BILL, 50-something, is an auto mechanic, lives in an apartment on Bainbridge Island, takes the ferry to his job in Seattle, after his breakfast beer. He has two more with (or for) lunch, three more at the bar after work, another when he gets home. He played professional baseball but never got to the Major Leagues because of an injury in a minor league game when he, a catcher, got run over by a baserunner on a play at the plate.
He gets a call from his cousin that his uncle - cousin's father, mother's brother - has committed suicide by running a hose from the exhaust pipe into the cab of his old Chevy Suburban, and that uncle's manufactured home in the desert south of Deming, New Mexico is his, if he wants it. He does, quits job, flies to El Paso to meet his cousin (and cousin's partner, they're gay) to pick up the keys and make the transfer. Bill's mother is deceased, he never met his father, uncle was father figure.
Bill is quickly into home improvement (with a beer always within reach) and through a visit to a lumber store he notices the animal shelter he will subsequently visit to pick up two dogs. In so doing he meets JILL, 40ish, who works at the shelter. Instant chemistry. He leaves with her card, promises to bring the dogs back by for a visit but she drives by his house on her way to "see a man about a horse" and they visit a bit; we learn more about each of them, including that she is divorced and has a 17-year-old son. She leaves, chemistry accelerated. The dogs are thriving.
We learn more about Jill and meet her son ERIC when she returns home after work to find him gaming (TBD), headphones on. An exchange about his day and what to have for dinner, she leaves him alone, moves into her routine that includes a glass of wine and rolling the joint she has with her cat in her lap on the backyard stoop. Subsequent conversation lets us know it's summer, school's about to start and he isn't taking care of the minor details re getting registered, etc. He promises he'll get it done, then leaves "for a walk." She asks if there's anything getting in the way of "getting it done tomorrow." He nods, leaves into the night. Eric is falling through the cracks into delinquency.
They have not been in Deming long, having arrived from Michigan, where Eric's father CHARLES/CHUCK, 40ish, is in prison, not far off from the parole hearing that could get him out. He's in for theft and manslaughter. We meet him in a prison softball game, when he hits a prodigious home run that clears the fence and watchtower to "leave the yard," as CHUCK/CHARLES will after his parole hearing. He then sets off to find his son.
But he has some part karma re an "associate" named SLIM (who is anything but) involving a considerable debt that complicates his ambition to make things right. He, like Bill, played minor league baseball, his career ended by drugs and crime.
