Then the lady smiled at Joe Viola. He smiled back. Hers was a confident, toothpaste-ad type smile. His was a goofy, loopy, dreamy cartoon-character-type smile.
Yes, she looked nice. Friendly.
Viola draped one arm around her shoulders like a wet towel. She stood a few inches taller than him, due to the fancy shoes. On his other wrist was slung his baseball glove. They walked in the opposite direction, across the field and away from the small, polite crowd that waited. (Violin-man had left, after being on the business end of a hard look himself from Asa Pike.)
“Well, I guess he doesn’t want to see his fans just yet,” said Winky, turning toward the break in the fence that was the exit.
I wasn’t about to let Joe Viola get away. I grabbed Winky’s arm.
“Come on!”
We chased Joe across the field.
“Hey!” I yelled.
He glanced back over his shoulder. Was it my imagination, or did he pick up his pace?
Winky and I kept jogging. Closer and closer we came. It was like a movie where the camera rushes up and stops short: Joe Viola turned around. We nearly ran right into him. Up close, his red hair sprang tuftily from under his baseball cap. More hair could be seen in patches in the open neck of his uniform shirt.
Winky opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. He was standing really close and doing his heavy-blinking close-peering thing. Number 5 took a step backward.
“Joe Viola!” Winky squawked, stepping into the space Viola had just made between them. As if the guy didn’t know his own name! Winky was losing it!
Slowly, slowly, Winky extended his right hand toward his sports hero’s arm. His hand homed in on its target, as if Viola’s elbow was a big red button that would set off a nuclear bomb we all had mixed feelings about launching from an underground silo. Then, very lightly, and with everyone watching, Winky’s fingertips touched Viola’s sleeve.
Ka-boom!
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Joe Viola said.
Winky pulled back his hand. “Did you get my letters?”
Letters?
“What letters?” said Viola. He glanced at his girlfriend.
“I sent letters.” Winky drew his shoulders to his ears and squinted hard. “A couple letters. Three or four. Maybe a half dozen or a dozen. Couple dozen—”
“Joey, honey,” said the lady, and good thing or Winky might have counted to a hundred. “Why don’t you sign the little boy’s program or something.” She turned to me. I could see my own face in her huge sunglasses. “Would he like that, sweetie?” Her hair really was a thing of beauty.
“Oh, my friend can speak very nicely for himself,” I piped up. “Normally.”
Nobody had anything to say about that, and the word “normally” was still hanging in the air like a speech bubble. “My friend, here, is probably your biggest fan,” I said. “Don’t you have anything to say, anything nice to say, about that?” I swallowed. “Sir?” I added. I didn’t want to seem weird or unfriendly.
Joe Viola narrowed his eyes at me as if I seemed weird and unfriendly. So did the lady. So did Winky Wheaton, even.
“Thanks, kid,” said Joe Viola. “That’s nice.” Glove dangling from his wrist, he yanked my program from my hand, whipped out a Sharpie pen, signed it, and handed the program to Winky. “I’m just a little tired,” he said. “Adjusting to the time change, so to speak.”
“Uhhnnn,” Winky sort of mooed, like a cow-zombie, staring at the still-glistening Sharpie on the program, which, since Winky was too paralyzed to use his magnifier, I read out loud: “For a true athletic supporter,” followed by a scribbled signature that looked like “Vile.” I’ll say!
“Joseph,” said the lady, looking concerned at Winky.
“What?”
She jutted her chin at Winky and cut her eyes at him two or three times. “Go on and buy them each a Sno-Cone.” She smiled in a large way that showed every single one of her nice teeth, even the ones in back. Then she leaned toward Winky and spoke very slowly and loudly, with pauses between each word. “You, like, Sno-, Cones?”
I scowled on Winky’s behalf, but my argument was not with Tina Taylor. And yes, we like Sno-Cones.
Joe Viola let all his air out—pffffff—like a bike tire valve, reached into his back pocket, and rolled his eyes as if buying a Sno-Cone for a blinking, multiple-letter-writing zombie and his friend was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of. And that just made me mad. A true sports hero would buy his biggest fan a Sno-Cone without his girlfriend having to force him into being nice. I couldn’t help it. I stuck my tongue out at him. I curled it for good measure, because I can do that and I figured it would look extra sassy.
