That Lad Can Throw: Ten Sentence Story #106

The lad, at two-years-old, picked up a peach pit and threw it in a straight line against the broadside of a barn.

The pit erupted as it blasted through the peeling paint and aged wood — leaving behind a hole you could look an eye through.

“That lad can throw,” said the farmhand milking a cow in the barn, after the dusty peach pit remains settled gently on the brim of his cowboy hat.

At fifteen, the lad threw a snowball so hard, he broke the jaw of three kids on the playground as the dripping orb of ice skittered across five frosty cheeks.

The other two only lost teeth.

“Tht ld cn thrw,” one child mumbled through the remains of her fractured mandible.

At 21, and pitching in the pros, the lad spun a baseball so firmly, he shattered the thumbs of five catchers in two leagues and three divisions.

Each time the thumbs were surrendered, the newspaper headlines simply read, “That lad can throw.”

At 98, and in the dimming light of his life, the lad picked a hunk of chewing gum from his mouth and flicked it high into the air; the pink wad tumbled in a perfect arc and landed in the garbage can where it met a pile of leftover spaghetti from lunch, spattering tomato sauce out of the bin and back into the air to indiscreetly spell “l-a-d” on the wall in improvised, foodie, graffiti.

“That lad can throw,” said the old man, as he grimaced and closed his eyes and dreamt of what he always saw when the darkness came to him:  An object given the life of flight as it soared from his fingertips with the blessings of the heavens.