Princess of Passyunk by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

perfect, glowing, breathless instant before he swung the bat in a gleaming arc.
    And missed.
    Face flushed and tingling, Ganny glanced around to see if anyone had seen. The two old men were intent on their game, arguing a move, children played tag, birds flew, twittered and built nests; all were oblivious to his embarrassment.
    Furtively, and without ceremony, he tossed the ball up a second time and hit it, then hurried after, lest there should be another window box waiting to receive it. It flew across the intersection of Thirteenth and Reed and ricocheted off the curving roof of a parked Buick.
    Ganny heard the sudden music of shattering glass. He halted, teetering on the curb. The impulse to take flight warred with the urge to confess.
    Flight almost won out, but then he remembered the Ball. He dropped the bat at the curb, pushed his glove around to the back of his waistband and trotted across the street, dodging a milk truck and a bicycle.
    The broken window belonged to a butcher’s shop. It was a large window, made up of six panes. “Sausage King,” said a paper sign taped to one pane. And above it in gold leaf, “Gus___ and Sons” was artfully lettered across two panes. He suspected there was more to “Gus” than now met the eye, for there was a gaping hole in that pane right after the letter “s” at which two white-garbed folk within the shop now gestured with great gusto.
    Ganady swallowed and cautiously—not to say surreptitiously—crossed the street and approached the front of the store. He crammed his hands into his pockets, felt the emptiness with a pang of loss, and scoured his mind for the right, the most apologetic words.
    As he peeked in through the door, he saw one of the butchers throw the beloved ball out the back door of the shop into the alley beyond.
    He almost gasped aloud. He no longer needed to confront the butcher to claim his ball, but...
    Father Zembruski would say, his conscience supplied with annoying predictability, that you should confess your sin and make reparations. He sucked up his fear and squared his shoulders.
    â€œI tell you,” said a man’s voice from within the shop, “if ever there was a sign from God we should replace that sign, here it is. I’m gonna call that glazier this minute.”
    Ganady slunk away as far as the corner, then ran to find the entrance to the alley.
    Behind the butcher shop was a jungle of trash and foul-smelling garbage, among which flies buzzed happily. Ganady did not see the ball. He sent a prayer heavenward that he would find it before he was overcome by the various aromas. He gave a glance to the back door of the shop. It was shut tight against the ferocious odor.
    He stood, chewing his lip, trying to imagine the trajectory the ball would have taken from the butcher’s hand, how it might have bounced, how far it could have rolled.
    His calculations led him to a spot where one of a trio of large garbage barrels had tilted and overflowed, loosing an avalanche of refuse onto the cobbles. He moved reluctantly toward it. Flies scattered like startled birds; Ganny batted them away, wrinkling his nose.
    Bread crusts, fruit rinds, and things he did not recognize—nor wanted to—were mounded beneath the barrel, along with wadded and torn scraps of butcher paper.
    He kicked the paper aside hopefully. No baseball. He tiptoed among the garbage, further disturbing the flies, eyeing the gaping mouth of the barrel as if something terrifying might lurk within.
    Then, Ganady Puzdrovsky swallowed his misgivings, held his breath, stepped up to the barrel and peeked inside. He caught a glimpse of yellow eyes before something big and black exploded into his face with the shriek of a demon.
    Ganny threw his hands up and yelped, ducking to one side as the outraged cat flew past his ear. When his heart had stopped pounding and the roaring had left his ears, and he was certain there was no reaction from the