Morning practices were always hard to stomach. Somewhat slowly, I made my way up to the big field at Parson’s. The sun, weak and silver, seemed to have gotten stuck about a quarter of the way up the flypaper sky. I’d left my hat in Hutch’s dad’s Cherokee, so I borrowed a back-up from the bin—a big rubber tub Hollings set outside his office—a tub that, along with extra hats, held practice jerseys, belts, and even one or two pairs of socks for those of us that, as Hollings said, might forget our hands if they weren’t attached to our wrists.
I always remembered my hands, but I grabbed a back-up this or that from the bin more often than I cared to admit.
As I approached the diamond, I noticed Hollings was already there busily arranging tees against the fence that ran from the end of the first-base dugout to the right-field corner.…
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Every morning and evening, I trace the same path clockwise starting from the dogwood tree and ending at the chain link fence in the neighboring apartment’s shadow. The walk takes roughly ten minutes depending on the vagaries of Olivia’s bowels, which I confess to knowing better than the amount of my dwindling savings or the time since I last saw a friend or went out on a date.
I should mention Olivia is a brown and silver-haired pointer named after her striking olive-green eyes. Those are the first things that anyone notices about her, or me for that matter. We answered the ad for a quiet and respectful tenant, qualities I prized most in myself, and moved into the small one-bedroom the following week. Once the hour became late, I took a break from unpacking and grabbed Olivia’s leash.…
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The beachgoers in Lake Farley knew they’d do well to avoid Earline. By now she was a familiar, if unfortunate, staple of the town. Wild-eyed and manic, her prematurely graying hair flying frizzy around her gaunt face, she could be found each day prowling the sand with bloody ankles and a beat-up metal detector. They knew her at the pawn shop just as well. Every afternoon just before closing, she’d come on in and empty a raggedy old Crown Royal bag onto the glass display case with that day’s findings. Mostly that metal detector of hers picked up bottle caps, broken bits of old belt buckles, pull tabs from cans of pop, and other bits and bobs of uselessness. Earline would pitch every last one of them as priceless treasure.…
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Wendy and I had English together and I barely knew her when she told me she was going to the hospital after class to have her thyroid removed. Would I visit her?
At that time in the morning, between my second and third cups of french roast and after a brisk speed-walk across the quad, pink scarf wrapped tight over my neck, hospitals were the last thing on my mind, though I wouldn’t have minded an IV drip and medical-grade acetaminophen for my hangover. When she asked, I didn’t have an easy answer, so for a moment I sat silent and then I asked her if her parents lived nearby. Most of us were far from home, but I thought with it being surgery and serious one should have family on hand.…
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When I explained to my grandmother why I took the job, I told her it was because they offered to pay off my student loans, which was the truth. My housing and transportation were provided; I was given a separate stipend for necessities; health, dental, vision – all of it. The money I was making from the salary was pretty much all going into personal entertainment and accessories. With this job, I would have no bills, no debt, no uncertainty about future or quality of life.
Which definitely sounded too good to be true when it was originally offered. I’m not stupid; I assumed it was some kind of scam or sex trafficking thing. But when I was contacted, multiple times, by very public officials from Washington, I figured why not at least listen to the full offer.…
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He was always something of an odd man, Leonard was. Even as a child he was what folks would call different. It was said that after he came back from the war his oddness was more extreme, his behavior a little more unexplainable. Not that he was a bad man. People liked him; they just thought him a bit odd. When you looked at him, even before he spoke or moved, you saw a tall, gangly man with ears that stuck out from his head farther than it seemed possible, like Dumbo’s, but on a human face. When he talked, he leaned into you and completely violated your personal space, and if you backed away a bit his face with those big ears would follow you and stay just inches from you as he spoke.…
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It was said he was good to her, bought her the house of her dreams, taught her how to buy clothes from runway shows in the city, took her to restaurants where meal prices never appeared on her menu. He opened doors for her, stood when she approached or left the table, spoke politely and endearingly to her in public, spoke even more lovingly to her in private.
It was said she enjoyed his old-fashioned chivalry, soaked it up the way a poppy soaked up the sun, delighted in the one-of-a-kind jewelry he had made for her on special occasions and not so special occasions—like her 33rd and a half birthday, and the completion of her fourth week of tennis lessons, and because the fifth of the month happened to fall on a Wednesday, which happened to be the same day she was born.…
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