Keeping Score (17 page)

A few days later, when Giants pitcher Johnny Antonelli got the last out in the last inning of the fourth game, Maggie exhaled in a huge whoosh.

The Giants had won the World Series! Not just won it but
swept
—they won it in four straight games!

Before she could stop herself, Maggie turned her head to look at the phone.

Silly—it's not like he's going to call right this minute....

But her fingers were tingling and her heartbeat seemed to have sped up a little, because she knew that Jim must be
thrilled.
Even if he didn't call today, maybe he was already talking again, and pretty soon he
would phone, or come over, even, and the two of them would talk about Willie's incredible catch and lots of other things.

Whenever the phone rang, Maggie jerked her head up and held her breath. But it was never Jim.

She could have called him herself. Gotten Carol's number from Dad, asked Mom for permission to make a long-distance call.

But what if Carol asked Jim to come to the phone and he wouldn't, and she ended up yelling at him again? That would be awful. No, it would be better to wait for him to call her.

The rest of the day went by, and then the rest of the week, with no call. Not even when the papers announced that Willie had been voted Most Valuable Player in the National League.

Jim's team winning the World Series—not just winning but sweeping all four games. His favorite player winning the biggest award...

And he
still
didn't call.

The best baseball news in the world hadn't been enough to help him.

Maggie took the scorebook to her bedroom. She had left it out on the shelf in the living room so it would be handy when Jim called to talk about the Series.

He wasn't going to call.

She opened the closet door. With her foot, she pushed aside last summer's sneakers so she could see the other scorebooks in the back corner.

All those books. All those pages. Hours and hours and
hours
of listening to the games and writing everything down ... and the Dodgers had never won the World Series, and Jim hadn't called.

Maggie turned and stomped toward her bed. She yanked the photo of Jim and Jay off the wall. A small corner of it tore and stuck to the wall; she pulled that piece off too. She jammed the photo between the pages of the latest scorebook and threw it onto the pile on the closet floor. Then she tossed her old sneakers on top and pulled some clothes off their hangers to bury the scorebooks good and deep.

She slammed the closet door shut and kicked it hard. She stood there panting a little and staring at the scuff mark her shoe had made.

I'm never keeping score again. Not ever.

For a brief moment, she felt almost frightened by the thought. But her eyes were dry. She pressed her lips together and stalked out of the room.

It was the middle of November. Maggie stopped in at the corner store after school to say hello to Mr. Aldo and buy a Hershey bar. When she got home, she saw Dad sitting at the dining table.

"Hi!" Maggie said, pleased but puzzled. He never came home in the middle of the day.

"Hey, Maggie-o," Dad said. "You busy?"

"No,
I
was going to do some homework, but I can do it later."

"Good." He stood up. "Let's you and me go for a walk."

In that instant, Maggie knew what they were going to talk about. Not the exact words, of course, and she didn't know how she knew, but she did.

She waited while he got his coat; she hadn't taken hers off yet.

"Park?" she asked when they were outside.

"Sure," Dad said.

"Then can we take Charky with us?"

They stopped by the firehouse and said hello to the guys. When she got out the leash, Charky jumped around as if he had never been taken for a walk before in his whole life.

A short distance into the park, they found an empty bench. Maggie let Charky off the leash so he could go exploring. She wound the leash into a neat coil, waiting.

"Jim was here today," Dad said.

I knew it was gonna be about Jim....

"Carol called this morning. She said that Jim had written her a note, that he wanted to talk to me. She was trying to act all calm and everything on the phone, but she was so excited that she got in the car with him and drove right over, and I got off work and came straight home."

Maggie couldn't decide what to ask first. "So what did he—I mean, how was—did he talk to you?"

Dad nodded. "Your mom and Carol had coffee. Me and Jim went for a walk."

