The Aurora County All-Stars

by Deborah Wiles

  “Yeah! Let’s get ready for those Redbugs!” said Lincoln and Arnold and Evan. “Finally!”

  House gave Eudora another little whistle. “Let’s go, girl.”

  “That’s the ugliest dog I ever saw,” said Cleebo. “Dogs are supposed to be houndy with floppy tongues.”

  “This one isn’t,” said House.

  “YouDoggie is beautiful,” Honey said simply.

  And with that, the baseball team disbanded for the duration of the hot day. The empty lot was left to the grasshoppers and the soon-to-come shadows and secrets of late afternoon.

  WBAC

  IN BEAUTIFUL AURORA COUNTY

  YOUR STATION FOR LOCAL NEWS AND WEATHER!

  * * *

  RADIO FLASH NEWS!

  Composed and Read by Phoebe “Scoop” Tolbert

  June 17, noon

  Lord-a-mercy, here’s a tidbit of breaking news from the Halleluia Bureau. It has just occurred to this reporter that the annual Aurora County All-Stars Game, which is always played on July 4 at 4pm, is scheduled to take place at the same time as the once-in-a-lifetime Aurora County Birthday Pageant, funded by Dr. Dan Deavers of Our Fair County. (Dr. Dan is having a new stage constructed at Halleluia School expressly for this purpose!)

  Now. The ball game is sparsely attended, this is true, and it is the only official game our boys get to play each year, against the Smith County Raleigh Redbugs, who are also too few in number to warrant an official Little League team. But it is an important event! My grandsons, the Tolbert twins, are beside themselves with worry over the fact that they will miss their game, especially after last year’s loss—they want a chance to redeem themselves! They have refused to eat their vegetables until there is a resolution!

  The time and date of the ball game cannot be moved—families from both Aurora and Smith counties set this date aside each year to picnic and play this game and there is no other good time when we can congregate.

  The pageant time and date cannot be moved. Aurora County was founded on the Fourth of July, and Dr. Dan cannot leave his soap opera to be in attendance at any other time, due to the fact that he has come out of his coma on the show, and is making his comeback from the amnesia.

  What will this mean for the pageant? For the game? Mamas? Papas? How do we proceed?

  This is Phoebe Tolbert, the Vivacious Voice of Aurora County, signing off until next time!

  * * *

  10

  I don’t make speeches. I just let my bat speak for me in the summertime.

  —HONUS WAGNER, SHORTSTOP, PITTSBURGH PIRATES

  Cleebo, House, Honey, and Eudora Welty walked down the middle of the dirt road, a road that traveled the almost-mile from Halleluia to Mabel. Mabel was a crossroads dotted with farms, scattered with homes, and blessed with two large churches that faced each other across a dirt road, and a county middle school that boasted a brand-new woodworking shop and greenhouse.

  The sun beat down on the travelers like a hot gold hammer.

  “I ain’t never seen you like that, House,” said Cleebo.

  “Like what?”

  “Standin’ up to Frances!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I never saw you do that before!”

  “Do what?”

  “Approach your problems! You never approach your problems, House. You don’t talk about ’em—”

  “You talk enough for the both of us—,” House interrupted, but Cleebo bulldozed on.

  “—and that’s what gets folks in trouble—they don’t approach their problems.”

  “Where’d you learn to talk like that? Your problem is you’ve been watching that soap opera at the laundry.”

  “I can’t help that—it’s on when I’m there for lunch. I’m tellin’ you, House, sometimes things need approaching.”

  “I approach the plate. That’s enough.” But he had approached his problem, and he knew it. He had survived it, too.

  Cleebo punched his fist into his catcher’s mitt for effect. “You moused around all last summer after you got your elbow broke. I woulda gone after Frances right then and there!” He shoved his hands into his pockets and slouched toward home. “You shoulda blasted Frances just now, House. She deserves it.”

  House worked his elbow. “I think the arm’s fine” was all he said. He tossed his baseball in the air and caught it.

  Cleebo kicked a rock in front of him. “So you can play ball in the afternoons now, House? What gives?”

