Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

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Phantoms roared overhead, three in formation, streaking over the
land and finally darting off into the sky. One day, I thought, I
would sit in the cockpit, made anonymous by the oxygen mask,
helmet and dark glasses, serving some higher purpose. But when
I looked back out over the ocean, I pictured myself there, in a small
boat. In dreams, as in life, I have never traveled but always arrived.
And I had never once considered that the world I dreamed was not
the world in which I lived. I picked up a piece of driftwood off
the beach and rushed at my friend Andy, to stab him once more,
the pretend enemy, to make sure he was dead and my child's world,
then and now, safe from a life I have never been able to imagine.
Andy's mom arrived and stood on the dunes, arms akimbo
with the sun behind her, a dark cut-out shape of a woman.
There was nothing more silent at Cherry Point than the
Marines eating dinner. The machines, gunshots, clicking heels and
shouted commands all ceased very suddenly and always at the
same time, even as the days grew shorter into winter. When the
silence hit, my sister Heidi stood up straight and let the tennis ball
bounce by. The tennis coach walked forward hoping to end the
lesson early, but she quickly hit another ball in his direction, which
he smoothly returned, backing up for the full swing so as not to
look bad. Nobody liked the tennis coach. He was always having
some problem.
The empty pangs of the ball against the strings and the
muffled screech of tennis shoes against hard top were the only
sounds. Eleven other courts stood empty, the players gone
home for dinner.
Finally the coach let one of the balls go by and stepped up
toward the net. "Enough for today," he said. She stayed in a
crouch, racket cocked back as if he were a ball coming over the
net. He stopped and tapped the net with his racket, turned around
and started to pick up stray balls. She leaned against the fence. All
the balls were on his side of the net. She could play all night without
eating or sleeping, driving herself straight into her future
which she could see always just on the horizon. The coach walked
around the net waving his racket to get her attention. "Ready?"
he said and headed out the gate.
She followed, leaving her racket against the fence on the court
as if she were coming right back.
"Your mom's late," the coach said in the parking lot.
She wanted to say something but she couldn't. She was
trying to remember something. She had forgotten.
"You told her six, right?" the coach asked while combing the
parking lot and the officer's lot below.
She focused on the back of his head. "Yes," she said. "You can
leave. She'll be here in a minute."
"No, I can't do that," he said. "But I do have to be somewhere.
I bet you do too. What are you going to be?"
"A cat."
"A cat?"
"Yes."
"Do you have a costume?"
"Yes, but it's in the car."
"Your mom's car?"
She nodded. "You can leave," she said, and then remembered
her tennis racket and told him she would be right back. She
watched her shoes moving like two little white-shelled turtles along
the black top. The racket was still there and one of the stray balls.
When she returned to the parking lot the coach was gone. You
couldn't even hear his car anymore he had driven away so fast. No
other cars came down the road, so she went back to the court and
hit the ball over the net. She switched sides and hit it again. She
delighted in the idea of how much faster the ball would travel
when she turned thirteen. Then she would practice into the night,
improving the accuracy of her shot. The ball would land exactly
where she pictured it would. Thirteen seemed like the year.
It would be dark soon because the first soldiers were coming out
of the mess hall, smoking and pushing each other lightly. She stood in
the empty parking lot with the tennis racket and watched them pass
by. Back then you could buy beer out of a machine on the base, so
that's where they were going, to sit around and drink. Heidi watched
them while walking down the parking lot. Then she tripped.
One of the soldiers broke off from the others, walked up to
her and held out his hand, in which an unlit cigarette lay wedged
between two fingers. "Are you OK?" he asked.