Member-only story
FICTION
A Baseball Catcher’s Stance
I had made it a habit to bask in the precarious world of the metaphysical. Yet practicality nailed me bare bones to the earth where I remained an ordinary man.
One fierce critic of my passionate preachings about the world’s imperfections was a burly blonde man I called Friend. His mighty fists and Irish zest could flat-out clobber my dreams and desires.
On a miserable day of work last summer, as I twisted and pulled a large mesh pool cover to its backside, he approached me from behind in police-like fashion. “Hey, what r ya doin’, ya meat stick?” His breath puttered down on my neck like a faulty steam radiator valve.
“Nuthin’, just trying to get this thing — One second,” I said. The smell of grass and mulch and vinyl petered out the faster I breathed through my nose.
Ric knew how to make money. He could drink a Budweiser, fertilize a lawn, build a deck, make a woman feel inferior, and perfect the vernacular of crab fishermen. But not much else.
Certainly, he didn’t know his friend’s true capabilities; he ignored the mysteries of human potential. What I had was arrogance — no, confidence — about imagined possibilities and intellectual pursuits that were in my hot zone. This of what I knew could not be denied.
