“Cool,” he said.
“Gross,” said Betsy, hopping over some kind of slimy goo on the floor.
I took the key off my neck and slipped it in the lock of the door Ferdie had told us about, the one next to the batting helmets. The box with the letters was on a shelf over the brooms, next to a stack of books and used-up paint cans and a pile of extra Rockskipper posters. I was lucky to have this summer’s height, because I pulled it down without using Marcus as a stepping stool. That was a good thing, since he was so preoccupied.
“Can you reach those posters, Betsy?” I asked. “We need twenty-five.”
While the Ploggers counted out twenty-five posters and Marcus eyed his field of dreams, I took the letters to the steps of the dugout. The dew couldn’t reach there, so it was a pretty good workspace.
“Marcus,” I said, “can you find me some tape or something?”
He rummaged through a first-aid kit and tossed me a roll of medical tape. If it was sticky enough to wrap up injuries, it would be good enough for us.
“We got it, Derby.” Betsy dumped twenty-five tubes on the steps of the dugout and they bounced and bumped into each other as they settled into a pile or two.
“Perfect,” I said. “Will you unroll all the posters? And stack them face‑down.”
“Face‑down? Our dads are on those things, you know,” said Marcus.
“Yeah, and you know what they look like, right? We need the backs, blank.”
Marcus’s defense of Lump got him up off the bench, and the three of them made a stack of posters, blank-side up. I scattered the letters on the steps, searching through for the ones we needed—an N, a C, a couple Ws. It was hard to tell if the squiggle was a comma or an apostrophe, but we’d need it, too.
We made a sort of assembly line with Ferdie’s letters and the Rockskippers’ posters. After I scavenged for each right letter, painted black on flimsy, clear plastic, Lollie stuck the letter on the blank side of a poster with a torn-off piece of medical tape, and Betsy laid each finished thing out along the top of the steps. They weren’t as beautiful as June’s sign from my first night in Ridge Creek, and they wouldn’t tower over everyone like Ferdie’s marquee, but they would do.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
“Perfect,” said a Plogger.
And like he said we could have done in the first place, Marcus scrambled over the dugout and hopped into the first row. We handed him the posters letter by letter, and he stuck them under the seats in the first two rows. He only had to switch the J and the U, which made some sense because they both curved around a little.
I looked back up at the semicircle of a moon, its brightness a good sign that there wouldn’t be any rain dumping down on the longest day of the year.
June 21
Twenty-Eight
IN the morning, I woke up to hammering and hoots and hollers from the parking lot as the men of Ridge Creek assembled the booths and the ladies began to display their confections. But inside the Rambler, all I heard was Garland rummaging through the cabinets, rooting around for that Santa Claus mug.
“Morning, gentlemen,” I said to the boys, slipping into a seat at the table. Peter crawled around on top of it, eye-to-eye with Triple, ready perhaps for the afternoon’s race. I made a mental note to clean the table real good when the day was over, but first I’d keep my mouth shut and let Triple focus.
We both had a big day.
“How about some eggs, Derby?” Garland asked.
“Yes, please. And some coffee?” I turned to Triple, though I was really asking myself. “Are you ready?”
This got a crinkly, freckly morning grin out of him, and soon the three of us sat there in comfortable quiet, eating eggs and listening to the booms and bangs from outside.
“Looks like Peter’s hungry.” Triple grabbed one of his new drums and plopped Peter down into it, then reached for that old pistachio bag with the stadium’s smorgasbord right inside. And off he went, taking all the confidence in the world with him.
Garland shouted a Good luck! and a See you at the race!, but I was too nervous for words to come out. After Triple left, Garland gave me a look that was a little bit strange and a little bit sad, and it was a hard one to read.
“I’m going to see if Marcus needs any help,” I said. “Turf management, you know.”
Since I wasn’t really going to see Marcus, I snuck over to the Grill and twisted out a strand of lights and a garland of greenery. June needed a better wreath, and one that I could weave from spare joy might sweep away those cobwebs.
