Wall Ball (6 page)

T
he bus barely managed to squeeze into the lot. Too many tourists crowded the school grounds. They’d ditched their cars by the side of the road and streamed forward on foot. Bundled from head to toe against the cold, hundreds stood gawking at Mount Rambletown. Parents of classmates, office workers who’d detoured past school on their way to their jobs, high school kids cutting class, nurses from the hospital. Most carried cell phones or video cameras. Those who weren’t taking pictures of the snow peak took pictures of one another. Despite the frigid temperature, they all looked happy. Everyone laughed
and pointed and clapped. And generally took up too much space.

“Yowza!” exclaimed Gabby. “Do you think they’ll cancel school?”

Our driver leaned on his horn until the crowd parted and a way opened for us. He slowly piloted the bus to the curb and we unloaded.

Principal Gorton stood out front again playing traffic cop. She looked as if she was fending off mosquitoes. Whenever a car packed with sightseers tried to sneak through, she popped a silver whistle into her mouth and gave a sharp blast. She did not look like a happy camper.

“What a circus!” Gasser hooted as we tramped up the front walk between high banks of snow. He turned to take in the crowd. “Man, if we could charge admission, we’d make a mint.”

We all cracked up.

All except Slingshot.

“Hold on now,” he said. You could almost see the wheels turning in his head. “That’s not a
bad idea. Not a bad idea at all.”

“What’s not?” Stump laughed. “Getting steamrolled by a crazed mob?”

“I’m seeing a hot chocolate stand,” said Slingshot. “All these people? In this cold? We’d make a fortune!”

We were quiet for a minute as Slingshot’s idea sank in.

“In Florida we used to set up lemonade stands,” ventured Orlando. “I’ve never heard of a hot chocolate stand.”

“Same idea,” said Slingshot. “Different weather.”

“You know, it might just work,” said Gabby. “Seriously. You think Principal Gorton would go for it?”

I glanced over at our intrepid leader. She made a series of hand gestures that looked like kung fu while fiercely tooting her whistle.

I didn’t think she’d go for anything at the moment. Except maybe a big bottle of aspirin.

“Let’s talk to Mr. Swickle,” suggested Stump.
“C’mon! What’ve we got to lose?”

We funneled through the snow canyon into school. Without bothering to take off our coats, we surrounded Mr. Swickle and explained our idea.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!” Stump pleaded, hopping from foot to foot. He always bounced when he was excited. “When else will we ever have a crowd like this on our doorstep?!”

Mr. Swickle folded his arms across his chest. He was not convinced. Then I had an idea. “It could be a fund-raiser for charity,” I ventured. “You know, a cool cause the whole school can support? Remember when we washed cars to raise money for the outfield wall at Rambletown Field? It’ll be like that, except this time we donate the profits to something bigger!”

“That wall is pretty big,” Orlando murmured, rubbing his head.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“Hmmm,” Mr. Swickle said. “Community
service. I’ll tell you what. Everybody take your seats. If we get through attendance without any problems, I’ll make the necessary inquiries.”

We didn’t need to be asked twice.

We stowed our winter stuff and sat at our desks in no time flat. We folded our hands and beamed at Mr. Swickle like angels. After calling roll, he told us to get out our workbooks and copy down today’s poem. Then he opened the door between our room and the other sixth-grade class next door and asked the teacher, Mrs. Nedermeyer, to keep an eye on us.

“I have to talk to Principal Gorton about something important,” he explained. “I’ll fill you in when I get back.”

Without waiting for an answer, he dashed out of the room.

Through the open doorway, I saw Ducks and Ocho and the other guys settling in for class. Boy, would they be in for a surprise if we could pull off this thing.

T
he new poem was called “Watermelon.” It was by a guy named Charles Simic. Mr. Swickle had written that Charles Simic was a poet laureate of the United States of America. I guessed that meant he was like the president of all the poets.

