First Cousins

Don­ald and I walked through Maupin’s apple orchard at noon on a hot sun­ny day in 1963.

“I can catch fish with my hands,” I said.

“No one can catch fish with his hands.”

“I can.”

“Bull­crap.”

We were first cousins. Don­ald was 14, short with a spare tire of baby fat he would car­ry through­out his life. Skin­ny and a head taller than Don­ald, I was 16.

We climbed over the orchard fence, walked into the woods, and worked our way down a steep slope to Moorman’s Riv­er. At the Skunk Hole, a fish­ing spot named for an unfor­tu­nate inci­dent involv­ing our fam­i­ly dog, I took off my shirt, shoes, and socks and climbed up on a big rock.

“This is ridicu­lous,” Don­ald scoffed. “Quit fool­ing around.”

From five feet above the water, I can­non-balled into the deep­est part of the Skunk Hole. The cold water braced me. I dove to the river’s floor, grabbed a big bot­tom-feed­er, pushed upward, broke through the sur­face, and waved the wrig­gling fish above my head.

Donald’s eyes bugged out. “Holy Crap!!!”

Show­ing off, I let that fish go, caught anoth­er, released it, and caught a third.

My fam­i­ly had moved to White Hall, Vir­ginia, a cou­ple years ear­li­er. Coun­try boys had taught me a few tricks. One of them was hand-fishing.

Hand-fish­ing requires no skill. Moun­tain streams are bot­tomed with riv­er rocks. The cur­rent wash­es away sand and silt, cre­at­ing lit­tle open spaces between some of them. When you dive in, fish scur­ry to the lit­tle caves to hide from preda­tors. If you place one hand over any exit hole and reach inside with the oth­er, the fish has nowhere to go. You get a good grip and pull it out.

Don­ald was a city boy. My coun­try-boy trick fooled him good. He stared at me wor­ship­ful­ly as we climbed the hill back to the par­son­age. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

I strung him along for about an hour before I clued him in. He was a good sport, and we laughed about it.

When we were lit­tle boys, Donald’s dad, my mom’s big broth­er, Kei­th, drove his fam­i­ly the 600 miles from Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, to Virginia’s tide­wa­ter area every sum­mer to vis­it my fam­i­ly for a few days.

Our way of life must have shocked Don­ald at first. His fam­i­ly lived in a sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood with city water, sewage sys­tems, and paved streets. Their neigh­bors were office work­ers and shop­keep­ers. All the ani­mals in his com­mu­ni­ty were domes­ti­cat­ed pets.

We lived on a sandy road in a clear­ing cut out of a pine for­est. We drew our water from a hand-dug well and did our busi­ness in a wood­en out­house. Our neigh­bor was a guy who lived in a rust­ed-out school bus, its wheel hubs propped up on blocks in a soy­bean field. Deer raid­ed our veg­etable gar­den, and black snakes slith­ered through the grass in our backyard.

Despite our cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences and the short amount of time we spent togeth­er, Don­ald and I became great friends. We climbed trees, swam in the York and James Rivers, caught crabs in tide­pools with hand nets, and, thanks to me, went nuts over baseball.

I was 8 years old when I got hooked on the Boston Red Sox. The Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors were the clos­est team to my area, but they stank. Uncle Kei­th lived near Boston and was crazy about the Red Sox, so I adopt­ed them as my team and Ted Williams as my favorite player.

Mom bought me a cou­ple packs of base­ball cards short­ly after that. This turned out to be a cost­ly mis­take on her part. Obsessed with try­ing to score a Ted Williams card, I forced her to spend $30,000 on 600,000 Topps 5‑cent-bub­blegum packs over the next cou­ple years. It was a hope­less quest. Topps print­ed almost no cards of good play­ers so that kids would blow all their par­ents’ mon­ey chas­ing the superstars.

I’d rip open each pack excit­ed­ly only to be dis­ap­point­ed by yet anoth­er pile of .200 hit­ters and 10.00 ERA pitch­ers, nev­er the good play­ers, and nev­er ever Ted Williams.

Then one hot sum­mer day, Mom bought me five packs at a gas sta­tion in Lee Hall. Rid­ing shot­gun in our Hud­son on the way home, I stuffed all the gum in my kiss­er and flipped through a stack of the usu­al worth­less bums, but when I broke the seal on the last wrap­per, I almost faint­ed. Mick­ey Man­tle, Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, and TWO of TED WILLIAMS! The sadists at the Topps fac­to­ry dumped all the future Hall-of-Famers into one blessed pack, and I hit the lottery!

I swal­lowed my bub­blegum. The fist-sized wad got hung up behind my Adam’s apple. Stran­gling to death, I coughed and gagged while caress­ing the two Ted Williams cards to make sure they were real.

“You all right?” Mom asked.

Clutch­ing my throat and heav­ing for air, I held my twin dream cards up to her and flashed a pur­ple-faced smile. “Teh …Wims,” I croaked.

She fran­ti­cal­ly pulled off the road and pound­ed me on the back until I pro­jec­tile-puked the dead­ly pink gob of gum onto the floor­board. When we got home, she went to the kitchen cab­i­net and downed a half-bot­tle of Dad’s nerve med­i­cine. Obliv­i­ous to my near-death expe­ri­ence, I bliss­ful­ly retreat­ed to my bed­room to pore over Ted Williams’ career stats on the back of my thank-you-Jesus Ted­dy-Ball­game doubles.

