Jeremy sat on his bed and watched the sunlight move across his room. He’d been sitting on the same spot where his granddaddy had put him since after breakfast.
You’d better not move an inch, the old man had warned.
And Jeremy hadn’t, not until there was a ping, ping, ping of gravel against the window pane.
The boy jumped up and ran to window, shoving it open and hanging his head outside.
Just below, Will stood, tossing a ball in the air.
You gotta game going? Jeremy asked.
Yep. You gonna play?
Sure am. Jeremy turned, grabbed his cap and mitt. He scrambled out the open window space.
You ain’t gonna ask?
Nah, Jeremy said, with one glance back at the house.
He gonna beat you again.
Probably, Jeremy replied. His legs carried the memory of his granddaddy’s leather belt from days before. It had been swift and sharp against his thighs.
How many times I got to tell you not to be playing with those colored boys? his granddaddy had demanded.
It don’t matter, Jeremy assured his best friend and coach. Just don’t be ’specting me to slide into any bases.
Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz is a fiction writer and poet. Her chapbook “Mother Love” was published by Unlikely 2.0 and is available for download at http://www.unlikelystories.org/mintz0607.shtml.
This story was sponsored by
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13 Responses to “GAME ON • by Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz”
Comments
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November 14th, 2009 at 2:21 am
This story reminds me of my childhood, and growing up in South Carolina.
November 14th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Not bad. An interesting premise, and nicely written.
But I have to complain about one thing … the lack of quotation marks on the dialog. It’s pretty obvious that this was a conscious decision on the author’s part, but why? I’ve seen this done before, and I think it just makes the story harder to read. If you’re going to violate the normal rules of grammar, there should be some obvious benefit from it, and I don’t think there was, here.
November 14th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Short and sweet. I have no idea why, but the second line irritated me just a tad. “sitting on the same spot” I myself would’ve used “sitting IN the same spot.” Silly, I know. Sorry.
Story was cute.
November 14th, 2009 at 7:01 am
This was okay, though, I’ll second Jim (#2’s) comments about the quotation marks. I’ve seen the same “style” and am sure it is all the rage in some circles, but it’s distracting when you’re not accustom to it. Also thought Will as his “best friend and coach” was overmuch. From the setting and the dialog, I pictured two boys of roughly the same age playing ball, but you toss in the coach thing and suddenly I’m not quite sure of the ages.
–John
November 14th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Sharp and sad, but true to some people’s experince and very well written.
November 14th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Margie… I grew up in SC, too.
Nothing of this reminds me of that.
I didn’t have a problem with the missing quotes. I had a problem with the missing story. You had to depend on the dialog to drive the story and it struck me more like conversation.
November 14th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Mickey,
I was born in 1955; And growing up, in order to play with my ‘black’ friends, it had to be on the sly. . .much like the boy in this story.
It’s nice to meet someone from my neck of the woods.
November 14th, 2009 at 9:26 am
This is nice, but . . . what turns a vignette into a story is an inflection point – a moment, thought or decision in which something has changed. We don’t have that here. For all we know, Jeremy had always intended responding to Will’s summons. No decision, no inflection point; no dramatic tension. No story.
November 14th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Born in ‘54 in Conway. We weren’t allowed to play with the black kids. I still remember those “Colored Only” signs. I’m glad we are, for the most part, past all that. You knew big changes were in the wind when that big Confederate flag came down from Maurice’s Piggy park.
If the motivation of the story was to get us thinking and talking about bigotry and how children handle it, then job well done!
November 15th, 2009 at 12:06 am
Bob said it best. No hits, no runs, no errors, no story.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:22 am
I enjoyed this one. No, there isn’t a lot of story, but the character is well-delineated. The situation is strongly visual, and all together well done.
November 16th, 2009 at 9:12 am
I love the way the dialog told this story. Very inventive; I didn’t miss the quotation marks at all. An excellent vignette of one day in one child’s life.
November 16th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I liked the writing and the form, although no quotes did get messy there for a moment when swoitching between internal perspective and then two different speaking voices. But okay.
Unfortunatly I also agree that theres a lack of ‘middle’ or ‘flashpoint’ or one of the much better terms people have already said.