Growing Old at the Sweet Onion Tennis Tournament or How We Played Singles Against the Young Track Star and Lost

--Hashimoto (1995)

Out on court two, an old man hacks a swinging volley. His form looks fine; his pants are clean; and so's his hat. The ball flups up and spins out across the net. The ball is nicely hit. It looks so good, so fine.

Across the net, the track star lopes and turns; he's got his racquet back and down; he's got a decent follow-through for someone so young and unpreserved. But his tongue is out. He doesn't bend his knees enough. His eyebrows pinch too much as he hits the ball toward the edge of the court--the very edge where the old man runs.

Reaching out the old man chases down the shot, his racquet out, his wheezing knees flopping in the dead air.

Up, up, the ball is floating up. And down, down, the ball is floating down with a sidewise spin. It bounces back about waist-high, and the old man waits and waits and reaches out to loft it up and up and back and back it comes with a nasty spin almost out of reach, almost to the edge of the earth, almost to the farthest reach a man in his age and shape can reach without hurting his leg or feeling something pop. The old man runs to smack the ball; he leans forward and reaches out; he stabs, but gets there late. He duffs it out behind his back foot or leg or whatever that was that was stiff and old and in the way . . .

* * *
Oh Cleoma. It floats sooooo slowly uppppppp, even the old man can read the label in the air.

* * *
In the heat, in the heat . . . Somehow, the ball doesn't bounce high enough even in the heat. The old man is lunging. The old man is lunging toward a trot. Somehow his knees are gasping and his shirt is too tight or maybe it's too loose; his shoes weigh too much; there's something wrong with his socks. Across the net, the young fellow pinches in his eyebrows as he swoks the ball, his form is a mess. He is only looping little droppers, little fluffers, little chippers that floop and die at the edge of the court while the old man chases, his racquet out, wheezing knees flopping in the dead air.

"I'm sorry, sir," he says, watching the old man leap too late, too far away. And now the old man is crying out near the fence, his body bent, a pain taking hold of his chest.

"I'm sorry, sir," he says, trying hard to hide the whopper with cheese he's now holding in his left hand. "I didn't mean to hit it there. It was just a lucky shot. I don't know where it came from, sir." He's got sesame seeds stuck between his teeth. He's got no place to put the sandwich wrapper.

* * *
The young man must not have had time to eat before the match. The old man is lunging and the young fellow is eating--a banana now or maybe a large biscuit or a peach. (I can't tell for sure because the sweat is dribbling into his eyes.) The biscuit looks like a large juicy pink peach with a fine largeness, and a juiciness that seems to be a fresh fine smell of fresh sweet refreshing wonderful peachiness, all cool and fine and sweet. The old man reaches out the end of his racquet like a dry scoop and swooks the ball off his back foot, sending it up the court with a lazy backward spin. The young fellow lopes. There's something wrong with the old man's nose.

(On the cool grass, next to the crushed ice, someone's asking what a Denver sandwich is.)

(Turkey and tomatoes and three pieces of bread cut up in triangles and glued together with mayonnaise or something else--like sweat.)

And now the old man is running and shoving his glasses up his nose, and the young fellow out there is standing in the sun picking his teeth with a Swiss Army knife. He's standing in the sun without a hat, digging at his teeth.

* * *
(On the courts near the state hospital, we used to pick up bits of tar from the street and on hot days, sometimes we could pull it up from the seams on the court itself. They said you could chew the stuff for days, but chewing it was never fun and it left an awful taste in your mouth like roadscum or broken blisters.)

* * *
Oh time. Oh time. We should know when to quit and when to bet and when to go eat cheese. The old man swipes at the sweat, now beading, trickling and flooding off his brow, now flicking off the end of his once clean hat, leaving drops on the court like so many tears. Somehow he is me but I am not him . . . We squint together stubbornly across the net at this young fellow with all those Doritos in his mouth, and somehow our racket seems so loose, but it's not the handle that's loose and when we shake it, something rattles, but it's not our handle that rattles. It's not the composite graphite ceramic construction with the blue pinstripes. It's got to be something inside his ear. Or maybe it's a loose joint or a loose fart that's not coming out.

"Just a minute," the old man says. "I have to adjust . . . I have to adjust my ear." And we stop in the middle of the court and shake our head and try to adjust our underwear and tug at his t-shirt, but our t-shirt is so heavy already and it's stretching loose and bagging around my elbows. "Just a minute," the old man says, and squints across the net at the young fellow so far away. My face is wet.

* * *
Something is happening. We don't understand. There seem to be more people on the young fellow's side than the rules allow. There are three grocery clerks shimmering out there in the heat and a green hospital orderly and the kid's mother is even out there with him and she's got her own racquet. (How can that be?) She's not supposed to be there. She is supposed to be on the deck by the pool or in the shade by the pro shop chewing tar or cleaning her shoe, but she's out there covering half the court with her visor and her oversize racquet with the blue grommets, and somehow, it doesn't seem fair.

In fact, across the court so far away, the kid's mother is propping her racquet on her shoulder, and she's bending her knees and tossing the ball up just like she's serving, and the kid is yelling, "Keep your eye on the ball!" and "Follow through!" And she's got her tongue out, too. And somehow, she is hitting the ball and no one seems to mind.

The orderly throws a rock that spins up and up and clatters on our side of the green court. The grocery clerks are drinking Big Gulps from the minimart and applauding.

* * *
There are yellow jackets nesting in the pipe down by the handball courts. They are singing. We can hear them singing.

* * *
My friend Johnny Appleton lives in New York. Or did he move? There are pigeons on his roof cooing and warbling in the shade of smutty chimneys.

* * *
We want to stumble out to the fountain by the curb to wash our face and soak our red hanky in cool clear water, and rub the water on our cheeks.

We want to ride our bike to the lake late at night and wade in with a stick and a large flashlight. We will slosh around waist-deep in the cool water. The mud will suck our feet, and we will turn toward the shore and shine the light across the lily pads and right into their eyes. For a moment, they will just sit there, stunned, their racquets on their shoulders, their golden eyes locked on the light--and we will raise our sticks up in the night and whop the shit out of them. Just whop the shit out of them.

* * *
Old man, old man--and now I'm wringing out his hat, his underwear is in his crack. Old man, old man.

* * *
Old man, old man, somehow, we can't remember the score.

* * *

* * * Oh Cleoma.

* * *

* * * * * * * * *
High above the courts, under the awning by the pro shop two pound bags of onions hang from hooks screwed into the roof. (They will give us one of those bags even when we lose.) Alison dabs her pink skin with baby oil and looks into the clear sky where a single cloud drifts and melts into blue. "Look," she says, pointing to three seagulls wheeling around and around the deck, waiting for a dead sandwich to fall limp, on the grass. Two brown dogs sleep under the hedge alongside the court panting, their red tongues sudsed; cool, pressed, moms and dads point to a cloud of steam from a Buick Skylark overheating in the street. And we wonder how big the stain will be when we fall like a wet rotten summer squash on the hard, green court and implode.

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