Rufus M. (7 page)

Mrs. Saybolt never could get Rufus to come in and listen to her player piano again. She coaxed him with cookies for a while. Then she gave up. She decided she must have made a mistake about Rufus loving music so much. She soon fell into the habit of calling him "Tiger!" again and chasing him off her white sidewalk.

As for Rufus, every time he went past that house and heard the piano playing his pulse beat very rapidly for a second as he thought of the invisible piano player, and then it calmed down completely when he reminded himself,
Oh, a machine!

Usually it made no difference whether or not Rufus was a left-handed person. In fact, now that the teacher had accepted this quirk in Rufus's makeup, it was only awkward to be left-handed when somebody wanted to shake his right hand. So far no left-handed person had tried to shake hands with Rufus. Rufus hoped to meet one someday and then they would have a good left-handed shake.

But there was one occasion when it really was an asset to be left-handed, Rufus found. And that was in connection with the Fatal Four.

For some time Rufus had been seeing "The F. F." on all of Janey's notebooks and on the brown covers of her grammar and arithmetic books. He asked Jane what it meant. Jane said it was a secret. However, if Rufus would not tell anybody, the initials stood for the Fatal Four. More than that she would not say. Rufus assumed it had something to do with pirates. Therefore, he was really surprised when Jane, in a mood of confidence, further enlightened him to the extent of revealing that the Fatal Four was the name of a baseball team she belonged to that could beat anybody.

"Then," she went on to explain, "if the Fatal Four gets tired of baseball, oh, not gets tired 'cause they'll never do that, but if it should snow, and they couldn't play anymore, they'll still be the Fatal Four because it's a good name the members can keep always. Baseball ... football ... no matter what. Or it could just be a club to eat cookies and drink punch made out of jelly and water."

This all sounded good to Rufus, particularly the punch. He asked if he could join. Did it cost anything? Jane said she was sorry but the Fatal Four was all girls. However, she would try to bring him a cookie if they ever decided on punch and cookies instead of baseball. So for a time Rufus was not allowed to have anything to do with this team. But sometimes he went across the street to the big empty lot behind the library, sat down on a log, and watched them practice. There were a half dozen or so silvery gray old telephone poles piled up in one part of the lot. Bleachers, Rufus called them, and that was where he sat to watch the Fatal Four.

Jane and Nancy had organized the Fatal Four baseball team. At first Jane was worried that they were playing baseball in October when the time for baseball is spring. She thought it would be better if the Fatal Four started right in with punch and cookies on Tuesdays. But once they had begun playing baseball she wondered how she could ever have been so foolish. She loved baseball and could not understand how anybody was happy who did not play it every day.

Naturally, since Jane and Nancy had thought up this whole team, there was no reason why they should not take the two most important roles, the pitcher and the catcher, for themselves. Jane was the catcher. She accepted this position because she thought the name alone would automatically make her a good one. "Yes," she said, "I'll be catcher." And she put her trust in the power of the title and the mitt to enable her to catch anything. Nancy was the pitcher. For a time they were the only members of the team, so they had to be the pitcher and the catcher, for in baseball that is the very least you can get along with. Soon, however, other girls in the neighborhood joined up.

"I'll be the captain," said Nancy. "Let's take a vote."

They took a vote and elected Nancy. Clara Pringle was the outfield to catch all flies. She never really had very much to do because there weren't many flies hit and she sat in the long grass and waited for business. A girl named Hattie Wood was first base. That made four girls they had on the team and that was when they decided to call themselves the Fatal Four.

So far Rufus had had nothing to do with this team except to sit and watch. He did this gladly, however, for he considered that anything that called itself the Fatal Four was worthy of being watched, especially if there was that vague possibility of pink punch and cookies in the offing. He used to sit there pounding his fist into one of Joey's old mitts, hoping they'd take him into the Four.

At first the Fatal Four baseball team practiced ardently every day. However, after a week or so Jane grew tired of chasing balls, since she rarely caught one. The mitt and the title of catcher had not produced the desired results.

"A backstop is what we need," she told Nancy.

None of the girls was willing to be a backstop. Moreover, they were all needed where they were. Take Hattie Wood off first base and what kind of a team would they have? they asked themselves. An amateur team. The Fatal Four was anything but that, Nancy assured them. "But if you want a backstop, why not ask Rufus?" she suggested.

Now there was much arguing back and forth as to whether or not they should invite Rufus to be the backstop. He was not a girl and this team was supposed to be composed of girls only. But then everybody thought how nice it would be to have Rufus chasing balls for them, so they enthusiastically assented.

