Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (14 page)

What the hell?

A wave of cold washed over Sol. He had to steady himself on the dresser. What was happening to him? “That’s it,” he muttered aloud. “No more absinthe.” He slid open the dresser drawer. His paws were still shaking.

He lifted out a pair of jeans and stopped in the middle of pulling them up his left leg. Wait, what had his mother said? Baseball clothes? He groaned. At least that might take his mind off the dream. He threw the jeans back, pulled on his baseball uniform pants, and then decided he had to try to call Meg.

The phone rang and rang, and her voicemail picked up. He started to say something about his dream and then stopped. Better to tell her in person. And he still didn’t know how to tell her about the ribbon. He stared again at his dirty clothes pile as he pulled on a t-shirt and ran outside.

Behind their house, the yard sloped gently down, away from the house toward the wooden gate that separated their yard from the back alley they used to pull into their garage. His father had a bat in one paw and had set two baseballs down on the barbecue grill while he took some practice swings. “Morning. How about some grounders? Thought we could walk down to the park.”

Fielding ground balls was not what Sol really needed to work on; he needed to be out there with the team. But it was about all he could practice with only his father. “Sure,” he said. He picked up the baseballs and followed his father down the alley to the park.

“How’s that report coming?” his father asked, unexpectedly.

“Oh, pretty good.” Sol scratched behind his ear, until the itch reminded him of Niki’s scarred ears. He dropped his paw quickly. “Meg’s an artist, you know, so she’s into all that stuff. I’m helping write it.”

“Not taking too much of your time, is it?”

“No, sir.” He slipped through the fence surrounding the park, behind his father’s bushy grey tail. “I told her I have baseball practice.”

“Good.” His father hefted the bat. “It’s important to stay competitive in school, too, you know,” he added, as though just realizing it.

They found a nice open spot among the trees. Sol trotted a baseball diamond’s length away from his father and got down in his stance. He kept flicking his ears, feeling phantom scarring from his dream.

His father tapped the first ball short; Sol had to run forward to pick it up. “Guess I need a little practice, too,” his father said. “It’s been a while since we did this.”

Sol grinned, walking back to his spot. The next ball came all the way to him. He fielded it and threw it back to his father’s bare paws.

“Make that rock second base,” his father said after a few more. “I’ll hit you some double-play balls.”

It was funny, but running to tag the bag and then throwing back to his father felt good. His father dropped the bat and stood like a first baseman, one leg back, arms outstretched, and when Sol’s throws smacked into his paws, Sol felt a flush of pride.

At the end of an hour of this, his father’s tail was wagging, and Sol felt almost good enough to wag his. They gathered up the bat and balls and walked back to the park gate. As they stepped through it, his father said, “Something wrong with your ears?”

Sol jerked in surprise, banging his arm on the iron post. His ears flattened, their scarred sides—no, they were fine, they were whole. “Wh-what?”

“You kept flicking them. Just wondering. Do they itch? Your mom has a cream for that.”

“N-no.” Sol swallowed, forcing his ears upright. He heard the words in his mind and then coming out of his mouth before he could stop them. “I had a dream.” He rubbed his arm, caught in a half-second of incredulous belief that his father would understand, would ask him about the dream.

His father laughed. “You dreamed your ears itched. Go ask your mom, she’ll give you that cream.”

Sol trudged behind as they walked up the alley. At their yard, his father stopped in surprise. “Come on, pick up your feet!” he said, and when Sol finally reached the gate, his father slapped him on the back.

At least there was no discussion when Sol took four slices of toast, grits and eggs, and no sausage in the breakfast his mother had set out. He listened to his father talk to his mother about how well he’d done that morning, eating even after he felt full so he wouldn’t be hungry at the barbecue.

The strategy worked at first. He got himself a plate of potato salad and tore off a piece of a bun so it looked like he’d already eaten a burger. Mr. Norston asked about his organic steaks, so Sol and his father said he’d had lunch at home rather than put everyone out. Sol kept rubbing the paw that had had the ribbon wrapped around it, which he didn’t notice until his mother asked him what was wrong with it, and then he yanked it back against his body so fast that he dropped his plate.