Donald’s fam­i­ly came to vis­it the fol­low­ing week. When I laid out my Topps cards on the bed­room floor, it became clear Don­ald didn’t know any­thing about base­ball. I spent all day teach­ing him about the game, the Red Sox, and the Splen­did Splin­ter. I sank the hook deep. By the end of the day, he was a crazed addict.

The next morn­ing, Uncle Kei­th took me aside. “You’ve accom­plished a mir­a­cle,” he said, his voice quiv­er­ing. “I’ve tried every­thing to get Don­ald inter­est­ed in base­ball. Noth­ing worked, but you’ve turned him into a Red Sox fan overnight. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

I knew exact­ly how he could repay me. “Take me to a Red Sox game,” I said.

The fol­low­ing sum­mer Uncle Kei­th insist­ed my fam­i­ly dri­ve to Prov­i­dence for the annu­al vis­it instead of their com­ing to us. He sent me the Red Sox sched­ule and told me to pick a date. Fig­ur­ing I’d nev­er see anoth­er big-league base­ball game dur­ing my child­hood, I chose a dou­ble­head­er against the Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors. “I under­stand the dou­ble­head­er,” Uncle Kei­th said, “but why the Sen­a­tors? Don’t you want to see the Red Sox play a good team?”

“No! I want to see the Red Sox win.”

On a hot as hell day in July, Uncle Kei­th, my dad, Don­ald, and I took our seats on the ground lev­el way down the third base line across from deep left field. In the first inning, when Ted Williams trot­ted out to stand in the shad­ow of the Green Mon­ster, Fenway’s tow­er­ing left-field wall, I was struck dumb. Don­ald could still talk, but bare­ly. “Jesus,” he said softly.

If you weren’t a lit­tle kid whacked out of his mind about see­ing your favorite team and play­er, that dou­ble­head­er was a mis­er­able expe­ri­ence. There was no shade over our seats, and it was a mug­gy 95 degrees. At the end of the first game, which the Red Sox won, Dad want­ed to go home. “We’ll get sun­stroke,” he said.

“I don’t care,” I said. Don­ald backed me up. We stayed.

Halfway through the sec­ond game, the Red Sox pulled Ted Williams and subbed in Gene Stephens. Uncle Kei­th begged me and Don­ald to give it up. With my face broiled beet-red and my shirt drenched in sweat, I was on the verge of cav­ing, but Don­ald said no. Uncle Kei­th got angry. He grabbed Donald’s arm and stood. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Eight-year-old Don­ald pulled his arm free and shook his fin­ger at his dad. “This is Kenny’s big day!” he shout­ed. “We’re stay­ing till it’s over!”

Uncle Kei­th looked at me for a long moment, then sat down. Dad almost cried.

In the top of the ninth inning, Jim­my Pier­sall climbed the cen­ter field wall to make the most spec­tac­u­lar catch I would ever wit­ness, rob­bing Roy Siev­ers of a game-win­ning home run and secur­ing my dream of the Red Sox win­ning both ends of the doubleheader.

When we got back to Donald’s house, I gave him one of my two Ted Williams cards. Over­whelmed with emo­tion, he hugged me.

My hand-fish­ing trick went down six years lat­er in 1963. That trip to White Hall was the last time Donald’s fam­i­ly came to vis­it us, and it was the last time Don­ald and I got together.

We grew up, mar­ried, set­tled on oppo­site coasts, and raised our own fam­i­lies. We didn’t keep in touch.

When Uncle Kei­th died in 2004, I called Don­ald. A forty-year estrange­ment, a big­ger wall than Fenway’s Green Mon­ster, stood between us. We had changed too much, and the new guys didn’t know each oth­er. Our con­ver­sa­tion was short and awk­ward. We nev­er spoke again.

Don­ald passed away in 2017.

Cindy and I have three chil­dren, two sons-in-law, a daugh­ter-in-law, and eight grand­chil­dren. Of that crew, about ten of us, includ­ing Cindy and me, have birth­days in June and July. This year we had one big birth­day cel­e­bra­tion last month for the Gemini/Cancer bunch, a cook-out and pool-par­ty at our house.

That Sun­day after­noon, I stood in the shal­low end of our pool, watch­ing four of our grand­chil­dren tak­ing turns can­non-balling off the jacuzzi wall into the deep end, about a five-foot jump. That long-ago day at the Skunk Hole came back to me. I thought about the Red Sox game and all the good times with Don­ald when we were kids.

Char­lotte, Riv­er, Logan, and Wyatt are first cousins. They live close to each oth­er and get togeth­er a lot. They have a spe­cial bond. It’s a great gift, I thought as I watched them. I hope they can keep it. I hope they don’t grow apart.

I got out of the pool and stood at the jacuzzi behind Wyatt. When he fin­ished his dive, I stepped up on the wall.

A 77-year-old loon leap­ing off a high wall into a pool is a shock­ing spec­ta­cle, I guess.

Char­lotte grabbed Riv­er. “Look! Papaw’s gonna jump!”

All eyes were on me.

I can­non-balled into the deep end. When I sur­faced, Char­lotte and the boys were laugh­ing and cheering.

I climbed out, got in line behind them, and wait­ed my turn.

I can­non-balled into the deep end three times. One for my grand­kids. One for me. And one for Donald.