by Scott Ostler
The bright red limo coasted to a stop across the street from the Palace.
“It figures he’d come to watch the big show,” I said.
Mia snorted. “Look, he’s parking over there so no flying pieces of the Palace will scratch his Chariot of Fire.”
“Don’t let him see us,” I said, backing up behind a tall hedge.
As we watched, Mayor Burns stepped out of his car—big smile, wraparound shades, shiny black shoes reflecting the sun that was peeking through the clouds. The mayor’s photographer popped out of the front passenger’s seat.
One of the men from the demo crew hurried across the street to shake the mayor’s hand and hand him a red hard hat, which the mayor very carefully lowered over his shiny hair.
Mayor Burns said something to the police officer at the gate. The officer nodded, got into his police car, and drove off.
I checked my phone. It was a few minutes ’til eight. The same demo man escorted the mayor over to the crane and steadied the mayor’s shoes on the steel ladder rungs as he climbed up into the cab. The man sitting in the cab smiled and stood up to let the mayor sit down at the controls. We could see the man showing the mayor which levers to pull.
I didn’t want to see any more of the show. Mayor McCheesey himself was going to be the Rat Palace’s executioner. The photographer moved into position near the crane.
It was the perfect photo op. With no pesky kid protestors to spoil the mayor’s fun, he would have a heroic photo of himself clearing the way for his glorious new mini mall.
The man in the crane cab leaned over the mayor’s shoulder and pressed a button. The diesel engine sputtered to life, belching smoke. The mayor smiled like a kid with a shiny new toy.
I looked at my phone. Seven fifty-eight.
“I can’t watch, let’s get out of here,” Mia said, spinning her chair away from the Palace.
“One second,” I said, stopping to read a text from Rosie.
We’re at the Shoe Barn with the team. Where are you and Mia?
Just heading back, see you in 10 minutes.
I started to turn and join Mia when I heard an odd noise coming from somewhere near the top of Railroad Avenue.
It was faint at first but got louder and louder. It sounded like kids whooping and yelling, but how could that be? Through the wisps of fog, I saw a group of kids about our age running down the hill.
As they got closer, I could see a big kid was leading the pack.
“Ohmygod, it’s Stomper!” Mia said, puzzled.
“And the Bulldogs!” I said angrily. “Mia, I’m such an idiot. I blew it. I told Stomper about the protest. I guess he not only told his dad, but he brought the whole school team to watch his father’s company smash the Palace.”
“What are they carrying?” Mia said.
Stomper was waving something shiny. And behind him I could now see… Every kid was carrying a handful of chains.
“Carlos, they came to join the protest,” Mia said, grabbing my arm.
“And they’re going to do it even without us.”
There was nothing to stop them. The police officer was long gone, and the three demo crewmen had moved to the far side of the Palace to be a safe distance from Big Bertha.
In the crane cab, the mayor’s cheesey grin turned to a look of alarm.
The Bulldogs were about fifty yards away from the gate when the mayor yelled to his driver, who was smoking a cigarette and buffing a fender of the limo.
“Ced!” the mayor barked. “Pull the Chariot around and block that gate! Hurry! Don’t let those kids in.”
Ced threw down his towel and jumped in the limo, which took off like a shot. At the corner, he made a screeching U-turn and sped toward the playground gate, well ahead of Stomper and the boys. They would have to join Mia and me and watch from outside the fence as the Rat Palace went down in a cloud of dust.
Mia, watching with eyes wide, squeezed my arm harder and said, “Carlos, what about Captain Hook and his family? They’ll be crushed.”
As the limo neared the gate, it suddenly veered to the right, bumped over the curb, and smashed into a fire hydrant, knocking it over and creating an instant geyser.
Stomper and his cavalry didn’t even slow down. They blew through the gate and up to the front doors of the Palace. They quickly chained themselves to door bars and raised their arms in triumph.
The limo driver, soaking wet from the hydrant shower, stood near the car. The mayor glared down from the cab and barked, “What the hell was that about?”
