AT the Rambler, where Garland was closer to the earth, he was back to his jolly old self. The only problem was that he saw my face before I could ask him about being in the nosebleeds.
“Are the turtles fighting back now?”
Garland was like a magnet, and with that teasing nudge, I snapped right into him.
“What’d you do to this girl, Triple?” he asked over my shoulder, which bristled me all up, afraid Triple would tell the truth. I didn’t need eyes in the back of my head to see Triple stiffen up too. But he didn’t say anything.
“I’m fine, Garland. Just misjudged the rocks down at the creek. A clumsy girl in wide open spaces, you know.”
Garland paused like he didn’t really buy it. But he didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell him. And before I knew it, he was washing the sting off my chin and finding me an icepack like any good mama would.
“Well, you can’t tell it by these clothes, but it looks like the rain’s about over,” Garland said. “You two heading over to the stadium?”
That’s when someone knocked on the Rambler’s door. Garland swung it in fast, probably surprised that we had a visitor here. The Grill was where we welcomed the town—he doesn’t even hang a Christmas wreath on the door of the Rambler, because it’s mostly for closing up his sadness while the hope stays on the outside.
“Well, look who it is!” Garland’s hello was so loud that I jumped a little. Or maybe also because of who was on the other side.
Betsy Plogger’s who it was, that’s why.
“Hey,” she said. “Aunt Candy wanted you to have this.” She handed Garland a Famous Apple, just like the one I’d left on June’s porch, hidden from the rain. It was hard to see under her umbrella, but I was pretty sure she was trying not to look around too much in the Rambler as some odd show of respect or something. My stomach flipped a little at seeing those soft edges to her, even though it was silly that she was still protecting her hairdo when it was hardly raining.
“Thank you, Miss Plogger!” said Garland.
Nobody said anything for a minute. Garland had one arm on the door and one under the pie, and both of us were looking at this unusual visitor like she was a baby squirrel that had dropped right out of a nest and onto our stoop.
“Are you all right?” Betsy tipped the edge of the umbrella up enough for me to see that she meant it.
“Oh,” I said. “I fell in the creek.”
“Okay.” Betsy took one step backwards, and then almost smiled at me.
“Okay,” I said.
“She’ll have more pies at the Rally, of course, but I think she’s been practicing so she can beat those chocolate chip cookies.”
“Sounds familiar,” Garland said, looking back to Triple.
And when Garland spun around in search of a fork, I watched Betsy curl around the Rambler, back to the Heritage Inn. But I couldn’t linger too long on whatever had just happened, because it was time to get to the game. Garland would have to do the prep on his own.
“Triple,” I said, “you ready?”
“No way,” he said, eyes only for Peter. Triple wasn’t at all interested in the game. A flicker of Twang washing down the creek made me remember why real quick.
“Come on. I know where we can get him some really good grass clippings,” I said. “Let me just get on some clothes that weren’t in the creek and we can get there early for batting practice.”
But when I came back from the queen room, Christmas Nutmeg and all, Triple was gone.
“Pie?” Garland hadn’t even bothered with a plate. But I just left, and I didn’t even say Goodbye or No, thank you or What were you doing in the nosebleeds?
It’s funny how you can be lonely even with people on all sides of you—I had a sea of them from here to the outfield. Triple was who knows where, sulking about Twang and as mad as a dove in a mud puddle. Marcus was in the bullpen and June was probably with him, and Garland sure wouldn’t be in the stands again, not twice in one day.
So there I was as soon as the game began, all alone behind the dugout with a busted-up chin. The thing about baseball is that it moves real slow and gives you enough time to sit with yourself and your thoughts, and so that’s what I did. But the other thing about baseball is that it’s easy to get caught up in the ceremony of it, and when the third‑base side starts the wave, you stand up and sit down with the whole crowd, alone or not. After a couple loops of that wave, it started to fizzle out—people returned to their hot dogs and claps, trying to keep up with whatever tune Miss Houston was working out.
Except then I heard something small and shrieking, something that wasn’t letting the wave crash, and it was coming from way over by third base.
“One!” someone screeched.
“Two!” another yelled.
Betsy and Lollie both screamed, “Three!” at the very same time.
It took another couple rounds of those girls’ directions, but the wave started up again, and when it was good and going, going, gone, it made it all the way to Marcus and June in the bullpen. Betsy and Lollie jumped up and down and hugged each other, and even the other team’s left fielder gave them a little nod.
The stadium’s energy made me forget a little bit about my face and my loneliness. But then the middle of the fifth inning rolled around, and Marcus rolled out of the bullpen. June stood watch right inside, her hand on her heart. She looked like she wanted to ride along with him, just for the spin of it, just to be with the Skipper, one of her memories on the outside.
And then I had a thought.
Marcus.
Who knew a lot about turf management.
Maybe I could fix something after all.
While he finished grooming the red dirt and headed back toward the bullpen, a big voice came over the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen! Are you hungry for Estelle Hooch’s chocolate chip cookies? Maybe Candy Plogger’s famous apple pie? Want to dunk your favorite Rockskipper or try to steal their bases? Race a turtle? Throw a knuckleball? The Rally for the Rockskippers, Ridge Creek’s favorite night of the summer, is coming up on the longest day of the year. More daylight means more fun! Tickets available at the box office!”
