The Aurora County All-Stars

by Deborah Wiles

  “I want off the list!” barked Cleebo. “I’m the best first baseman in the state of Mississippi, and the Aurora County All-Stars got a game on the Fourth of July! It’s our onliest game and we ain’t gonna give it up!”

  “You’re a catcher!” said Ruby. Cleebo ignored her.

  “Your mama is one of Dr. Dan Deavers’s biggest fans, Cleebo Wilson,” said Melba in a cool, take-charge voice. “She’s not going to let you off the list. She and half the Mamas watch Each Life Daily Turns from the front room of the Sunshine Laundry every afternoon while Lurleen learns how to iron with that new pressing machine.”

  “That’s what’s wrong with your head,” said Wilkie. “Sleepin’ on all that starch!”

  Cleebo shoved Wilkie. Wilkie shoved him back. Finesse smiled and nodded at Melba. Melba marked Cleebo present, marked herself present, then began calling out the name of every person on the list.

  There were twenty-one names on the list. Eight of them were ballplayers. All of them were under fourteen, all signed up for the 200th anniversary children’s pageant representing the wonders of tiny Aurora County, founded on the now-defunct fortunes of an old sawmill in the piney woods of southern Mississippi, where the accents were so thick that words such as here and now were pronounced in two syllables, where folks said y’all and yonder every day, and where everyone drank sweet tea and ate sliced tomatoes at every midday meal. And where it was so hot in June, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. If you had a sidewalk.

  “I’m afraid you have no choice!” chirped Finesse. “And just think—you get to meet my uncle! Mon oncle! Dr. Dan Deavers of Each Life Daily Turns! The man who is making this pageant possible! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! We’ll have a rigorous schedule for the next two weeks, in order to be ready on July Fourth . . .”

  “Nope!” House felt the word leave his gut with way too much breath behind it. It rushed out, strident, high, and uncontrolled, but it would not be denied—it was time to swallow his toad.

  He shoved his sunglasses onto his face. “We’ve got us a ball game on the Fourth of July at four o’clock.” He looked from face to face. They were all staring at him like he was on display. His nerve began to evaporate—he reached for something else to say before it vanished completely. “I missed that game last year—Frances.” There. He said what everyone knew, and as soon as he said it, it held no power over him. He held the power. He made himself as tall as he could. When he spoke, his voice was strong and straight. “I missed that game last year—Frances—and I’m not gonna miss it again!” He checked himself over mentally. He felt marvelous. He was practically radiating.

  “Now you’re talkin’!” said Cleebo. Honey and Eudora had both fallen asleep. Cleebo scrambled to his feet and pointed at Finesse, who was dotting a handkerchief on her forehead. “We lost that game last year because of you!” he shouted. “You! And don’t you think for one minute we ain’t gonna win it back this year! If you do, you got another think coming!” Cleebo was so mad, his face turned a puffed-up purple—he looked like an angry eggplant. The rest of the All-Stars clambered to their feet, shouting their agreement. Little kids recoiled from Cleebo as if he might explode.

  “You nearly killed House here!” spit Cleebo. “You . . .” His words gargled in his throat, strangling him. “I need a drink!”

  And, as if he’d been released from prison and could now do whatever he wanted to do, Cleebo made a beeline for the schoolhouse where, in great, round sweeps, he unwound the hose from its position on the back wall.

  Drunk on the power of his own words, House made like a hornet after Cleebo. “Good idea!” He snatched the end of the hose and marched with it the few feet back to the crowd. Finesse stared at him with eyes as round as Moon Pies. House pointed the end of the hose directly at Finesse. He called over his shoulder to Cleebo: “Turn it on!” No one moved.

  Cleebo blinked. “What?”

  “Turn it on!”

  It took Cleebo two seconds to understand. “All right!” He turned the spigot on full strength. House crimped the hose in his fist to keep the water from spraying out. He aimed the nozzle at Finesse’s propellered head. “It’s hot out here,” he said. Water dripped onto the ground from the end of the hose.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” said Finesse.