  “Nothin’ gives.”

  Cleebo hooted. “All year long, the whole team showed up to play ball after school and you said you couldn’t come. School got out and still you only showed up in the evenin’s. Now you can come anytime? I’m your best friend and you ain’t gonna tell me why?”

  “Nope.”

  “I don’t know about you, House. We’ve had to do without you with no good explanation—I’ve been mighty forgiving about it . . .”

  “My arm was broke half the time!”

  “It’s not broke now!”

  “Well, here I am!” House shouted. “Let’s play!” It felt good to yell.

  Cleebo yelled, too. “We ain’t gonna have a game if we don’t figure out this pageant problem!”

  “Well, I don’t have answers right now, Cleebo! Why do I have to figure out all the answers?”

  “Because you’re team captain! It’s your team! You put it together in the first place!”

  House sidestepped Eudora Welty, who was wobbling her back-and-forth gait.

  “Hey!” said Honey. “Be careful!”

  “Where’d your dog come from?” asked Cleebo.

  “Found her in the bushes,” said House.

  “I love her!” chirped Honey, who was struggling to keep up. “Her name is YouDoggie!”

  “Eudora,” said House.

  “That’s what I said,” said Honey. “YouDoggie!”

  Cleebo and House rounded a curve in the road. “Looka here!” burst Cleebo.

  The gates to Mr. Norwood Boyd’s house were open.

  “Wow . . . ,” breathed Cleebo, staring at the crumbling house beyond the gates. “It’s Mean-Man’s house . . .”

  “Yeah . . . ,” House spoke in his most noncommittal voice.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. There was his note, still rolled into a small, crunched scroll.

  Cleebo squinted at House. “You knew Baby-Eater Boyd.”

  “What are you talking about?” House looked behind him for Honey.

  “You knew him,” said Cleebo. “I can tell.”

  House shook his head. “Nah.”

  “Yeah, you did,” said Cleebo. “It got to you, all that talk about him dyin’ and who he was.”

  “You know what, Cleebo? You talk too much! I wish you’d catch as good as you talk.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m a good catcher!”

  At that moment, Honey and Eudora caught up to the boys. Eudora Welty stopped short, sniffed the air, then ran straight through the open gate to Norwood Boyd’s house and disappeared.

  “YouDoggie!” screamed Honey.

  “Eudora!” House sprinted after the dog with Cleebo on his heels.

  “Don’t go in there, House!” screamed Honey.

  House and Cleebo screeched to a halt at the gate. “Eudora!” House called. The dog was gone. “Let me get her, Honey.”

  “No! There’s ghosts in there!” cried Honey. She pulled on her brother’s shirt as hard as she could.

  “There’s no such thing,” said House. “That’s just a story . . .”

  “Nooooo!” Honey began to cry. She leaned forward and wailed for Eudora. “YouDoggie!”

  Cleebo hissed. “I see where that dog comes from, and I know you know somethin’. You can tell me. What did you do to him? Did you find the treasure?”

  “You’re crazy, Cleebo!” House wrapped his arms around Honey, who was hollering herself blue for Eudora.

  “She’s in there with the ghosts!”


  “Ghosts can’t see dogs,” said House. “And there ain’t no ghosts.”

  “Then why don’t you go in and get her?” Cleebo spit into the mountain of kudzu by the gate.

  “You go!” said House. He stood and glowered at Cleebo. “Go on! You know so all-fired much about ghosts and treasure!”

  Cleebo eyeballed the decaying old house and took a step through the driveway gates. Honey screeched. She wrapped her arms around herself like a mummy and held her breath.

  Cleebo stepped back.

  “You’re not as brave as you thought you were,” said House. “And there ain’t no treasure.”

  Cleebo jabbed his finger at House. “You know somethin’.”

  House spit. “I know I’m goin’ home.”

  “YouDoggieeeeee!” Honey wailed.

  “She’ll be at home waiting for us, Honey. Let’s go.”

  Cleebo took off his baseball cap and wiped his forehead with his sweaty T-shirt. “You really gonna be at practice this afternoon? Or you gonna be busy?”

