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     Skeet Thurman stopped to watch two old men smoke Camel cigarettes, gulp black coffee out of ceramic mugs that someone had stamped “LAS VEGAS” on the sides of, and play dominoes on the surface of the rickety, coffee-stained table that wobbled unmercifully in front of the window that opened onto the creaky porch of The Martinez Meat Market. The pick-up ballgame behind the high school could wait. True, Skeet had his glove, the Rawlings four-finger dandy his grandfather had bought for him at the Walmart in Ft. Stockton, but whether or not the other boys would allow him to play was hit or miss, at best.

     Skeet was careful to maintain a safe distance between himself and the ornery old timers; he wasn’t up to getting grumbled at for disrupting their game, not after all that he’d been through the past month. He couldn’t take being griped at, not today. He just couldn’t. Like most old men, the two domino adversaries could be real grouches. Skeet had already received more than his share of grief, from his mother, until a month ago, and from some of the older kids at school. He didn’t need to be crabbed at when he was doing nothing more than minding his own business.

     The store’s swamp cooler spit enough cool air onto the porch to make sitting outside in the shade, beneath the over-hanging roof, almost bearable. It was a spot Skeet felt he owned, the same table he sat at when he watched the noisy, dust-raising semis speed through town on State Highway 1129. There wasn’t much else to do in Dos Pesos, Texas, now that school was out for the summer and his best friend, Antonio Saenz, had gone out of town with his parents.  

     The eleven-year-old knew that if he stood beside the door of the butcher’s shop long enough, Mr. Ramon Martinez, the owner, might bring him an empanada. More often than not, the mustached butcher, a broad-chested Mexican Skeet’s grandfather called every cuss word in the book, took pity on him and did just that. Usually, apricot. Sometimes, pumpkin. Skeet preferred apricot, but he knew better than to ask. He’d been raised to take whatever was offered and say thank you. If Mrs. Martinez was in the store it was better not to linger; the sharp-tongued woman wasn’t as generous as her husband. She seemed to have it in for Skeet, perhaps for all children, other than her own, now grown, married and off in Austin or Dallas or wherever.

     He figured that his cantankerous grandfather was wrong about Mr. Martinez, as he was about too many things. The crusty old man was a notorious crank, but to Skeet he’d been nothing but kind. Not as smart as the other boys at school—something to do with not getting enough oxygen when he was born because of a cord of some sort—Skeet knew enough to realize that his grandpa was a far cry from the most popular man in Contreras County; the old man was seen by most folks as nothing more than an old grump.

     The hobbled-up retired railyard switchman, Skeet’s mother’s father, didn’t much give a damn about anyone when you came right down to it, especially Mexicans, and he didn’t want his only grandchild having anything to do with brown-skinned people—in particular, the butcher, Ramon Martinez. But, anymore, just about everyone in Dos Pesos was Mexican. There were only two white kids in his grade at school…and they were both girls. If Skeet wanted a friend, that friend would have to be a Mexican.

     “Then find one that don’t look so Mexican,” his grandfather scolded when Skeet informed the bilious man that there weren’t that many Anglos at his school. A white friend would be close to impossible to come by. “Then, goddamn it, just find one that don’t talk Mexican.”

     When Antonio, one of the few kids in school willing to play with Skeet, came to the two-bedroom, clapboard shack his grandfather had built years ago, little more than a shanty the old man had slapped together for himself and Skeet’s mother, before she up and got pregnant by some “son of a bitch,” the phantom father Skeet had never met, his grandfather seemed to genuinely enjoy teasing the round-eyed Tony about this and that. He liked the kid. And Tony liked him. Never mind that Antonio was Mexican.

     Not once did the ill-tempered old man utter so much as a crack about Antonio being what he was. Tony, the quietest kid in school, thought the old man was funny. Skeet worried that his grandpa would let slip one of his invectives aimed at the likes of Tony and his family, but so far, thank God, he’d held his tongue. To Skeet’s astonishment the old man seemed to take delight in having Antonio around. He fixed the two boys peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for lunch along with a coke and potato chips, a rare treat in the Thurman household.  