Thoughts were crashing into each other inside Maggie's head.
It's like when George told me that Jim had written to Carol—well, he hadn't really, but that was what George told me—and I was jealous that he hadn't written to me. But this is worse!I'm the one who did everything! The game—and the novena—and the Giants—and saving my money for so long—

For ages now there had been a picture in her head of how things would go. The Giants would win the World Series, and Jim would be so happy that he would start talking again, and she would be the first person he would want to talk to. And then other people—Treecie, probably, maybe Carol and Dad and Mom, too—would tell him how hard Maggie had worked and all the things she had done to help him get better, and he would be so grateful. And she would be sort of like a hero.

Stupid.
Stupid.
Maggie could feel her pulse thumping in her throat and she knew that her whole face had gone red. She turned away a little, hoping that Dad wouldn't notice.

"He didn't say anything until we got to the park," Dad said. "Then he started talking, but he could only sorta whisper. I guess 'cause he hasn't used his voice in so long."

Dad reached out and gave Maggie's hair a gentle tweak. "Maggie-o, when we got back home, before he left, I asked him—I said I wanted to tell you everything and I hoped he wouldn't mind. He didn't say yes—he was done talking by then—but he didn't say no, either. So I'm telling you, 'cause I think ... I think you got a right to know."

Maggie's heartbeat slowed a little. She couldn't speak, but managed a nod.

"What happened to Jim, it was bad," Dad said. "I mean, bad things always happen in a war, that's just the way it is. But I guess there's some things you can't never expect."

Dad looked down for a moment. "You remember about the battle, right?" he said.

Maggie nodded.

"Well, it was a tough one. And it was even worse
because a report had come in from Recon that there were Commie spies around somewhere."

"Recon?" Maggie said.

"Reconnaissance," Dad said. "Those are the guys who go out ahead of everyone else and scout things and send back reports. Anyway, the reports said that the spies were dressed like civilians. To try to sorta blend in with the villagers.

"So during the battle Jim is going back and forth from camp to the front, bringing back soldiers who are hurt. Sometimes bodies too. And the fighting keeps going on, and he works through a day and a night without a break, and half the next day too. And on his last trips to the front, he's not bringing back soldiers anymore."

Dad stopped. Maggie didn't speak. She didn't blink or breathe, either.

"Civilians. People from the village, women, old men, kids." Dad turned toward her. "And while Jim was working on them, bringing them back, he talked to some of them, the ones who weren't hurt too bad, and it was clear that it was—that they had got hit by friendly fire."

He answered before she could ask. "Friendly fire—that's when you get hit by your own side."

Maggie gasped. "By your own side? How could that happen?"

He shook his head. "I guess things get pretty crazy in a battle like that. It might be a unit's supposed to be in one place, but somehow things get confused and they end up somewheres else, and then they get fired at because everyone thinks they're the Reds.

"What happened where Jim was ... well, maybe nobody will ever really know. But these villagers, they'd been hurt by American weapons, he could tell that for sure. And some of them said it was on purpose. That it wasn't a mistake."

"No," Maggie said immediately. "It had to be a mistake." Why would soldiers shoot at people who were friendly to them—people whose village they were trying to protect?

"It was because of them spies," Dad said. "There was a bunch of villagers who took cover under a railroad bridge. A whole big crowd of them, all huddled together. The soldiers thought the spies were hiding in the crowd, but they couldn't tell who they were. So they just—"

Dad stopped and swallowed before he went on. "They shot at everybody. That's what Jim heard, but nobody knew for sure what really happened. And the worst of it was, there was this kid—"

Dread clogged Maggie's throat. "Oh, no," she choked out.

"Their tent boy." Dad was almost whispering now, the softest Maggie had ever heard him speak. "He was hurt real bad, and Jim and the medic worked on him out in the field, and they brought him back, but there wasn't nothing anyone could do...."

Maggie felt as though the blood had stopped running through her body, like she might never be able to move again.

Dad cleared his throat. "Jim said when the fighting first got started, he sent the kid home. Told him to go back to the village, thought he would be safer there. So he blames himself, see—he thinks that if he hadn't sent the boy home, then he wouldn't have ended up under the bridge, and maybe..."

