Cornhole at the Keep

“What’s going on out there?” Some dude, standing in the doorway by the pool table, asked in the general direction of Garret and Joseph.

“It’s Tuesday night,” was Garret’s reply.

The dude stood there, uncomprehending, for long enough to prompt Joseph to say, “Cornhole.”

“Oh, right on,” said the dude, who grabbed a buddy of his, walked outside and around the back corner of The Druid’s Keep, and wrote their names on the white dry erase board, putting them fifth in line for a game.

Annabeth sat at a table outside with her friend, Eliza, sipping a $2 can of PBR, deep in thought.

“Are there, like, way more catastrophes nowadays than ever before?  Or do we just have much faster and wider access to news, so it just seems that way?”

“I don’t know,” Eliza replied, “I think it’s both.  I mean, we have nuclear power plants and deep sea oil rigs . . . they didn’t have that stuff a hundred years ago.   And we also hear about everything in real time, which didn’t used to be possible.”

“It’s so depressing.”

On the two cornhole sets, one of the games moved slowly and the other hardly saw a bag miss the board.  Mark and his ‘Kleenex Method,’ so called because he held the bag between two fingers and his thumb and just flicked his wrist ever so slightly, like someone pulling tissue from a box, dominated on the near court.

But it was Mark’s partner, Drew, who caused everyone to start shouting when he sunk four bags in a row to seal the game.

“Next!  Bring ‘em on.” Drew called out as he and Mark slapped hands.

The Phillies defended their division lead, projected high and large onto an unpainted cinder block wall outside by the cornhole games, against the Braves while a cop watched from his car on the corner.  Some people left the bar and took a walk and grabbed a slice of pizza and brought it back to the bar and ate it there.  The night sky had a light blue hue to it, moonlight reflecting off the city and merging with city lights, shining down on that happy corner bar in their corner of the world.