     Skeet didn’t understand the game the old timers played, the white tiles with mysterious black dots placed hither and yon in lines that looked like a tree with stiff branches, the two men grunting and groaning over every move. Each man studied the dominoes balanced on edge in front of him like a general stews over his troops in the heat of battle, as well as the layout of flat tiles on the table, while each of the eighty-somethings slowly ran his fingers through the stubble of gray whiskers on his leathered, wind-blistered cheeks and glared skeptically into the squinty eyes of his opponent.

     Skeet was enraptured by the two experts; he delighted in silence when one of the old timers bumped the table and knocked the painstakingly-balanced dominoes over. How, he wondered, could anyone cuss like these two? Only his grandpa cussed better. Skeet had practiced swearing at home when his grandpa was out of the house, but the words didn’t carry the same intensity that they did when an old man grunted them. A few cuss words, Skeet could understand, but too many puzzled him, the ones about what men and women do when they’re alone, the sort of mysterious matters kids at school snickered about when they were safely out of earshot of the teachers.

     “Son,” said Mr. Ochoa, the thin, hunched-over contestant whose lenses in his wire-framed glasses were every bit as thick as the windows at Milam Elementary School, where Skeet had two weeks earlier completed fifth grade. “Don’t you get bored watching old men play such a slow-ass game?”

     Skeet shook his head. His long black hair fell across his forehead.  

     “Nacho, leave the kid alone. He ain’t botherin’ no one. You’d be better to worry ‘bout your sorry ass losing another game to me.” Mr. Walker, the round-faced opponent, smiled at Skeet and winked. The lines around his eyes were as deep as the trench the cable company had dug down the only paved street in town, the state highway, last winter. “How’s your grandpa doin’, Skeet? I ain’t seen Seth ‘round town lately.”

Skeet shrugged. He wasn’t one to talk to adults, especially old people, except his grandpa who wasn’t all that old. Not as old as these two. His grandfather, when he limped around town, just looked ancient.

     The boy tended to become rattled too quickly, even tongue tied, when he was flustered. Talking had never been easy. Though he wasn’t a stutterer, not as bad as one boy in his class, Skeet got his nickname from his problems with speech. His mother told him that when he was learning to talk, at about two, he couldn’t say the word mosquito or the word mesquite. He could only say “skeet” and point at the pesky insects or at the bush that seemed to grow at will around Dos Pesos. To this day, in the back of his mind, he half believed that mosquitos lived in the mesquite bushes. His given name, Seth—after his grandfather—had been forgotten by most everyone; even teachers called him Skeet. He printed his same Skeet.

     Mr. Walker slowly shook his head. Beads of sweat dotted his hairless pink scalp. “I’m really sorry about your mom, Skeet. Esther was a fine woman.”

     A lump the size of his fist caught in Skeet’s throat. He nodded and sniffled. He didn’t want to cry in front of these old guys, he’d blubbered enough at home; it was time to get over it and move on, or so his grandfather had told him. Yet, he couldn’t get over it. Not so soon after his mother, his only confidant, had been buried in the sand and caliche in the cemetery south of town. Cancer. Undiagnosed, until it was too late. At least, that’s what the doctor had told his grandpa.

    An empanada, apricot, in one hand, a can of Dr. Pepper in the other, both courtesy of Mr. Martinez, Skeet kicked at stones as he walked up dusty Rivera Street toward the high school where some of the older boys played baseball every afternoon. Sometimes they let him shag flies in the outfield, if there weren’t enough fielders available. He’d never been given a turn at the plate. That would come, he guessed, when he became a teenager.

     “We don’t need any punk-ass halfwits botherin’ us today,” shouted Ricky Lopez from second base when Skeet stood in anticipation, arms folded, grinning ear to ear, behind home plate.

