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The Can Collector
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This unpublished
"extra" is available exclusively online. All ideas expressed
via RACQUETBALL Online [www.racqmag.com] are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official
position of the USRA. |
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My mother told me that tennis lessons were going to be too expensive. Racquetball was a cheaper sport and that’s what we could afford. The racquet she bought me looked close enough to a tennis racquet, except that the handle was short. I gripped it, twirled it, and convinced myself that a tennis racquet would be too big and clumsy for a kid my size anyway. My first lesson proved to be a success when I hit the ball fast and low on the wall. My coach screamed, “that’s the way Rosie!” Her enthusiasm became my own and soon enough I was on the racquetball courts everyday. I practiced alone most of the time and occasionally I saw another girl, who looked about my age and stature, walk to the opposite end of the courts with her sports bag thrown naturally over her shoulder. She smacked the ball and it echoed like crackling thunder to my end of the club. I was curious about this girl and after several weeks, I began watching her practice. I climbed up the stairs that lead to the top of the courts and walked to the dead end side of the club where she always played. My tiny eyes and forehead peeped down at her from a corner of her court while I ate my lunch. After two weeks, the girl turned her head up at me and yelled, “Do you want to play or what, I’m getting sick of this!” Her eyebrows were furrowed and her intimidating voice was enough to win me over for good. I walked back down the stairs and began letting Alice beat me at racquetball everyday. In my eyes, we were friends. Every morning, I walked to the dead end side of the courts and met her. I learned different techniques by playing with her. Serves, ceiling balls, cross court and down the line kills. We both had a competitive nature and took the sport seriously. Mid afternoon, I went to the snack bar by the tennis courts and ordered my usual ham sandwich. I really wanted to buy “The Club’s Club,” but a ham sandwich was all I could afford. My mother gave me three dollars every morning and this didn’t allow for much choice. By the time I returned to the cold, air-conditioned courts, Alice claimed to have already eaten her bag lunch. I thought nothing of it and watched her practice while I ate. Our days were long, and Alice started taking us to the small arcade located by the locker rooms. She took my three dollars, and we played video games with it. I was concerned about what I would do for food, but she snapped at me, “Don’t worry about it. We can go down to the snack bar and have crackers for free.” That’s what we did. Together, we ate dozens of crackers and formed great, big mounds of clear plastic wrappers on our picnic table. “Go up to the cook and ask him for some pickles,” she commanded. I looked at her curiously, got up, and did what she told me. The cook handed me the pickles over the counter. By the second month of summer, my routine became having Alice beat me at racquetball, handing Alice over my money, and eating crackers and pickles with Alice for lunch. Fridays, though, were special days. Fried mushrooms. She crunched on the greasy fried batter from the mushrooms like potato chips. I got the slimy remains. Once while we were at the snack bar, Alice told me that she collected cans around her neighborhood and thought it would be a good idea if we started collecting them together too. “At the end of the day there’s plenty of cans near the tennis courts,” she said. She pulled a folded garbage bag out from under the table and shook it open like a bird flapping its wings. We circulated around the tennis courts. I was left-handed, Alice right. This worked out perfectly so that we could exchange one of our old, stiffened racquetball gloves while picking through the wire bins. I was somewhat embarrassed by what the tennis players would think. “Who cares, we’re ghosts to them,” Alice growled, “I hate those stupid tennis players anyway, dressed all in white, they think they’re so much better than us.” How could they feel superior to us if we were ghosts? I didn’t challenge Alice’s remark, but continued following her around the clay courts to the next trash bin. She began having grander ideas about can collecting, and we started working the trash barrels by the snack bar. I lifted the metal top off and turned my head in the other direction to avoid getting a big whiff of stench up my nose. Alice stuck her skinny arms into the container and sifted through the half eaten food until she located what she wanted. When her own bag was full, she said to me, “I’ll be back soon.” She left the club with the rattling bag hung over her shoulder. I never knew where she disappeared to or how much money she made. I never saw any of it. I was just her helper. Alice actually never came back to the club at the end of the day like she claimed she would, but I always found her at the dead end side of the racquetball courts the following morning. One time, she took me to the outskirts of the club. We walked down a small dirt road, and I soon saw what she was after. About one hundred feet ahead of us were two massive garbage reservoirs. My eyes widened and moved from the sight of the black blobs in the distance back to Alice. Back and forth my eyes went until I began feeling dizzy. “Where are we going?” I asked. My voice was feeble and my words thinned into nothing. Alice kept walking. We stood at the base of the receptacles while looking up to where a dark line crossed the sky that lead down to a place I didn’t want to go. “I’ll jump inside and you can sit on the edge. I’ll hand you the cans and you put them in this bag.” She handed me her bag and then jumped up and grabbed the rim. She heaved her dangling legs over and called to me from the other side, “Come on Rosie, jump up!” I obeyed. Alice ripped open all the garbage bags she could get her spider-like fingers on. I sat on the edge of the receptacle, the frontier of two worlds, and Alice handed me up aluminum cans from one of them. I dropped each and every one into her bag until it was full. Then I opened a new bag and did the same thing while sitting on the edge of the other receptacle. When Alice had had enough, we jumped back out. “I’ll be back,” she said. I knew that I would not see her till the next morning, but nodded “okay.” That was the first and last time we took on this project. I think the job overwhelmed Alice just as much as it did me. It was the last month of summer, and Alice told me that she’d decided to quit playing racquetball. She never gave me a reason and I was never one to ask her too many questions. She turned her back to me and walked away. That was the last time I saw her. I practiced alone in my original court at the front of the club but no longer heard the sound of crackling thunder from the other side. I pounded the blue, rubber ball against the wall until the strings on my racquet broke, and then I stuffed my equipment back in my bag and walked outside the club where I made a left and then another left which led me to the dirt road Alice had introduced me to. The two containers were getting closer. Rusty, black metal towered over me. I unzipped my bag and chucked my racquet over the edge. I chucked my balls over the edge, and then I did the same thing with my gloves and then the empty bag went over too. It was late in the afternoon when my mother picked me up at the front of the club. She was waiting for me in the old station wagon just as usual. I jumped in the car, held my mother’s hand, and we drove away.  Hannah Spector teaches freshman writing at Emerson College, in Boston, Massachusetts, where she is completing a Masters Program in creative writing. She has previously published fiction in “Scriptorium,” a Harvard Writer’s Journal and is currently working on her first novel. One of her proudest achievements was winning a Junior Nationals racquetball title, in 14 and under doubles.
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