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CHAPTER FIVE

The Yellow Shank
Plate CCLXXXVIII

HERE ARE the stats from the last two weeks of October:

Three fights in the downstairs hall. No wins. One loss. Two ties. Mr. Ferris stopped them.

One fight in Mr. McElroy's class with barbarian hordes. A tie. Mr. McElroy stopped it.

Two fights in the upstairs hall. No wins. One loss. One tie. Mr. Ferris stopped it.

Two fights in the PE locker room. Two ties. Otis Bottom stopped them both, since the So-

Called Gym Teacher was nowhere around.

One fight while running the cross-country course in PE. One loss.

One fight in the boys' bathroom. A tie. James Russell stopped it.

Two fights between school and The Dump. No wins. Two losses. But they were close.

Twelve near-fights. Probable record: Eight wins. Four losses. You don't believe me? So what?

So what?

Five days of After School Detention.

Two threats of school suspension, because I was the instigator of the PE locker room fights,

according to the So-Called Gym Teacher. Liar.

Things were not going so well at Washington Irving Junior High School. Mr. Barber told me I needed

to put a new brown-paper book cover on
Geography: The Story of the World,
which I hadn't

bothered doing since I was leaving it in my locker instead of bringing it to class and I think Mr.

Barber was starting to suspect that I'd taken his new book and destroyed it. I hadn't turned in my

Chapter Review Map on the culture of China to Mr. McElroy, and no, I didn't know if I was going to

get it done or not. Jane Eyre still hadn't figured out that she was in love with Mr. Rochester, and I

mean, how many more clues do you need? I didn't raise my hand anymore in Mrs. Verne's class, and

after the first time I didn't bother answering even when she called on me, she stopped calling on me. I

spent PE running the cross-country course while the rest of the class started in on the Wrestling Unit.

No one said anything when I went out, not even the So-Called Gym Teacher. And I didn't do anything

on the next two lab experiments in Mr. Ferris's class. Lil did them both. Even the smelly chemically

stuff. And so what that
Apollo 7
successfully detached from the Saturn rocket to practice the

rendezvous they would have to perform perfectly for a moon shot? So what that they landed a mere

third of a mile from the landing site? So what? Clarence is a stupid toy horse. Who cares if he's

rocking like anything?

Because no matter where I went in stupid Washington Irving Junior High School, there was the

look. And the laugh. And the smirk. Jerks.

And no matter where I went in stupid Marysville, there was the look. And the laugh. And the smirk.

Jerks.

Do you know what that feels like?

I stopped helping Miss Cowper with her County Literacy Unit. Who were we kidding?

I did do the Saturday deliveries. Guess who wanted the money and wouldn't let me stop?

I didn't meet Mr. Powell at the library afterward either. I don't know if Lil was waiting there or not.

I didn't draw anymore.

I didn't even want to.

It was like the Black-Backed Gull had laid its head down and given up the sky.

So you can see why, on the day of the Annual Ballard Paper Mill Harvest-Time Employee Picnic, I

wasn't overcome with happiness and joy.

Neither was my father.

It was pretty clear that Mr. Big Bucks Ballard was an idiot, he said, and that my father or Ernie Eco

could run the paper mill blindfolded and do it better, a hundred times better, than he could, he said.

All Mr. Big Bucks Ballard did was sit around his big office wearing his nice white shirt and silk tie

and telling everyone else what to do, he said. But he never got
his
freaking hands dirty, no he didn't.

You never saw
him
at a forklift. You never saw
him
backing a truck into the loading dock. Wood

pulp? Big Bucks Ballard wouldn't recognize it if he tripped and fell into it over his freaking head, he

said. That's what happens when you get rich. You leave all the real work to the little guy, and you sit

back and enjoy all the profits, he said. And it was going to take a whole lot more than a Harvest-Time

Employee Picnic to change things to the way they ought to be.

When my father was home—and it wasn't often, since Ernie Eco came over most nights and they

drove off together—but when he was home, that's pretty much what he told us.

So no one wanted to go. Not to a picnic thrown by a jerk like Mr. Big Bucks Ballard. But on the

last Saturday in October, my father made all of us get in the car and drive to the Annual Ballard Paper

Mill Harvest-Time Employee Picnic—even my brother. You can imagine how happy we were.

Especially when my father said that Mr. Big Bucks Ballard was the skinflint of skinflints, and there

probably wouldn't be much to eat. And what there was wasn't going to be all that good. You don't

expect a jerk and a skinflint to be grateful to his employees, do you?

The only reason we were going, he said, was the Trivia Contest. And this Trivia Contest,

according to Ernie Eco, was all about Babe Ruth. And who knew more about Babe Ruth than my

father? No one, and I'm not lying. Do you know how many World Series home runs Babe Ruth hit?

No, you don't. But my father did. Fifteen. You probably know that in 1927, Babe Ruth hit his famous

sixty home runs in a single season. But do you know when he hit fifty-nine home runs? Probably you

don't. But my father did: 1921. Do you know how many home runs Babe Ruth hit in the final game of

1928? Three. In one game.

My father could tell you that and a whole lot more, because he had once met Babe Ruth. He shook

Babe Ruth's hand and bought him a beer, and Babe Ruth had winked at him and said, "You're a

helluva good guy."

My father loved Babe Ruth.

And Ernie Eco said that the prize for the Trivia Contest was going to be a baseball signed by a

Yankee. It was probably, Ernie Eco said, a baseball signed by the Babe.

So we all went to the Annual Ballard Paper Mill Harvest-Time Employee Picnic, because my

father wanted to win a baseball signed by Babe Ruth.

