Chapter 12
Pete
So spending Sunday afternoon with Baxley and Zoe was fun. And, it made me less apprehensive about what in the world I am going to do with a ten-year-old.
I kept wondering if I was going to have to babysit her, but I am pretty sure now that isn’t the case.
The morning isn’t bad. I just stand around while she is upstairs getting ready, and then when she moves into the kitchen, I do too.
The housekeeper, Glenda, is really sweet, and made me crepes for breakfast as well.
crepes are not my favorite, but I haven’t had anything to eat, and they go down real good with the coffee that she made. It is the best coffee I’ve ever had. Probably some kind of expensive French kind of coffee, but whatever it is, I appreciate it.
Then, I kinda sit around twiddling my thumbs, unsure of what I should do for the entire day. I consider going to the diner where Zoe said she was a waitress. That’s what I really want to do. But I know I probably should spend some time on the farm. Actually, this whole month, I will have every day there is school to spend almost eight hours working on the farm. Goodness knows there are plenty of things for me to catch up on, so, after I drop Baxley off, I head straight to the farm.
Aunt Arley is very happy to see me, I get a good bit done, and get a good lunch to boot.
If this keeps up, I am going to gain weight like crazy while I am off.
I heard that Kylie had a safe trip to the airport and her plane was in the sky. Of course, they wouldn’t know for sure whether she actually made it for a few hours. I don’t even know how long it takes to fly to France. I’ve never flown anywhere.
Nor do I want to. Not that I’m afraid of flying, I’m just very content where I’m at. I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing the country a little bit, but I need to have a travel companion that I like well enough to want to spend days on end traveling with them. Traveling can be... Hair-raising, to say the least.
Anyway, when I get back from the farm, I shower and head back to the school, getting there fifteen minutes before it lets out.
I have to admit, I thought about Zoe all day. I don’t know what she thinks of me, and I kind of want to find out. But I have five hours before I can.
I’m just putting in time with Baxley, then something happens that makes me think that maybe this month with Baxley isn’t going to be too bad.
“How was school?” I ask her, thinking that is what the adult is supposed to say when a kid gets in their car after leaving the school building.
“Boring,” Baxley says, sounding as depressed as I always felt when I left the building. I know that some kids love school, and good for them. I wasn’t one of them. It looks to me like Baxley is the same, which is kind of surprising, because she seems like the type that would. She is quiet, and an only child, and just has the kind of personality that probably makes her good in the classroom, although that is pure speculation on my part.
“That’s too bad,” I say, feeling sad that kids had to waste their childhood going somewhere they hate.
I think I could have learned everything I learned in school in about six months of intensive training when I was eighteen.
I think I would have been pretty happy roaming the woods until I was seventeen and a half, had that six months of intensive training, and then be ready to face adulthood.
Maybe that’s just wishful thinking, but it feels like somewhere, someone needs to do a study, to see if kids thrive just as well growing up pretty much feral, until they are almost adults, when we can take them and cram everything in their heads instead of spending thirteen slow years killing them while we slow drip it to them.
“What do you do for fun at home?” I ask, feeling like we have exhausted the school subject with the two sentence exchanges that we had.
“Do you play ping-pong?” she asks me, instead of answering my question.
“I’m pretty good at it,” I say, trying to be modest, but I’m pretty sure I failed. Still, my words are true. I am somewhat of an expert at ping-pong. I played it at the police academy, and in the military too. I can never sit still very long, and sometimes you can’t get up and just go wherever you want to. But almost every place had a ping-pong table and pool table. I never really did get good at pool. It was too much standing around and studying stuff. But ping-pong, yeah. I am good.
“Really? You want to play?”
“You guys have a ping-pong table?” I ask, thinking that her mother would flip her brisket if I took the kid to a pool hall, where they have a ping-pong table along the side. Nobody ever uses it, although every once in a while I get my buddies to play. Leo is good for a game, and sometimes Cal will even do one or two. Cal is a little better, but I beat their butts, and nobody likes to lose all the time.
I decide that I’m not going to rub it into Baxley, or trash talk anything. She might change her mind.
“We do. Down in the basement. We have a pool table too, but I don’t really like that.”
“I play pool, but I don’t really like it either,” I say, thinking maybe I have more in common with Baxley than I thought.
“Then, we can play ping pong when we get home?”
“Okay,” I say, knowing that my job doesn’t mean I have to play with her, but I’m down for wading in the creek and playing ping pong. But if she wants to break out fingernail polish, this dudes out. Or, I can’t exactly leave, but you know what I mean.
We get home, and she talks to Mrs. Fowler for a couple of minutes while the housekeeper offers us little sandwiches, and I think they have cucumbers in them. I preferred the crepes from this morning, but she offers me coffee to go along with it, and I take that eagerly.
I usually don’t drink coffee too much after six o’clock, unless I’m on duty.
I like to be able to go to sleep pretty easily at night, and coffee makes my brain not want to shut off.
I read somewhere that people who have ADHD actually get calmed down by stimulants. I decided that at that point that I didn’t have it, because caffeine makes me feel wired.
Anyway, Baxley and I make our way down to the basement, and not only is there a ping-pong table and pool table, but there’s foosball, and a couple arcade games. The old-fashioned kind that you might have seen in a bar fifty years ago.
There’s a big screen TV, and a couple of chairs that look like theater chairs in front of it. Maybe six of them.
It’s like the rich person’s rec room. I don’t know why I am surprised. I should have expected it.
Baxley walks over to a pocket hooked to the wall, where she reaches in and pulls out two ping-pong paddles and a ball.
“Would you like to choose your side?” she asks, and I get an inkling that perhaps she’s better than I thought she is. Perhaps I’m coming into this a little overconfident. Perhaps... Perhaps she is better than I am.
I’m not sure where I get that premonition, but it is pretty accurate. I don’t know that I would say she is better exactly, but as a player, she’s definitely better than my buddies. She’s probably the best person I’ve ever played with.
After the first game, which I beat her by one point, I held the ball and said, “How did you get to be so good?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I guess I always had a knack for it, but when no one’s around and I want to play, I turn the table so that one end is against the wall, and I play that way.”
“By yourself?” I say, impressed. I guess I have done that a few times, but there was almost always someone who would do a few games with me, and then I would end up hitting it against the wall until I got tired of that, which didn’t take very long.
“Another game?” I ask.
Her eyes brighten. “Yes!” And I think she feels about the same way I do. That it is fun to finally have a worthy opponent. Although, if she’s this good at ten years old, she’s gonna do circles around me by the time she’s my age. But I don’t say that. Maybe playing against her will help me get better. But she has youth on her side. Multiple times over the past few years I’ve felt my age catching up with me. Not that I’m that old. Mid thirties isn’t old at all, but... I have lost a few steps. I’ll say that. And, I’m going to need to double my efforts at the gym, or I’m going to gain weight too.
But, Bexley is a much better ping-pong player than I ever was. That’s my take away after three games. She beat me by one point in the second game, then I beat her by three in the third game.
We’re getting ready to start the fourth when the housekeeper calls down the steps and tells us that supper is ready.
I am pretty happy about that, because that cucumber sandwich thing hadn’t done anything toward alleviating my hunger. It just made me a little bit sick in the stomach, but I am not going to complain. I don’t recall anyone saying that they were going to feed me, but they seem like they are expecting that, and I certainly am not going to argue.