Chapter 11: Extra Innings

https://www.todayshomeowner.com/dealing-with-black-snakes-around-your-home-or-garden/

“Time-out,” calls Jo from the third base coach’s box while holding up her hands in the shape of a T. “That bag is on crooked.”

Toni steps out of the batter’s box as the home plate umpire trudges over to fix third base. He’s tired because it’s the bottom of the tenth inning of the state championship game and the score is still VCU 2, G-HC 2.

__________

“Today we run to the river, if you please,” announced Marie-Josee on the Saturday before the game.

“Quelle horreur” I exclaimed in my pigeon French.

“C’est un fait accompli,” she laughed, “our mileage is already registered for the world hunger walk.”

“I’ll never make it there and back again,” I complained.

“We only go there,” she concluded to my bewilderment, and go we went, jogging along the tracks and through Dogtown before hitting the rolling hills of the Virginia piedmont beneath a brilliant blue sky.

“My God!” I gasped pulling up beside a large strawberry patch. “How much farther?”

“We’re already halfway,” she laughed and took off down the blacktop, her straight black hair bouncing in a braid from the back of a baseball cap and calling me on.

After six more miles, we finally stumbled down a rocky bank in the yellow haze of a noonday sun.

“A snake!” I warned, steering her upstream from the coil of copper bands sunning on a flat rock at the edge of the clear-running stream.

Claty-claty-claty-claty-clat trailed off with a big-headed kingfisher as I plopped down into a little pool between boulders.

“Hé, it’s Jo!” MG exclaimed, peeking over a rock and spotting a couple sunning on a downstream boulder.

She started to wave but then ducked back, splashing down into the pool beside me.

“What’s up?” I asked, climbing up to take a look.

“We leave them their privacy,” she answered grabbing my arm to pull me back down, but I had already glimpsed Jo and Ronki doing a little more than sunning on that big boulder.

“To each her own,” I laughed sitting back down in the cool water. “Besides, it’s a sight for sore eyes and our ride in one swell foop.”

“We give them a show, no?” she asked with a mischievous glint in her cat eyes.

“Oui oui, mademoiselle” I agreed, following her up onto a flat rock and lying back onto its rough warmth.

She straddled my lap and pushed her hands down onto my chest, exaggerating a slow arch of her back and hips and letting out a loud moan.

“Here I go, from my body, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, help!” I gasped, mimicking the orgasmic ending of Space Monkey from the new Patty Smith album.

“Hey ya’ll,” called Jo, seeing through our ruse as Ronki shifted her clothing. “What’s up besides old Zo?”

“Just hitching a ride,” I shrugged, waving them over.

They hopped from rock to rock to join us on the upstream boulder.

“Can you see the stinger?” Jo asked, pointing down to the back of her knee. “A wasp must have got me.”

“No, just two little red lines with some blue veins above them,” I answered. “Nothing that a little cold water won’t help.”

She settled into the pool as Ronki joined us on the rock.

“Where does this fantastic Little River go to?” asked MG while splashing her feet downstream.

“It flows out of the Blue Ridge and meets the North and South Anna to form the Pamunkey, the major tributary of the York River down in the Tidewater” I recalled from a topographical map on the Biology classroom wall.

As I was preaching, a dark-skinned boy with a cane fishing pole skirted past on the bank trying to ignore us.

“What county you reckon this is?” Jo shouted after him.

“Louisa,” he called back and was gone.

“Mammaw always said we Collinses come across the mountains from Monkey Creek away down in Weezy,” Jo declared, marveling that she had arrived accidentally where her Melungeon family had originated.

__________

“Yikes!” screams the umpire, leaping back as a sleek black snake shoots out from under the bag and undulates toward the bleachers brought in to Dusk Field for the state finals.

With two swift leaps, Jo steps on it, breaking the snake in half. The tail flops a few times and settles down but the head keeps slithering away, heading under the stands as people scurry away. Jo picks up the tail with both hands and carries it across the street, gently placing it behind a big oak tree.

“This fellow’s head will search out his tail,” she announces, marching back onto the field as the fans settle back into the stands.

Then she strides down the third base line to Toni in the batter’s box.

“Just tap it to third,” she whispers to Toni. “Ronki will do the rest.”

“Play ball!” yells the umpire.

Toni digs her cleats into the dirt in the batter’s box with the score tied and one out in the bottom of the tenth inning as the tall VCU relief pitcher toes the rubber.

“You reckon there’s more?” Jo whispers to the third basewoman, who glances down to the base and shifts a couple of steps away from the bag.

Ronki leans off first base ready to run. The Rams pitcher rears back and propels herself toward the plate. Ronki takes off just as the ball leaves her fingertips. She’s halfway to second as Toni stabs at the ball and hits a chopper to third. Ronki’s rounding second as the third basewoman bobbles the ball before launching a hard to first.

