It was a quarter to four. The sun was coming down out of the haze, a hard white coin sliding down the sky toward the west end of the court. In a little while it was going to sit right on top of the roof.
* * *
The third set was played in the hottest part of the hottest day of the summer, and by the middle of it, Whit was coming apart.
Every long rally had added up the way a bill adds up. Nobody at Coosaw Point had ever made him hit nine balls in a point, or play three sets in ninety-four degrees, and now his white Fila shirt was soaked gray down the back and he was bending over between points with his hands on his knees. He started coming to the net too early, to get the points over with, exactly as Mr. Grant had said he would.
And every time he was on the east end, she lobbed him.
She didn't do it every point. She did it when it counted, when he came in close and leaned on the net, and she'd put the ball straight up into the sky over his head, high and higher, so that to get it he had to turn and look right up the hill into the sun sitting on the clubhouse roof. She saw him squint. She saw him put his left hand up to shade his eyes, the way you'd look for a plane. Twice he let the ball bounce rather than hit it out of the air. Once he swung and missed it entirely, and the bleachers made a sound like a tire going flat.
At 4-4 in the third, chasing one of those lobs, he went down.
He was running back toward the fence and his right leg just quit. He grabbed the back of his calf and fell sideways onto the clay and stayed there, curled, his face screwed up, a green smear all down one side of his white shirt.
"Cramp," said somebody in the bleachers. "He's cramping."
Coach Pemberton half stood in the chair. From the top of the bleachers Mr. Langford was on his feet, and the camcorder was back up on his shoulder, Dee noticed, the red light on.
"Get up, Whit," Mr. Langford called. Not loud. Just flat and big, the voice through the den window. "Walk it off. Get up."
Whit didn't get up. He was trying. Dee could see him trying, pushing at the clay with his hands, and his leg wouldn't straighten.
Dee had read the rule book. Mr. Grant had made her read it, the whole U.S.T.A. pamphlet, front to back, at the kitchen table on Duke Street. She knew there was no time out for a cramp. She knew that if he couldn't play, Coach Pemberton could start a clock, and if the clock ran out, he'd lose the point, then the game. She could win the game standing still, and maybe the next one.
She walked to the net. She picked up her water—a Mason jar of sweet tea with the ice long melted, her mother's idea—and she ducked under the net cord and walked over to where he was lying and crouched down and held it out.