Chapter 1: Mah Number

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“But mah Pop, he’us twenty-two when he played hyer,” argues Jo, reverting to her home dialect.(1)

“The best player always gets the Mick’s lucky number seven” counters Coach Jim Quintana, reaching over to pat her on the bottom.

 __________

We were passing out uniforms after the first practice on the newly cut grass of March below the Mason Dixon Line. The women had been frisky as they hit the lime green expanse and tart smell of spring on Dusk Field.

“If wood’s good enough for the bigs, it’s good enough for girls,” Coach Q had announced when Catherine Kent arrived with one of the new aluminum bats.

These were the first words of wisdom of the new Gibson-Henry College  coach to his softball team.

The previous season they had been a club team organized by juniors Veronica Leskuski and Josepha Collins. After winning the all-Richmond tournament, Ronki and Jo had lobbied the Dean for school backing. He had stalled by pointing out all the permissions and costs, only assenting to bring it to the Board of Governors when the new school President arrived with two teen-aged softball playing daughters.

Coach Q had let me pick the numbers for the rest of the players, saving seven for Jo and seventy-seven for himself. I mostly deferred to the strong-willed women, serving only thirteen to MG since she didn’t know what to pick as an exchange student new to softball. She had played boules in southern France and that bocce-like game using metal balls didn’t have uniforms, much less unlucky numbers.

Being a student-trainer for a college women’s team had certain advantages and disadvantages for a, shall we say, “big” guy. The players ignored him in the equipment room of the Old Gym, a stately brick building built in 1887. They also forgot that guy on Saturday nights in the not-so-stately motel dorms and fraternity houses that made up the Gibby-Hank social scene of the late 1970s.

 __________

“Hey coach, how about a hit of that chaw?” asks Jo, stalling for time and dodging his pat with her dark curls bouncing.

“We don’t want any hair on that pretty little chest, now do we?” he laughs, running long fingers through a thin black comb-over.

“Not iffin I git mah number,” she bargains, eyebrows raised and chestnut eyes flashing as she leans on the door frame.

“Does it have to be one or the other?” he grins, stepping behind his desk and spitting into an extra large McDonald’s cup.

Jo storms out of the office stripping off the new white Izod Lacoste polo with number seven on the back and heading for the exit in her sports bra.

“Wait, try this on for size,” I call, tossing her the only remaining jersey.

“We’re meetin in mah room after larnin so fetch a poke a that tobacco,” she smiles, pulling on number seventy-seven as she bumps open the door.

The soft “who coo, who, coo, who” of a mourning dove floats in on the orange of a piedmont sunset, briefly illuminating Jo’s ruddy skin before the oak door slams shut.





1. Unusual terms, phrases, and phonetical spellings used for the character Josepha Collins are derived from a glossary of terminology in North From the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio by John S. Kessler and Donald B. Ball (Mercer University Press, 2001).