Farhead on the Bench
"Put me in, coach. Put me back in," Farhead said from the bench.
But there was no coach to answer. And there were no other players on the bench. Farhead wondered if he in fact were really there.
In fact there was no one else anywhere near. The little rural field backed up against the rocky hills was immaculate in that respect, the snow unmarked by any intrusion of bats, balls, gloves or any other baseball gear.
There were tracks, but only in a single line from Farhead's car to the entrance to the field and thence to his solitude on the bench.
***
"He lost his job," Eileen said to her older sister when she finally could. Bridget had gone on forever about all she was unable to attend in Toronto - theatre, opera, movies, her favorite restaurants, her spa - and how she simply hated having to wear a mask while shopping because she loved her new lipstick and wanted to show it off everywhere and how dare the government interfere with her happiness.
"He did what?" exclaimed Bridget.
"They laid him off. We got the email this morning."
"But they can't! You just moved all the way to Nova Scotia! You bought a house sight unseen for twice what it was worth. You went to live in the sticks to satisfy that fool of a Farhead. Oh, I knew you shouldn't have married a foreigner."
"I don't know what to do," Eileen said in a voice that had little more to it than a wind in a wasteland.
"Well," said Bridget, "Well ... well ... oh my god."
***
Farhead marked in the snow where he thought that the bases would be. And then he ran them. Over and over till he thought that his heart would give out.
"You have to make your own chances," he said when he had slipped and fallen seven times. "You have to keep getting up and you have to find something. That's what a Nova Scotian does. And my goodness you are going to be a Nova Scotian, sir."
His breath in the frigid air turned into clouds that seemed to him like cartoon word balloons. Like empty cartoon word balloons.

20 January 2022
Texas Jim
West Dover, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca