Kingdom of the Sun: Stories by James Terry

Author:James Terry [Terry, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9780826356406
Google: 1lTSEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2016-03-14T11:00:00+00:00

It was more than just losing both sets to a nearly crippled old man that so annoyed Gary. However irrational it may have been to conflate these two seemingly unrelated contests, losing so badly to an old man at tennis only stirred up the humiliation still festering in him from the election. It made him realize that he needed much more practice against the wall before he could hope to stand a chance against anyone with a halfway decent game.

When he arrived at the courts the following Wednesday afternoon, it was with a sense of renewed purpose. A quiver of almost greedy anticipation, not unlike that of the painter before a freshly stretched canvas, or the writer facing an empty page, thrilled through him at the sight of the vacant courts.

He had been hitting for twenty minutes when the old white Rabbit pulled up.

Something about that streak of blue spray paint across the passenger door instantly irritated him. It wasn’t so much the vandalism that bothered him—he had done stupid things like that himself when he was a kid—as the sense that the old man, if he was aware of it at all, either didn’t give a damn or simply couldn’t be bothered to get rid of it.

Ray got out with his racket and his ball. Same red shorts, same straw hat. He shuffled across the grass over to the gate. Without so much as glancing at Gary, he went and started hitting against the backboard on court two. Then, after about ten minutes, just as before, he came over to the fence and stood there watching Gary. Gary went on practicing until, sensing he was approaching the threshold of rudeness, he caught the ball and turned.

“You want to rally a little?” Ray said.

The thought of repeating that frustrating experience didn’t appeal to Gary at all, but it seemed mean to outright refuse the man when there wasn’t anyone else around for him to play.

Gary looked at his watch.

“I can give you about ten minutes,” he lied.

“Name’s Ray,” Ray said, extending his hand across the fence.

“I know,” Gary said. “We played last week.”

“I don’t think so,” Ray said. “This is the first time I’ve been on a court in years.”

Gary looked into the old man’s eyes and saw with a strange empty feeling that he actually believed what he was saying. Ray’s outstretched hand hung there in the air above the fence. Gary went over and shook it uneasily and uneasily said his name, wondering if what he was witnessing was genuine dementia or just the usual faulty memory of advanced age.

“Good to meet you, Gary.”

They rallied for a while, and just as before, after about ten minutes, Ray said he needed to take a break and shuffled over to the bench.

“I don’t know why we don’t use clay courts in this climate,” he remarked. “You wouldn’t get all this cracking. It’s easier on the bones too. I used to play for hours in Paris without feeling a thing. Of course I was a lot younger then.

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