Ocho and I were in the backyard trying to turn Frog the Dog into a one-hop shortstop by shagging pop flies to her. She runs away from fly balls, waits for a bounce or two, then leaps over the ball like it’s butterfly she really doesn’t want to touch, just chase. Mostly, she catches air.
“Keep your head down! Charge the ball!”
And then we’d start over. She gets so excited that she jumps and pirouettes and falls over long after the ball has hidden itself in the bushes.
Dogball is fun and free, and we adjust the rules to fit our circumstance. No uniforms, no fans, no phones. My two dogs make me happier than when I got my first job.
A voice flew over the fence, “Hello? Are you busy?”
Well, yeahhh.
It was a human, so I told the dogs to stop spitting shots of tobacco juice, adjusting discomfort in their business district, and making the sign of the cross before batting.
“Are you busy?” she repeated so easily.
What is the definition of busy? Hanging drywall? Writing a term paper? Dying?
“Not at all.” I opened the gate. My dog team bolted out and the woman walked in.
“I don’t really want anything. Do you have a beer? I was missing someone else, so I came to see you. I hate when people died two years ago and I want to tell them something today and can’t.” She was serious.
“Yes,” I uttered, “that’s a tough one. But maybe they hear you and will float a cryptic answer or message in your dreams or thoughts while you’re driving.”
“Don’t be practical,” she said, unbelievably. “I really wanted to talk to J.B. about books in the home being dust collectors, God, and other things you wouldn’t care to talk about.”
“What? Because I’m alive I’m in second place? I’ll talk about books and God any day. We’ve done that before.”
“Oh, I know, but I don’t want to disturb your dog play. I’m having trouble not being able to have just one more conversation with someone before they’re dead and gone forever.”
We sat in the December evening shade where it’s really too cool to sit still for long. Which meant I had to invite her in. Or I could just tell her that it was getting cold and dark and that it’s too bad her friend died before she had a chance to ask her more stuff about life and that I needed to whistle the dogs back home.
Instead, I opened her a Moosehead and poured it into a pilsner so she’d feel special but hoping that wouldn’t make her want to stay long or move in.
“Books can make you cry without breaking your heart,” I said. “Books take on the smell of whoever ever touched them, books are exciting and quiet at the same time. Everything left alone gathers dust.”
“You never get it.” She seemed suddenly shy, maybe embarrassed.
“Yes, I don’t,” I agreed. “I don’t get why humans stand by while other humans are killed all over the world. Whether by drones, hunger, secret agents, crazy weather, or hopelessness. But I know that survivors occasionally write books and sometimes someone reads them and then it’s a lot like being with a friend except you don’t have to talk. The book, the writer’s version of what happened, becomes a truth, at least a consideration. Being without books would be like lying around empty.”
“Not everyone agrees with you,” she said not drinking any of her beer.
“Anyone who considers books as dust collectors only sees dust,” I said. “No one has to keep books. They can donate them, burn them, throw them out or use them for table legs under a sheet of plywood. It’s really not a problem.”
She leaned back and took a pull of beer worthy of a welder.
“I didn’t interrupt your ballgame just because I saw you outside. I did it because I felt lost. You were the only choice I had.”
I tossed that around inside, thought the same thing about the Moosehead, and let the dogs in. I kind of wanted to talk about God. Just to stir things up.
But she left, Ocho and Frog went to sleep, and I wondered if it was too late to start Christmas shopping. Christmas is this week, right?