“Out at first” calls the umpire as Ronki rounds third base.

She’s three steps past the bag and sees the first basewoman carrying the ball back to the pitcher as the catcher walks out to the mound.

“Go, go, go!” hisses Jo as Ronki takes off for the plate.

“Home!” shouts the VCU coach leaping up from the bench.

The catcher scrambles back and straddles the plate. The throw hits her glove as Ronki streaks down the line. The catcher’s tag sweeps down and hits Ronki’s thigh, but her front foot is already on the plate.

“Safe!” calls the home plate umpire, throwing out his arms to signal the winning run.

The Gibby-Hank women swarm Ronki as the VCU players just stand there and watch.

“We’re all for one,” Jo chants.

“We’re all for one,” the Yellow Jackets reply.

“We’re one for all” Jo continues.

“We’re one for all” join in the Rams in deference to little Gibby-Hank pulling of an upset championship win in their first year of intercollegiate softball.

“Together we stand,

together we stand,

together we fall,

together we fall,

but in the end,

but in the end,

we win them all,

we win them all.”

“Brave call, Coach Collins,” exclaims the VCU coach walking over with open arms. “What are you doing next year? I need an assistant.”

“I swear,” Jo laughs, accepting the hug. “It appears the Collinses are finally coming back to the Commonwealth.”




Box Score:

Chapter 10: Check Swing

https://theperrynews.com/pry-soft-emma-check-swing/

“G-double-O-D-E-Y-E, good eye, good eye,” we cheer from the bench as Cat Kent watches another high pitch sail past.

The home plate umpire raises a fist to signify a full count with three balls and two strikes. The bases are loaded and we’re down one run in the bottom of the seventh inning against Virginia Commonwealth University for the state championship.

__________

After our playoff win at Mary Baldwin College I had hopped into Quinn’s old car for the ride back to Magnolia. The navy blue Bentley’s front end was painted with sharp teeth, forked tongue, and a fiery plume.

“Nice wheels, bro,” I laughed as he passed me an obligatory Rolling Rock, “but I’ll pass on the grenade this time.”

“To each his own,” he responded, taking back the bottle as we wound out of the verdant Shenandoah Valley heading east on I-64. “My grandfather was fond of import cars, God rest his soul.”

“Expensive taste for a farmer,” I noted.

“It wasn’t tobacco they grew before the war of northern aggression,” he confided, slipping into a southern drawl while talking about his family. “Major Seth Mason was the largest slave trader in the Valley of Virginia.”

“Didn’t they lose all that with the fall of the south?”

“Chattel and land, yes, but his granddaughter married a teacher from up north. They took the family wealth up to Jersey with the fall of western Virginia.”

“Perchance, was he George LaMonte and their Virginia estate Wheatland?”

“Januzzi, you are a walking encyclopedia.”

“Not really, I just grew up in Bound Brook, where the LaMontes were the primary benefactors for public land and community services.”

“Well then, we’re practically related,” he laughed, holding the steering wheel with a knee while popping open another little green bottle.

“My turn to drive the blue dragon,” I asserted, pointing to a scenic pullout at the crest of the Blue Ridge.

Kik-kik-kikkik-kik-kik rang out from a pileated woodpecker at the top of a white pine and was followed by a thunderous pecking as we hopped out to take a leak over the rim and then switched drivers.

     “Quinn, what’s up with the Belle’s Ball?” I asked as the diesel engine chugged to a start.

“President Caine was going to shut it down,” he replied, “but he likes the idea of an antebellum costume ball. He even offered to sponsor if we change the name and open it up to the whole campus.”

The team bus chugged by as I pulled onto the interstate, so I shifted into overdrive and caught up as we came down off the Blue Ridge. Toni and Cat waved from the back window as I drafted behind them through the rolling hills of the piedmont.

“It’s a double moon over old Virginia!” I laughed as our leftfielder and catcher bared their bottoms against the glass.

“That’s it, Zo,” Quinn exclaimed, “we’ll call it Old Virginia!"

For the rest of the drive back to Gibby-Hank we sang along to the Queen song:

     “Ooh, we gonna let it all hang out,

      fat bottomed girls

     they make the rocking world go around.”

__________

The count is three balls and two strikes with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning.

“Make it be your pitch!” calls Jo, flashing signals while standing on first base.

“Yes sir, Coach Collins,” Cat jests before stepping back into the batter’s box.

The pitch is right down the middle of the plate but beneath her knees, Cat’s secret sweet spot. She steps into it as her arms slant down into a golf swing. Just before her wrists pass the middle of the body, she pulls up, whipping the bat back.

“Ball four!” yells the home plate umpire.

“She broke her wrists,” shouts the VCU catcher pointing down to first base to appeal the call.

The first base umpire throws her arms out into the safe signal as Ronki steps on home plate to tie the game.




Box Score: