Week 8 Prompt I

35. Three of them sitting there in complete silence.

I looked up from my homework, and saw what I always saw, the vending machines. They sat across from me. The sight of vending machines was not all that pleasing, though the sound was even worse, with people screaming and playing loud music in the lounge nearby.

***

I sat in the back corner of the library. The quiet was much more pleasing to me for doing homework. I did not feel bad for abandoning the vending machines.

***

I pulled my glove out of my bag and went out to play pass. It did not look like a safe place to me for playing baseball. It was a basketball gym with doors and things! Everywhere I looked there seemed to be doors or windows of glass, openly exposed to errant throws. Then I looked into the back corner. "Hello, you again."

***

The vending machines in the corner apparently were stored there for safety, which made no sense to me. After a while I just took all the breakable things for granted. So many people keeping drilling throws off of one of them made it a lot easier to take it for granted. As I did the players calling me Tomas, which led to a few calling me Tomahawk because they could not pronounce it.

***

"Here," the player said, "When he comes we'll go three way."

The other player came, and we threw three way for a bit. Having been using soft baseballs for fielding, the hard one for throwing stung my hand a little bit when I caught it. We had thrown for five minutes or so when my throw sailed a little bit on me. Unconcerned, we watched it skip, bounce off a table, and then hit the vending machine. But it hit a different one, with glass on the front. There was a quiet crack.

***

The three of us stood looking at it.

"Did it break?" one of them asked me.

"It looks like it," I replied.

The other player had already retrieved the ball, and someone else who happened to have been walking by who presumably worked at the gym had looked at it and gone off.

"Who threw that?" another player asked.

"It wasn't me," I said to him, with a smile. "No it was me," I corrected.

We went on throwing, though I had us move away from the vending machines eventually, as throwing at them was now making me uncomfortable. As we threw, every minute or so I heard the tinkle of more broken glass falling off.

I took the opinion that if it was broken, there certainly wasn't anything I could do about it.

***

I had assumed the coaches had noticed it, but when the director of the program came to look at it, the coach who was there was surprised by it. Up close, I could see what I had thought was a small crack was actually a gaping hole, and the hole door was shattered, like when a car hit another car head on and the windshield got demolished. The director said that it was to be expected with baseball in a gym, but that we should put a mat up over the vending machines next time. I apologized, but he said that it was fine. And the players got even more reason to call me Tomahawk.

***

Later in the practice I threw the ball, and it ricocheted off the first baseman's glove, almost behind the mat.

"Tomas, if you break another freaking vending machine," the coach said in a joking tone, "We're taking it out of your pocket. Or adding it to your tuition."

***

The next practice, we went to throw again.

"Coach, can we put the mat up?" I asked.

"Oh yes, we should," he assented. "Are you nervous you might hit one again?"

"I'm going to be scared of vending machines for the rest of my life," I replied.