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Ooone.
Twooo.
From beyond the window, voices come in unison.
A holiday morning.
It seems the neighborhood is holding its sports day on the grounds of the elementary school nearby.
The voice on the microphone crackles a little, and a scatter of applause follows.
Three.
Fouuur.
It is the counting, from the beanbag toss.
Once, partway through, the count stumbles, and laughter rises.
Then it settles back into its first pace.
In elementary school, I was slow on my feet.
In the footraces, always second from last.
The beanbag toss was the one event with no places.
At the whistle, everyone gathers at once beneath the pole.
You pick up a red beanbag and throw it upward.
When you squeeze the cloth bag, something fine shifts and whispers inside, and the grit of the schoolyard sticks to your palm.
Looking up, the basket is much higher than you thought.
Throw straight up, and the beanbag comes down on your own head.
Most of what you throw hits the rim of the basket and drops back at your feet.
You pick up what falls, again.
Whether it is the one you threw, or the one the child beside you threw, you cannot tell.
Not knowing, you throw again.
What I picked up, more often than not, was a beanbag someone else had missed.
At the final whistle, everyone crouches where they stand.
A teacher lowers the basket and tosses the beanbags up into the sky, one by one.
Whether any of mine went in, I never find out.
The counting, at least, I think I shouted louder than anyone.
A little after noon, I meet two friends in front of the station.
A big building with bowling and karaoke inside.
On a holiday, bowling meant an hour’s wait.
“Want to play that while we wait?”
At the back of the floor, four tables stand in a row.
The clatter of falling pins and someone singing in one of the rooms carry all the way here.
When I say I have never played, one of my friends answers while racking the balls.
“You can sink any of them. We take turns, and if you miss, it’s the next person’s go.”
The borrowed cue is longer than I expected.
I do not know what shape to make with my left hand on the table.
Glancing sideways at my friend’s hand, I make a small loop with my index finger.
When I slide the cue through, the tip catches a little inside the loop.
I take aim, and strike.
The white ball slips past the side of the one I was aiming at.
Second try.
This time it connects, and the ball I aimed at stops just short of the pocket.
“Sorry.”
Without a word, my friend walks around the table and stands before that ball.
A light stroke.
The ball that had stopped a moment ago drops in, softly.
Then two, three in a row, and on the fourth, a miss.
The missed ball rolls up near another pocket, and stops.
My turn comes back around.
The balls on the table are just where they were when my friend finished.
Nearest of all, the one my friend just missed.
I take aim.
The tip of the cue wavers a little.
I strike.
The ball rolls straight, and disappears into the pocket.
My other friend claps, quietly.
After that, hardly anything went in.
Each time I miss, a ball comes to rest somewhere on the table.
My friend walks around the table and stands before it.
When my friend misses, I am the one who walks around.
At some point, I had stopped saying sorry.
Our number for bowling was called partway through the third game.
Five balls are still left on the table.
I take the balls out of the pockets and put them back in the tray.
Whose misses they were, I can no longer tell.
We bowl two games and leave the building.
The sun is already low.
Our arms, all three of us, are a little heavy.
I say goodbye to the two of them at the station and walk past the elementary school.
The schoolyard is empty now.
The pole and the basket have been put away; only the white lines remain, faintly.
On the sidewalk outside the fence lay a single red beanbag.
I pick it up and toss it, underhand and easy, over the fence.
It bounced once, just inside the white line.
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