What Rhea doesn’t remember: fighting against tears, biting her tongue, and bleeding from the mouth onto her seersucker shorts after her Schwinn’s front wheel skidded over a softball, sending her nose to the pavement. What she does remember: the sound of an aluminum bat crashing against a ball, the ensuing shouts from the crowd at the ballfield beside the street, and the swirls of memory from her own softball days, making her taste infield dirt instead of blood––in her own playing days, she practiced every day of the year, lugging her bucket of balls and her bat to the high school field down the street from her childhood home, taking hundreds of swings off the batting tee, even in flurries and temperatures in the teens. Before anyone noticed her curled up next to the bike, she heard the ringing of a collar: a dog was running toward her, barking for help. 

RICHARD MORIARTY teaches writing and literature at North Carolina A&T State University. He is also a former fiction editor for The Greensboro Review. Moriarty’s stories appear in Stymie Magazine and Boog City.