Thinking of presidents made me look outside. Our frozen four were still up there. The curious crowd, I noted with satisfaction, was still there too, and getting bigger.

The poem was really short. It was about watermelons. The poet thought they looked like fat little statues of the Buddha. When the fruit was cut open, the red wedges reminded him of smiles.

I thought a smile was a cool way to describe a watermelon because eating one made you happy.

Biting into a real watermelon would have been nice. It would have meant summer and hot weather and no more slushy boots and wet mittens. It would have meant no mitts at all, except the baseball kind.

I finished copying the poem, and Mr. Swickle still hadn’t come back. The long red second hand on the big clock above the blackboard inched forward. In a race with a tortoise, it would have lost by a mile.

Finally, the hall door swung open, and Mr. Swickle walked briskly through the doorway. He nodded to Mrs. Nedermeyer. I tried to read his expression, but his face was like a crossword puzzle with no boxes filled in. It was blank.

“Well,” he said after about a hundred years had passed. “Yes, indeed.”

“Yes, what?” I wanted to shout.

“Principal Gorton has pressed the cafeteria
ladies into service. As we speak, Mr. Trombley and his men have begun setting up folding tables.”

Mr. Trombley is the school custodian.

“The first ever Rambletown Elementary School hot chocolate stand is a go!”

Room 12 exploded in cheers. Through the open door, the kids in Mrs. Nedermeyer’s class snapped their heads around and stared.

“Ahem,” said Mr. Swickle. He turned to Mrs. Nedermeyer, who looked as curious as her students. “Sudden change of plans,” he explained. “A fund-raiser to service the frozen hordes outside. The whole school will participate.”

“When?” asked Mrs. Nedermeyer.

“Now.” Mr. Swickle beamed.

An excited murmur broke out among her kids.

“I never got the memo,” complained Mrs. Nedermeyer. “My lesson plan is all made up. We’re ready for a big day of diagramming sentences. Definitive articles, noun markers,
prepositional phrases.”

Whispers turned to groans in her room.

“There was no memo,” said Mr. Swickle brightly. “The kids just dreamed it up this morning. Principal Gorton agrees that we should seize the moment. Strike while the iron is hot. Carpe diem and all that.”

“What about my definitive articles?” asked Mrs. Nedermeyer. “My beautiful noun markers?”

“They’ll keep,” said Mr. Swickle. “But the crowd outside may not.”

We settled down and listened intently as Mr. Swickle explained how the fund-raiser would work. Five tables would be set up at different points around the parking lot, each with its own steaming vat of hot chocolate. Classes would take turns manning the tables. Everyone would have a job. Some kids would collect money from customers, some would fill cups, others would push carts loaded with fresh urns of hot chocolate from the cafeteria to the tables outside.

Best of all, since the whole thing was our idea, our class got to go first.

Slingshot raised his hand.

“Yes?” asked Mr. Swickle.

“How much are we charging?”

“A buck a cup. It’s a nice round figure and will keep things simple. We won’t have to make a lot of change.”

The only thing left to decide was how to use the proceeds. Mr. Swickle asked if we had any ideas.

We had plenty.

Many of them had to do with new, cool stuff for the school. Like a swimming pool. With waterslides. And a sprinkler park.

“Why not some trained dolphins that could swim around the deep end doing tricks?” asked Mr. Swickle

I detected sarcasm.

“People, people,” he said. “The idea is to use the money to help other people, remember?”

We got serious after that. Our class thought
of a million good causes, but Orlando came up with the best one of all. Maybe the fact that he came from Florida gave him the idea. Or maybe he simply glanced out the window at the shivering presidents.

In any case, his hand suddenly shot in the air.

“Go ahead, Orlando,” Mr. Swickle said.

“Coats for Kids?” the center fielder suggested. “I read about it in the paper. It’s a program to provide warm clothes to families who need them right here in town.”

We talked it over. It was perfect.

