My Cicada Killer

I’m ten and Luke is five. We use trashcan lids to shield our bodies, broken brooms and sun bleached branches for swords. Back and forth we fight beneath the orange trees, overripe fruit draws rats at night and wasps during the day. Luke spins, shifts his shield to his back and blocks a downward cut from my katana, he stabs upward. I shift back, duck beneath a low hanging branch full of thorns. Luke jumps after me, he throws his shield in front of him covering fallen fruit and rolls over it. I swing down.

Ten years later.
We run.
We cross fallen trees that span streams of clear cold water. It’s a game of tag and no one is ever it, we simply run because the air fills our lungs and the sun breaks through the canopy. We run because we have legs. Two trees are growing together. They look the same age, seeds fallen from the same tree half a century ago. Luke runs straight at them, veers slightly to the left tree, jumps with one foot he kicks the trunk and twists around to reach the lowest hanging branch on the right tree. He swings up and scales the oak until the branches will not bear his lithe form. I can jump higher than him, I don’t need fancy acrobatics. We peak through leaves at blue sky, it is so close now.

The smell of sticky fruit fills the air. Luke sees my branch swinging down, he slides to the right, his thrust is blocked harmlessly by my shield. We circle each other in the shade of our citrus trees. Luke charges, he flicks his long slender branch, there is an audible crunch of the cicada killer that he just dispatched. Cicada killers are hornets on steroids. They are large, black with red trim, but unlike hornets they fly solo, and killing one brings no repercussions.

We hardly ever fight. Luke is beating me with one hand in fooseball. I take the fooseball off the table and throw it at him. He’s five feet from me. He catches it effortlessly. I run in case he throws it back because I know I cannot repeat that feat.

I come home from college. I’m drinking orange juice. Luke comes down the stairs, he tosses me some leather and we head outside. I’ve been out of baseball for five years, but I impress myself, the velocities of our throws are even. Ten minutes. I realize that Luke is throwing with his left hand.
“My accuracy is getting pretty good,” Luke says.
“Really?”
Luke takes the glove off his right hand, “Left knee,” he calls out, and the ball is rocketed at my left knee. He puts his glove back on and I throw the ball back at him. “Right shoulder,” he says next.

We wait for our burgers. This is the first time he’s visited me by himself.
“I don’t love it anymore,” he says.
“No?”
“The pressure,” he shakes his head.
“Hmmm.”
“Every time the ball is hit at me I’m thinking, don’t f up don’t f up don’t f up.”
“Remember the last year I played?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought that same thing, that’s why I sucked, but remember summer ball?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t give a shit about it, I just had fun eh? I jumped over a friggin fence.”
“Ha, yeah that was quite a catch.”
“My point is,” I sip ice water, “don’t get so worked up. I know that pressure doesn’t go away or anything, but just play the game. You have the gift, a talent. Don’t waste it by not enjoying it.”
“It’s a job now. It’s my ticket to a free ride through college.”
“わかな。” (wa-ka-na)
“What?”
“What do you want to do now?”
We talk about how he mentors the younger shortstops on the team. I can imagine how he must have reached god status in their eyes by now. He tells me that he wants to coach someday. I tell him how impressed I am by his writing. He asks me how to improve.

I am eight and Luke is three. He sits angry at the ball field. This is the genesis. This is where his passion ignites. He watches me bumble about on the clay, awkward, uncoordinated, more apt to chase a dragonfly than catch a fly ball. He runs with this. I’ve seen my brother silence angry sports parents on both baselines with his acrobatics. I’ve seen him defy gravity and time. I watched him take line drives to the chest without so much as a grimace. Once he turned a triple play. Once he stole home off a right handed pitcher. Once he looked angrily at a kid who just hit a stand up double and scared him right off the base. There is this aura of self assurance. I robbed a home run once. Fifteen years of playing and that was my greatest moment, my one moment. I was pretty proud, but I’m more proud of him. Are our younger brothers not projections of ourselves? And I realize no, they are not. And our mother wonders where Luke gains his intensity.

Luke swings his sword at my eyes. I bring my shield up to guard them. He touches the garbage can lid with the lightest kiss from his wooden blade, spins and swings low, slaps my shins, and then it’s up with the point. He stops, the smooth branch barely touching my stomach.

I get emails now. Luke sends me short stories; poems. He makes the mistake of ending stories for happy endings. I teach him that not all endings are happy, but they can all teach us something. He rewrites, resends. It’s good stuff. Better than anything I ever wrote at his age. I wonder where this new creativity comes from, and I wonder if, like baseball, he will someday far surpass me in this also. And I am so proud.

I’ve hardly touched my burger, the waitress has already cleared Luke’s table setting.
“I’ve been reading your stuff.”
I laugh, I’ve been leaving it around hoping he would find it. “Really?”
“Yeah. I was cleaning your room the other day and I found some of your old stuff too.”
“Ha, yes, some of that stuff is pretty glib.”
“Yeah.” He looks at my plate, “You gonna get a box?”
I flag a waitress down.
“I’ll eat that later,” he winks at me.