     None of the other boys, all teenagers who from time to time made fun of Skeet, said anything, but Kent Wardlow at first base laughed and raised his middle finger toward the chain-link backstop where Skeet stood, glove-ready, waiting his turn to take over in right field.

     His grandfather was in the living room, smoking a cigarette, Camel, of course, drinking a glass of iced tea, dozing, lit cigarette in hand, in front of the television. The curtains drawn, the room dark, like the gloomy room at the funeral home in Ft. Stockton where, just four weeks ago, Skeet and the old man had sat alone in the hope, and at the same time, the dread, that someone might show up and offer their condolences, the boy tried not to wake the old man returned from the ballpark.

     On that dreary night, one month earlier, only one person had bothered to make the seventy-mile drive to Ft. Stockton. For two hours, the two mourners, the grandfather, in the same suit he’d been married in, and the grandson, in a white shirt and a blue tie, sat like witnesses to an execution, until one consoler, Mr. Martinez, of all people, quietly stepped into the eerie room. Upon noticing the butcher’s arrival, Skeet’s grandfather stood, then limped noisily out of the ornately-furnished tomb without so much as a word to the man. The butcher didn’t stay long, just long enough to muss Skeet’s hair with his large hand and stand over the boy’s mother’s coffin for no more than a minute.      

     “What the hell are you doin’ home?” asked the old man once Skeet had shut the front door and plopped himself onto the recently reupholstered sofa. “I thought you were goin’ to play ball.”

     Skeet shook his head.

     “Those bastards wouldn’t let you play?”

     The boy looked down at his dusty sneakers. He couldn’t rat on the other boys. Even if they were jerks.

     “Tell me what happened, goddamn it.” His grandfather clicked the TV set off with the complicated remote Skeet wasn’t allowed to touch. The one time he’d used the device it took his grandfather two hours to unscramble whatever Skeet had entered by pushing the wrong buttons.

     “One of the boys told me that they didn’t want me botherin’ them today,” sniffled Skeet. “He called me a halfwit.”

     His grandfather sat up in his ratty, stained-with-cigarette-burns, recliner.

     “What asshole said that?” demanded the old man. He now teetered on his good leg. His bad leg, the left one, the one that got caught between two boxcars eighteen years ago, could barely hold any weight, let alone the old man’s two-hundred-and-thirty pounds. Though he needed support, the stubborn old goat refused to use a cane. He preferred hobbling obstinately wherever he went.

     “It was just one of the boys.”

     “Goddamn it, tell me who it was.”

     Skeet sighed. “Ricky Lopez.” He watched his grandfather. The man had never hit him. Never even spanked him. But who knows? There’s always a first time for everything. His mother had let him have it from time to time, but not once had the old man so much as laid a hand on him. Yet, it was the switchman Skeet feared more than anyone. When his grandpa was riled he let everyone know it. And pissed he was at this moment. Skeet could see the storm in his eyes.

     The old man, his gray hair disheveled, his face bristled with a two-day growth of whiskers, stared at Skeet. Finally, he snarled, “If your mother hadn’t gone and got herself knocked up by that son of a bitch, we’d be out of this hellhole of a town.”

     Skeet had heard this complaint a thousand times. His mother must’ve heard it a million. It made no sense, even to Skeet. If his mother hadn’t gotten “knocked up” at twenty years old, he wouldn’t be here.

     Skeet was embarrassed, but at the same time pleased, that it was Ricky Lopez who was the first to spot the old man tottering toward the backstop with his “halfwit” grandson two steps behind him. It was as if the second baseman had been expecting them.

 “Ricky Lopez,” shouted his grandfather, “get your ass over here right now.”

     “I didn’t do nothin’,” Ricky whined. The boy looked to the other boys for support; the others remained frozen in place, stoop-shouldered and wide-eyed. Slowly, like a condemned man, the skinny kid trudged toward his accuser and avenger.

