Quote of the Day:
“We talked into the night. The kind of talk that seemed important until you discover girls.” –the writer, Stand By Me
The two boys laid flat on the roof and stared up at the endless black sky. They had climbed up here not to stare at the sky, nor for any particular reason other than that it was here. One was a year older than the other, and a year taller. He wore an old Cincinnati Reds cap his brother had lost interest in several years back. The C was well and proudly battle-stained from the red dirt of every ball field within bike range. The smaller boy was chewing on a long strand of grass. It was a habit he’d picked up in anticipation of one day sticking in a dip, but he wasn’t mentally there yet. After all, it would probably be a sin, which wasn’t such a big deal in itself, but it might be a little more of a sin than he was comfortable about committing just yet. At once their eyes darted reflexively across the sky, though their heads scarcely twitched.
“Did you see that?” the older boy asked.
“Yep. That was a shooting star wasn’t it!”
“Sure looked like one to me. Did you make a wish?”
The scrawny one sat up and took the grass from his teeth, not even trying to hide his excitement. “Hell yeah, same one you did, probably.”
“Well tell me what I wished then.”
“You crazy? It won’t come true if I do.”
The big kid couldn’t argue with that logic so he let it go without debate for a change. “Good point. It’s all just superstition anyway.”
“Can’t hurt though.”
They were quiet again for a while. The little southpaw kept searching the sky for another meteor while his wizened old pal sat up and looked down at the pitcher’s mound in front of them. The season would start soon and he would dominate. He had to dominate. But there wouldn’t be any state championships at the end of the season. They’d never even made it out of District.
“I sure would like to get my name on one of those boards down there.” The big kid rolled his eyes and his optimistic friend who couldn’t see them and didn’t turn to look in the first place felt the look burn into his head and laughed. The five boards hanging on the press box façade beneath them bore the names in scripted red, white and blue of the gallant few who’d come before and who brought home state titles for not only Gibson Field but for the whole town.
“Come on, we better climb down before we get caught. Did you find anything?”
Lefty always had better eyes for picking out lost golf balls in the ditch, or finding rusty pocketknives in the weeds, or spying stranded foul balls atop the press box that could only be retrieved in the dead of night. He grinned ear to ear. “Got two, pearly white!”
“Give me one.”
“Screw you too. Finder’s keepers.”
No arguing with that logic either, so the bigger kid dug his toe into the chain link fence and headed back down to Earth.
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This is the first part of a story I’m working on. Hope you like it. I’d let you see the rest but I haven’t settled on the rest yet. But the story is/will be drawn from conversations I recall from ages 10-12 or so, plus some stuff I made up. And if I can ever get the 15 stories I’ve got outlined finished and refined I’m going to put it in some sort of binding and call it my book. Then maybe I can get on with my life.
Oh, ps, I haven’t named this yet. That name at the top sucks, but it is the best I can do for now.
Travellinbaen 