The Ball

FICTION

by Michael Beadle

The neighbor’s kids keep kicking this ball over the fence that divides our backyards. It’s one of those rubbery, flesh-colored kickballs with a slow leak, the kind you don’t mind leaving out in the rain. I’ve never actually seen when it goes sailing over the fence, but from my deck, I watch the kids kick around the ball in the dirt and patchy grass of their backyard.
        They moved in a few months ago. Young couple with a boy and a girl. The boy’s taller, but the girl does most of the talking, so I think she’s a little older. They have dark hair, dark eyes. Turkish or Greek. They call to each other with words I don’t know. The mother mostly stays inside while the father goes off to work. When he comes home in the evenings, if I’m in the front yard and he’s getting out of his car, I’ll wave. He returns a weary nod, like he’s lost something and spent the whole day looking for it, only to come home empty-handed. I wonder if he’d be upset if he knew his kids keep kicking their ball over the fence into my flower garden.
        Sometimes I think I’ll go over to their house, ring the front doorbell, and hand them their ball, all washed and clean and full of air. But I don’t have an air pump, and I worry they’ll think I’m just looking for a returned favor, some unspoken custom they’d feel compelled to follow. So instead, I toss the ball back over the fence. I do it again and again. Once when it snowed, I watched it roll to a rest in their backyard, paving a smooth trail like those stones in the desert that move when no one’s looking.