Meeting

There wasn’t a thing that I would have wanted to do less that night. The last thing I wanted to do was attend a slow-pitch softball game where a group of grown men run around bases. But it was what Kadie liked, or a boy she liked on the team at least. The most ridiculous thing about the whole idea is that Michael was Jessica’s cousin. Jessica was Kadie’s best friend. How messed up is that? I had never met him, but Kadie didn’t hesitate to fill me in:

The story was that they were together a year or so ago but she broke it off because of the bad things he was into. She said it was drugs, but Kadie is notorious for lying. What kind of drugs, pot? Is that even a “drug?” How could a barley out of high school 20-year-old be into drugs, especially one related to Jessica? With that kind of family innocence, it seemed to be yet another of Kadie’s exaggerations. People in these small towns don’t do drugs, not the real ones.

It didn’t matter that I protested. Kadie had dragged me to that softball field, not even blinking at the constant excuses I was coming up with. We drive around the roundabouts and take a right turn before getting into town. There’s a lot more people at the field than I had expected. All the parking lots were full and people were walking all down the sidewalks. In such a small town it was abnormal to see more than a few people on the street. We parked and walked in. An orange plastic fence framed the entrance to the park. Two cops were sitting at the only opening of the fence greeting people as they walked through. It was a typical small town festival with a ferris wheel, funnel cake stands and carnival rides. “Summerfest” they call it. Every year a men’s softball tournament is held during the festival, as Kadie has informed me. It seemed to me to be an excuse for middle-aged men to get drunk and build up testosterone with each other. The entire town was there, we almost couldn’t find a seat on the bleachers.

We sat on the top, backs exposed to the beer tent crowd behind us. It was the middle of June and I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, it was warm and I was sweating. “That one is Shane. He’s sweet, one of my favorites of Michael’s friends.” She points to the dugout. “He can’t play anymore, he was hit in the face with a ball and was injured, bad enough to quit playing, but he still comes to watch.” She starts to introduce the other boys on Michael’s team. I hate baseball, and softball really wasn’t any better, but still continued to ask who’s who. They all wore matching fire engine red jerseys with a phone number written in black on the lower back. “That’s Sam.” She pointed at the batter. He was skinny and small with “Cheeser” written on the back of his red jersey.

“Why does it say Cheeser on his jersey?” I asked.
“They call him Cheeser because he looks like a rat.”
We both agreed how awful that is, but couldn’t resist the humor in it and laughed. “So which one is Michael?” I asked, scanning the field of boys. They were all younger than the other teams. Most under the age of 25 at least.
She pointed to the pitcher. He was tall and thin, with brown hair. Much taller than I thought he was, taller than all of the other boys on the team. He had a heavy walk, very awkward. The other team was much older, they were anywhere from late 30’s to mid 50’s and didn’t wear uniforms, or even matching shirts.

The game ended and the teams shook hands. It was odd for me to see grown men line up in single file lines and shake each other’s hands like a Little League. Michael walked towards the bleachers and made his way behind us and started up some small talk with Kadie. He was wearing old, worn out Nike shoes and had dust stains on his ratty shorts from the sand in the field. His clothes didn’t match, blue jogging shorts and a red dri fit jersey with the number 69 on the back. “Big Nasty” was printed above the numbers. I then realized all of these boys had ridiculous nicknames on the back of their jerseys. Michael spoke slow and had calm voice. He acted laid back, almost as if he was careless about the conversation, but not quite. He didn’t seem nervous nor excited to see Kadie. Odd, I thought. He shook my hand and introduced himself. Kadie and I both twisting our backs on the top bleacher in order to look in Michael’s direction as he spoke.

