Day of the Jaguar 9 Death

The first time Marcus sees his father, the boys are playing soccer. The striped ball flies through the air, pummeled by feet, knees, heads, rarely touching the ground. The sun presides overhead, his hot breath on their shoulders.

"Pass it to me! Aqui voy!" Marcus scuffles on the left side of the field, battling for control of the ball. He gets shoved to one side by Rico, who's grown five inches in the past year, but he's back up and running before the bigger boy has gone more than a few steps. Shoving doesn't matter; boundaries don't matter; rules don't matter out here where they play with a volleyball on a basketball court, where the only referees are the sun and the scudding clouds and the cottonwood trees that shiver with the heat.

Marcus skids under Rico and kicks the ball to Fede, who runs it up the court. Look around Fede, Marcus shouts, but his best friend loses the ball to Carly. Now Pancho and Fede double-team her, closing in on either side and taking posession. Little Olivia shoots between them, red hair torching through the air as she steals the ball between their feet. Marcus barely manages to intercept it when she passes the ball to Rico, and pelts towards the other end of the court, goal in sight. Only Andres the new goalie stands in his way. Andres runs up to stop Marcus, bowling him over and advancing with the ball. Pancho and Fede pound up the field and collide with Andres, Fede back-heel kicks it to Marcus, the ball flies high in the air
Marcus lunges up and knees the ball towards the goal, his upraised elbow grazing the it as it flies overhead
The ball curves up and down, sliding softly into the basketball hoop before rolling neatly into the little hockey net they're using for the goal, set up directly below. 

"Dude, that was tan cholo!" Rico says, grinning. 

"He uses his hand! It doesn't count!" Andres shouts from one side. 

Soon they were running the field again. Nobody kept score... or rather, everybody kept score, but nobody knew for sure what the score was. Marcus thought it was something like 14-11, but Fede said they were ahead by 7, and Rico said his team was winning, he'd scored 4 goals himself and he knew they had like, 20, and nobody cared enough to stop the game to find out. They just wanted to keep playing. It's like this every day of the summer, Rico, Fede, Marcus, and whoever else shows up, playing for hours on end. This is their world. Today two new kids showed up, but they don't remember anyone's names. Andres isn't too bad, and Olivia is amazing for a girl, but nobody else can keep up with them.

Slowly the sun burns its way across the desert sky, three, four, five hours. Finally, as it nears the western horizon, Marcus hears the voice of his mother from the side of the field where the cottonwoods send their puffy messengers on the wind, the dappled shadow hiding her from the bright sunlight of the field. 

"Marcus! It's time to go!"

Marcus runs towards his mother, waving goodbye to the others. He slows down and stops though, when he gets under the trees. Hidden high up on one of the branches is an enormous, heavy spotted cat. It gazes at him, banded tail twitching back and forth. "Mami!"

"What is it, Marcus?" 

"Un tigre! Up in that tree right there." Marcus points up into the tree, but the spotted cat is gone. 

"Ay, mijo, there is no tigers in the Mexico." 

"But I saw it! It had spots all over it, and it was missing a paw! and-"

Suddenly his mother looks frightened. "We have to leave, right now, mijo," she says, dragging him to the car.

That day she calls in and quits her job, and they move from Oaxaca to Acapulco, where his mother has a sister. He didn't get to say goodbye to Federico, or Rico, or anyone. From then on, whenever the jaguar shows up again, he doesn't mention it.