Escape Characters

Backyard

There they are. Balls. In my backyard. Trapped, it seems, by my fence, the barely functioning gate, held captive by some neighbor kid's fear of trespassing, fear of strangers. They sit there for a week before I notice them, one a red four-square model, one maybe a white and blue basketball. If somebody was missing them, I'd expect at some point I would have got a knock on my door. Some sheepish kid, asking to get them back. Or perhaps their parents, wondering what's keeping me from throwing them back over the fence. But the knock never comes. I never get a chance to explain that during this wonderful time of year I go to work in the dark and return in the dark, and so the backyard remains the black void outside my kitchen window, behind my television.

I see them while I'm making a lunch of rice, honey, and coffee. I wander outside in my summer jacket, exercise shorts, and Xtratufs (knee-high rubber fishing boots). I stand between the two prisoners, wondering at the direction they came. It hasn't snowed in a week or so, the snow should be disturbed so that the indentation caused by the ball should point the way to the fence I should throw them over. It isn't. Their trajectory would have had to be straight up, and then straight back down, no bouncing, nothing. I think this is unlikely, but I haven't thrown a lot of balls in the snow.

I look over the fence to the south. Then to the east and west. Nothing disturbed in their yards except the tracks left by east's overweight cats. Nothing to indicate children, play, or the source of the two balls. Instead, it would seem, they have just appeared, with nobody to claim them. I can't very well throw them into somebody else's yard without reason: that's like dumping your trash or your glass clippings over the fence for somebody else to deal with. I could let them languish in my garage until summer, slowly deflating, but that seems more like stealing them. I could come back out late at night, surreptitiously throw them over a random fence, escaping responsibility and consequence at the risk of the neighbor dogs taking notice. I walk over to see if maybe they have a name on them.

I pick one up, only to be confused further. Not only has the ball fallen to the ground without any horizontal direction, but it is frozen to the ground, such that when I pick it up, grass and dirt reluctantly come with it, like it has been sitting there since long before the ground froze. Now, I don't usually count myself as an observant person, but I've been traipsing around my backyard multiple times since the snow fell: repairing wind-damaged fence planks, shoveling the back deck, moving a dishwasher. They were simply not there before.

I wonder for a moment if the universe is trying to tell me something. I determine that it isn't. I throw the balls into my front yard. If somebody wants them, they can come take them.