The other boys on the team began to gather in a half circle around Kadie, Michael and I’s conversation. I scanned the circle. The boy standing directly right of Michael had long shaggy hair. I looked at him for a long time. Looked at his face and then down at his shoes. He wore a T-Shirt and shorts, long white socks with old skater shoes. They had large, fat tongues, like the shoes you see in 2000’s skater videos. He wasn’t wearing a jersey like the other boys were. I realized I had stared too long, enough that he noticed me staring. He had a crooked smile when I looked back up at his face, eyes locked on mine.

“This is Jeff, Sam, and Austin.” Michael told me.

Sam was standing between Austin and Jeff. He had big teeth and close up, he indeed resembled a mouse. Austin was the smallest of them all. He was short and skinny with blonde curly hair, a pointed nose and thin lips. He wore a flat brim hat and his hair curled under it.

We introduced each other. Kadie had already met most of them, and they seemed to be familiar with her. Michael looked down at his phone. He let out a small breath that was almost a laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” Kadie asked him.

“Jeff texted me. He wants to know if your friend wants to come to a fire tonight.”

We all looked over at Jeff, his face red and his smirk grew into a smile. “Oh thanks,” Kadie joked, “I’m not even invited?”

We laughed and agreed to meet them later that night. They were the kind of boys I stayed away from usually, dirty, careless, and drunk, but something about them left me intrigued.

We went back to our town, which was even smaller than this town. We changed and grabbed the only bottle of alcohol we had, a half empty bottle of Kinky. Being in high school, we drank what we had access too, no matter how crappy the liquor was. We left when it was dark, and picked up Mikayla.
Jeff’s house was further than where the festival took place. We drove on back roads that were curvy with lots of hills and no houses. Seemed we were driving into the middle of nowhere. There weren’t any streetlights as the GPS got closer and closer to his house, until we saw a patch of trees with lights peeking through as we made our last turn.

We parked on the side of the road in the gravel. A small fire was breathing in the front yard of a one-story ranch-style house. It was small and I couldn’t the house well but it looked rundown. There were cans of beer piled at the front corner of the house and a woodpile next to the where the fire was burning. A boat and a camper rested on the side of the yard, and a picnic table between the road and the fire. I saw the silhouette of two people sitting on top of the picnic table and one on the other side of the fire.

We were greeted by Michael as we walked up the driveway. He gave Kadie a hug and said hello to me again. As we approached the fire I saw a few familiar faces, and also a few new ones. I sat on the end of the bench of the picnic table. Jeff was sitting across the fire from me. He waved and I waved back. A new face sat above me on the table. He had long dark hair. He was skinny and lanky and didn’t waste any time getting to know all of us.

He introduced himself, “I’m Dylan” he said, “I’m Taylor” I answered.

He was obviously drunk, almost obnoxious, but refreshly entertaining.

Mikayla had also introduced herself to the others. Kadie and Michael sat and talked together. I took a little more interest in Dylan than the other boys there. He intrigued me. He asked about me, where I’m from, what I like. It was refreshing that he had an interest in me. Not just the ice breaking kind of interest, but the interest that he wanted to know me and what my life was like. I've had boys take interest in me, but he seemed unusually genuine about these questions. Most people would ask shallow questions to skim the surface of my personality, but he was different. He was interested in my life. What was going on in it, how I grew up, the kinds of things I enjoy, even my family. It was an unusual encounter for my short seventeen years of life to find that not all boys pick and choose who to let into their life, but can give a stranger the opportunity to be open and to open themselves up without having to destroy their personal walls.
We sat around the fire for a long time, drinking and laughing and getting to know each other.

As the night came to an end and the three of us girls were leaving, Michael, Dylan, and Jeff walked us to the car. Dylan stopped me and asked for my phone number. Thinking about all the alcohol consumed that night, I replied, “You won’t even remember my name in the morning.”

He smile at me and said, “Yes I will, i think you might be hard to forget” So I gave it to him. I don’t know what it was that led me to believe that this dirty, unmatching, goofball of a boy who seemed to have not a single short term goal in his life might actually be a decent person, but I was eager to see him again.