The weight of wishes and a day that would bring blisters was already bearing down, hot and humid and heavy. But the Rally didn’t know about all of that, and our front yard was already almost as exciting as a nail biter of a ninth inning.
“Goose! I need the award ribbons for the pies—where are the ribbons for the pies?” Candy Plogger screeched out orders in a voice that clamored above the rest of the clatter. Goose followed her with an armful of tools and a can of paint that dripped Rockskipper red, which made him look like a walking storage shed. Scooter followed close behind both of them, laughing and cutting up and carrying on.
That’s when I understood where Betsy might have gotten her bossy from. But because sometimes the worst in people gets flipped around, I walked over to the girls’ parking-spot nail salon.
“Good morning, you two,” I said. “Thanks for staying here to keep an eye on June.”
Lollie and Betsy were both in pink again, but not pajamas this time, and Betsy had her chopped hair floofed up and a bow stuck somewhere in the pinned-back curls. If I had been interested in having my nails painted, these two looked like experts.
“Actually, Derby,” said Betsy, “I’ve got some business to take care of, so June is up to Lollie.”
For a second, split like last night’s moon, I saw the old Betsy, the one cracking bubblegum on the porch of the Sweet Street Mart. And then she ran off, like she’d forgotten all about the letters and the late night and the real Rally plans.
“Okay,” I said, and I watched her go.
“It is,” said Lollie. “Really.”
There weren’t any more seconds to split, so I thanked Lollie again and dashed down past third base, headed to June’s. I took one more look at Ferdie’s marquee, the one that said nothing more than RALLY because we’d borrowed so many letters, and all my wishes turned into hope.
I hoped Marcus was already there.
I hoped Betsy hadn’t run off with my friendship.
I hoped Garland wouldn’t find the Franklin bucket in my queen room.
I hoped June felt loved and needed and at home.
I still hoped the sun could stay out longer and longer and that this summer wouldn’t ever end.
But when I passed the impatiens at the end of the drive and ran straight on past the weeds to the porch, Marcus wasn’t there.
He’d promised. And I don’t know if it was the heat or the heartache or the Blue cow, but I sat down on the porch, too tired to cry. I wondered how one person would pull all these weeds and pour in new dirt and clear the vines that hugged the walls.
One person can’t make up a house. June couldn’t keep up with this one, and maybe it was from loneliness more than needing muscles. But neither one of us could manage this job without the grounds crew.
It only takes one person disappearing for a whole family to crumble.
But then a rumble motored down the driveway. Marcus looked surer than he had the first time I’d seen him driving Franklin’s cart, like now he knew he belonged there.
“I had to take the long way, remember?”
Seeing Marcus reminded me of what mattered. The crumble is quick to fix when you let other people patch it up.
“I brought you some batting gloves Lump loaned me,” he continued. “I know you hate getting blisters.”
And then, all of the too-tired-to-cry from earlier caught up to me and didn’t stop.
“Pull it toge
ther, Lefty. It’s four hours until the race. We’ve got to get this done.” Marcus whacked me on the arm like any skipper would.
I’d already known Marcus took dirt real serious, but then he hauled out two huge bags of soil that were each about the size of a pillowcase.
“We’ll need one of those over by the mailbox and one down there by the porch,” he said.
I slipped Lump’s batting gloves on and dragged each bag to their new garden beds, then headed right back to the Skipper for the next call.
“These things are called sweet peas, which sounded like something June would call you, so I thought you’d both like them.” Marcus handed me a box overflowing with small purple poofs. “The guy at the store even said the more you cut, the more they grow, and I thought that would be real nice for June. I used some of my grounds‑crew money.”
I sniffed that sweet pea, and I knew Marcus was right. And then we got to work.
Marcus said I was a natural with garden tools. I think that’s probably because I’m pretty good with both a spatula and a saw, so I’m not sure why he was surprised. We yanked and dug and raked and planted, and four hands and a couple hours later, June’s storm was starting to clear out.