He cleaned it up and walked away from the food, out to where the younger cubs were tossing water balloons and Frisbees around. The younger wolf cubs grabbed Frisbees out of the air with their muzzles, which prompted yells from their mothers not to do that, that that was why God gave them paws, but the cubs just laughed and rubbed their muzzles and went on doing it anyway. Some of the adults and older cubs got into the game, and when Xavy Norston went out of his way to ask Sol to join, Sol figured he might as well.

He was pretty good at Frisbee and was enjoying himself, lobbing easy throws to the cubs and whipping it toward Xavy and others, so he didn’t notice what was going on out at the other side of the picnic until it was too late. “Hey!” one of the guys yelled, a short fox in a Peachtree Runners t-shirt. “Come on, let’s pick sides for softball!”

Softball? Sol flipped the Frisbee to a white wolf cub and ignored the call, hoping they would just let him play Frisbee. But Xavy was already loping off toward the field, and Sol’s father, a moment later, called out, “Sol! Come on and play!”

The white wolf cub had snatched the Frisbee out of the air with his teeth. He dropped it to his paw and threw it back to Sol. The black wolf caught it and hesitated for a moment, then tossed it to a lanky young fox cub. Sol held his paws up and turned his back deliberately so they wouldn’t throw it back to him.

“Hey, don’t put these two on the same team,” a paunchy grey fox said as Sol stopped next to Xavy. “Aren’t they both on the Richfield High team?”

“Xavy plays third,” Mr. Norston said. “Sol backs up second base.”

“Backing up?” The grey wolf standing beside Sol’s father clapped him on the shoulder. “Thought he was starting.”

Xavy looked away. Sol cringed from his father’s glare. “One of those ’yotes from the trailer park,” Sol’s father said finally. “Tough, scrappy…just temporary, though. Sol’s gonna be starting again in a couple weeks.”

“Coyote, huh?” The other wolf looked sympathetic, flicking black-tipped ears. “Glad my boy’s a football player.”

“Sol’s brother Natty plays football. He’s fighting for a starting spot his first year in college. They almost never let a freshman start.”

The words didn’t seem to register with the other wolf. “Y’know, once those trailer kids set their mind on somethin’…” He shook his head. “Don’t get between one of them and a steak, know what I’m sayin’?”

A couple of the other wolves laughed with him, though Sol noticed some wolves, foxes, and the wolverine couple shaking their heads or forcing smiles.

“Sol’s taking extra practice.” His father had that steely look in his eye that made Sol shut up when it was fixed on him.

The other wolf didn’t feel that effect. “Gotta get him working on those leadership skills. My boy’s defensive captain.” He gestured out to a bulky ten-year-old cub who was examining a softball bat. “Three tackles last week.”

Sol was spared from having to see any more of the argument. The fox in the Runners t-shirt put him and his father on one team, mercifully setting the wolf with the black-tipped ears on the other. Sol’s team went out into the field, where he paced excitedly, eager to be part of a team again.

The game went pretty well for a while. Sol hit the ball well, though he only got one hit, and he caught three balls that were hit to him (two on the ground, one in the air). He hadn’t done anything really extraordinary, though, and his attempts to bond with his teammates were met with “hey, get me another beer,” or tolerant smiles, and in one case, a tousling between his ears and the remark, “you remind me of my boy before he went off to college,” which became a story about how that fox was top of his class in his sophomore year. Perhaps Sol only imagined the sound of his father’s teeth gritted together.

In the late innings, Sol stood behind second base, actually feeling good, feeling like it was where he belonged. There were two runners on, and his team was up by a run. He was scratching his paw again, the echo of black velvet, when the batter swung, the thud of the softball hit the air, and it came hurtling across the ground at Sol. He reached down for it—

—and just before it reached him, it hit a stone, or a tuft of grass, and spun to one side. It hit the back of his paw, and rolled along the grass to his right.