The Rally was a big day for June. She had the regular game tickets to deal with, and then the dunk tickets and softball registrations and tickets for pie-tasting too.
She’d be here, and we could be there.
It would be the perfect day for a housewarming and a homecoming.
June 12
Eighteen
SUMMER began to peel back its layers, and the next few days were a blur of Rockskippers and Rally hopes. Triple hadn’t talked to me since that day at the creek, and I hadn’t had a minute to catch up with Marcus on account of his turf management. I’d had to wait for the first Rockskippers’ road trip, when he wouldn’t be so busy. The Grill wasn’t as crowded when the team was traveling, but you could always count on the regulars. And since I knew our best customer would be having extra mustard, I made sure to fill those tubs up.
When you fill up the mustard tubs, though, you aren’t supposed to drop the biggest one on the ground. And if you’ve never seen how far mustard can splatter when it belly-flops on the pavement—well, it’s farther than you think. Your fingernails will be yellow for days, no matter how many times you scrub them in the creek or the sink.
I just stared at the mess, one more thing to fix.
But since Marcus was one of those friends who can read the different kinds of quiets, when he stumbled upon me and the mustard, he got the rags from Garland.
“At least it wasn’t ketchup, or we’d have a crime scene on our hands.” Marcus scraped yellow from the concrete canvas.
“At least red’s a Rockskipper color,” I said. “Can you meet at the marquee tonight? I’ve got an idea.”
“I’ll bring a new penny,” Marcus said, and that was that.
Triple was in the Grill with Garland, and their operation was in full force without any room for me. “We’re good
on the mustard,” I yelled up to them.
If they had looked at me, they would have had a thousand jokes about how the mustard was good on me instead. But neither one had any jokes to tell. Triple was still silent, and Garland was only acting merry to the masses on the outside, as though Triple had told him how much I’d ruined. I went in anyway, even though there wasn’t room for all of us, because I wasn’t sure where else to be.
And that’s how we spent the next hour—the nuts and bolts of an assembly line humming along and all greased up. But really, each part was rusted.
After the last burger had been flipped and the oil stopped bubbling, Triple threw his apron onto the floor and left. I think he meant to hit the hook behind the door and couldn’t see through his madness, so I hung it where it belonged.
Garland scrubbed the counter with his back to me, but must have felt me trying to come up with something to say. So he did instead. “Go talk to him, Derby.”
“Okay,” I said, and headed back to the Rambler.
Triple was lying on his back on the top bunk, nose almost to the ceiling. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could tell he was crying. My heart dared me to break the silence before Garland came back. But Triple did first.
After a long pause and a few snuffles, I heard a quiet “I miss that shoebox.”
“I know. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to—I’m sure you had Twang all safe and sound until my grand nosedive.” I sat down on the bunk underneath and thought about our mama’s sandals, and how she’d hardly ever seen Triple walking around in his own shoes.
My eyes were squished shut so tight that I didn’t see Triple’s feet swing down from the top bunk. But the next thing I knew, Triple was sitting next to me. He wrapped one skinny arm around my shoulder, his other hand on my knee. That dirty little hand said I’ve got you now and It’ll all be fine and I love you too.
“Thanks, Triple.” I had to answer with real words.
“Might’ve been me who kicked Twang off that rock. I forgot about him for a while ’cause of Peter. Maybe he felt mad about that.” Triple was so tenderhearted toward the things he loved.
“Maybe. But I bet you felt mad at me ’cause I forgot about you for a while too. So that makes sense.”
“Yeah.”
“You know Miss June? She’s needed some help.” I grabbed Triple’s little hand. “And I have too, and so we’ve been fixing up each other’s broken parts, even though she doesn’t all the way know it yet.”
“She probably misses her groundskeeper, right, Derby?” Triple’s sincere truth made me smile a little. The impatiens had revealed that tidbit.
“Yeah, she does—and someone else, too. Kinda like us. We miss someone, but Garland is still here, and aren’t we lucky to have him? But June is all out of someones.”
“Oh.” Triple said a lot in that syllable. “She needs a new song, too.”
I nodded, and just as our meeting on the mound was coming to a sweet close, the door to the Rambler swung open and Garland came home.
Nineteen
IT had taken a lot of grease splatters to get to that point with Triple, and it looked like this summer would be one for blisters, too. Because that’s what it would take for my plan. So that night I headed out to the marquee, out to Marcus.
It was one of those nights that didn’t get all the way dark, like maybe the sun wasn’t quite done shining for the day. And in that almost-haze, I could see the marquee shouting ON SATURDAYS, TAKE THEM OUT TO THE BALL GAME! KIDS UNDER 6 FREE!, which was maybe how old I was when I’d met Marcus.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said right back. “What do you think about Betsy Plogger?”
“Betsy? I mean, I try not to think of her so much at all.” Marcus wiped sweat from his face and left a trail of bullpen dust behind.
“But she’s not all that bad, right?”