  Kids scrambled to their feet and scattered, all but Honey, who continued to snore, out of the line of fire, with her head on top of Eudora Welty under the china-berry tree. Everyone watched from a safe distance, as if they were all cowboys witnessing the gunfight at the OK Corral. House was armed with a hose. Finesse had a clipboard. There was no contest.

  House felt more alive than he’d felt in a whole year. He trained the hose at the face of the girl who had almost ruined his baseball career. The ball team gathered around him.

  “We’re the Aurora County All-Stars,” he said in a voice so calm it surprised him. “We’re gonna play baseball on the Fourth of July, and we’re leaving.”

  “Yeah,” said Wilkie, his eyes on House. “We’re leavin’!”

  “Yeah!” said the ball team, full of admiration for their leader.

  “You . . . you can’t leave,” said Finesse. Her voice cracked.

  “Watch us!” shouted House. “The ball field is just over yonder—right field backs up to the schoolyard, you can see it from here!” He lifted the hose to eye level and sighted Finesse like a target.

  This would have been a good time to shut up, but Finesse couldn’t stop herself. “You’re . . . you’re signed up!”

  House squeezed the hose until his whole left arm hurt, which made him even angrier. “I feel our departure emanating from within!” he shouted, plunging ahead. “But before we go, I have a basic sensory exercise for you, full of wonderful past and glorious present!” He thrust the hose toward Finesse like it was the sword of the rightful king, come to smite her. With his free hand he fixed his thumb over the opening. As he began to release the kink, water sizzled and made a puddle at his feet.

  Finesse snatched her straw tote and held it against her sequined shirt like a shield. She stepped backward. “I know you are a gentleman, House Jackson.”

  The summer locusts screamed from the trees. Kids froze at attention in the blazing summer heat.

  “Git her, House!” snarled Cleebo. “You know her—she ain’t gonna let this go. She’ll call everybody’s mamas and tell on us. They’ll make us do it, and we don’t got no time for a pageant! She ain’t gonna let us alone. Go on, House—git her!”

  8

  The great thing about baseball is that there’s a crisis every day.

  —GABE PAUL, GENERAL MANAGER, CINCINNATI REDS

  House sucked in a giant breath of hot summer air, the way he did whenever he wound up for a big pitch. But instead of envisioning his pitch going straight across the plate—strike!—or instead of envisioning the water from the hose hitting its mark—splat!—instead, the image of Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd lying on the cold metal embalming table at Snowberger’s Funeral Home, dead, without his glasses, maybe without his clothes, covered with a white sheet, slid into his mind. His anger wheezed and sputtered.

  House shook his head to clear it.

  Finesse shook her head back at House.

  And that’s when the sound of tires rolling over pebbles on the dirt road diverted everyone’s attention. Bunch Snowberger drove his black hearse right up to the empty lot behind the school, right up to the pageant players.

  House stared at the hearse as his heart began a frantic bang against his rib cage. His face sizzled like it might dissolve right in front of everybody. They were coming for him. They’d ask him a bunch of questions. He’d be found out. He clutched harder at the kink in the hose to make sure he didn’t let it get away from him.

  Bunch Snowberger opened the back door of the hearse and out stepped Parting Schotz, Finesse’s great-grandfather. At his full height, he was no taller than House. He had a stubbly sprinkle of silver gray hair across the back of his head and
skin the color of the pinecones that dotted the forest floor. He wore his barber apron; he had come straight from work.

  House blinked, as if clearing his vision would help him understand what was happening.

  “Poppy?” Finesse’s face was a mixture of relief and distress.

  Pip—for that’s what everyone in town had called Parting Schotz all his life—Pip grabbed Finesse’s elbows with his slender, strong hands and gave off one great shuddery sob. Then he gestured toward the hearse.

  “Come on, sugar. We need the family together now.”

  Finesse didn’t wait for explanations. She didn’t even say good-bye and good luck. She popped into the car with her great-grandfather before you could say What happened?— she didn’t even glance at her subjects. Bunch clicked the door shut behind them and drove the car away.

  House stared at his hands still clenching the hose. They shook like trees in a storm.

  “Wow!” said Evan Evans as he watched the hearse disappear. “That was some getaway.”

  “Somebody’s dead,” said Ruby.