Sol cursed under his breath and dove after it. His fingers closed around it and he threw automatically around to his left, toward first base.

“Home! Home!” the short fox was yelling from the pitcher’s mound, and the first baseman, too late to get the batter, threw the ball over the catcher’s head and into one of the picnic tables. Potato salad exploded around it as cubs shrieked and scattered.

The batter ran past Sol and stopped at second. “Just one base?” she asked, paws on her knees and panting.

“Yeah.” The short fox stood with paws on hips as the other baserunner trotted home. One of the cubs, covered in potato salad and laughing, ran the ball back to him. Sol and Sol’s father, and the fox, were the only ones not laughing now. Even the first baseman, a raccoon, was laughing at his own mishap.

Sol knew his father wasn’t laughing without having to turn around to look. And when they went to the bench at the end of the inning, his father hurried up behind him to mutter, “You had no chance at first. You had to throw home.”

“I know.” Sol’s ears were already down, his tail curled around his leg. He didn’t look at his father, just at his feet, one stepping in front of the other.

“Everyone gets a bad hop sometimes,” the short fox said, coming up beside Sol.

“Not usually in softball,” Sol’s father said.

“Give the cub a break.” The fox patted Sol on the shoulder. “Baseball’s a faster game. Hard to adjust to the slower ball here. And it’s not a perfect field. Did you see Johnson boot that grounder earlier?”

“Hey, it took a bad hop.” A wolverine who must have been Johnson pricked up his ears.

The fox snorted. “Your sales proposal to CureLite took a bad hop. That was just poor fielding.”

He shouldered his bat and took some practice swings while he and the wolverine commiserated over this unfortunate proposal. Sol’s father stayed silent for a moment, then joined in the conversation.

Sol stayed hunched over on the bench, panting, his stomach twisting up. He kept seeing himself miss the ball, throw to the wrong base, a film loop playing over and over in his head that he couldn’t change no matter how many times he watched it. He was due to bat fourth, and he hated himself for hoping that none of the batters ahead of him would get on base, that he wouldn’t have to come to bat.

But the short fox got another hit. “Four for four,” he crowed. “Come on, team, we’re only down one! We can win this!”

His wife came to bat next. Sol knew she was going to get a hit, and he hoped against hope that she would hit a home run and win the game. But she smacked the softball over the pitcher’s head, and her husband stopped at second.

“Go on, Sol.” His father nudged him.

He got up. The prospect of going back out and hitting, the whole team counting on him…come on, he told himself, you’ve done this before. But those times it had been all right to fail. There had been someone else to hit after him, or else he’d known it was just a game. He’d never had to try to atone for an error with his father staring at him from the bench.

His paw itched again. He scratched it and then picked up a bat. As he took a swing, his stomach cramped up so tightly that he almost threw the bat. It clattered to the ground as Sol doubled over.

His father jumped up, came to his side. “What’s the matter?”

“Stomach…hurts.” Sol forced the words out through clenched teeth.

The wolverine joined them, and Sol’s mother came running over as well. All the attention was just making things worse. “I’ll be…fine,” he said.

“I’ll bat,” the wolverine said. “Hey! Sick player, we’re skipping his spot. That cool?”

Only the short fox protested, even though it was for his own team, but he gave in when everyone else outvoted him. Sol listened to the wolverine’s at-bat as his mother led him back to one of the picnic tables. “Strike one,” he heard, and then the thud of bat connecting with softball, and then cheers. He turned to look and saw the short fox crossing home plate, arms raised.

“Bet it was all that potato salad!” Mr. Norston, who wasn’t playing in the game, wagged his tail as Sol came to sit near them, still clutching his stomach. “Xavy had two burgers.”

A female wolf nearby asked why Sol had been eating so much potato salad, and Mr. Norston told her about the organic steaks, while Sol’s mother stayed quiet. “Funny, Jerius never mentioned it. What’s the condition?”