He stuck his tongue out back! Wicked immature! He even curled his, too! I was right about the extra sass.
He and I stared at each other.
“Sorry, all I got’s large bills,” he said finally, and shrugged.
“That’s okay,” I said to Joe Viola’s wallet. I put my hand out flat, and Viola hesitated.
All in one smooth motion, Joe Viola’s girlfriend looked straight at Number 5, crossed arms over chest, tilted ear to shoulder, and popped a hip like a long-legged doll. Joe Viola watched her do this thing, and then he glared at me with the force of a hundred suns.
For a second I thought about grabbing the wallet and sprinting away with all his large bills.
Joe Viola’s cheek bulged where either he shifted his chewing gum or a weird vein was pulsing. “Fine,” he said, smacking a twenty onto my palm. He snapped his wallet shut and shoved it in his pocket, and as he did, his glove slipped from his wrist.
It fell
onto
the ground.
So I picked it up.
The sound of three people gasping at once is a lot louder and hissier than you might imagine.
Joe Viola clutched his chest and made a couple damp, gakking sounds, and Winky uttered two words: “Josephine Bloom!” It seemed like all Winky could do was say people’s names.
“You look like you might be having a heart attack or something,” I said to Joe Viola. “Are you okay?”
Viola stared at me. It wasn’t the hard look he had for batters, it was more of a horrified, bug-eyed look. He took in a shuddering breath. “Am I okay?”
“You seem sort of—”
“Am I okay?”
“I mean you look a little sweaty—”
“Am I okay?”
“That’s what I’m asking! That’s what I’m asking!”
Joe Viola took the glove from my hand and whispered, “Time will tell,” creepy, like he was wrapping up a ghost story around the campfire. “Only time will tell.”
Joe Viola walked away. His girlfriend glanced back at me over her shoulder once, then tipped her head to his, a puffy silvery cloud above his head, and wrapped both arms around his waist, all without tripping. Those two would probably be winners at a three-legged race.
“What was that all about?” I said to Winky.
Winky was white as a sheet. He was opening and closing his mouth, but he still hadn’t said another word. We watched his hero walk away across the field.
“You never,” he finally managed to croak. “Ever,” he added. “Touchabaseballplayer’sstuff!”
“Why not?”
“You could throw him in a”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“S-L-U—”
“He’s already in a slump!”
Winky plugged his ears.
I flapped Joe Viola’s twenty in Winky’s face till he dropped his hands by his sides.
“Sno-Cone?” I said.
I Win the Bet with Mr. Mee
You never talk about a no-hitter or a perfect game while the game is in progress.
Don’t ask a baseball player about his family.
A player won’t ever put a hat on a bed.
Never ask a baseball player to spit out his gum.
Winky gave me a crash course in baseball superstitions, and I promised to st
udy my notes even though that sounded a lot like school.
Speaking of school, soon it was the last day of it.
“Nobody is leaving until this room is spotless!” said Mrs. Blyth-Barrow.
“Smell ya later, Brillo!” said Becky Schenck. I ignored her and practically galloped home.
I got myself an after-last-day-of-school snack, and sat down to flip through an issue of All-Time All-Sports magazine. My stack of sports books hadn’t turned up a single thing I could say I knew that Mr. Mee didn’t. I wasn’t feeling as happy as usual on the last day of school because of, you know, all the problems.
I began to think I really should have run off with Joe Viola’s wallet, the jerk, when I came upon something that made me sit up so fast and so straight that the bowl tipped from my lap, and mini-pretzels scattered all over the place. But who cares about the mini-pretzels? Who cares if maybe I had a rich father I had no idea how to find? Who cares about the slot machines and the bills? I could not believe my eyes! This was the best fact I’d ever come across, and I didn’t care if Mr. Mee did already know it!
I rolled up the issue of All-Time All-Sports and took off running back to school in hopes a librarian’s work is never done.
It isn’t.
There he was.
“Mr. Mee! Mr. Mee!”
Mr. Mee put down the pen he was holding, sprang from his seat, and poked his eyeglasses.