  “It’s got to be somebody who’s kin to Finesse,” said Wilkie.

  “That could be a hundred people around here,” said Cleebo.

  “Somebody run to Miss Mattie’s store and find out who died,” said Melba, waving the clipboard for an I’m in command effect.

  “I’ll go,” said Ruby, “and not because you say so.” She ran across the field and toward the row of stores on Main Street.

  House began to cough. He unkinked the hose and let the water splat and spray into the dust. He took off his baseball cap, stuck his face into the stream of cold water, then shook the wetness from his head. “Who wants a drink?” he asked in a robotic voice. Finally. He could speak. He handed the hose to whoever would take it first. Wilkie took it gingerly from his hands.

  Kids eyed House cautiously as they milled around the hose, drinking or waiting for a turn. They were hot, cranky, and confused. Honey, lost in a dream, draped her arm over Eudora and sighed.

  “Are we practicing or not, House?” asked Cleebo. He jittered like he had ants in his pants.

  “It’s too hot,” said House. He took the hose and handed it to Cleebo, who slurped at the stream of water, then spit into the dirt and wiped a wet hand across his face. His jeans were splotched with mud from the nearby puddle and his crisply starched T-shirt was streaked with dirt. “We play no matter what—it’s in the rules! You wanna beat them Redbugs or what?”

  “We’ll beat ’em.” House picked up his slumbering sister. Eudora Welty wobbled herself to a puddle and began to slurp. Honey tucked her head under her brother’s chin. House said, “I gotta take Honey home.”

  “Hey!” came a shout from across the lot. “I know who it is!” Ruby hollered. “I know who died!”

  9

  Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  Ruby grabbed the hose from Cleebo and drank like she was dying of thirst. Then she made her announcement. Water dripped off her chin and her eyes were wide in astonishment. “It’s Mr. Norwood Boyd! Mean-Man Boyd!”

  Cleebo popped like a firecracker. “Baby-Eater Boyd?”

  Ruby nodded. “Can you believe it?”

  House swayed, wandlike, at the words. Honey began to wake up in his arms.

  “We went by his house this morning!” said Cleebo importantly. “I knew it! I knew somethin’ had happened! There’s a mess of kudzu all over the place, like they had to hack it down to get in there!”

  The news crackled the air like thunder.

  “Are you sure?” asked Melba. “Finesse can’t be related to him!”

  “How do you know?” said Ruby.

  “Who is Mean-Man Boyd?” asked George Latham, who was only five.

  Ruby spoke with every twist of the spigot as she turned off the hose. “Meanest . . . man . . . who ever . . . drew . . . a breath . . . of life.”

  “Rich, too,” said Wilkie.

  “Yeah,” said Cleebo, a glint in his eye. “He hoarded trunks full of treasure in that old rattrap of a house, from all them years he traveled all over the world.” Cleebo rubbed his hands together in a greedy gesture and stared, bug-eyed, at the kids. “Treasure! Just sittin’ there, waiting for somebody to come find it.”

  Kids nodded. It was a well-worn tale. Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd the Merchant Marine who came back from his world travels only to hole up in his house for the past twenty years—alone. No one even knew what he looked like anymore.

  House’s stomach flip-flopped. He whistled for Eudora.

  “Why is he the meanest man?” asked George in a timid voice, as if he couldn’t help it and had to know, even if he might be sorry.

  “He kidnapped kids and they were never heard from again!” said Boon Tolbert.

  “He ate ’em!” said his brother Ned, only too happy to add to the story.

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Melba, halfheartedly, draping her arms around George and Violet both and shooting daggers at Cleebo. “He couldn’t get away with that.”

  “Oh-yes-he-could!” crowed Cleebo. “And did! For years! How do you think he got food to eat? The ghosts of all those dead kids he kidnapped still live in that old place, and there’s tons of ’em—he’s hundreds of years old! He comes back to life every time he dies!”

  “Eeeeeee!” squealed George and Violet and every other pageant kid under ten.

  “Stop it!” shouted House. He put Honey down. She buried her face in his leg. She was sticky with sweat.

