The Youngest Hero (16 page)

“Don’t worry,” I said as I went to get into jeans and a sweater. “He’d be the last person I’d tell anything.”

We raced down six flights, laughing and bumping each other. Just before we turned into the lobby, we heard Mr. Bravura.

“What’s that racket?” he hissed, but he softened when he saw us. “Good morning, madam! Are we ready for our little chore?”
He said he had found a length of chain and a rubber bungi cord that might assist us in lowering the contraption down the stairs.

Elgin looked stunned by the device. With its metal tubes and protrusions, it made a mass of parts about six feet tall and
four feet wide. It was on wheels, but not all of them rolled. Elgin put his hands on the sides and shook it to feel the weight.
The thing hardly budged.

“I hope the three of us will be enough,” Mr. Bravura said as he fed the chain in and around a couple of metal bars. He did
the same with the bungi cord.

“I’ll hold by the chain,” I told Elgin, “and you can guide it down the stairs by the side. Whatever you do, don’t get in front
of it.”

We maneuvered into position, centering the machine in the square landing at the top of the concrete stairs. It took all three
of us scraping and grunting to get it facing the right direction.

“We should just let it fall down the stairs,” Elgin said. “I’m gonna have to put it all back together anyway.”

No one laughed.

Elgin moved down two steps while Mr. Bravura and I got behind and bent to push. When the front wheels slipped over the top
step, just before the weight of the machine made it tilt forward, we stopped and repositioned ourselves, carefully wrapping
chain and bungi cord around our hands.

I lowered my shoulder into the machine. Mr. Bravura did the same. Elgin held the side, hoping to keep the thing straight as
we planned to go step by step to the cellar. But as soon as the weight of the machine shifted, the whole thing pitched forward
and began to walk itself down the stairs, faster and faster.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Mr. Bravura cried, following as if taking a gigantic robot on a walk and finding himself dragged behind.

“Don’t let go!” I squealed. “Elgin, get out of the way! Get up here and help us if you can!”

Elgin flattened himself against the wall as machine, landlord, and I lurched by, picking up speed. He reached around Mr. Bravura
and got both hands on the chain, but that only made my side move more quickly. The whole thing was turning to the right. Elgin
let go and it straightened itself, but when he grabbed the bungi cord on my side, the thing jerked that way. Now it was humping
and jumping and banging down the stairs with the three of us trying to hang on. I had the cord intertwined in my fingers,
something Mr. Bravura could not do with the chain.

“I’m losing my grip!” he shouted.

“Hang on!” I said.

Elgin was crushed between Mr. Bravura and me now, trying to grab the chain again so one side wouldn’t rip free. Just as Mr.
Bravura’s hands slipped off the chain, Elgin grabbed it. The landlord’s weight shifted to his rear and he sat on the stairs,
unable to hang on or help.

Elgin may have been as strong as I was, but he didn’t weigh quite as much, and now our dead weight, trailing the lumbering
appliance, was all that kept it from tumbling end-over-end.

When Elgin screamed that he too was losing it, I knew I was in danger. If he fell back too, it would be just me and heavy
metal rolling down those ungiving stairs, my fingers and hands stuck in a contracting rubber cord. My weight moved forward,
and I tried to plant my feet to keep from rolling over the top of the machine. Now I knew what a rodeo rider feels like when
he’s thrown off an animal but his hand is still locked into the rope.

As the machine began to hurtle and crash down the stairs, Elgin pushed off with one foot and got his knee atop it. As he was
going over backward with it, he somehow unhooked my bungi cord from the metal. I sat back and he jumped off, landing hard
on the stairs as the three of us watched the thing reach the basement floor with a terrible crash and roar.

Elgin sat rubbing his thigh, where he had hit the edge of a step.

“Everyone all right?” I asked.

When they nodded, I began to laugh, and soon the three of us were howling. Dust rose from the basement, along with the smell
of oil and grease. We went down to survey the damage.

“I wonder if you can hurt one of these things,” I said.

“Two wheels are bent in,” Elgin said.

“I hope we can still drag or push it somewhere,” Mr. Bravura said.

We scouted the musty, dark basement. Every imaginable piece of junk was stored in that cellar, from surplus furniture to tools,
rags, gadgets, and moldy junk decades old. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I got an idea. I could tell from the look on
Elgin’s face that he had the same.

Just around the corner from where the pitching machine lay in a heap were two walled-off areas. Both were windowless, and
each had one bare lightbulb that looked like it was on its last tungsten. One was a square room piled three or four feet high
with junk. I had my eye on the other room, which ran almost half the length of the building and was about twelve feet wide.

“What would you guess was the size of this area, Ricardo?” I said idly, trying to keep him from suspicion.

He straightened and looked to all four corners. “Oh, twelve or fourteen by thirty or forty.”

“I would have said twelve by forty myself,” I said. “There’d be more than enough room to store it in here.”

“Mr. Bravura,” Elgin began slowly, “is there an outlet in this room?”

Ricardo squinted.”Why?”

“Maybe someday when I get the thing figured out and put together a little, I could plug it in and see if it works.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. This is not an inside thing. And you might break something.”

“I’d move everything into the other room.”

I was afraid Elgin would offend Mr. Bravura. “Maybe, Ricardo,” I said, “the boy has a good idea. I’ll bet a thinker like you
could come up with an idea of how we could make this work. Maybe I could give you a few dollars a month for your trouble
and for the electricity.”

The light returned to Ricardo’s eyes. “I will consider it, of course. I was an engineer in the past, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, feeling sleazy. “But it doesn’t surprise me.”

“Maybe if the boy moved everything into the other room.”

“Yes,” I said. ‘Then you wouldn’t have to worry about what he does in here with the machine.”

