“The Ball”
Thirteen and white in a world where everyone else is
also white, a world that longer exists: Cherokee County, Georgia in the
1980’s. In 1987, south Cherokee County
was still largely an undeveloped second-growth forest. Due to the poor soil, farming or ranching
never really took hold in the area, save in the river bottoms, and after they
dammed the Etowah to make Lake Allatoona (pron. Al-toona locally), almost all
of that good land was underwater. It was
an odd place in that there were trees galore, everywhere, but not many animals,
as they had been hunted out sixty years before when people were truly hungry
during the Great Depression.
So, we find our hero playing with his friends one
day at the Army Corps of Engineers’ Galt’s Ferry Day Use area at the end of
Rocky Lane just down the street from his home.
Recently and innocently, by accident, he had become a true sexual being, and he began to study women like he had few other
things ever. The shape and curve and
voice and personality and eyes and hair and basically anything feminine within
the realm of reproductive age became the texts he long to read. He was no voyeur though, and he was too
sheepish to actually talk to women, still full of the romantic ideas he found
in the novels and comics he read about how a man should woo a woman. But, Cherokee County at that time was not a European battlefield, a desert isle, or a colony town full of intrigue. It was a boring white-bread backwater, though within 20 years, the whole place would change, better in some ways, but no longer an innocent place with a Sheriff with "" marks around his name and a "Don't spit in the fountain" sign in front of the county courthouse.
The Day Use area had a large beach, a man-made
one. Its sand had been trucked in in
1985 from some remote shore, and an artificial sandy beach had emerged where
before there had only been rusty red Georgia clay littered with veins of webby white
quartz. In 1986, the Army Corps had
developed the area more by installing a modern triple boat ramp, building a
jetty that extended out a good 40 yards into the channel of the lake (they
would thereafter heap spent Christmas trees along the edges in an effort to
create an environment for minnows, which would make the area a good fishing
ground; it didn’t work. Lake Allatoona
was called “The Dead Sea” in the 1980’s because of the lousy fishing), building
two picnic pavilions, a bathroom facility, a few RV pads, and about 15 picnic
sites with BBQ pits. It was a solid
piece of work, and the kids were in love with riding their bikes around the
smooth concrete sidewalks that ran beneath the pine trees. At that time, the side roads in the Galt’s
Ferry area were still all gravel. There
was no mail service. There was no cable
tv. It was the sticks, and it was
absolutely fabulous.
So, this day, probably July, maybe late June, our
hero, in swimming trunks, cheap flip-flops and nothing else, has spent the
entire morning at play. His skin has
taken on the natural tan of the young that existed before parents knew what SPF
meant, with blond highlights coming out in his curly hair. He lives outside all day and is in good shape
and can run and play all day, despite his unmistakable pudginess. Having grown up around the water, he can swim
fairly well, though not very quickly. He
would think nothing of swimming from one shore to the other in the area of the
lake where he lived (he could not have swum the channel up by the Dam—too far).
So, their games took them to the large parking lot
behind the beach area. Between the
parking lot and the beach were some pine trees with picnic tables for
shade. They sat down, and that’s when he
saw her, a woman, a mother of three small kids—cute kids. She was in her late 20’s/early 30’s, and he
knew that he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He wasn’t leering, but he knew that she was lovely, and he enjoyed
watching her playing with a bouncy ball with her toddlers. She would pick it up, bounce it toward one of
them, they’d run and grab it and bring it back to her with looks of pure joy on
their faces. It made him smile. And, every now and then, he would study the
frame of her body in the pink one-piece swimsuit, quickly looking away if he
felt her gaze even remotely close to fixing on him, feeling guilty about it,
but not guilty enough to stop for a while.
This lasted about 15 minutes, and then it
happened. He had stood up and started to
walk down the beach toward some new adventure, when he heard the children start
to cry. An errant throw, and the ball had
bounced out of reach out onto the water, and since she was by herself, she
couldn’t go get it. He told his friends,
“yall, I’ll be back” and he ran out into the water after the ball. Only, there was a breeze, and his approach
made ripples that carried the ball farther away. It got to where he had to swim, and as much
as he tried, he couldn’t close the distance between himself and the ball. But, he didn’t give up. He knew that she had seen him go after it,
and she was yelling to him, “It’s alright, don’t worry about it,” but he wanted
to impress this woman because she was beautiful and lovely and that’s what his
body and brain were telling him to do.
It was a mix of chivalry, lust, and charity for the little
children. He remembered their joy while
playing with the ball, and in his heart, he hated (and still does) when a child
is sad over having lost something. So,
he swam on and on. He also wanted to
impress her, to feel a woman, some woman, any woman, besides his mom and
grandmas, looking at him with tender eyes.
Now, the ball was headed for land, across the cove
from the beach, so he knew that he’d get it eventually. He kept swimming. And swimming.
And swimming. And swimming. He’d swum a good 400 yards when the ball came
to rest on the opposite shore, in the back of Caleb Dupree’s house. He was about 50 yards away when his heart
filled with rage, for he couldn’t believe what he saw: that little shit Michael
was riding his bike down to the ball, stealing his thunder, robbing him of
glory. He yelled, “Wait, that’s mine,”
but Michael just smiled and turned around and rode off. He eventually pulled himself up out of the
water, catching his breath, and stayed there long enough to see Michael give
the ball back to her. She thanked him,
patting him on the head, and then turned and waved to him. He waved back, walked back on the road to his
bike, and then went home and cried. Even
now, all these years later, unlike other days—great days even, the memories of
that afternoon may never leave him.
...
Copyright 2013