  “Let’s you and me part company, Cleebo. You can get your bike and go home.”

  “What about lunch? I bet your daddy is fixin’ four, maybe five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches right now . . .”

  “I don’t want company!” House took Honey’s hand. She made a miserable sound through her tears.

  “What am I supposed to do for lunch?”

  “I don’t care what you do. Go eat with the Mamas at the Sunshine Laundry and watch Dr. Dan on the television. Go get starched, Cleebo.”

  “Fine!” cried Cleebo. “I don’t care if you show up for practice or not!”

  “Yes, you do!” House let go of Honey’s hand. She collapsed like a sad little balloon that was all out of air. House took an angry step toward Cleebo. The inside of his nose stung with tears. “Watch me approach my problems, Cleebo! You tell me every day how I let the team down last year. What kind of friend does that? I’m the one that’s been forgiving! A broke elbow is a broke elbow!”

  Cleebo blinked. “Well, you shoulda watched where you were going!”

  House crammed his ball and glove into his armpit. “It wasn’t my fault, Cleeb,” he said in an even voice.

  “You know what, House?” Cleebo took one last look at the gloom that was Norwood Boyd’s house. “Eatin’ at the laundry’s better than eatin’ with you any day!” He stalked back toward town, throwing a shout over his shoulder. “I’ll get my bike later! Don’t you touch it!”

  House picked up Honey, who sobbed into her brother’s neck. “It’ll be all right, Honey.”

  But it would not be all right. House was wrong.

  He was wrong about Eudora.

  Wrong about the treasure.

  Wrong about everything.

  * * *

  * * *

  Special Edition, June 17

  THE AURORA COUNTY NEWS

  SNIPPETS FROM SNOWBERGER’S

  (An Occasional Column on the Deceased of Aurora County)

  Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd Claimed by Death Thursday Morn’g!

  By Comfort Snowberger: Historian, Recipe Tester, and Funeral Reporter with help from Goldie Shuggars, Snowberger’s Resident Archivist

  We here at Snowberger’s Funeral Home live to serve. We pride ourselves on knowing every body who has died in our county. We keep careful records of all the deceased and their resting places.

  So you can imagine the sheer surprise of it all when Bunch Snowberger was called away from his worktable (where he was carefully preparing Mr. Clark Terry for his funeral and eternal rest) to ride Sheriff Taylor over in the hearse to the nearby Mabel home of Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd—a closed-up, veritable haunted house of a place, full of old treasures from long-ago travels and . . . Mr. Norwood Boyd!

  A mysterious phone call alerted Doc MacRee to the death.

  “I thought he’d died eons ago!” said Goldie Shuggars, Snowberger’s Resident Archivist and (she wants you to know) new to the job.

  “I thought he was a ghost,” said an amazed Tidings Snowberger, resident yard mower and bush trimmer.

  “Heavens! Where and to whom do I send flowers?” said Joy Snowberger, wife of Bunch and mother to little Merry, who took one look at Mr. Norwood Boyd’s body as it was wheeled into the Snowberger’s workroom and said, simply and affirmatively, “Dead!”

  “Folks forgot he was alive,” said Bunch Snowberger. “I forgot, too.” There was real sadness in his voice.

  It is rumored that years ago Mr. Norwood Boyd returned from many years at sea and locked himself up in his house, never to be heard from again. Why? And what happened after that? We may never know.

  A letter of direction written in Norwood Boyd’s hand was found on the bed next to him. He has requested no funeral and instead sends word that he has other plans, although they have not as yet been discovered or disclosed. We here at Snowberger’s await any forthcoming news so we can figure out what to do. If anyone is kin to Norwood Boyd, please contact Snowberger’s immediately. (We have a new batch of oversized Snowberger’s handkerchiefs—now being laundered and ironed by the all-new Sunshine Laundry!—in baskets placed strategically around the Serenity Suite, so don’t worry about tears when you come forth to tell your story. We’ve got you covered.)

