“Well, no, and I started with baseballs. My dad had pitched in high school and he and I used to play together. For hours,” I said. “I loved it.” I had really gotten into sports, but the best thing was getting to spend so much time together.
We spent a good amount of time in the park today, too, because Lyra got into it. She pushed out her lower lip and focused just like she did when she wrote one of her stories or read something exciting. After a while, I put my hat on her head to shade her face, and we also worked on fielding. Silas had sat under the tree, and he’d picked up her book but he didn’t seem to be reading it. I saw him napping for a while, since he was tired as usual. His work hours were awful and he was able to conk out in the blink of an eye.
But he must have roused at one point. “It’s getting close to dinner time,” he called, and I looked over in surprise.
“It is?” Lyra and I both asked, and I smiled at her.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “We should go back and start cooking.” We gathered up her sports equipment and I thought about collecting all of mine when I visited my parents. That weekend was approaching soon.
“Do you have to go to work tonight?” she asked her brother, and he said that he did.
“Sorry,” he told her. “What if we play again tomorrow? There’s a twenty percent chance of rain, but only in the morning.”
We all thought that sounded promising. “I’ll carry that,” Lyra said, and she reached for the bat. She took a few practice swings and I told her they looked good.
“I bet there are teams around here that she could join,” I said, as she ran ahead down the block. It was nice to see her being active. I was glad that she liked to read and do her writing so much, but a kid needed to be outside, too.
“I should look into it.”
“Or I could, since I was so into softball,” I suggested. “I might catch some red flags.”
“Red flags about a team for seven-year-olds?” He snorted. “Yeah, sure.”
“There are coaches who are red flags, parents who…who’s that kid?”
A boy had come out of the house catty corner to ours, where Mrs. Alford lived. “That’s her grandson, Boris,” Silas said. “He and Ly always fight.” The kid looked to be slightly older than her, maybe eight or nine. I heard him say something, but I could onlycatch the sound and not actual words. She stopped dead and answered, then he pointed and said something else.
She yelled back at him, and those words I heard clearly: “No, shut up! Fuck you!”
“Oh, no!” I took off running but Silas was faster, and it was a good thing. He grabbed the bat as she was still in her backswing and the kid ran to Mrs. Alford’s porch, hollering at the top of his voice that Lyra was trying to kill him.
“You’re fine,” Silas yelled back, but this situation was not fine. His sister struggled to get away from him, probably so that she could try to attack that boy again. I rushed to unlock our front door, and the moment Lyra was inside, she ran up the stairs. I heard her bedroom door slam.
“Jesus Christ on a cracker,” he sighed. “We were having such a good day.”
“She tried to hit the other child with a bat!” I gasped. “She could have killed him.”
“That’s a little dramatic.”
“No, it’s not. It was really dangerous!” I said. I couldn’t sign her up for a team if there was a possibility that she would get mad and try to hit another girl. “Silas, that was shocking. You don’t think so?”
He hesitated. “I got into a lot worse fights when I was a kid,” he told me.
I shook my head back at him. “You’re excusing—"
“Silas?”
We had been too loud to hear Lyra coming back downstairs. “Yeah, what’s up, Ly?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and her face crumpled. “I’m sorry I did that.”
“Come here,” he told her, and when she ran to him, he picked her up. “What did he say to you?”
I heard her mumble something against her brother’s neck, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“You know that’s not true. You know that’s wrong, because I love you,” he said back. “I love you so much. Your mom and dad do, too, but they’re not smart about how they act. They’re not smart about how they show it.”
She said something else and I also heard her sniffle.
