Biff might have brought all his supporters, but he also had a lot of enemies here. If I were him, I’d make sure I had someone walk me to my car when the meeting was over.
Mr. Witherington had been waiting for the crowd to grow quiet again.
“However,” he went on, “due to the unfortunate events of the last few days, it appears that Mr. Brown will no longer be able to continue as league president—”
“That’s a lie!” Biff leaped to his feet and turned to face the crowd. “I never resigned and I’m not going to! They’re trying to railroad me!”
The people immediately around Biff jumped to their feet and began shouting things like “fraud!” and “unfair!” and waving their arms around wildly. From where Mr. Witherington sat, they probably looked like a frenzied mob, but if you were a little distanced from it, as Michael and I were at the other end of the row, you could tell that it was a tempest in a teapot. In fact, it looked rather like one of those moments at a political convention when a dark horse candidate with next to no chance of winning has been nominated and his supporters are trying to make up with enthusiasm what they lack in strength.
Then Ms. Ellie, the town librarian, who was sitting a few seats down from us, stood up, turned to face the audience, and began to clap rhythmically in the “One! Two! One-two-three!” pattern she always used when story hour and other library events grew too boisterous. Seeing what she was doing, Michael and I joined in immediately, as did a few others. In fact, since several generations of Caerphillians had been trained to respond to that particular rhythm, before long the entire room was clapping along—and many of us stomping as well—completely drowning out the feeble noise that Biff and his cronies were making. One by one the cronies shut up and sat back down, until only Biff was left standing at the head of the room, with his mouth hanging open.
When the last crony had sat down, Ms. Ellie held up her right hand and the clapping and stomping stopped instantly, as if we’d rehearsed the maneuver for hours. She turned to Mr. Witherington, nodded, and sat down.
“As I was saying.” Mr. Witherington glared at Biff for a moment before continuing. “Mr. Brown will no longer be able to continue as league president because I, as the duly authorized representative of Summerball National, have removed him for cause.”
Wild applause from most of the crowd greeted that statement.
“Good going, four-eyes!” Callie shouted.
“We will need to elect a new league president,” Mr. Witherington said, when the room had grown quiet again. “In fact, we’ll also be electing a new vice president and treasurer.”
“Point of order, Mr. Chairman,” Biff said. “Am I correct in assuming that only Caerphilly Summerball League members in good standing will be allowed to vote?”
Mr. Witherington stared over his glasses at Biff for a few moments.
“Mr. Brown is correct,” he said finally. “Only members in good standing will be allowed to vote.”
At these words, many of the people seated near Biff began waving little cards in the air. No doubt these were cards declaring them league members in good standing.
“Where do we go to get a card?” Michael muttered. And from the sound of the muttering behind us, he wasn’t the only one thinking this.
“However,” Mr. Witherington went on, “since under the previous management there does not appear to have been a good faith effort to enable prospective members to join, we will postpone the voting until all those present who aspire to membership have been given a chance to pay their annual dues.”
“No fair!” Biff leaped to his feet, already shouting.
“Stow it, beef brain!” Callie called out. “Four-eyes has your number.”
Even Mr. Yoder was smiling now, though it was as stern and forbidding as a smile could be and still qualify for the name.
Meanwhile, before Mr. Witherington had even finished speaking, the non-Biff portion of the audience had already begun forming an orderly line leading up to the podium.
Ms. Ellie, Mother, and I pitched in to organize the dues-paying. We recruited several volunteers to work their way down the line, taking cash or checks and writing out receipts, which Ms. Ellie and I then carried up to Mr. Witherington in batches for his official signature.
The only sour note was that Biff’s supporters were shouting protests and waving their arms to be recognized. Mr. Witherington was ignoring them, but I could tell they were wearing on his nerves.
“While you do that, I will suppress the opposition,” Mother murmured to me. I was looking forward to seeing how she did it—I was rather hoping that, like the guinea pigs in Alice in Wonderland, this would involve stuffing them into bags and sitting on them. Mother’s more civilized solution was to organize entertainment to amuse the crowd while the dues collection went forward, and to chide Biff’s cronies for their bad manners if they interrupted the entertainment.
They sat still for Dad’s dramatic recitation of “Casey at the Bat.” I was a little worried that Mother would let him recite other, less baseball-oriented poems—his repertoire leaned to long, nineteenth-century narrative poems like “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” or “The Highwayman.” But after Mighty Casey struck out in the last stanza, Mother called upon Michael to do a dramatic reading—and, to my surprise, he obliged with a touching rendition of Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Address.
But the line was still going, and some of Biff’s cronies were beginning to mutter about calling the question. Did Mother have other aces up her sleeve? Even Dad reciting “The Hunting of the Snark” might be preferable to letting the forces of Biff prevail.
“And now,” Mother said, “I would like to introduce you to a figure out of baseball history. My mother-in-law, Mrs. Cordelia Lee Mason—who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League under her maiden name of Delia Lee.”
“Delia Lee?” Mr. Witherington’s head snapped up, and he almost stabbed me with the pen he’d been using to sign the latest batch of receipts. He looked up at me. “She’s Delia Lee? I must bring my girls down here to meet her,” he muttered as he dived back into signing receipts.
