39. Groove Is in the Heart
Groove Is in the Heart
Arden
C harlotte hauls an ugly, avocado-green plastic basket full of square beanbags off the porch and comes to stand about thirty feet from a wooden board on the lawn. It looks like a short ramp with a single hole at the end.
“Cornhole,” Charlotte intones to her enraptured audience, indicating the wooden ramp with a sweeping hand. “Sometimes there are two boards, but Miller cornhole is always played with one board. The idea is to toss your beanbag into the hole. The distance is set at twenty-seven feet. However, depending on the age of the player, we let them move a little closer, to be fair since they don’t have as long of a reach. Three points are awarded each time you get a beanbag in the hole. One point is awarded if your beanbag lands on the board. Zero points are awarded if your beanbag lands in the grass.”
She gives me a sly look out of the corner of her eye. “Also, if your beanbag lands on the board, but bounces off, falls off, or in any way is dislodged before your bags are tallied, it doesn’t count.”
I smirk because I see exactly where she’s going with this.
She waves the purple beanbag in her hand. “We play to twenty-one points. This is a team sport.”
Since I’m the biggest, train physically every day, and have the obvious advantage, I’ll take it easy on Charlotte. I don’t believe in throwing a game. Ever. Not even when playing against children or women more than half a foot shorter than I am, but I believe in fair play. The two youngest kids should be a reasonable handicap. “We don’t have even numbers. I choose Bronnie and Gabriel for my team.”
Bronnie wraps her arms around my thigh and looks up at me, her eyes shining with pride. “No one ever picked me first. I’m always last.”
Right there and then, I decide. It doesn’t matter what game we’re playing in the future. I’m picking Bronnie first for my team for the rest of her life.
I tug gently on her pigtail. “Are we going to kick butt?”
She steps back and throws those arms and legs again. “Oh, yeah.”
Charlotte looks at Henry with a smile. “It’s you and me, Henry.”
He smiles back at her. The children all had baths after smearing themselves in chocolate, then clambering over sand dunes and kicking around on the shoreline. He’s currently wearing khaki shorts and a long-sleeved white Oxford shirt. He unbuttons the cuffs and meticulously folds them up his forearms.
“One last thing. Smack talk is encouraged and interference is allowed, but you aren’t permitted to physically stop or touch a beanbag once it’s been released with any part of your own body. Tools, however, are permitted,” Charlotte says.
“And you aren’t ’llowed to hurt nobody,” Bronnie adds.
“Exactly,” Charlotte agrees. “Either of those gets you kicked to the sidelines. And what’s rule number one?” she asks Bronnie.
“You have to have fun!” Bronnie says authoritatively.
Does she expect us to play a game where mayhem is not only permitted, but encouraged? What’s the point if there aren’t strict parameters to ensure appropriate sportsmanship? “I don’t believe smack talk and interference are real rules, Charlotte.”
“When you’re playing with a Miller, they’re the only ones that count.” She winks.
I stay where I am as she makes her first toss and shows the kids how it’s done.
Bronnie chants, “Choke, choke, choke!!!”
Despite Bronnie’s directive, Charlotte does no such thing. Her beanbag lands directly in the hole. She swipes a hand over her head in fake slo-mo, shakes it out, then gives Henry a high five.
Henry looks both shocked and delighted by this surprising turn of events. The calculating look he sends my way would be terrifying if it weren’t so funny.
Bronnie goes next. She takes a purple beanbag and makes a running start for the closer line her mother made for her with a jump rope. She throws overhand, even as I yell, “Go, Bronnie! You can do it!”
Her mother yells, “Impossible! It can’t be done!”
Bronnie’s beanbag lands less than an inch from the hole, and she throws both arms in the air. “Point!”
There ’ s no way. She flailed that thing with zero rhyme or reason. She didn’t even aim. It has to be a lucky shot.
Charlotte seems to agree. “You got lucky!” she hollers in a heckling tone.
Bronnie makes a yapping motion with her hand and saunters back to the end of our line with a grin on her face.
Henry steps up, carefully lines up his shot, and tosses his bag. It lands six inches shy of the board. He narrows his eyes, chews his lip, then nods, and moves behind Charlotte with a thoughtful expression on his face.
Gabriel goes next.
“You can do it, Gabriel!” Bronnie cheers.
Gabriel barely makes it on the board. The beanbag hangs over the side and Bronnie shakes her head mournfully. “That point’s not sticking.”
Charlotte takes another turn and shouts, “Swish!” when her bag goes through the hole once more.
I reach for my purple beanbag.
