"Why am I the one looking at the sun?" she said.
"So it won't be news to you," Mr. Grant said, "when you're making him look at it."
* * *
It was at Ebenezer, the third week of August, that her grip finally gave out.
She was hitting a backhand and felt the handle turn in her hand, the whole fat wad of old tape slipping on the wood underneath like a sleeve sliding off an arm. The ball went sideways into the tomato field.
"Let me see," Mr. Grant said.
He sat on the church's back steps with the racket across his knees and cut the tape away with a pocketknife, layer after layer, gray and grayer and finally the original white, gone brown and gummy at the bottom. Under the tape, the old leather grip was rotten. It came off in crumbles. Under the leather, there was the bare octagonal wood of the handle, pale and smooth and surprisingly clean, like the inside of an apple.
And written on it, in blue ballpoint, in a small round hand, were the letters J.L.
Under them, smaller: 6/14/76. For the long rallies.
Dee looked at it for a long time. Mr. Grant didn't say anything. He took a new leather grip out of a paper bag, a real one, the kind that came wrapped in cellophane in the pro shop, and began winding it on, starting at the butt and working up, overlapping each turn by exactly a quarter inch. The letters disappeared under the leather one at a time. L, then J.
"Who's J.L.?" Dee said.
Mr. Grant tacked the end of the grip with two little nails and wrapped a strip of black tape around the top. He handed her the racket. It felt like a different racket. It felt like it was hers.
"That's not mine to tell," he said. "But I'd guess you'll find out." He stood, brushing off the knees of his trousers. "Now go get that ball out of Deacon Fripp's tomatoes before he sees it."
* * *
On Saturdays her father did yard work for a few of the members, cash in an envelope, and the last Saturday in August one of the yards was the Langfords'.