“I guess,” said Marcus. “She brought me a pie.”
“She did? Candy’s Famous Apple?”
Marcus rubbed his belly like the thought of it was pouring actual sugar right back in there, crystal by lump by cube. “No,” he said. “It was the chocolate chiffon.”
It sank in slow what Betsy might have meant by the chocolate chiffon, but if she had a crush on Marcus Emmett, I did not want to be the one to spill the beans. I couldn’t tell how much room he had under his shaggy curls, but his head didn’t need to get much bigger than it was. Maybe that’s why she’d smiled at me earlier. Or maybe she was a little like me, not real sure where she belonged.
“Hmm,” I said. “I guess pies are vegetarian, right?”
“I don’t know about that, but I do know they are delicious.”
That’s when Ferdie walked by, carrying a broom in one hand and his box of letters in the other. He walked over real slow, and since he doesn’t say much, I thought his eyes were about to make us leave.
“Evening,” he said, easy and gentle and more welcoming than I expected. I think I said hello.
“Ferdie,” Marcus said, and shook his hand like a grownup would.
“I found this while I was sweeping up inside. Will it work?” Ferdie handed something to Marcus, something too small for me to see. But I knew. Whatever year it was, I bet Marcus agreed that it was nice to be remembered.
“All right,” Ferdie said, tipping his cap to us and letting us be. He shuffled away about as slow as he’d shown up, like maybe by making his rounds at a speed like molasses, he wouldn’t have to go to wherever his home was. We all had overlapping strands of that, and I wondered how his story wove into this stadium that wrapped us all up in it.
That’s when Marcus flashed me the penny, shiny and new and stamped with this year.
“Ferdie!” I yelled at his back. “Do you like sweet potato fries?”
He turned real slow, the way an owl watches the night. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Okay, then. Come by sometime.”
After Ferdie shuffled off again, it was just me and Marcus, watching the last grip the sun had on the day, sitting there until the true night moved in.
“That first marquee was his idea.” Marcus looked up. “The one about Franklin.”
“He told you?” I asked. “He doesn’t say much, does he?”
“He sticks to what matters,” Marcus said. “Things like Franklin and June.”
“Franklin and June,” I echoed.
It was time to get Marcus in on my plan. So I asked him, and then I folded my Christmas Nutmeg smile into two straight lines of wait and hope and see.
“That’s a real busy day. I won’t have much time,” Marcus said. “And won’t she be working?”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s why it’s best.”
Marcus didn’t ask me anything else—he knew, he trusted, he nodded.
And then we pressed that penny between our thumbs and wished real good. I don’t know how wishes work, or if you wreck them by wishing for more than one thing at a time, but that’s what I did. A wish had already worked with Triple, even without the penny, so it was worth trying for a bunch more.
I wished for the Skipper to patch up a garden.
I wished for something sweet of my own from Betsy.
I wished I knew why Garland had snuck up to the nosebleeds.
I wished June would tell me about her daughter.
I wished the sun could stay out longer and longer and that this summer wouldn’t ever end.
June 13
Twenty
IT was a good morning for strawberries.
I walked up and down the numbered aisles of the Sweet Street Mart, holding my nose on the odds because a girl can only take all that pickle smell about half the time. This place was a mishmash of stuff: worms (both for bait and the gummy kind), newspapers from the city that probably only got bought for the crossword, and cherry colas where they squirt sugary syrup right into the fizz. They’ve got apples and bananas and laundry detergent, and they’ve got the Ploggers every single morning.
“Hey, Derby,” Betsy said, her voice some kind of suspicious.
Thank goodness she followed me over to aisle eight.
“Are you looking forward to the Rally?” I asked her, nose un-pinched.
The last few years Betsy and Lollie had begged Goose and Scooter to let them turn just one parking spot into a beauty parlor, and they’d given pedicures and manicures to anyone who would let them. Once, Lump Emmett had them paint his toenails with some gold sparkles for good luck, and they charged him extra ’cause his feet were so big. Marcus was horrified, but Lump did run a little extra fast at the game that night.
“Yeah,” she said. “Are you?”
“No better way to spend the longest day of the year, right?”
But the thing was, I had other plans for that long day, and there wouldn’t be much room for painting nails.
Betsy and I walked, maybe even together, to the produce aisle. She ripped a bag off the spinner and picked over the apples—a green, a red, some pinks, dropping them all down into the bag.
“For Aunt Candy,” she said. “She likes a bunch of all of them, but I prefer the pinks, so.”
I wasn’t real sure what to say to her, so I got busy figuring out which of the strawberries June and I might prefer, even though there’s not a bad strawberry in the summertime.
“Plus they’re vegetarian,” I said after we’d picked out our apples and strawberries, and I meant it.
Betsy looked at me, and then she took her big bag of apples up to the cash register and off she went. That’s when I wondered if maybe June liked apples too, and I plucked out a few good pinks.
I took my strawberries and apples and walked back up the street to the stadium, where it was still too early for the baseball players. My real favorite players were already hard at work—Marcus in the bullpen and June settling into her box office, ready to welcome the crowd. Maybe even Ferdie, fixing up the marquee.
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