“Believe it or not, Mr. Mee!” I flattened out All-Time All-Sports and flipped to page 67.
Mr. Mee was quiet. Then he smiled and reached out his hand, and (heartily) I shook it.
“Now, about those prize winnings,” I said.
* * *
I found Winky at the ball field. I waited while he used his ever-ready magnifier to read page 67 of All-Time All-Sports—which Mr. Mee himself had ripped (he used a ruler, wicked neat) right out of the magazine. I watched him as he read about the noises and the rules and the schedule, the blindfolds and the specially made ball.
“That oughta cheer you up!” I said when he looked up and let the magnifying glass drop to his chest.
Winky stared at me.
“I mean after the thing with Joe Viola.”
He blinked a whole lot.
“Does it?” I asked. “Cheer… you up?”
Winky stood there counting to ten or something. Then he threw his arms around me, pinning mine to my sides. Then he released me. “Come on!” he said.
We followed the shortcut through the pines and got to Winky’s house in no time flat. I took the porch steps in one stride and got whacked in the head by one of Mr. Wheaton’s pull-up rings, which hang on blue webbing straps from overhead hooks. Mr. Wheaton is something of a fitness fanatic. Winky got the key from where it’s always stashed under the mat, and stuck it in the lock. Wink’s parents keep the house locked even though they are almost always at home. “In case they come looking for me,” is what Mr. Wheaton says about that.
As usual, Wink’s dad was sprawled on the couch, the TV on full blast. Mr. Wheaton sported a muscle-shirt on which was printed I FLEXED AND THE SLEEVES FELL OFF. The message was distended partly by comic design and partly by the fabric being stretched to its limit across Mr. Wheaton’s perfectly round stomach and leaving bare the shady underbelly like an unwholesome Winnie the Pooh. (I said he was something of a fitness fanatic.) Through the open door to the back room, Mrs. Wheaton could be seen sitting up in bed, wearing a flowered housecoat and sewing on a book cozy.
Both the parents froze, as if startled to see children in their house.
“But I love you, Brock!” said a breathy voice out of the TV.
“Turn it off!” Winky said. “Quit stitching!”
I’m telling you, I was surprised by his teacher-like tone. And so must his parents have been because they did what they were told.
“What is it?” said Mr. Wheaton, thudding his stocking feet to the floor and aiming the TV clicker so enthusiastically that the tattooed hula dancer on his bicep wiggled her grass skirt. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wheaton shoved her rolling table aside, casters squealing, and rose from her bed to reveal—like the time-lapse photograph of the Amazon Rainforest we saw in science class—the full length and width of her flowered housecoat.
“I have an announcement,” said Winky.
“Yeah,” I said.
“There’s such thing as the National Beep Baseball League, and I want to join.”
Mr. Wheaton craned his neck over the back of the couch to throw a look at Mrs. Wheaton.
“Well, isn’t that a thing!” Mrs. Wheaton said as she made her way to the couch.
Mr. Wheaton turned back around. “What the beep is that? Heh-heh,” he said.
“It’s a blind baseball league,” Winky said.
“Blind baseball league, eh?” Mr. Wheaton scratched his underarm. “It sounds expensive.”
Mrs. Wheaton wheezed and plopped down on the couch beside Mr. Wheaton. He put a hairy arm around her. The hula dancer looked uncomfortable.
“There’s a team in Boston,” said Winky.
Mr. Wheaton took a hard candy from the dish on the coffee table and popped it into his mouth. He squinted one eye and made an O with his lips. The candies were clearly sour balls. “You know Bosh-ton’sh a good fwee-hour drive, Elwyn,” he said, speaking around the sour ball, “and that’sh not accounting for traffic.”
“And the tolls!” Mrs. Wheaton remarked.
“Highway robbery!” said Mr. Wheaton.
“I could take the Peter Pan bus straight there,” Wink said.
“Now, now, Elwyn, the bus costs a pretty penny too, and peopled with strangers and who knows who, murderers and felons, probly, and rough sorts like them. The Peter Pan bus is no way to travel.”
