I spent every night at the softball field the summer I was thirteen. Around ten p.m., with the last game called, players and fans emptied the dirt paths, splintering bleachers, parking lots, and concession stands of the Ball Mountain Softball Park, found on the edge—if there is an edge—of Loyalty, Arkansas. My brother, his friends, and I trespassed on those deserted spaces in the back of a forest green 1963 Ford pick-up, gate down, cans of Milwaukee's Best swimming in an open cooler. A cocktail of stale beer, souring belches, and freshly cut grass smelled like home to me. Still does.
On one of those evenings, a crisp night with stars and no rain, I sat on the ground next to Hunter Vincent. Hunter was sixteen with blonde hair, broad shoulders, and a formidable nose. He smelled of sweat and grease and too much cologne. Earlier that summer, he'd learned to water ski. He could down a twelve pack in one night, and his front left tooth was chipped from stumbling off his roof. I of course thought he was cute.
While Hunter and I played a game of football using beer bottle caps and our fingers, Margie Taylor asked, "What's the one thing y'all want to do before you die?" With frizzy hair, fleshy stomach, and short legs, Margie had teeth the color of movie-theater popcorn butter.
"You know what you should try to do, Marge?" asked my half-brother Donnie, ten-years my senior, lounging in the back of his truck. That night he was alone, but most nights he brought young drunk girls who wanted to get into his pants. I was only thirteen, but even I knew when someone was trying to get into somebody else's pants. That past spring, in the bushes behind my mama's house, a boy tried to reach down my pants, but I wouldn't let him. I'd been counting the stars while he kissed me, so God'd have to find me another temptation.