“Precisely,” Ricardo said. “I would entrust you, ma’am, with a key to the basement. You would be responsible for whatever
happened down here.”

“That’s great!” Elgin said. “I’ll—”

“But,” Ricardo said, holding up a hand. “No one must ever be in this basement who does not live in this building. No boys
from your team, no stickball players.”

“Stickball?” Elgin said.

“Whatever they call it these days.”

“Fastpitch,” Elgin said.

“Are we agreed?”

“If I got the thing working, I’d want to show my friends and have them try to—”

Mr. Bravura raised both hands. “No! No! See, ma’am? He does not understand liability and expense and a person’s job. Just
store the machine wherever you can find room! No setting it up, fixing it, getting it to run, anything. And no key to the
basement.”

“Ricardo,” I said. “Depend on me to carry out your wishes. I understand completely, and I’ll make sure your rules are followed
exactly down here. You can trust me, and we both appreciate it.”

“You’ll explain it to the boy?”

“For sure.”

M
r. Bravura made a point of giving the key to me and not to Elgin. “Whenever you or whoever you designate is in the basement,”
he said, “I want the door locked behind you.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Elgin?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You can always get out,” Ricardo continued, “but it’s a big steel door, so no outsider can get in without a terrible racket.
I’ll run them off. I will not allow anyone to threaten my tenants.”

I told Elgin to wait for me upstairs. He looked puzzled and didn’t respond, but he slowly went to the elevator.

“Take the stairs,” I called after him. “Keep you in shape.”

“Oh, Momma,” he said. But he obeyed.

I could tell Mr. Bravura was already regretting his decision. “Ricardo,” I said. “Let me just say again how much I appreciate
this. Next time you look in that basement, it’ll be straightened up, and we’ll be sure your rule is followed. You made me
very happy today. Can I send you and your wife down a plate of Thanksgiving dinner later?”

“Why, Mrs. Woodell,” he said, beaming. “I’d be more than honored.”

Back upstairs, Elgin was sulking.

“What’s your problem, buddy?” I said, pulling him to me.

“That is the best thing you’ve ever given me, and I can’t wait to start working on it. Where’d you get it anyway?”

“You can see it’s not new.”

He nodded.

“It’s from your daddy.”

Elgin sat in a kitchen chair and shook his head. “Momma, you gotta let me get at it. Let’s skip lunch, and then let’s have
the big meal later.”

“Big meal?”

“I saw the turkey, Momma.”

“Not much to speak of, is it?”

He shrugged. “I love turkey. Now can I have the key?”

I shivered when I finally got to the basement, but it wasn’t long before I had to take off my sweatshirt. I kept thinking
that in ten minutes or so the machine would be ready, but so far I hadn’t touched it in forty minutes. I made trip after trip
from the big room to the smaller one, trying to find places to put half-used cans of paint and heavy containers of who-knew-what.
There were suitcases, trunks, oil drums. It was all I could do to push them, slide them, roll them into the other room. I
would be tired and sore after this.

By noon I was hungry, but I put off running upstairs for a snack. I knew I couldn’t last till the turkey dinner that afternoon,
but I didn’t want to quit working either. I had never been so industrious. Everything I was doing, every step I made, pushed
me closer to checking out the rickety pitching machine. Trouble was, even if I could get it to fire up, I had only one bald
tennis ball. Would that even work?

It was another hour and a half before I had cleared the big room. I leaned against the wall and surveyed it. There were pipes
overhead, a utility box in one corner, and the single bulb hanging in the middle of the room. That left the ends of the room
nearly dark. The machine could be set up at either end,
and since one was just ten feet from where the thing sat now, that would be the best bet. I heard a knock at the door.

I jogged up the stairs to find Momma with a couple of apples. “I’m glad you’re here,” I told her.

“Need some help?”

“Wait till you see.” I grabbed the apples, thanked her, and chomped a huge bite as I led her down the stairs.

“Elgin! You’re ready to move the machine already!”

“I’ve been working forever.”

“I can’t believe how much you’ve done.”

“I need help dragging the machine. I’m gonna set it up at this end and have it pitch toward the other wall.”

“How hard will this thing throw, Elgin, and what will it throw?”

“No idea how hard. I’ve seen em at batting cages where they throw slow and medium and fast, but I don’t know how you set that.
I’ll have to look at it. I don’t even know how to aim it.”

“Aren’t we gonna need Ricardo?”

“I don’t think so, Momma. We’re on flat ground now, and the chain is still attached. We can put the bungi cord back on, and
I can try to get the thing up on its wheels.”

We laughed, remembering what happened on the stairs.

“We can try,” she said as I put the uneaten apple in my pocket and tossed the core of the first one into an empty can in the
other room.

I hooked the bungi cord to a strategic spot on the machine, and we leaned and braced and pushed and pulled until it stood
upright. Two wheels were still bent, but at least it was pushable now.

Every time we got it going a few inches it seemed to turn on its own and head the opposite direction. I couldn’t help but
laugh when Momma did. As the machine started through the door, I ran to the side and leaned into it, bumping and pushing so
it wouldn’t drag against the doorframe. Momma had got up some speed behind it, and as it cleared the doorway it swung into
the open room and spun almost in a circle.

“I’ve got to get back to the turkey,” she said, “unless there’s anything else I can do.”

I shook my head. “You think Ricardo would mind if I used the tools down here?”

“Looks like nobody’s used em for years. Be careful with the electricity now, hear?”

I nodded. “Only socket I can find is in the light fixture.”

She looked up. “Funny place for it. At least you know it works, cause the light’s working.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll
come get you at dinnertime, around four. I promised Ricardo and his wife some turkey dinner.”

“Oh, no, Momma! They gonna eat with us?”

“I’m just bringing them a plate; now don’t be so selfish. Having them join us would have been a nice idea. Wish I’d thought
of it.”