As nice as lemonade and oatmeal raisin cookies sounded, Marcus’s company was just as good for a break, and so we settled on the front porch steps to watch the flowers and the time.
But then Betsy skipped down the driveway, waving with one arm and hauling something heavy in the other, and I remembered all that hope.
“Sorry I’m late. I had to chase down some paint.” Betsy lifted up a bucket, and something sloshed over the edges.
“Paint?” I asked.
“The best pink.” She nodded toward June’s front door, the one whose welcome had withered. That’s when I noticed that Betsy had changed into an old Rockskippers jersey of Scooter’s, and she was ready to get to work. “Goose had all that red paint, and I asked Ferdie if he could spare any of that white we saw in the dugout, and he didn’t even look at me funny.” Betsy dug into each pocket for a paintbrush. “I bet he wondered what I needed with a bunch of billboard paint, but he gave it to me anyway and I said thank you, of course, because people are a lot nicer when you’re nice to them first.”
That’s when I hugged her.
The Skipper took charge of finishing up the planting, either because that’s who he was or because he wanted his tools back or because he didn’t know what to do with all of this niceness. But still, I squeezed Betsy so tight that I got sweet‑pea dirt all over her, and then we painted June’s door the best pink.
Twenty-Nine
THAT might have been the best Rally ever, the one when Betsy Plogger painted a front door pink instead of painting some fingernails. The one when Marcus snuck the cart out of the stadium and drove a bunch of sweet peas around the long way. The one when Betsy insisted we do the outfielders’ leap and chest bump, the one that took three people, instead of a high-five, which was just for two. The Rally I’d skipped most of—except for the turtle race.
After watching the paint dry enough so we could loop those lights and greens on the door, Betsy and I ran back to the Rally just in time for Triple’s big moment. The turtles raced the length of a parking space, the one reserved for the Ridge Creek Rockskippers Fan of the Month. I think it’s a parking-space-sized course mostly because you can’t trust turtles to race in a circle, and besides, the Rally only lasts for one afternoon.
“On your mark!” the shortstop shouted.
“Hey,” I whispered to Garland, who’d gotten there first.
“We have to chat,” he said, and there was that face again.
“Get set!”
Marcus slipped up behind Triple to see how his grass cuttings had helped, and to cheer on his team. And Triple was channeling focus from somewhere any skipper would appreciate, and not even Charlie’s wiggling, giggling, and gum-smacking would break that.
“I always beat you, Triple Clark, and this time I’m buying a bunny with my prize money,” Charlie said, inspecting her Lollie-done manicure more than her turtle at the starting line. “I’m retiring at the end of today, though. It’s kinda boring to win all the time.”
Triple must have gotten his fierce determination from Garland, because he didn’t budge. And when the keep-your-mouth-shut-before-getting-too-feisty gene was passed out in our family, he got all of that, too. I sure didn’t. I swallowed some hot air and almost spit out a bunch of salty words to tell her what she could buy with that prize money.
And then I stopped, but only because Garland said, “Derby?”
“Okay—” I said, figuring I could explain about the stolen lights and greens.
“Aren’t we lucky,” he said, “getting to be front-row spectators of the greatest upset of all time?”
And we were.
It was a thrill when the shortstop yelled, “GO!” but it hit with a bit of a thunk, since turtle races aren’t the speediest of events. But still, we stood there, Garland and I, cheering for Peter like he was bracing for a collision at home plate. Triple and the Skipper shouted so long and loud that between the two of them, I was sure they’d have half a voice the next day.
Twelve minutes and forty-nine seconds later, Peter tappety-clawed over the finish line, first.
Triple gripped Peter’s belly and held him high up in the air, and Marcus was the first to congratulate them. And then those two boys did the rowdiest Rockskipper high-five that the James Edward Allen Gibbs Stadium had ever seen.
“So?” Triple said when he saw my shock at his newfound skill. “You said to go see Marcus in the bullpen!”
