A mural of The Catch was painted in the Athletic Center as a memorial to my memory. But I returned.
I had to spend a year in a hospital, recuperating, but I did, and I did that I also started taking correspondence courses to get my teaching degree from the best teaching college in the state, Northern Arizona University. It took me only three years to graduate; I returned to my alma mater, married, with a year old boy named Mickey Jr. I was introduced in the high school football stadium at a special Spirit Day-Pep Rally, the first day of school. The crowd roared its approval—The Mick! their Mick!!, was back, back to lead the high school to victory again. It had been a three year hiatus since there had been any success. One particularly pathetic game they had lost 100-6.
But now the crowd was cheering and stomping in a standing ovation for the new, but now Perennial, for many, many years—Coach. Just Coach would be enough. Coach Mick. Even better.
Minnie poked me in the side, hard. “Stand up, and stop bawling.”
Tears were running down my face, tears of rage and humiliation because what should have been my moment of glory was being bestowed upon Charles Anderson, a real returning hero.
I would never become a high school sports hero.
Minnie, pretty Minnie, lived down the street from me.
.
Mickey had just learned to drive; he drove a Willy’s surplus Army military jeep. Even though he was nothing more than a fantastic yarn spinning day-dreamer at heart—at least he had one—a heart I mean. He was deathly shy and afraid of girls; they were foreign and terribly exciting to him, especially if they were pretty. So how did we become friends then? I was brusque and pushy. He would OK for a pal, and he had a jeep. He was sort of cute in a boring sort of way, with a face and personality like Scotch oatmeal. Maybe bland but hearty, with still waters that ran deep? Or deep neurosis and possibly even psychosis? I was really into psychology then, it seemed so much more exciting than my life. I loved Jung and the way he swam down deep into his psyche. Well, if Mickey did have a hidden psychosis I would try to avoid it, do no poking or prying in sensitive places.
Minnie just came over one early spring morning when I was shooting baskets in my driveway.
“Mind if I shoot with you?” I turned around and looked at her: she was swarthy and stocky and short with semi-sweet chocolate eyes, long black hair with absurd bangs. It was the fashion. But she was what I can only think of as cute in a pugnacious but openly friendly sort of way. I really think that cute just means that you love somebody as a fellow creature even if that someone might just a squat red-faced little pooping baby or a wrinkled, withered old hobbling Sunday school teacher or a harridan of a junior school Civics teacher who nevertheless taught us about becamerals and smiled at me twice.
I remembered several years earlier, in the sixth grade, when a girl had asked me if I would play catch with her and teach her some baseball. I had stupidly said “no, I’m busy” when that hadn’t been the case. I had also at that time not yet developed my morbid fear, a shyness if you will, just short of terror, of attractive females.
“Hello, my name is Mickey, what’s yours?” I put out my hand to shake her, an exquisitely formed but tiny hand. She wasn’t pretty, just normal—she had a big zit on her chin and a small thin scar above her right eyebrow-and she wasn’t a female, just a girl.
Minnie: So we played basketball: first HORSE, and then because we were fairly equal in shooting, one-on-one. I was short but dribbled better than he did, and shot way better, which probably surprised—but it was just a fact, nothing to think about once it was established. The problem for him was: how to beat a shorter but superior player. His attempted answer was to back me up and far as he could and shoot fade-away jumpers or hook shots. We played some close games. The results didn’t matter as soon as the games were over.
We became friendly through doing this and that together: watching TV, getting ice cream at Baskin Robbins, talking about school, especially all the teachers and students we disliked. He had liked my brusqueness. I had liked his attentiveness; he listened to me.
This story isn’t about us though: it is about an absurd beagle named BB, short for Booker Bacchus Beagle Boy. That was his official name, he being a pure-bred AKC.
Yuma has a reputation for a being an ugly brown hell hole. That was how I thought of it at first, my father having pakced up the family and moved us from Tacoma. He had chronic bronchitis, an ailment of the trachea which is exacerbated by moist air.
It was 107 degrees on May 5, 1971, the day the ancient brown 57 Chevy Station Wagon rolled into Yuma at the old 5-Corner Marketplace. It was dry. I just watched television shows and read omnivorously the first two years we lived there. I hated it.
