In the early rounds of junior tournaments, they send you far away from check-in. To asphalt courts that turn your shoe soles black. To cement courts dimpled with fool’s gold and trilobites. To courts with chain link nets and foxtail grass in the cracks and purple birdshit stains the rain hasn’t washed away.

You and Jesus sit at a picnic bench, waiting for your name to be called: Gunther? James?

A farmer drops a blue handkerchief over a sparrow pecking in the dirt. The farmer picks the bundle up. Throws it like a racquet to the ground. Splat.

Jesus, Jesus says.

“You like that PDP there?” the farmer asks you. You are a spoiled 12-year-old with a royal blood condition, and you'll be dead in 13 years of AIDS. You hand him one of your two new racquets made from spaceship.

Hog farmers hogging courts.

He unzips the white cover with the interconnected orange letters and hands it to you. He takes a beginner's lilting swings with the racquet. Forehand. Backhand wrong side out.

You'd beat him in two.

“God almighty but that’s light," he says to himself.

"Ain't it?" he says to you.

Bird Report

Malaiseville wind advisory today. Gusts up to 45+mph. Nothing but turkey vultures in the sky. They’re hanging in the air absentmindedly. They rise and drop against the current of the wind, calm as fish in a brook.