STORY: ‘The Size of a Grapefruit’

Vern’s daughter had played softball in high school and been quite a star.

Baseball had been her passion, though, and she’d never been able to play it. Back then it had been a boy’s game, which had angered her no end.

So girls can’t hit a ball unless it’s the size of a grapefruit, she’d say.

He’d got her a baseball but that hadn’t helped. She’d bunt it to him in the backyard and talk about how she was going to go to America and join a team, play in the women’s league.

Then one day she hit the ball clean out of the yard, into the bushes and blackberries next-door. Search as they might they couldn’t find it.

Not long after that everything went wrong. They found out she was pregnant, that her coach had been having his way with her.

The coach was a boy himself – he played softball and baseball – so it wasn’t as bad as it sounded at first. They got married and their kid joined the air force as an apprentice.

That was the last Vern saw of his daughter for a bit.

And they never found the ball.

(Photo by Denley Photography on Unsplash)