Lilith drinks and drives

"Journey, did you have your first drink yet?" I said, teasing the young man in the cemetery who'd just turned 21. One of his co-workers looked at me as if I meant it. Said he hated when he was carded, especially after he left the card in his car. "Maybe you look very mature for your age." He laughed and said a guy a year younger than him in high school had had a full beard and was over 6 feet. Could throw a baseball 92 miles an hour. The Diamondbacks came to his school--it was a big deal--because they wanted to draft him. I gathered that nothing had come of it, wondered if he'd hurt his arm. "No, partying." What's become of him? "Probably nothing." The guy who hates being carded was sad that his friend hadn't made the major leagues.

 

On our way up the hill, another worker zoomed over in his John Deere vehicle to tell me his father took him to Cardinals games in San Diego when he was a kid. 1972. I told him about my dad taking me to see a game in 1971, where Vida Blue pitched. "He was really good for a while." I asked if I could take his picture. "No!" he said as he zoomed off in the green cart.

 

We ran into Raschelle and talked story about all the people we meet in the cemetery. (She'd tried to take his photo once, too.) Did you know, she asked, that the mortician used to be a paramedic? Lived on the east coast, back in the day, and already so many gunshot wounds. At least the dead aren't stressful, I surmised.

 

The second time we saw Raschelle on the big hill where Lilith sniffs out mongooses, I told her I had a grammar question. She's in a JW Pidgin language group that sends out flyers. For some reason, they come to my husband, his address and name handwritten. The one flyer read "Jesus had make" (makay = died, dead); isn't it actually "wen make," I asked. We'd spent a long time that day going "had--wen," "wen--had." She thought it was an interesting question, but I still don't know.

 

Lilith almost got a chicken on the other side of the shopping area, just as we ran into another walker. She's under the couch now, while her person awaits news of indictments and baseball trades.