  As always, Snowberger’s remains a place of family comfort and repose. When you arrive for your loved one’s funeral you can rest assured that your every need will be attended to from the moment the door is opened by our greeter, Peach Shuggars (“So glad to SEE you!”), to the moment you are ready to depart, when our new puppy, Surprise Snowberger, walks (runs, twirls, jumps, yips) with you to your car to see you safely home.

  11

  I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  Eudora Welty did not come home. Honey would not be comforted and finally fell asleep in her father’s lap in a rocker on the front porch. House sat on the porch swing and listened to the chain creak as he rocked himself back and forth.

  An afternoon breeze tugged at the corners of the porch and thunder grumbled in the distance. “Thunder makes me think of your mama,” his father said. “Seems like every time it rained, she had sheets hanging on the line.”

  “I remember,” said House.

  “You do?” His father shifted Honey in his lap.

  “We pulled the sheets off the line in the rain,” said House. “We laughed.”

  “We sure did,” said his father. “Those were the days.” He sighed. “How was the pageant practice?”

  “Terrible. The whole team’s signed up by their mamas and the game is on the same day. Cleebo thinks I’m supposed to fix it, but I can’t. And Frances—she’s worse than ever.”

  His father nodded as if he were processing all this information carefully. “Can nothing be done about the date?”

  House shook his head no.

  “It would be a shame not to play your game,” said his father.

  House scratched at his cheek. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  His father watched the dark clouds move in. “Your mama loved baseball,” he said. “Do you still have that glove she gave you just before she died?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I thought Honey might use it one day, but she seems to have other ambitions,” said his father.

  Thunder crackled its way across the gray sky and House looked over at the empty clothesline. “Is there going to be a funeral for Mr. Norwood?”

  “I don’t believe he wanted one,” said his father. “That’s what Pip told me today when I was in town.”

  “Oh.”

  “It seems strange to die and not have anyone mark the occasion, doesn’t it?” said his father.

  “Yessir.” House had marked the occasion. He had been there.

  The wind rattled the pecans in the trees. The hidden sun cast the yard in a rosy-edged, silver glow. “You did well this past year, son,” said his father.
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  “Yessir.”

  “I know you didn’t want to do it.”

  “Nossir.” He had gotten used to it, though. He had gotten good at sitting by the bedside of a quiet old man. “It wasn’t bad, once I got used to it.”

  “I know,” said his father. “I could tell.”

  Leonard Jackson stood up with the sleeping Honey in his arms. “We’re going to get a soaker,” he said. “Why don’t you lie down for a while, too? You were up half the night.”

  “We got practice this afternoon,” said House.

  “Not in a thunderstorm,” said his father.

  “Maybe it’ll pass,” said House.

  “Maybe,” said his father.

  “Is Frances related to Mr. Norwood Boyd?”

  “Can’t say as she is.” The sky darkened and lightning flashed in the distance, followed by another low rumble.

  “Eudora’s at Mr. Norwood’s house for sure,” said House. “And she’s afraid of storms.”

  “We’ll go get her if she doesn’t come back,” said his father. “She’ll be all right.”

  “Are you staying home?” House scratched a mosquito bite on his elbow.

  “Can’t mow in the rain,” said his father. “I’ll tinker in the shed. I’ve got sandwiches in the kitchen if you want ’em.”

  Rain dotted the dirt by the pecan trees, setting off a dusty, sleepy smell. House stopped in his bedroom to get the shoe box of baseball cards he’d found on the front porch after his elbow had been set in a cast for the second time, after it had been determined that the break was worse than they’d thought.

  No one knew where the box had come from. House had asked his father, Cleebo, the boys, but none of them knew. He and Cleebo had spent hours on rainy days poring over the well-loved, beat-up cards. They memorized statistics, pretended to be one player and then the next, but it was Sandy Koufax—a lefty, like House—who had captured House’s imagination. House had even gone to the Bay Springs Library to look up more about Sandy Koufax. Miss Dena DeRose, the librarian, had found articles from old Life magazines to share with House. House knew all about Koufax. He felt close to him.