“Sir, I had to swerve because something hopped in front of the limo,” Ced sputtered. “A small cat or squirrel or something!”
The mayor shook his head, disgusted.
“Hopped?” the mayor said, spitting out the word. “Maybe it was the Easter Bunny.” He adjusted his hard hat and gazed grimly at his limo.
“You crashed my Chariot to save an animal? Well, you’re lucky, Ced. It looks like only minor damage to the bumper. That will come out of your bonus. Call the police chief and tell him to get a couple squad cars here pronto, to get these kids out of here so we can get back to work. This is getting to be a circus.”
The mayor turned his gaze to the Bulldogs and for the first time noticed Stomper. “Roland! What are you doing here?”
“Just helping some friends, sir,” Stomper said.
“How nice. I wonder if your father will appreciate your… team spirit.”
“Probably not, sir,” Stomper said quietly.
“Sir,” said Ced, holding his phone, “the captain says three squad cars, six officers, will be here in one minute.”
I got a text from William and showed it to Mia.
The photog and I are 10 minutes away.
“Too late,” Mia said. “There’ll be nothing left to photograph, but you might as well video it, Carlos.”
The police cars arrived as promised, lights flashing. Six officers jumped out and ran toward the Palace. One of them had bolt cutters and quickly unchained the Bulldogs.
“Let’s go, fellas,” one of the officers said. “Out the gate and away from here quickly or you will be arrested, and we don’t want to do that.”
The Bulldogs trudged out the gate dejectedly and started walking back up the hill.
“Hey, Stomper,” I called out. He turned and saw me, and walked over to where Mia and I were “hiding.”
“Sorry we couldn’t help your team, dude,” Stomper said sadly.
“It was a great try,” I said.
From the crane cab the mayor’s angry voice rang out.
“Let’s do this!” he snarled. “We’ve kept Big Bertha waiting long enough.”
“You do the honors, sir,” the crane operator said, standing behind the mayor, who had eased back into the seat.
I cringed and pressed the red VIDEO indicator on my phone.
The engine coughed back to life. Mayor Burns lifted his hat, smoothed his hair, and carefully replaced the hat. He took a huge cigar from his suit pocket and clamped it between his teeth, unlit. He glared at the Palace as if he was going to bust it down with his bare hands.
Suddenly the mayor jerked his head to the left, his attention drawn to a car speeding down the hill and screeching to a stop at the gate.
Out jumped Diz and a young woman in a business-type suit. His law professor? She was waving a piece of paper and shouting, “Wait! Wait! We have a court order!”
The professor ran through the gate, across the blacktop court, and up to the crane cab, holding the paper out toward the mayor.
Mayor Burns stood up, leaned over the control panel, and tried to swat away the paper. But he leaned too far and his hat fell off, and as he tried to catch it, he bumped against one of the levers.
With a loud screech that caused Mia to cover her ears, the crane’s boom and wrecking ball, which were aimed at the Palace, began to lurch left, toward the street, with a metallic ching-ching-ching like a roller coaster climbing up its tracks.
Mayor
Burns was swearing like crazy and pulling at levers. “Get this thing back where it’s supposed to be!” he barked at the crane operator, but the two men were a tangle of arms. “Is this the lever?”
“No, don’t touch that one! That’s the ball!”
Too late. The mayor, with a look of horror, realized he had freed Big Bertha.
With a loud creeeeeak, the massive steel ball, now unhooked from the crane boom, swung downward on its cable. But not toward the Palace.
In what seemed like slow motion, Big Bertha plunged from the sky in a long, sweeping arc.
Ced, who was about to get into the limo to back it away from the geyser, yelled and sprinted away.
With the force of a runaway train, the huge ball ripped through the chain-link fence and slammed into the side of the mayor’s limo.
Our teammates told us later they heard the impact from three blocks away, the sounds of crunching metal and shattered glass.
Big Bertha knocked the limo off the sidewalk and into the street, on its side, bent in half like a crumpled aluminum can.