Cordelia entertained the crowd with anecdotes about her days on the diamond, interspersed with bits of general baseball humor, all the while keeping her eye on the progress of the line. And as Mr. Witherington signed the last few receipts, she brought her remarks to a graceful close and handed the podium back to him.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mason,” he said. “And now we will proceed to the heart of our meeting—the election of a new league president. Would anyone like to make a nomination?”
The Biff contingent had been muttering together busily all during the entertainment. From the little bits I’d overheard, they were debating whether there was any chance Mr. Witherington would let them nominate Biff or whether they should just put up a puppet candidate who would let Biff run things from behind the scenes. And I was a little worried, because while we’d all just expended a lot of energy making sure we could outvote them, the forces of good hadn’t had any time to discuss who we wanted to vote for. Could we elect Lem Shiffley, and figure out later how much help he needed and who could provide it? Was there anyone else capable of running the league—even without the roadblocks Biff could be expected to throw his way? But while both the pro- and anti-Biff forces were still murmuring in clusters, Mr. Witherington called on someone who’d raised his hand—Will Entwhistle.
“This is the first league meeting I’ve managed to attend,” Will began. “Mainly because it’s the first one anyone bothered to tell me about.”
Cheers and scattered applause from various parts of the room; glares from the Biff precincts.
“Preach it, kiddo!” Callie called from the back.
“I think better communications should be one of the goals of whoever we elect as the new president,” Will went on. More cheers. “Also better field maintenance and at least a status report on how much longer it’s going to be before w
e get some of those improvements we’ve been promised for the last five or six years. I think we could get a lot of these things done if we had a president who was good at organizing things and communicating with people and getting them to do stuff. I think Lem Shiffley was going a great job till he took sick, and I hear he’d be willing to come back when he’s better.”
“If he gets better,” one of the Biff supporters called out. “And we need a president now.”
“That we do,” Will said. “So I nominate Lem for president, and Meg Langslow for vice president, and that way I think we’ll be pretty well covered no matter what happens.” With that he sat down.
“Hang on,” I was starting to say, but I was drowned out by calls of “I second that!” from various parts of the room.
“Don’t worry,” Michael whispered. “We can get you lots of minions.”
“Don’t worry,” Mother was whispering in my other ear. “Lem finishes his chemo in two weeks, and in the meantime I’m sure everyone in the family will be delighted to help out.”
So I gave up the idea of protesting and let them nominate me. After several hurried conferences, the Biff contingent nominated Adolph Pruitt, but Lem and I were elected by a landslide. Vince Wong was elected treasurer by an equally overwhelming margin.
Mr. Witherington congratulated the new officers, instructed the outgoing league officers to hand over all relevant files, records, equipment, and account information within the next twenty-four hours, and adjourned the meeting.
Not surprisingly, the defeated Biff supporters fled before either Vince or I could make arrangements for the handing over.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Witherington said, with a thin-lipped smile. “Summerball has dealt with this situation before.” Including the complication that the outgoing league president might end up either a victim of murder or on trial for it before the end of the season? “Meanwhile, we have a more pressing problem. It’s raining outside.”
“Don’t worry,” Randall said. “We’ve got a plan for the rain.”
We were standing under the awning in front of the Caerphilly Inn. Michael had dashed out in the rain to fetch the Twinmobile, scorning the bellhop’s offer of an umbrella. Randall was about to do the same. Mr. Witherington, now ensconced in a room here at the Inn instead of the beastly Clay County Motor Lodge, wasn’t going anywhere, but appeared to want to continue our discussion of how to deal with the rain.
And apart from waiting it out, how in the world does a baseball league deal with rain? Unless Randall had workmen already unfolding a giant economy-sized tarp to cover the entire field, tomorrow’s games were probably going to be postponed. Maybe even Monday’s games, given how badly our local red clay mud drained. Or was Randall planning to build a giant pipeline to channel the water elsewhere? California would probably love to have it, but I didn’t think even Randall could pull that off by morning.
Randall must have noticed that I looked puzzled. Or maybe “alarmed” was the proper word.
“We can use big wet/dry vacs,” he said. “We literally suck the water up and dump it someplace where it will drain.”
“And there are several brands of absorbent clays that can be used to increase the drying,” Mr. Witherington said. “We can try to find some in the morning. Unless, of course, your league has laid in a supply, although that seems rather unlikely under the circumstances.”
“I’m pretty sure the league hasn’t,” Randall said. “But the county has, so we’re good. I’ll line up some workmen who can get started at first light and send both of you an e-mail once I’ve got a plan.”
At first light. Nothing like hitting the ground running in my new job.
Chapter 23
I awoke to the dreaded sound of continuing rain. Only a drizzle, but a steady drizzle. And while it was still dark outside, someone had left the driveway light on, so when I peeked out the window I could see enough puddles to tell that it had been drizzling for some time. Or maybe pouring for part of the night.
I sighed, and pulled out my phone.
“Relax,” Michael mumbled from the bed. “No baseball this morning. Too wet.”