"After all," said Jane, "a backstop is not really part of the team. It's part of the grounds."

So that clinched it and that was how Rufus came to be backstop for the Fatal Four baseball team. Rufus was happy over the arrangement. When they abandoned baseball for punch and cookies, he might be an accepted member. Moreover, the more practice he had, the sooner the big boys would take him into their team, he thought. Certainly if the pitcher of the boys' baseball team had the same tendencies as Nancy, left-handed Rufus would be a tremendous asset.

Nancy used to be a rather good pitcher. But ever since the girls' baseball team had been organized, Nancy had taken to practicing curves. Somehow these curves always shot the ball way to the left of the batter. The batter would move farther and farther to the left, hoping to catch up with Nancy's curves. But it was no use. No matter how far to the left the batter edged, the farther to the left flew Nancy's balls. Often the bases had to be moved several times during the game to catch up with the home plate. Frequently, by the end of the game, home plate was where the pitcher's box originally had been, and vice versa. Nancy realized there was a flaw in her pitching which she would have to correct.

Meanwhile, it certainly was lucky the team now had a left-handed backstop, for Jane had a hard enough time catching just straight pitches, let alone these curves of Nancy's that veered off to the left all the time. But Rufus had only to reach out his left arm farther and farther, and he caught most of them. What he didn't catch he cheerfully ran for, over Mr. Buckle's hen coop or in Mrs. Wood's asparagus patch that had gone to seed, or he hunted between the long silvery logs that lay lined up in a corner of the field.

As a reward for his backstop duties Nancy pitched Rufus some curves, and since he was a left-handed batter, her balls that veered to the left were just perfect for him and it was only when Rufus was at the bat that Clara Pringle, picking goldenrod in the outfield, had anything to do in the game.

This convinced Nancy that there was nothing wrong with her pitching after all. The trouble lay with the material she was working with. "Slug at 'em, fellas," she said. "Rufe hits 'em all." And the girls, feeling rather ashamed, now tried harder, sometimes even turning around and batting left-handed as Rufus did, hoping to hit Nancy's balls.

One Saturday morning Rufus was sitting in the driver's seat of the old abandoned sleigh that was in the Moffats' barn. He was thinking that if he had a pony next winter he could harness it to this old sleigh and go for a ride. Suddenly Nancy and Janey burst around from the front yard. Nancy was swinging her bat. She had her pitcher's mitt on. Jane was pounding the baseball into Joey's big catcher's mitt, limbering it up.

"Come on, Rufe," they yelled. "This is
the
day!"

"What! Punch and cookies?" exclaimed Rufus.

"No, we're having a real game today. Not just practice," they said.

For a long time Jane and Nancy had thought they were the only girls' baseball team in Cranbury, in the world in fact. Then one day a girl accosted them after school. She said her name was Joyce Allen and that she was the captain of the Busy Bee baseball team, a team composed entirely of girls on the other side of town. She wanted to know whether or not Nancy, the captain of the F. F. team, would accept a challenge from her, the captain of the Busy Bee team, to play next Saturday. Nancy consulted with Jane and said "Yes."

So now today was the day. Rufus climbed off the sleigh, found his old pitcher's mitt that he used to catch Nancy's curves, and they all marched across the street to the big lot behind the library where the game was going to be held. While they waited for the teams to show up, Rufus spit in his mitt, rubbed sand in it, and got it into condition to play.

"I hope we don't have to go all over town and round everybody up," said Jane impatiently.

The Fatal Four had added another team member, Nancy's sister, Beatrice, but they still called themselves the Fatal Four because it sounded better than fatal anything else. Since this team had such an excellent name, the F. F., it had plenty of applicants to join. Nancy and Jane were particular, however, saying to join the F. F. you really had to know something about baseball. Most applicants backed away apologetically when Nancy stated this firmly.

At last here came somebody across the lot. It was Joyce Allen, the captain of the Busy Bees.

"The others will be here soon," she said cheerfully. "Some of them hadn't finished washing the breakfast dishes, but they'll be here soon."

"While we're waitin'," said Jane, "since both the captains are here, we can see who's up at the bat first."

Rufus took the bat, threw it, and Nancy caught it. She put her right fist around the end of it, then the other captain put her fist above Nancy's and swiftly placing one fist above the other they measured the length of the bat. The visiting captain's left fist was the last one to fit the bat. It was a tight squeeze but fair, and Rufus said that the visiting team was first up at the bat. Rufus sometimes had to act in the capacity of umpire as well as backstop.