Marcus laughed and shrugged, and my heart was a jumbled-up bunch of awe at seeing the two of them, almost like brothers. Yet when I caught Garland’s eye, I knew we were a strum that didn’t really sound right. I followed him back to the Rambler, turning my head to watch the Skipper lead Triple and Peter on a victory lap.
I swore I heard some thunder.
Garland stepped in first and put on a kettle of water. I stood there, watching him, waiting for the storm.
“Derby,” he said again, like he wanted to fill each syllable, each time, with all the disappointment that could fit. And he was patient, too, sifting through the dishes for the Santa Claus mug. He hummed something that sounded like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” although he matched Miss Houston for mastery of the pitch. The squeal of the teakettle was a welcome note.
I couldn’t find words and I’d forgotten how to wish. Garland set two mugs down on the table, stuck a teabag in each one, and filled them to the brim with hot water. Then he slipped into a seat at the kitchenette table and waited. But not for long, because Garland was the kind of dad who knew how to love, and when he put his arm up on the back of the bench, I snuck in underneath.
“Aren’t we lucky, the three of us?” Garland asked. The water was too hot, so I couldn’t sip the tea to stall the time and that question.
After he cleared his head and his throat, he spoke again. “But it’s come to my attention that some Clark family business has been a smidge out of character.” Garland’s voice dropped an octave from seriousness. “Even downright sneaky. Not at all like the rambler that I know.”
I let the steam smack me in the face. “Garland—” I started, not too sure what I would say next.
“Being a rambler on the road means three things.” And then he paused for dramatic effect, like always. “Food, family, and fun.”
That’s when I knew this wasn’t about taking the lights from the Grill. Garland wanted to let me steep with my thoughts and the tea. But he was as gentle as Triple was sweet, and his words made honest come tumbling out.
“I took some of the tips. I stole from us for June Mattingly,” I said. “And I broke a promise to Triple and I lost Twang and I stole a strand of lights, too.”
Garland lifted his mug with one hand, because the other was still on the arm that was around me. “Well, Derby,” he said, as cool as the tea wasn’t, “so
metimes big hearts make bad decisions.”
And there we were, just two ramblers with big and broken hearts. He might have been right about the lucky part, because at least with family, you can share the pieces. Our silence was interrupted only by another low rumble of thunder, one that sounded far off. I wished and hoped and wished again that it would stay there, because a storm wasn’t welcome on this game day.
“I skipped most of the Rally because we fixed something special up for June at her house. But I thought she also deserved a fan or something so she wouldn’t sweat her insides out. I needed money, and that’s what my bad decision was all about,” I explained. “But I don’t even have enough. And I shouldn’t have taken it.”
Garland shifted, and looked up like he was asking the sky for a wish of his own.
“But you,” I said. “Why do you always skip the Rally except for Triple’s part? I know you love Candy Plogger’s Famous Apple.”
Garland set his Santa Claus mug down, and his faraway look drifted a little bit closer. “Did you hear that thunder?” he asked. “The biggest thunderstorm I ever saw in my whole life happened on the afternoon of the very first Rally for the Rockskippers. You should have seen Candy Appleton—flailing around like a hen without a head, and Goose Plogger following her around like some other chicken, pecking at her leftovers. She couldn’t see him, of course, ’cause she was blinded by all the details like getting tarps over the pie tables and tying up the banners. She couldn’t see what really mattered. It was three Rallies later before he got her attention and made her a Plogger.”
Garland paused for a minute and sort of smiled, as if his memory had been bookmarked for this moment and the pages hadn’t yellowed on the edges yet. I’d never thought of Candy Plogger being anyone but Candy Plogger, and I was only beginning to understand all that Ridge Creek kept knotted up in its shared stories.
“As entertaining as the frenzy was in the parking lot over here, I wanted to see the storm from higher ground, and the best I could think of was the stadium.”
A Rambler Steals Home Page 9