Ray hummed. “You ain’t embarrassin’ nobody. You human, son.”
“It don’t feel like it,” Zaire said, his eyes going low.
Ray nudged another ball toward him. “Swing again.”
Zaire squared up, swung, and sent it flying.
“See that?” Ray asked. “That’s you! Not them cameras…not them critics…not them jealous ass White boys. That’s allyou.”
Zaire didn’t respond. He just watched the ball disappear into the distance.
Ray took a deep breath and scanned the land around them. “This place saved a lotta people. Saved me…saved Meadow…saved my wife, long before you ever knew your name.”
Zaire swallowed. “She…” He hadn’t been introduced to the lady of the land and didn’t want to overstep or come off as too nosey.
Ray continued “…had a quiet morning.”
Ray nodded, eyes sad. “We deal with it one day at a time. Magnolia ain’t gone, she’s just…somewhere else inside her head. Meadow holdin’ her down and I’m holdin’ them both down. But Meadow?” Ray chuckled softly, “that girl carry the sun on her back like it don’t burn.”
Zaire looked toward the house. “She got a lot on her shoulders.”
“She do,” Ray said. “And she ain’t gon’ tell you she tired. Meadow don’t break in front uh nobody. She break in private then comes out like she ain’t been cryin’. But I know…I always know.”
Zaire rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah…I can see that. It reminds me of my Mama.”
“How so?”
“Hard to explain but when I’m ready to sit down and build a family, I know it gotta be with a woman that’s like my Mama…like Meadow.” Zaire looked away. “Hypothetically,” he added.
Ray turned to him with a serious expression. “So if you gon’ be around… Don’t just flirt with her…don’t just take her to the city. You lift some of that weight…you steady her…you make life easier, not harder…that’s for any Black woman. They deserve to just be big ol’ soft barrels of cotton.”
Zaire’s throat tightened. “I hear you.”
Ray placed a ball down and handed Zaire the club again. “Good. Now hit it.”
Zaire swung harder this time. The ball exploded off the club, cleaner than anything he’d hit in weeks.
Ray smiled like he already knew the outcome. “There you go.”
Zaire inhaled, his shoulders releasing the tension he didn’t notice he’d been carrying.
Ray clapped him on the back. “You gon’ be alright, son. You sittin’ in the eye of the storm right now but storms pass, they always do.”
Zaire nodded quietly. “Appreciate you.”
Ray fixed his cap. “Now help me pick up these balls. You too young to be leavin’ me out here doin’ manual labor by myself.”
Zaire snickered and followed Ray farther down the green, the late morning sun warming his skin, the land finally feeling peaceful every time his feet pressed into it.
It grounded him in a way he didn’t expect, made everything in his chest unclench a little.
He wasn’t fixed, wasn’t healed…yet.
But walking the green with Ray, filling a bucket one ball at a time, he felt something settle inside him…something just enough to hold onto.
Zaire stretched out in the full-size bed in the guest house and stared at the ceiling until his eyes blurred.
The little spot Ray set him up in was nice enough - old but taken care of with clean sheets that smelled like detergent and something floral, a working TV he hadn’t cut on a dresser he hadn’t used, and a small bathroom where the hot water hit his back harder than most country club showers ever had.
