Chapter 1: The Mower Boy
The alarm on Davon Mitchell's phone buzzed at six fifteen, and for a second he lay still, listening to the house wake up. His grandmother Rose was already in the kitchen, her slippers shuffling across the linoleum, the kettle clicking as it boiled. Outside, the Georgia summer air pressed against the window screens, thick and warm even before sunrise had finished.
"Boy, you planning to sleep through your own Saturday?" Rose called, not unkindly.
Davon sat up and rubbed his eyes. "I'm up, Grandma. I'm up."
In the kitchen, Rose stood at the counter in her housecoat, pouring hot water over a tea bag and watching him with the look she wore when she was deciding whether he was telling the truth. She was sixty-eight, with bad knees that made her move carefully down the porch steps, and hands that had fed hundreds of schoolchildren when she worked as a cook. Now she fed one boy, and she did it with the same seriousness.
"You eat before you go," she said, sliding a bowl of cereal toward him. "That mower will not wait for a hungry stomach, and neither will Mr. Jackson."
Davon's grandmother knew the routine as well as he did. Every other Saturday, he mowed the fields at Riverbend Athletic Park for forty dollars. It was not glamorous work, but it was steady, and Earl Jackson, the groundskeeper, trusted him because he showed up on time and trimmed the edges properly instead of rushing past them. Forty dollars went into a jar on top of the refrigerator, and the jar was for school things, and shoes when his feet grew again, and whatever else Rose decided mattered more than candy.
After breakfast, Davon stepped out back with the thing that mattered most to him, though it cost nothing at all: a scuffed tennis ball, its yellow fuzz worn thin. The cinder-block wall behind the duplex bore a faded patch where he had thrown that ball ten thousand times. He did not count anymore. He just threw.
He stood about sixty feet back, as the library book described, and wound up slowly, the way its photographs showed. The ball smacked the wall and bounced back in a lazy arc. He caught it on the hop, reset his feet, and threw again, keeping his elbow up, his shoulders level, his follow-through long. When the ball sailed high, he adjusted. When it cut sideways off a seam, he noticed.
Rose watched from the back door for a moment, a dish towel over her shoulder. "You talk to that wall more than you talk to people," she said.
"It listens better," Davon said, grinning.
"Don't get smart with me, Davon Mitchell. You get that mower gas can and go."
He packed his work boots by the door, old and scuffed, the laces frayed at the ends. They were not cleats. They were not built for running bases or digging into a pitcher's mound. They were built for work, and Davon wore them for work. His mother, who worked nights as a nurse's aide in Atlanta and came home when she could, had bought them two sizes too big on purpose, so he could grow into them. Now he had, almost.
Earl Jackson picked him up in the park truck, which smelled of cut grass and gasoline. Earl drove with one elbow out the window.
"Hot one today," Earl said. "Got a showcase coming. Scouts and all."
"Which team?" Davon asked, trying not to sound too interested.
"Falcons," Earl said. "Travel ball. They play Field Two this afternoon."
Davon had heard of the Riverbend Falcons. Everybody at the park had. They were an elite fourteen-and-under team, with matching bags and helmets, and Davon had watched them from behind the fence more than once.
At the park, Earl handed him the mower and pointed at Field Three first. "Edges, Davon. Don't skip the edges."
"I never skip the edges," Davon said, and Earl snorted, because that was their joke, and it was also true.
The mower roared to life, and Davon pushed it in long, straight lines across the outfield grass. The morning sun climbed higher. Sweat gathered at the back of his neck and soaked through the collar of his T-shirt. He kept his lines even, overlapping each pass just a little, the way Earl had taught him. When he reached the fence at the edge of the field, he stopped, lifted the mower around, and looked through the chain-link toward Field Two.
Over there, the Falcons were arriving. Cars pulled into the lot. Boys in clean uniforms carried bags over their shoulders. A coach with a loud voice was already directing traffic. Davon watched for a moment, then went back to his lines, the mower humming beneath his hands.
Forty dollars. Edges done right. It was an ordinary Saturday morning, and Davon had no reason to think it would become anything else. He finished Field Three, wiped his forehead, and moved to the next field as the heat settled over Riverbend.