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
Naked Metamorphosis — All the world’s a stage… and Franz Kafka wants to direct. An absurdist’s version of Hamlet complete with heretofore unexplored heights of depravity, cockroach transformation, Shakespearean bawdiness, and split infinitives!
