashing the top side of everything so hard that some dark-colored version of light is starting to leak clear through. It would scare me to hook a steelhead. I’ve never caught a fish, except minnows by hand, so I hope I just catch a trout. Everett caught a steelhead once and wasn’t a bit scared, but he’s not scared of anything except Grandawma’s dead family, and maybe Mama’s dead dad. I might not be scared either, except last summer Irwin brought a catfish home from the Columbia for a pet, and the first time I tried to pick it up it spiked me so bad my hand got infected and hurt for three weeks. I was glad when the chlorine in our water finally killed it, though it made me sort of wonder why it doesn’t kill us. We buried the catfish by the trash burner, and Irwin made a wood cross for it, and a sign that said: HERE LIES TYRUSCOBB JUNIOR. That’s what Everett said to name it, since Tyrus Cobb Senior liked to spike people too.
I open the mailbox. A letter from Everett, addressed to me! Postcards from Irwin and Pete! The commercial! It must be over!
Run!
T he screen door slams behind me. I try to dial a wider opening into my eyes, but the TV’s so dim compared to outside that the ballplayers look like ghosts. I tell Papa we got mail from the Three Stooges. He says, “Great!” but just goes on watching the game. When my eyes finally adjust, though, I see why:
Roger Maris is up, no outs, top of the ninth. Maris homered in the third with nobody aboard. That’s the only mistake Mudcat Grant has made all day, Papa says. And even Maris’s homer was just a routine fly, he says, except for a hard wind gusting into right. I can’t wait to see the other Wind, I tell him. The river, I mean. No, it won’t be too windy there, he says when I ask him, it’s just called that. Yes, it’s sheltered, he says, it’s in a deep canyon. Yes, there are trees in the canyon, and yes, there will be steelhead, but that doesn’t mean we’ll catch one. Spikes? Like who? No, they won’t have spikes like Ty Cobb. No, not even the bucks. No, no antlers either. Yes, it’ll be great, he says. QUIET! he says. He says he’ll only answer baseball questions from now till the game is over.
The score has gone:
NEW YORK: 001 000 00 …
CLEVELAND: 100 010 10 …
Roger Maris takes a ball, then a strike. His hair’s so short the sides of his head look like wads of
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