“You coaches and players can relax,” I said. “We acting league presidents have to worry about how much longer it’s going to be raining, and whether there’s any chance we can rescue tonight’s games or at least tomorrow’s.” Not to mention whether our predecessors were going to do anything to make the transition even more difficult.
“Don’t fret; it’s just for the time being,” Michael said. “I’m sure Lem will be back on the job before too long.”
Or if he wasn’t, I had a couple of other ideas about people I could draft to take over for me. But for now …
“Can you take care of the boys today while I focus on baseball?” I asked.
“Sure thing.”
I threw on some old clothes and headed downstairs. To my surprise, no one else was up—not even Rose Noire, who usually had breakfast ready long before I came downstairs.
Of course, I didn’t usually come downstairs at a little before six.
“Good grief,” I muttered. “The sun isn’t even up yet.”
And wouldn’t be for another half hour, according to the weather app on my phone. Which also predicted scattered showers off and on all day.
I stuck a slice of bread in the toaster, grabbed some leftover fruit salad, and used my phone to check my e-mail. Apparently Randall Shiffley and Jim Witherington were also already up and planning to meet at the field at dawn. And I was invited if I wanted to come.
“Meet you there,” I replied.
I had other e-mails from various parents and coaches. I glanced through them as I wolfed down my fruit and toast. Nothing that couldn’t wait until after I inspected the field.
And no reason not to head there immediately, I decided.
The road was slick, and in a few places puddles spread most of the way across its surface. I was pleased to see that the baseball field’s parking lot was in good shape—it would have been a sea of mud if Randall’s crew and the volunteers hadn’t spread all that gravel Friday night.
Unfortunately the field was a sea of mud. A sea of mud with ambitions of becoming a pond.
And there was someone standing by the backstop staring out at it. Biff.
He didn’t look up when I drove up—just stood there, fingers twined in the chain link, staring. He was wearing an industrial gray rain poncho over jeans. The poncho had a hood, but it was pushed back, and his Yankees cap looked sodden, as if he’d been standing there in the rain for some time.
He wasn’t wearing the wretched windbreaker with the tracker in its pocket, or if he was, it was well hidden under the poncho. Probably just as well. The sight of the windbreaker might have tempted me to get out and see if I could pick his pocket. A temptation I hoped I’d have resisted, since he was still very much a murder suspect. Instead, I turned my car engine off and sat there, watching him, until a truck pulled into the parking lot.
Two tall forms in rain slickers got out and began unloading equipment from the bed of the truck. The men looked familiar—in fact, they looked like two of Randall’s many cousins—so I got out and sloshed over to greet them.
“We’re here to work on the field,” one of them said.
“Work on it how?” I asked.
“Wet/dry vac,” he said. “The more water we can suck up, the faster the field will dry. Is he going to hassle us about doing it?”
He was pointing to Biff.
“I doubt it.” I shook my head. “He’s not in charge anymore. And if he tries, I’m here. Tell him to talk to me about it.”
He nodded. Both of them hefted their wet/dry vacs—enormous black-and-yellow objects that looked like giant mutant vacuum cleaners—and trudged out onto the field.
Biff didn’t try to interfere with them, just stood there staring. I strolled over to see him. Not that I was eager to talk with Biff, but we had things to discuss, and I figured this might be one of my best ch
ances to do so.
He didn’t turn around, but I suspected he knew I was there. He hunched his shoulders a little higher and pulled his cap a little farther over his eyes, but he didn’t leave.
“Morning,” I said, when I reached his side.
“Come to gloat?” he asked.
“No.” I leaned against the fence in a pose that echoed his, watching the Shiffleys vacuuming up puddles. A seemingly thankless task, since the drizzle still continued. Already one Shiffley had stopped to carry a bag full of water off the field and through the parking lot so he could empty it into a drainage ditch that ran along the road.
Biff and I stood there for a few minutes, side by side, in what with anyone else would have felt like companionable silence. If I glanced to my left, I could see him, hunched a little away from me.
“I don’t want to bother you in the middle of the holiday weekend,” I began.
“Then don’t,” he said.
“I’d be happy not to, provided you make an appointment to see me on Tuesday and promise to show up. It’s been six weeks since Randall assigned me to be the contact between your company and the county government, and so far you’ve ducked every call and visit I’ve made.”
“Didn’t have anything to report.”
“You don’t have any progress to report,” I said. “I can see that every time I drive through the town square. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to talk to me.”
“Look,” he said, whirling around to face me, “I’ve had labor problems and materials problems and weather problems, so I haven’t started the job yet. But it won’t take more than a week to do the work, and there’s still four weeks till Memorial Day, so why don’t you quit badgering me?”
“Now was that so hard?” I said, keeping my tone as mild as possible. “If you’d called me back that first Monday morning I left a message, and said that—well, said it in a slightly less combative tone—I’d have left you alone for the rest of the week. Think of how much more relaxing your week would have been without me calling every day. And then if the next Monday you’d called to say that you still hadn’t been able to start the job, but it was on your schedule—and even better, given me the tentative start date—I’d probably have left you alone for the rest of that week, too. It’s not just about getting the work done, it’s also about keeping the customer happy.”
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