by rakkity

Once upon a time in the days of yore (2002 CE), in the little borough
of Bowie in the kingdom of Maryland-sur-le-Bay, a father and son
started going to the court to practice their skills in the ancient
sport of racquet-le-balle. They did this on a regular basis,
usually twice, sometimes thrice (rarely frice) per fortnight. In the
beginning, the son made all the errors he was prone to: standing too
far back in the court or too close to the side, leaning in one
direction or the other, a little off balance, or showing by one sign
or another that he was expecting a shot from a certain direction. The
father duly noted these mistakes and took shameless advantage of
them, hammering the ball into untoward places, with unhappy effects on
the son’s composure. Every time, he gently pointed out the son’s
mistake, but took advantage to go onto win anyway. When the son leaned
north, the service ball passed south, and when the son leaned south,
the ball passed to the north. When he stood in the rear of the court,
the ball landed in the front, and when he stood close to the front,
the ball bounced behind him. And the scores were always lop-sided in the
father’s favor.

Initially the two played with the old-style racquets of base metals,
and the son won an occasional game due to his speed and strength. But
the two players happily found newly-forged racquets of magical
lightweight metals, which increased the velocity of play. But with
these new racquets, the player’s strength and speed made less of a
difference, but scheming play worked even better. After that, over
the weeks and months, the father ruled the court, losing not a game
during the subsequent year of play.

The situation changed when the teen-aged daughter, newly enscholared
at the local college, asked to join in an occasional game. Thence
forth, the games became three-somes, and the son and father played
left-handed, so as not to overwhelm their winsome partner. With this
arrangement, the daughter was competitive, but the son and father
still won a reasonable fraction of the games, and kept their right
arms rested for the occasional right-handed battle, which the father
persisted in winning.

Two years into these games, the son left the borough to seek his
fortune, but returned to town every Friday to test his mettle on the
court. During that year he seemed to grow still taller, and his arms
longer. He learned not to stand too far back or forward in the court,
and showed no tendency to lean to one side or the other. In the
father-son games, he commanded the center and, with his height and
reach, no corner of the court was safe for the ball to pass him by.
Still, by hook and treacherous crook, his old father managed to sneak
the ball around him, using wall-grazing returns with twisty spins and
semi-magical back-wall drops that eluded the son’s reach.

Over time, the son developed a powerful back-hand, with all the
practice of returning balls that fell elusively to the back wall in
the depths of the corners, in such a way that only a back-handed smash
off the back wall had any chance of returning to the front wall. His
leaps and upward stretches made it almost impossible to loft a ball
over his head. His speed and lack of fear at crashing head-first into
the side walls made it difficult for the father to get a wall-grazer
past him. But the father just grew more cunning, and never repeated
exactly the same kind of shot in sequence.

The scores of these father-son games grew ever closer, sometimes with
the son losing only 10-15 or 11-15, and occasionally games would start
off with the son winning four, even five, serves in a row. But the
father knew the son’s few remaining fatal weaknesses, and he would
proceed to win several points in a row, eventually pulling ahead and
going on to win. He played these games like chess, serving often to
the corner deeps, and sometimes making a surreptitious slow serve
right after a series of fast serves. He served shots that traced a z,
or a backwards z, making the ball apparently curve through the air,
re-bounding parallel to the court’s back wall. In the early months,
serves like these used to bedevil the son and drive him to swing
futilely and miss, or if he didn’t miss, return with a weak parry that
led the father to a kill.

The increasing skill of the son would have led inevitably, if only by
random luck, to a win against the father, except for the
fortuitous appearance on the scene of the old master Zarro.

———————To be continued—————————-