Mia and I looked at each other, then at Stomper. His mouth had sprung wide open. “Ohhh, that was AWEsome!”
WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED?
TEN MINUTES LATER, THE ENTIRE BLOCK WAS A BEEHIVE of crazy activity. A fire crew worked to shut off the geyser from the busted hydrant. A tow truck driver loaded what was left of the mayor’s Chariot of Fire onto a flatbed tow truck.
Rosie and Augie stood on the sidewalk with Mia, Stomper, and me. Diz and his law professor joined us. William finally arrived and walked over, wearing a big smile.
“Well,” Diz said. “You guys did your job, and Professor Conklin here just bought at least another thirty days of life for the Palace. She convinced the judge there was reasonable cause to postpone the demolition.”
“Thanks, Professor,” Mia said. “How did you do that?”
“I showed the judge Carlos’s school report on the Palace,” the professor said.
“Yikes!” I said. “I only got a B on that report.”
“Well, the judge was impressed,” Professor Conklin said. “I believe she would overrule your teacher and give you an A.”
“I don’t think we’re going to need the full thirty days,” William said. “My story is scheduled to run next week. That might put more of a damper on the mayor’s project.”
I introduced Stomper to Augie and Rosie, and they thanked him for bringing the team to help.
“No problem,” Stomper said with a shrug. “It’s payback. If Carlos didn’t coach me, I never woulda made the school team.”
“This might sound crazy,” I said to Stomper, “but I thought you tipped off your dad about our protest. My bad.”
Stomper sighed. “Uh, it was me. But not on purpose, dude, I swear! I forgot my dad was checking my phone. He saw my text telling you about the demo. He didn’t say anything to me, but he knew something was up, and he must have called the mayor.”
Suddenly I got a chill.
“Your dad, Stomper,” I said quietly.
“Yeah,” he said, taking a deep breath and letting it out. “I knew me getting mixed up in this stuff would make him really mad. Last night I told my mom I didn’t care, because I wasn’t going to take it anymore, and she started crying.”
Rosie put a hand on Stomper’s shoulder.
“Mom and I packed suitcases and we moved out,” Stomper said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but whatever it is, it’s going to be better than it was.”
THE ZEN OF STATE
“HEY, TROOPER,” HOT ROD SAID AS OUR PLANE WAS about to land in San Diego. “Now that we’re here at State, is it okay if we start thinking about State?”
“By the rules of Zen, sure,” Trooper said, sounding serious until he added, “But what I think you should start thinking about is how to unload the bricks from your wheelchair so you can get back on defense.”
“Man, look at those palm trees,” DJ said as our plane buzzed low over downtown. “This must be the Garden of Zen. Is there such a thing?”
“Eden,” Mia corrected him. “Garden of Eden.”
“I flunked geography,” DJ admitted.
The plane touched down with a bump, but the Rollin’ Rats were still flying high, having a hard time processing everything that had happened.
We arrived two days before the tournament began and started having fun. The first two days we practiced in the mornings, went sightseeing in the afternoons, and goofed around in the hotel in the evenings.
Most of the parents made the trip. Augie and Rosie were able to get off work, which made me very happy. You’ve heard of a momma’s boy? Well, I was an aunt-and-uncle’s boy. Even though the adults on the trip stayed in their own rooms, I would have felt way too lonely if Augie and Rosie hadn’t been close by.
The night before our first game, Rosie said, “Let’s go for a walk, mijo.”
She strolled and I rolled through the shopping district near the hotel.
“How are the butterflies now, Carlos?” she asked.
“They’re starting to flutter around, but I’m kind of getting used to them,” I said.
“It took me a while,” Rosie said. “I finally figured out that the fear was there to remind me how much I loved playing. Ever hear the expression ‘Playing with house money’?”
I shook my head.
“When gamblers get ahead, they stop worrying about losing, because now they’re playing with the casino’s money. That’s what you guys are doing in this tournament, Carlito, playing with house money.”
We were quiet for a minute. Then she said, “Remember that first morning at the Palace?”