Charlotte plasters herself against my back. I freeze. “What are you doing?”
She runs her fingers over my shoulders. “I’m helping you with your form.”
Her breasts press against me, and I turn to look at her with incredulous eyes. “I’m supposed to throw with you touching me?”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Are you asking me to stop?”
Fuck, no. I am not.
I push back against her a little just to hear her breathless giggle.
“I can handle your help.” I toss my beanbag.
She pats my ass where the kids can’t see just as I release the bag, and my shot flails wide.
I turn on her in mock-accusation. “ Charlotte .”
She gives me an innocent look. “You’ll get it in the hole next time.”
And then it’s on.
When Bronnie takes her turn, I pick her up and stretch her over the line. She screams, “Swish!”
Henry puts his hands on his hips. “That’s cheating!”
“Fair play. No one got hurt. No one touched the bag with their hands after Bronnie released it,” Charlotte says.
She whispers something to Henry. He runs his hand over his chin and contemplates her words with an approving nod.
His next shot makes it onto the board.
Bronnie giggles. “Boo! I’m knocking that off when I go!”
Charlotte takes a turn, and I slide up behind her, placing my hands on her hips. Just as she lifts her arm, I lean down to nuzzle her ear. “Put your back into it, sweetheart.”
Her bag lands on the edge of the board, inadvertently tipping Gabriel’s beanbag onto the grass.
She bites her lip and bats her eyelashes. “Oops.”
When it’s my turn, she gives Henry a boost onto my back. He hangs on with his legs as she holds him steady. Then Henry covers my eyes with a cackle of laughter.
“I see how it is,” I say.
Henry leans against the back of my head, nearly hysterical with giggles. “You can’t see anything.”
I reach around with one arm and give him a twist until he’s hanging upside down, his hands clinging to my calf. “Nice try.”
I hold him there with my left arm and toss. “Swish!” Then I flip him back up where he clings around my neck, laughing helplessly.
When I let him down, he reconvenes to discuss strategy with Charlotte.
I motion Bronnie and Gabriel in. “We need to up our game. What have you got?”
When the kids have made their suggestions, I offer my hand. Gabriel slaps his on top of the back of mine, then Bronnie sticks her little hand on top of ours. I count up. “One. Two. Three.”
In unison, we yell, “Kick butt!”
C harlotte laughs and turns her head to speak out of the corner of her mouth, “I can throw like this, Arden. I’ve been forged in the fires of cornhole hell.”
Bronnie sits on her shoulders with her arms wrapped around her mother’s forehead.
I stride to stand directly behind the cornhole board. “Hit it, Gabriel!”
Gabriel pushes play on the boombox, then he rushes to join me. When a techno pop song blasts through the speakers, Gabriel and I dance.
I don’t generally suck, but I’ve never put this much into it. Gabriel, predictably, is both enthusiastic and managing to stay on beat the entire time.
“Yeah, Gabe. You got the moves,” I say.
I dance my way closer to the board to be sure I’m in Charlotte’s line of sight.
We’ve never had fun like this. It’s a cliché, but it’s as though the boys and I were a jigsaw puzzle. We were missing two critical pieces to make a whole picture.
Charlotte chokes with laughter and bends at the waist, unable to stay upright and reaching up to hold on to Bronnie so she doesn’t lose her balance.
“Throw! Or can’t you handle all this?” I shout.
She firms her expression. I turn my back and shake my ass as she releases. Once more, Charlotte Miller shouts, “Swish.”
“ I can’t believe they won,” Bronnie laments.
Charlotte had only one bag that didn’t make it in the hole, and Henry is diabolical. He rigged up fishing line to his beanbags, threaded a pulley system through the cornhole, and dragged every toss unerringly to its destination.
Gabriel throws up his arms. “We need to get our own fishing line next time.”
The lawyer in me had nearly disputed Henry’s tactics. He cheated. Over and over, my brain balked at the strategies we used. This isn’t how we do things, and there are consequences for rule-breakers.
But the game was a hundred times better than if we’d played my version of what cornhole would have looked like with these kids. Henry and Charlotte had howled with glee at the first beanbag he dragged into the hole.
He was proud of himself for figuring out a way that worked within the parameters Charlotte provided. He’s as literal and as much of a stickler as I am.
But in Miller cornhole, interference is not only permitted; it’s encouraged. We made our own rules, according to our goals and values. The only reason for me to fight any of it would have been because I was an inflexible tight ass.
“I think,” Bronnie says, “it’s better to be on Henry’s team instead of against him.”