He was in his locker room clothes, the white jacket with COOSAW POINT stitched on the pocket, and he had his hands folded in front of him, and he was standing a little apart from the others, at the corner by the gate, as if he'd come straight out of the clubhouse and down the hill and not stopped. Mr. Dabney was halfway down the hill behind him, red-faced, saying something. Mr. Grant didn't turn around.
He looked at Dee across the court. He didn't nod. He didn't wave. He just held up one finger, and then he pointed it straight up at the sky.
Higher.
She lost the first set 3-6. But she won a game late in it, on her own serve, on a lob that went up so high the people in the bleachers tipped their heads back to follow it, and came down on the baseline, and kicked, and sat up, and Whit, back-pedaling, hit his overhead into the bottom of the net. It wasn't much. But she felt something come loose in her chest like a knot giving way.
* * *
The second set, she started making him hit one more ball.
She stopped trying to hurt the ball. She put it up high and deep to his backhand, with as much topspin as she could brush onto it, and let it come down and kick up around his shoulder, and made him hit it from there. He was strong and he hit it back. She put it up there again. He hit it back again. Five balls. Six. Seven. On the eighth he got impatient and came in behind a backhand that didn't have enough on it, and she slid the ball down the line past him, low and spinning, with the slice she'd learned on a church court with a Dixie cup.
The far fence made a sound. Not a low one, this time.
"Out," said Coach Pemberton.
Dee turned and stared at him. The ball had been in. She had seen it hit. She had seen the green dust jump on the white of the line.
"Mark's right there," she said. She pointed. On clay, the ball leaves a little oval, a smudge in the dust, and this one was sitting half on the sideline tape, plain as a thumbprint.
"Call stands," said Coach Pemberton. "Thirty-fifteen."
From the top of the bleachers, Mr. Langford called, "Let's keep it moving, folks."
Whit walked over to the sideline. He looked down at the mark for a long second. Then he looked up at the umpire's chair.