Okay for Now (17 page)

to the water, plants with long stems and these flowers that—well, it's hard to describe. They didn't

even look real.

The woman hung up the phone. "They're orchids," she said. "Mr. Ballard grows them. Most of these

will be gone in a week or two."

"Gone?"

"When they start to blossom like this, he sends them to his old employees who still live in town.

You're Douglas Swieteck, aren't you?"

I nodded.

"I'm Mrs. Stenson. I'm sure he'll see you. Just let me call in."

But she didn't need to, because a door in the paneled walls opened and there was Mr. Ballard

himself, silk tie and all. "My partner!" he said. "Mrs. Stenson, have you met my partner?"

She smiled, laughed.

"Come in, come in," he said. And I did. I guess I don't need to tell you about what his office was

like, except that it was mostly like the room outside, but one wall had pictures of Mr. Ballard

throwing horseshoes with a whole lot of people I didn't know and a couple I did: Mayor John Lindsay

and—I'm not lying—President Lyndon B. Johnson, which he saw me looking at. "Never throw

horseshoes with a Texan," he said. "They don't like to lose. So, partner, what are you going to do with

the hundred dollars?"

He went and sat down at his desk, put his feet up on it, next to a long, long tube.

I looked at the tube.

"If you ask me—and you don't have to, since it's your money—I'd put it in a savings account for

college. It would be a good start."

"A hundred dollars?"

"The hundred dollars I sent home with your father. When you didn't come by on Monday, I gave it

to him for—" He stopped. He took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. "You didn't get it."

"No, no," I said. "No, I got it. Thanks. A savings account for college is a good idea."

He stared at me for a long time.

"What?" I said.

"You didn't get the baseball either."

"I got it. It's great. It's in my room right now. Thanks."

"You sure?"

I'm sure.

It was just like my father said. You shouldn't count on anything.

Mr. Ballard sat back, nodded, smiled a little. "So what can I do for you?"

I looked out his windows, past the orchids on the windowsill, and down toward the river. It was

wide, and the trees on the far side were starting to shake their leaves down. It was getting colder.

"You practice horseshoes here?"

Mr. Ballard had horseshoe pits down by the river, and we played in the cool with the sound of water

in our ears, and the clanging of the shoes against the posts when he threw them, and the thud of the

shoes against the ground when I threw them.

Here are the stats:

Mr. Ballard threw four ringers in a row, and five in a row another time.

He had fourteen ringers all together.

And six leaners—which still count, by the way.

I had one leaner—which, you remember, counts.

And I had one ringer where the shoe wrapped itself around the top of the post, spun around a

couple of times, and then dropped onto the sand.

I think Mr. Ballard was happier about my ringer than I was.

"Doug," he said, "you got the arc just right on that one. And it doesn't matter how many times it

spins around, as long as it comes down flat like that."

And just so you don't think I really stink at horseshoes, you should know that even though that was

the only ringer I threw, I did come close four more times, and I rang the post twice, and even though it

doesn't count, it still isn't bad.

"A little more practice," Mr. Ballard said, "and you'll be a better thrower than President LBJ ever

hoped to be. You come by anytime, okay? The shoes will always be waiting for you." He set them

down against a stake. "Right here."

We walked back up from the river, and Mr. Ballard told me to stop by his office and he'd have Mrs.

Stenson see if she could find us some lemonade to celebrate my first ringer, and when we got up

there, Mrs. Stenson was standing by his desk, and there was someone else there holding a stack of

frame pieces, and a picture of a bird from you know where was spread out on Mr. Ballard's desk, and

Mrs. Stenson said, "You're just in time. We're down to three choices for the Yellow Shank," and Mr.

Ballard went over to see.

I did too.

It was about as far from the Black-Backed Gull as you could get. The Yellow Shank wasn't the first

thing you saw at all. You saw his world first. It was fall, and the grass was getting duller, and the

trees were gold and that reddish brown that looks like the color of old bricks. The Yellow Shank was

walking in a sunny spot, looking like he owned the place. The water in front of him was dark, and the

woods beyond were darker still. Really dark. But Audubon knew something about composition: he

kept the top of the bird's back as straight as the horizon, right smack in the middle of the scene, with a

beak held up just as flat and just as straight, and an eye that said
I know where I belong.
You couldn't

help but be a little jealous of this bird.

I leaned in close. The lines in the water matched the line of the bird's beak. That would be easy to

get. What would be hard to get were the legs. The back leg was poised as if it was about to leave its

toehold and push ahead, and the way of it, the whole way of it, said that the head and back wouldn't

be moving at all—just those legs. How did he give you the way the bird was going to move, even

though he didn't show him moving?

"Any closer and we'll have to frame you too," said Mrs. Stenson.

"I think," said the guy holding the stack of frames, "that if you're going to put it over the bookcase

there, you'll want this mahogany frame to go with that wood."

"But we're not sure it's going there," said Mrs. Stenson. "It could go by the window, as if the bird

were looking outside. Then the mahogany wouldn't do at all."

"What do you think?" Mr. Ballard said. I looked up. He was asking me.

"I think it belongs back in the book," I said.

I know. That made me sound like a jerk. A real jerk. I didn't even mean to say it. Mr. Ballard had

supposedly already given me this signed baseball and a hundred dollars and stuff. I was wearing his

Timex watch! I should just shut up.

But he asked.

The guy holding the stack of frames looked at me like I was trying to take bread from his mouth.

Mrs. Stenson looked at me like I was going a little too far.

And Mr. Ballard said, "Why?"

"Because," I said, "things belong in the class to which they have been assigned."