“It’s unanimous,” Mr. Swickle said. “Coats for Kids.”

At precisely 9:45, we donned our coats, pulled on our hats and gloves and boots, and followed Mr. Swickle outside.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the last hour, every person in Rambletown apparently had gathered in the lot. Many had brought friends from out of town.

“That’s a lot of cold people,” Slingshot observed.

“Ka-ching!’ exclaimed Stump.

We took up our posts. Gasser, Orlando, and I commanded a table near the main entrance to school. We were cashiers. Slingshot and Gabby waited at either end of the table, ready to fill paper coffee cups from big, brown, plastic urns. Stump and several other classmates stood on alert behind pushcarts, primed to race back to the cafeteria for fresh supplies of liquid warmth.

“Come and get it!” bellowed Gasser. “Fresh hot chocolate! Getcher hot chocolate here.” His years of playing baseball obviously had not been wasted: He sounded exactly like a ballpark vendor.

Instantly, a swarm of noisy, red-nosed customers descended on us. They pressed dollar bills into our hands like money was litter they couldn’t wait to toss. We replaced greenbacks with steaming cups. The money went into a tin
box, the hot chocolate went down the hatch, and the customers—or so it seemed to me—went directly back to the end of the line to wait for seconds. You couldn’t have made money faster if you had your own printing press.

An hour passed in no time flat. We were so busy, I didn’t even feel the cold. At the end of our shift, Mrs. Nedermeyer’s class arrived to replace us. I counted up our haul before handing over the tin box to Ocho.

“One hundred and thirty-four dollars!” I announced.

Slingshot quickly did the math. “One thirty-four times five tables is six hundred and seventy dollars,” he said. “If we pull in that much every hour until school ends at two forty-five, we’ll make three thousand three hundred and fifty dollars.”

Slingshot is a whiz with numbers.

I didn’t know how many coats you could get for kids who didn’t have them with three thousand three hundred and fifty dollars. But I knew
it was a lot. Despite the kooky cold weather, I suddenly felt very warm inside.

On the way back into school, I surveyed the wild scene and spotted Principal Gorton. She still waved her hands, but she’d given up blowing the whistle. Instead, she shouted, “Hot chocolate! Getcher hot chocolate here!”

For the first time since spring break ended, she looked happy.

T
he fund-raiser was a huge success.

Our attempt to practice at Rambletown Field Thursday afternoon was anything but. The lumpy mounds of snow ringing the diamond looked like a bunch of white camels. And the ground was so crusty and hard you could twist an ankle just by looking at it.

Even Skip Lou had to admit that pretending to play baseball in those conditions made less sense than change for a nickel. Shaking his head, Skip gathered us around for a quick conference.

“Listen up, guys,” he started. “I hate to say it, but until this snow melts we’re going to have to
move inside. It won’t be perfect, but anything’s better than careening all over a giant slippery slide.”

He was right about that. We all had the bumps and bruises to prove it. Especially Orlando.

“Let’s head back to school and set up in the gym,” Skip continued. “We can run some really fun drills on the basketball court. Glove and Tugboat, you guys grab the equipment bags. Everybody else, get your stuff and let’s go.”

We followed him off the diamond. Our breath puffed white in the wintry air as we chugged single file back to school. Banked snow squeezed the sidewalk, leaving a cleared path about as wide as a Habitrail. A hamster could have scooted along it with ease, if it was an extraskinny hamster.

Reaching school, we threaded past sightseers ogling Mount Rambletown. I counted three TV news crews. The smiles on the reporters’ faces looked frozen in place as they gazed into their cameras. The gusting wind ruined
their perfect hair. Between takes, they stamped their feet and hugged themselves for warmth. I felt bad that we had no hot chocolate for them today.

We trudged behind the school to the back entrance to the gym, where Skip unlocked the wide double doors and flipped on the lights one after another.