“I wanted to turn around and go home,” I said sheepishly.
“That’s funny,” Rosie said, “because I came close to telling you, ‘Let’s get out of here.’”
“What?” I said. “I don’t believe that.”
Rosie nodded and said quietly, “Thanks for being strong for both of us that day.”
We walked a couple of more blocks, then Rosie said with excitement in her voice, “Let’s get back to the hotel. Edgar might be there by now. His plane landed a half hour ago.”
So many things about my old life seemed far away. Even with social media, it’s hard to keep up old friendships. But with Easy E, even though I hadn’t seen him in over a year, it felt like we were still best friends.
“There he is!” I said, pointing at the kid standing in front of the hotel, with a short afro and a big smile, looking up and down the sidewalk. “He’s gotten taller and skinnier.”
Edgar spotted us, yelled, and sprinted over to give me a big hug. Rosie had met Edgar before, and she put out her hand to shake his. Easy wasn’t having it. He gave Rosie a big hug. He had always called my mom “Mom,” and now he asked Rosie, “Is it okay if I call you Aunt Rosie?” She hugged him again. My mom had always said Edgar had more charm than all my friends combined.
It was time for team dinner at the hotel, and Edgar joined us. I had always been pretty shy, but Easy E never had that problem. He’s an instant fit in any situation, and after a few minutes it was like he was part of our team.
“Hey, Easy,” James said, “was Carlos really a big scorer on your team, like he tells us he was?”
“Not a big scorer,” Easy said. “Carlos was the scorer. I remember one game, we were down by one point and we had time for one last shot. In the huddle Coach looked around and said, ‘Well, I don’t see Steph Curry here, so we might as well get the ball to Carlos.’”
“Are you saying Carlos didn’t pass much?” Jellybean asked.
Edgar’s eyes got wide.
“Dude, Carlos didn’t pass the Gatorade.”
James was taking a big gulp of water and he laughed it out his nose, and that got Easy laughing until he had tears in his eyes.
“James, that’s a great trick,” Edgar said. “You gotta show me how you do that.”
James and I were roommates, and we had a rollaway be
d brought in for Easy. Trooper’s rule was no turning on the TV in our rooms. (“I think Trooper used to be a caveman,” Jellybean said.) He told us we needed to learn to interact with something that’s not plugged in or battery-powered, such as another human.
“Coach, you never had to room with Jellybean,” Hot Rod said.
James and Edgar and I didn’t need a TV. We talked about school, movies, girls, everything. Easy E caught me up on what my old friends were doing, and James seemed just as interested as I was.
At eleven o’clock, the unofficial “curfew,” we got into our beds and turned out the lights, then talked for another hour.
“Hey, Easy,” James said kiddingly, “I hear your team is having a good season even though you lost your big scorer.”
“We’re doing good, we’re doing very good,” Edgar said. He was quiet for a minute, then, “But you know what? I’d trade all those wins to have Carlos back. You guys got lucky.”
That made me feel good.
“Thanks, Easy,” I said.
It was quiet, then Edgar said, “Then again, a championship trophy would be really nice.…”
James cracked up. I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
Back in Bay City, our adventure with the Palace had made us celebrities for a while, in a small-town way. Even the Breeze, which was in the process of being sold and had a new editor, wrote a nice story about us. A couple of local TV stations did stories on us.
William’s story in the Metro Independent was huge—it told about all the stuff we uncovered and now was being investigated. One of the photos with the story was a picture of Stomper’s dog with a big caption: “Pete (the) Barker, company CEO.”
Some of that fame followed us to San Diego. The city’s big newspaper ran a story on us with the headline: THE KIDS WHO FOUGHT CITY HALL—AND WON.
So we were feeling pretty good going into our first game. Everything seemed to be lining up great.
Except for reality.
We played the Lakeview Lions, and they whipped us. They were ahead by ten at halftime. The tournament was double-elimination—you’re not knocked out until you lose two games—but this wasn’t the way we wanted to start.