The words trailed off. It was quiet for a long time.

Maggie didn't know if he was finished talking, but she couldn't listen anymore. She stood up slowly. Her legs and arms felt like they each weighed a thousand pounds.

Dad took the leash from her and whistled for Charky. They took him to the firehouse and left him. Dad went in to hang up the leash while Maggie waited well away from the bay doors so she wouldn't have to talk to the guys.

She didn't say a word during the entire walk home.

But at the front door, she stopped and put her hand on her father's arm.

"His name was Jay," she whispered.

Maggie sat on her bed, holding the letter Jay had written to her.

The handwriting a little crooked and unsure, like a first grader's. And the whole thing was only eight words long.

But it was enough to make her feel as if she had known him. It was a piece of paper that Jay himself had touched, words that he had written with his own hand and sent especially to her.

She thought about him huddled under that railroad bridge, where everyone would have been scared, even the grownups, and then the soldiers showing up, and Jay must have thought they'd be safe now, the soldiers would protect them.... And then the gunfire starting, and everything going crazy, people screaming.... Jay terrified, until the moment he got shot himself—

She clutched the letter tightly.
He passed out right away—he never felt a thing.
That had to be how it happened. Anything else was too awful to imagine.

She thought about Jim too—what it had been like for him. To get to the scene and see all those people hurt—ordinary people, not armed, not soldiers—and start working on them and trying to save them even though he was already beyond exhaustion ... and then to find Jay, unconscious and bleeding, and remember what had happened earlier—that it was he himself who had sent Jay home, sent him right into terrible danger.... Jim, his face stained with sweat and soot and blood, holding Jay's pale limp body...

She closed her eyes to shut out that last image. When she opened them again, she found herself staring at the shelf above her bureau. Her war notebook was there, and she thought of the maps she had drawn.

"The line," she whispered.

The line across Korea that showed how much territory each side had.

Dad hadn't said exactly when the battle happened. But it was sometime in the summer of 1952 for sure, because that was when Jim had stopped writing to her. And she knew from her war notebook that the line hadn't changed since June 1951.

Maggie felt like she wanted to scream at somebody, beat them with her fists, kick them. But who? Whose fault was it? The government people? Why hadn't they just stopped the war, stopped the fighting, as soon as they saw that the line wasn't moving?

If we were getting more territory—if we were
winning—if
we were beating the Commies, then maybe—maybe there would be at least a chance to feel like it was worth it. Jay dying and Jim getting so sick—instead, it was for nothing.

Maggie made the sign of the cross against her thumb. Sometimes that helped make her feel a little calmer. This time, though, it made her think about how she hadn't begun praying for Jim until long after the battle, after he had been back in the U.S. for a good while.

At least I did pray for him. But I didn't pray for Jay at all.

Never. Not once.

Did it matter? Would it have made a difference? If she had prayed for him, would that have stopped the spies, the soldiers, the shooting?

She crossed her arms over her stomach, hugging herself hard.

No. Only little kids think like that. It wouldn't have made any difference. Just like scoring the games doesn't help the Dodgers.

Nothing I do changes anything.

Maggie wept.

***

The next day she learned that Dad had called Carol, only to find out that Jim had gone back to not talking.

The phone rang. It was Treecie.

"Can I come over?" she said. "I wanna talk about our birthdays."

Last year Maggie and Treecie had celebrated their birthdays together. They were getting too old for the little-kid kind of party; instead, their mothers had taken them downtown for lunch and shopping. Treecie probably wanted to do the same kind of thing again, only different.

"I guess so," Maggie said.

"What's wrong?" Treecie said immediately. "Never mind. I'm coming over, you can tell me when I get there."

Within a few minutes, Maggie heard Treecie's knock at the front door. Treecie came in and greeted Maggie's mom cheerily, filling up the place with her presence. Maggie had to smile a little. Treecie was like Dad that way; you always knew when either of them was around.