Terrific.

I had to run through the Saturday-morning deliveries pretty quickly, which wasn't hard, as you might

remember, since not everyone knows the basic principle of physical science. Mrs. Mason hadn't

ordered any doughnuts. Mr. Loeffler didn't have a single light bulb to change. Mrs. Daugherty's kids

were playing upstairs when I came. And Mrs. Windermere never came into the kitchen.

I really wished that at least the Daugherty kids had been...

So what? So what? I'm not a chump.

I made it back as quickly as any human being could, which wasn't good enough for guess who.

It was a Saturday that you somehow knew was going to be one of the last beautiful days of fall. The

sun was shining hot, like it thought it was still July, and November drizzles were a whole season

away. The sky was blue, and a few white clouds were easing themselves along like they didn't care.

The grass was warm and sweet, like April, but the trees hadn't forgotten it was October. They were

all on fire, and behind their leaves, the birds were singing their last songs. Waves of heat shimmered

above the stone walls, and the granite sparkled.

"Such a beautiful day," said my mother.

My father didn't say anything. He was probably thinking about Babe Ruth.

The Annual Ballard Paper Mill Harvest-Time Employee Picnic was always held at Mary's Lake,

and since we got there late, we had to park about a mile away—all because, my father said, I hadn't

finished the deliveries on time, not that it mattered, since Douggo couldn't hurry up if there were an

atomic bomb on his butt. But even from a mile away, you could smell the chicken grilling as soon as

you got out of the car. And you could hear hollering and cheering. People called and waved at each

other as we walked toward the lake, and then they waved at us, and two women came to meet my

mother and took her by the arms and brought her over to introduce her to someone else she had to

meet because they didn't live very far from each other at all, and hadn't they seen her this fall at St.

Ignatius?

My father and brother and I passed by some long tables and someone called out to us and my father

grunted back and then the someone looked through a bunch of wrapped packages and picked two up

and called to me and my brother and handed them to us.

Inside was a Timex watch. I'm not lying. A Timex watch with a second hand and a real leather band

and numbers for regular time and numbers for military time. A Timex watch. Compliments of the

Ballard Paper Mill.

My brother looked at me. I looked at him.

Sometimes—and I know it doesn't last for anything more than a second—sometimes there can be

perfect understanding between two people who can't stand each other. He smiled, and I smiled, and

we put the Timex watches on, and we watched the seconds flit by.

It was the first watch my brother had ever owned.

It was the first watch I had ever owned.

My father looked at our wrists. "The metal will turn your skin green," he said. "Wait and see."

I did not know that so many people worked at the Ballard Paper Mill. It looked like all of Marysville

was there. There was a group playing volleyball, and no one was even pretending to keep score.

There was a baseball game going on, husbands against wives. I guess you can imagine how funny

that was. My father went over to stand with Ernie Eco, to laugh and smirk.

There were about ten guys throwing horseshoes, and the clangs and the cheers that came from them

made it seem like it was all-fired important—like it probably was to a bunch of chumps.

I went down to the lake, and it was so hot that there was a whole bunch of kids swimming (which I

decided not to do because of you know why) and about eight teams were doing chicken fights and

some were diving off each other's shoulders, and James Russell was there and he waved at me to

come in but I shook my head and he nodded.

And drifting over everything was the smell of grilling chicken, and the snap of buttery fat when it

fell in the fire, and the smoke that drew up over the baseball game and the volleyball and the

horseshoes and drifted over to the rows of long tables with bright white cloths over them, where the

women—including my mother—were setting out the bowls of salad and plates of rolls and pitchers of

pink lemonade and platters of corn on the cob that were steaming and more bowls of salad until

people started to crowd away from the baseball game and then one of the cooks by the grills hollered

out, "We're all set here!" and everyone came and found a place in line while the cooks carried the

long trays heaped with chicken, and the smell in the hot blue air was so wonderful and I looked over

at my mother and she was smiling to beat the band, like she had come home after a long time away.

It turned out that my brother was the first one in line. There's a shock.

But it didn't matter, because even if the whole town of Marysville had been there, they couldn't

have eaten everything that was loading down those tables. It was like something out of a fairy tale.

When a platter was empty, it got lifted away, and another one, even fuller than the first, magically

appeared in its place. And there was more chicken cooking, and more vats of hot water with steaming

corn, and then onto the line came all the kids from the lake, who were dripping wet, and they were all

hollering that it didn't matter if they ate like slobs because they were just going back into the water

anyway, and then everyone finishing the salad and chicken and corn and trying to sit back and rub

their stomachs and then big aluminum carts being wheeled across the lawn and every kid in the place

running to them and reaching in for lime Popsicles and strawberry shortcake and ice cream

sandwiches and James Russell grabbing me and yelling "C'mon!" and I was running over too and

reaching in for an orange Dreamsicle.

An orange Dreamsicle. You know how good an orange Dreamsicle tastes on a blue fall day when

you're full of grilled chicken and your mother is laughing a real laugh like she used to and once you

look over and your father is holding her hand like they haven't in a long long long time?

Until Ernie Eco came and she walked away.

Then all the mothers cleared the tables and swept off the long white tablecloths and, all laughing,

folded them together and boxed up the extra food, and there was a lot. The kids ran down to the water

again and James Russell yelled, "C'mon!" but I shook my head again. So he ran down to the lake and I

tried not to hate him when he took a flying dive and skimmed into the water, came up laughing, and

some little kid was climbing on top of him for more chicken fights.