ONE
JAKE MCKINNEY
BEGINNING OF THE MAVERICKS MINOR LEAGUE SEASON
I don’t like matcha. Mom says it’s tea, but I’m not sure what it is. The stuff looks more like a green milkshake to me. And it tastes like the hay I fed Lars an hour ago. Mom swears by this shit, though, and she’s the healthiest human I know, so down it goes.
“Third time’s a charm,” Mom says as she squeezes my shoulder on her way through the kitchen.
I chuckle as I choke down the last gulp of matcha.
“There’s a reasonfourth timeisn’t the saying. It’s because most people quit by now,” I say, rinsing out my glass and putting it back in the cupboard for my daily dose tomorrow.
“Don’t talk like that. You and I both know this game is mental as much as it’s physical. Maybe, I don’t know, try going into the season with a positive attitude.” She shoots me her trademarkyou know I’m rightgrin, and winks.
“Fine,” I grumble, forcing a stretched smile on my face that she knows is bullshit but laughs at anyhow.
I kiss the top of her head after she takes a seat at thekitchen table to sip on her matcha and review the bar’s financials from the night before.
“I’ll be over again tomorrow morning,” I say, the same phrase I’ve uttered every morning for the last three years. Ever since I moved out to live on my own in a shitty studio apartment by the truck route because that’s what I can afford.
“You know, I’m capable of taking care of this place on my own. You could let yourself get the extra sleep, at least during the season,” she says on my way out the door.
I sigh, pausing with my hand on the knob.
“I know. I’ll be here anyway,” I say, then step outside.
Of course she can handle the farmwork on her own. She can feed the pigs, clean the pen, feed Lars, clear the eggs, and run the only good restaurant in town all in a single day. And probably throw in earning her master’s degree online while she’s at it. In fact . . . did she already do that?
My mom’s been taking care of everything on her own since my dad left her here pregnant so he could become the beloved all-star catcher he is. Roddy McKinney, three-time World Series champ, Rookie of the Year, journeyman, and team leader.
My deadbeat father.
And now, he’s fucking here in Sweetwater. In fact, it feels like he’s fucking everywhere I am.
I make it a dozen steps down my mother’s driveway before Roddy’s life bleeds into mine in the form of a black and white pygmy goat named Willie. Correction . . . Willie 2.0. The original Willie passed away eight years ago, but not before studding a replacement. My Aunt Winnie has been taking care of Willie 2.0, but the moment she found out my father was moving back home, she unloaded the eating machine on him. Unfortunately, Winnie lives down the road.And Willie 2.0 is pretty attached. He’s also lazy, so every time he escapes my father’s property, he ends up about right here, eating Mom’s roses.
“Come on, Willie. You’ve got expensive taste, you know?” I clap a few times to get his attention, and he rushes through his final bite of flower petals as he hops toward me.
I hoist him into the bed of my truck and lift the tailgate, so he doesn’t slide out on the short drive to my father’s house. For most of my life, his massive ranch home made of stacked stone and redwood beams was a vacant black hole constantly sucking me in. As a kid, I’d leave for school about ten minutes earlier than I had to just so I could drive by it and stare. In high school, a bunch of us broke in to get shit-faced and smoke weed. My friends and I did that more than once, actually, and the first few times, the security company got called out to bust us. A part of me liked that I was inconveniencing my father with it all. He had to deal with a call from the people he hired to take care of his shit while he was gone. A call to deal with me. Until, eventually, he cancelled the security contract and simply mailed me a key with a note to clean up whenever we were done.
I haven’t been back since. Not until two weeks ago when he rolled into town and his damn goat started showing up at our place.
I leave the engine on after I pop the gears into park. I drop the tailgate and climb into the bed to grab Willie, who has made himself comfortable against the back of the cab.
“Come on, dude. You’re killin’ me,” I say as I haul him into my arms. I swear he purposely makes himself heavier when I carry him.
I turn around and prepare myself for a tricky squat maneuver so I can lower the little guy to the ground thenguide him through my father’s open gate, but I stop in the middle of the truck bed when my gaze meets Roddy’s.
“He got out again, huh?” my father says, leaning a hip into the edge of the tailgate and lifting his arms to take over Willie 2.0’s trip to the ground.
“No shit,” I bite, rolling my eyes and handing off the goat.
I jump from the back of the truck, landing with a thud on the gravel driveway, and slam the tailgate shut without giving my father a second glance.
“I’ll get on that gate. It needs a new latch,” my father says over his shoulder as he leads Willie 2.0 toward the acreage behind his massive house.
“He’ll just chew his way out of anything you put up,” I say, mumbling the rest. “Even the damn animals don’t want to deal with your ass.”