Mrs. Wheaton patted her husband’s arm. “It sure is not, Bob. No ’bout a doubt it. Hand me one of them candies, a yellow one. (He did.) Boston is out of the question, if anybody’s askin’. But tell us more about the sports up there anyways,” she said, sucking on the sour ball and beaming at Wink.
Winky pulled the article from his back pocket and handed it to me.
“You read it,” he said.
I read to them about the brand-new National Beep Baseball League. I read to them about how the league has no age or gender restrictions, about how the ball’s the size of a softball and how it beeps, how the bases buzz and they’re blue and five feet tall. I told them about the coaching, the competition, the playoffs, the costs.
“And best of all, it says there’s an invitational tournament coming up, called the Boston Beep Ball Bash. It’s at Fenway High School on June twenty-fifth.” I folded up the article. “And Winky should go,” I said. I smiled at Mr. Wheaton. I smiled at Mrs. Wheaton. They smiled back. I thought we were all together feeling happy. Winky had lost something, something wicked important, and with it what he loved best in the world, and here I’d come upon a way for him to get it back. Not his eyesight, of course, I’m not Jesus or even a doctor, but the game he loved to play, the thing that made him feel most happy. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.
“It sounds like a hoot, and if it were not out of the question, we’d be tickled to pieces for you to be able to go, Elwyn, and meet some other people like yourself.”
At this, Winky lit right up.
“Who knew there were so many blind-as-bats baseball yahoos?” said Mr. Wheaton.
“Enthusiasts,” said Mrs. Wheaton.
“Nuts,” said Mr. Wheaton.
“Players!” said Wink. His voice was much higher than normal. “They play baseball!” Louder, too. “On real teams! And so could I!” He pounded his fists on his legs. “I could have teammates! I could have friends!”
Hey, you’ve got a good one standing right here, I thought. But that wasn’t what was important right then.
“I’m shorry, shon,” said Mr. Wheaton. He crunched the last of the candy in his mouth before continuing. “Things being the way they are…”—he tilted an eyebrow in the direction of the corduroy c
ouch and Mrs. Wheaton’s housecoat, as if those items were to blame—“it just ain’t in the cards.”
The wind went right out of Winky’s sails, Mrs. Wheaton’s housecoat wilted, and even the dancing hula girl drooped.
“Don’t they see how you are?” I said loudly to Wink as if his parents weren’t even with us in the room, which didn’t seem very far from the truth.
Winky didn’t speak.
I addressed the slack-jawed members of the couch-committee. “Your son, Elwyn ‘Winky’ Wheaton, is a miraculous person.” They both gave me a look so blank that my brains went boiling mad. I scooped up all the hard candy from the dish in my two hands and threw it at them. They seemed surprised.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Winky, and I walked out the door.
Boiled Water Is Not a Good Dinner
I was dragging my feet by the time I walked up the driveway at home. Step-drag, step-drag, scuffing the white rubber fronts of my Keds. I’d won the bet with Mr. Mee on many levels—but still things weren’t working out. The sun was lowering, and the way it shone through the leaves and branches of the sugar maple tree behind the garage swept used-car-lot-type spotlights over the fifteen or twenty squirrels leaping around the back steps.
“Get out of here, you stupid squirrels!” I yelled. I picked up a handful of pea gravel and threw it far, and the stupid squirrels went for it as if I’d tossed their beloved peanuts-in-the-shell, a treat that used to be mine! “I hope you choke!” I hollered as I ran up the steps, threw open the door, slammed it shut, and backed against it for good measure.
The kitchen looked exactly like a TV cooking show does not. Pots and pans covered the counter. A row of pasta boxes stood like dominoes on the table. Cans of beans and chopped tomatoes had been opened, their sharp-edged tops sticking up and dripping. Water bubbled in a soup pot on the stove, and from it steam was rising. I put a lid on the pot and turned down the flame under the burner.
“Hi, Grandpa.” He was sitting in his recliner in the den, eating dinner off a tray. The TV was on full blast. He hadn’t even waited for me to eat his… bowl of Oatios with… orange juice poured over? As I watched, he picked up a bottle and drizzled some soy sauce into the bowl.
Josie Bloom and the Emergency of Life Page 8