  “What do you care?” asked Cleebo. Eudora Welty stood next to House, wagging her tail and looking droopy. Cleebo stared at the dog, then at House. He began connecting the dots. “What do you care?” he asked House again. “Unless you know somethin’ we don’t?”

  House cleared his throat. “You’re scaring Honey.”

  Honey nodded into House’s leg. Her tutu was crushed.

  Across the empty lot, walking with a purposeful gait, came Miss Mattie Perkins, Ruby’s aunt and owner of the mercantile. She wore a flour sack apron and had her hair pinned into a no-nonsense bun on the back of her head.

  “What’s happening here?” she needled. “Is it a convention?”

  Ruby’s face reddened to the color of her hair. “I was just tellin’ them about Mean . . . I mean, Mr. Norwood Boyd . . .”

  “I figured you were.” Miss Mattie put her hands on her hips, pursed her lips, and stared at everyone until each kid fidgeted. “Time to go home, all of you,” she said. “There will be practice here in the morning, nine o’clock sharp, for every name on the pageant list.” Her gaze speared each ballplayer’s face and each one looked somewhere else. “Remember,” she said, “if your mama signed you up, you show up. This pageant is not only a tribute to the county, it’s a thank-you to Frances’s uncle for his generosity in supplying us with the new stage. The pageant will go on as scheduled . . . on July Fourth at four o’clock at Halleluia School.”

  Cleebo elbowed House. House ignored him. No one protested to Miss Mattie. “Now, go home,” she said. “It’s hot. You’ll get an earlier start tomorrow.”

  “Miss Mattie,” said Melba. “Is Mr. Norwood Boyd kin to Finesse . . . er, Frances?”

  Miss Mattie carefully untied and retied the strings on her apron and said, “Norwood Boyd had no family.” She let her breath out slowly. “Rest his soul.”

  Rest his soul. The words were so final—they grabbed House by the throat. He swallowed hard. The thought of crying in front of everyone horrified him. He took a deep breath, and held it.

  “Then why . . . ,” Ruby began.

  “How did he die?” asked George. His face was a mixture of wonder and horror.

  House was light-headed, still holding his breath.

  “I don’t know, child,” said Miss Mattie. “But we’ll soon find out all about it.”

  We’ll soon find out all about it. With no warning, House’s knees buckled beneath him. He sank like a ship and landed in
the dirt, just missing Eudora Welty. Honey shrieked.

  Miss Mattie grabbed House by the arm and pulled him up. “What’s wrong with you, House? You’re white as a ghost!”

  House blinked and licked his lips. “Hot.”

  Cleebo was ever-ready with a reply. “He’s out of his head with heat,” he said hastily. “I’ll get him home.” He fanned House with his baseball cap. “C’mon, buddy. Let’s go.”

  House waved him away. “I’m fine.” He stood and brushed the dust off his jeans.

  “Suit yourselves,” said Miss Mattie. “Cleebo, if you can’t find something constructive to do, go help your mama at the laundry; Lurleen’s out today.”

  “Yes’m,” said Cleebo. “I got to get House home first.”

  Miss Mattie harrumphed and walked back to the mercantile with Ruby and Melba reluctantly in tow. “I’ve got work for you girls. I need help until Eula returns from her trip.”

  The energy fizzled out of the day. Kids wandered toward home, talking in little groups of twos and threes. The drama of the morning was over. Honey took House’s hand and gave him a quizzical look.

  “I’m hungry,” said Wilkie. “Let’s practice later.” The team murmured a tentative approval.

  “House can’t play later,” said Boon.

  Ned nodded. “Yeah, he can only play after supper until dark, remember?”

  Cleebo clapped a hand on House’s pitching shoulder as if he’d been empowered to arrest him. “You comin’ to practice this afternoon, House?”

  House pulled his shoulder away from Cleebo’s grasp. The idea of his newfound freedom hadn’t occurred to him until now. He scooped at the hot summer air with an empty overhand pitch. “Four o’clock. I’m pitching aspirin tablets! Get ready.”

  Cleebo raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

  “’Bout time we had some fastballs!” said Boon. “You’ve been throwin’ dead mackerels for weeks.”