“You guys stow your coats and stuff on the bleachers,” Skip directed. “I’ll get a basket of training balls from the equipment room. Be lined up on the baseline under the basket when I get back.”

Our wet boots squeaked on the shining wooden floor as we tramped across the basketball court. It sounded like a choir of songbirds. Real songbirds would have been nice. They would have meant spring had sprung.

“I’ll bet you never played baseball on a hoops court in Florida,” I said to Orlando as I yanked off my snow pants. Underneath, I wore a pair of gray sweats.

“Never,” he agreed. “Then again, I never skidded into the outfield wall ten times in one day either.”

Skip returned, rolling a wheeled basket of baseballs. Except they weren’t real baseballs, I knew. They were lighter, made of some sort of soft, rubbery material that bounced harmlessly off walls and lights and human bodies. We’d used them in T-ball and Coaches Pitch when I was a kid. Skip pushed the cart to the sideline and walked onto the court.

Apparently we wouldn’t be getting to the balls just yet.

“Let’s start with some sprints,” Skip said from the free throw line.

A groan went up from the team.

“Suicides?” Stump asked.

In the front row of bleachers, Gasser stretched out his broken leg and grinned. “Bummer! I do hate to miss this,” he lied.

Skip Lou explained the rules. Probably he didn’t need to. So-called suicide sprints were
like black jelly beans. One taste and you never forgot how awful they were.

“I thought you said this would be fun,” Ducks complained.

“Patience,” Skip said. “Ready?”

I crouched low, my right hand touching the floor for balance. Skip blew his whistle and off we thundered like stampeding cattle.

The Glove took an early lead with Orlando running a close second. The Glove led us in stolen bases every season. It would be interesting to see if Orlando could stay with the fleet second baseman.

I reached the free throw line, slapped it, and changed directions. Ocho and Stump breathed down my neck as I darted back to the baseline. I tagged it and immediately turned again and raced to center court. By the time I got there, Orlando and the Glove had already passed me heading the other way, still neck and neck. On dry ground, Orlando clearly didn’t have any trouble with speed.

“One to go,” Skip shouted as we took off on the last leg, a brutal full-court sprint. “Dig! Dig! Dig!”

I made it to the far end of the court, turned, and kicked for home. I was still a short jump shot from finishing when Orlando and the Glove crossed the line dead even. I followed them in third, narrowly edging out Stump, Ocho, and the rest of the guys.

“Great wheels, everybody,” said Skip Lou as we gasped for air. “With speed like that, we’ll be terrors on the base paths this year. Grab some water and then we’ll split up into teams for Wall Ball.”

Orlando’s head jerked up. “Wall Ball?” he asked.

“Don’t worry,” Gasser said with a laugh. “The idea is to hit a ball off the wall, not run into it. You’ll be fine.”

After a brief rest we formed two equal squads. Half of us, the Blues, grabbed our gloves and spread out along one end of the basketball
court. The other half, the Reds, lined up at the opposite end, where Skip Lou had set up a batting tee. One at a time the Reds—Slingshot, Tugboat, Ducks, Ocho, and Kid Rabbit—whacked a ball off the tee. If it got past us and hit the wall, they scored a point.

Stump hoovered up a hot grounder. Gilly snared a liner in his big first baseman’s mitt. I knocked down a dangerous flare, and the Glove made a nice backhanded stab on a tricky bounder.

But Orlando stole the show, leaping high to spear a rocket off the bat of Tugboat an inch in front of the gym’s bruising cinder block wall. He landed cleanly on his feet and soft-tossed the ball back to Skip Lou, smiling as if to say he could make that play any day of the week.

As long as snow didn’t cover the ground, I believed he could.

We played for a solid hour. At the end of it, the Reds had scored six times, and we had bounced seven hits off the wall. But the best
number of all was zero. Which was the sum total of Orlando’s collisions.

Practice broke up with all of us feeling a little better about our chances against the Haymakers. And a whole lot better about our new center fielder’s prospects for survival.