     “From what I been told, you done plenty.” Skeet’s grandfather leaned against a metal post behind the backstop.

     “We didn’t need another player. That’s all.” Ricky, now fewer than five feet away, on the other side of the chain-link screen, had stopped in his tracks and propped his fielder’s glove on his hip.

     “Didn’t you call my grandson a name?”

     Ricky looked around. All of his friends had backed up a step or two, ready to skedaddle, if need be.

     “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

     “Just who the hell do you think you are?” The old man shouted. His beady eyes bore into the slumping boy. “I know your father. Frank Lopez is a good man. I don’t think he’d much care for me havin’ to call him to tell him that his son’s a goddamned bully that picks on boys a lot younger than him.” He paused. “Skeet’s plenty smart ‘nough to know better than to call someone names. Who’s the real halfwit? Apparently you ain’t all that bright.”

     The boy shuffled his Nikes in the dirt. He looked straight into the old man’s face and blurted, “My father says you hate Mexicans. That ain’t very smart.”

Skeet’s grandfather laughed. “I don’t hate Mexicans. I got nothin’ against ‘em. What I hate is stupid people…mean and ignorant fuckups. And you, young man, seem to fit that bill.”

     “That sounds to me like you’re calling me names,” scoffed Ricky.

     “I ain’t callin’ you no names. I’m just callin’ ‘em like I see ‘em.”

     “Everyone in town knows you hate Mr. Martinez. Cause he’s a Mexican.” The boy stuck his bony chest out, unconvincingly.  

     “What goes on between Ramon Martinez and me ain’t got nothin’ to do with him bein’ a Mexican. That’s between him and me. And it ain’t none of your goddamned business.”

     “That’s what you say,” said the cocky fourteen-year-old. “But everyone knows that you hate all of us. And we know Skeet’s in that special class at school. The goofy, dumb-kid class.”

      Skeet watched his grandfather. The switchman’s still-agile fingers tightened into a fist in each hand. Slowly he unclenched them. He glared at Ricky like he did at Skeet whenever Skeet was foolish enough to talk back. “What I hate is meanness.” The old man exhaled. “That, and any son of a bitch that cheats on his wife with ‘nother woman, a woman half his age, then he goes and gets that woman knocked up, and refuses to acknowledge his own kid. Then folks traipse in and outta his meat market like he’s some sort of a god. All because he’s on the fuckin’ city council.” He looked at Skeet and gritted his yellowed teeth. “And what my grandson does in school ain’t none of your goddamned business.”

“We weren’t bein’ mean, Mr. Thurman. We just didn’t need another player. And Skeet ain’t too good anyway.”

     Skeet’s grandpa stared at the boy through narrow slits that had strangely replaced the man’s bugeyes. Skeet had seen that look enough to know the old man wasn’t finished with his onslaught. He had a lot more to say.

     After a long stare down, the old man said, “Look at Skeet, Ricky. God damn it, look at him. Get a good look.” He paused. “Don’t he look Mexican to you? Take another look at him. How the hell can you tell me that I hate Mexicans when my own grandson’s one. Just what kind of fool do you take me for?”

     The teenager looked at Skeet then back at his grandfather. “I never thought about it,” said Ricky.

      “You never thought ‘bout it,” chided Skeet’s grandpa. “You never noticed that Skeet looks a helluva lot more like you than me?”

     Skeet blushed. Never, not once, had his grandfather ever said anything about what was obvious. To him. To everyone. Neither had his mother ever talked about it, herself dark-skinned, though not as brown as Skeet. He stared at the old man.

     “I’m sorry,” mumbled Ricky. “Next time we’ll let him play.”

     “You bet you will.” His grandfather harrumphed, then turned and limped back toward his clunky pickup truck.

Ricky looked at Skeet. He shrugged, then trotted back toward second base. Not one of the boys said a word to him.

     Something huge had happened. Skeet knew it, but he didn’t quite understand what it all meant. Was he going to get to play, or not?