The guy with the stack of frames put another one on the corner of the print. "Perhaps the mixture of

the darker and lighter tone in this one would allow you to hang the print in either spot," he said.

Mrs. Stenson looked down at the new frame, then back at me.

Mr. Ballard drummed his fingers along the edge of his desk. He looked at me, then at the Yellow

Shank, and he let his fingers light on the sunny spot beneath it. "Let's roll the thing up and put it back

in its tube," he said. "I think I heard a ringer."

There aren't too many things around that are whole, you know. You look hard at most anything, and it's

probably beat up somewhere or other. Beat up, or dinged up, or missing a piece, or tattooed. Or

maybe something starts out whole and then it turns into junk, like Joe Pepitone's cap getting rained on

in a gutter somewhere. Probably you can't even tell it's a cap anymore. Probably you wouldn't even

want to pick it up if you saw it. But it didn't start that way. It started as Joe Pepitone's cap, and when

he was out in the field, the sun was beating down on it from above the stands of Yankee Stadium and

he could smell the grass and the dirt of the infield beneath its brim.

When you find something that's whole, you do what you can to keep it that way.

And when you find something that isn't, then maybe it's not a bad idea to try to make it whole again.

Maybe.

I mean, what would you do if you found a baseball with only 215 stitches? Wouldn't you want to

put in one more to make it right?

I know, that all sounds cosmic. But that's what you would have thought too if you had been in the

Marysville Free Public Library the next day when I brought the tube back in, and when Mr. Powell

took one look at it and knew what it was. You would have thought it too when we went back upstairs

and Mr. Powell slid the Yellow Shank out of the tube and opened the glass case and turned the pages

until he found the place between plate CCLXXXVII and plate CCLXXXIX and laid the print back in.

And if you looked at Mr. Powell's eyes, you would have thought what I thought:
I am going to get

the birds back.
The Arctic Tern, the stupid Large-Billed Puffins, the Brown Pelican, and all the rest

of them.

I am going to get the birds back.

And I'm going to start drawing again.

Ernie Eco came by for supper that night before he and my father were going off somewhere to look at

a new pickup that some idiot was selling for some price a whole lot less than he should be selling it

for and all he wanted was a hundred-dollar down payment. It would be a steal, Ernie Eco said, eating

another ham slice, and would I pass the mashed potatoes?

My mother didn't say anything. She wasn't smiling.

"I went down to the mill yesterday," I said.

My father and Ernie Eco looked at me. My mother did too, with worried eyes. She held her fork in

midair.

"Yeah?" said my father.

"I guess you two got the parking spots I won," I said.

"So?" said Ernie Eco. "It doesn't cost Mr. Big Bucks Ballard a thing."

"It just makes him look good to all the little guys who work for him," said my father.

"He said that he gave you the—"

"He didn't give me a thing," said my father. "Did you see me bring anything home? Did you? That's

because he didn't give me a thing."

"He said that he gave you the signed baseball and a hundred dollars."

My father put his two hands down flat on the table. He looked at me a long time. "What are you

trying to say?"

"I'm telling you what Mr. Ballard said."

My father's hands twitched. "If Mr. Big Bucks Ballard said he gave me the signed baseball and a

hundred dollars, then he's a liar. You got that?"

You know what I should have said. Even my brother knew what I should have said, because after

what felt like a whole long time, my brother whispered, "Doug's got it."

My father looked at my brother. "Shut up." He turned back to me. "I said, Mr. Big Bucks Ballard is

a freaking liar. You got that?"

Then I figured it out, how Audubon got the Yellow Shank to move. He's staring into this dark place,

and he's just about to cross the river that divides him from it, and his back foot is halfway up because

he's about to push off, and he knows what he's getting into, but he does it anyway, calm and smooth

and straight. He's going to step into the middle of the picture, where he should be, with the light in

back of him and the dark ahead. His whole world is waiting for him to do that.

I was waiting for him to do it.

I looked at my brother.

Even though whatever is in the dark is waiting for the Yellow Shank, he's going to do it anyway.

"Someone's a liar," I said.

Here are the stats for that night:

He missed me the first time because I leaned away.

He missed me the second time because I pushed the chair back and got up.

He just clipped me when I had to push through Ernie Eco's arm, the jerk.

And he missed me again when I spun around and got to the back door first.

I count that a win.

I went back to the Marysville Free Public Library and stayed until it closed at nine o'clock. Mr.

Powell had left the book open to the Yellow Shank. That bird, he knew where he was going, even if

he was going on stupid yellow legs.

He knew.

But that doesn't mean anything is going to be easier.

When I got home late that night, my father was gone, my mother was in her bedroom, and my

brother was flipping baseball cards all by himself, which tells you something about how much he has

going on between his ears.

I started up the stairs.

"Do you know what a jerk you are?" he said.

"Shut up," I said.

"All you had to do was say 'I got it.' That's all you had to do."

I leaned over the banister. "Don't you ever want to say 'I don't got it,' just once? Don't you ever

want—"

"Every day, Douggo," he said.

"Then why don't you?"

"Because after you left, Douggo, who do you think he hollered at? Who do you think? That's why

she's upstairs, so you don't see her face, because she's been crying since supper. Do you get it now?"

I sat down on the stairs.

"Do you get it, Douggo? Do you get it?"

"Shut up. It's not like you—"

"Like I what? Like I what, Douggo? Do you ever wonder what it's like to be so angry that you ...

And then something happens, and after that, everyone figures that's what you're like, and that's what

you're always going to be, and so you just decide to be it? But the whole time you're thinking,
Am I