Lucky Seven (4 page)

The Bobcats practiced the next two nights. Butch and Tim were there both times. After a hard half-hour workout, Butch was
still there in front of the net, challenging the guys to try to drive the puck past him. He was improving a lot, too. Tim
watched him, a doubtful smile on his lips. Butch was too tall, too awkward. He’d never make a really good goalie.

Tim hated to see Saturday come. But it came, and so did Uncle Al and Aunt Marge.

“Had to see the Bobcats play before the season ended,” said Uncle Al. “What’s your team’s record, Tim?”

“Won three, lost four,” Tim answered soberly. “Nothing to brag about.”

“Not bad. Win today and it’ll be even up.”

“Yeah,” said Tim, not very enthusiastically.

He telephoned Butch Sales just before noon.
“Butch, I’m not feeling well. You want to tell Coach Higgs?”

“Got a cold, Tim?”

“I don’t know what it is,” said Tim.

“Okay. I’ll tell the coach.”

The game started at two o’clock. The seats around the rink were half-filled with hockey fans, mostly parents of the boys who
played in the league. Tim was in uniform, but he was sitting on the bench. Butch Sales was playing goalie.

A minute and ten seconds after face-off, the Tigers, the Bobcats’ opponents, punched in a goal. The puck had slid straight
through Butch’s legs.

I would have stopped that one, Tim told himself. Two minutes later, right after the B Line replaced the A Line on the ice,
a Tiger socked in another goal.

Tim squirmed. That was another goal he was sure he could have prevented.

Chip scored a point. Then Butch managed to make a save that drew tremendous applause
from the Bobcats’ fans. Hardly half a minute later a Tiger charged in with the puck and zipped it like a bullet past Butch
for their third goal.

Butch’s head turned toward the Bobcats’ bench, and even through the face guard Tim was able to see the worried look in Butch’s
eyes. Tim remembered what he had asked Butch to tell Coach Higgs. What an awful thing to do! What would Uncle Al and Aunt
Marge think, if they knew that? They were sitting somewhere behind him, expecting to see him play. That was the only reason
they had driven all the way from their home. Uncle Al had said so himself. But what had Tim done? He had pretended he didn’t
feel well so that Butch would play and take all the blame.

His throat ached. He got up and walked over to the coach. “Coach Higgs,” he said, trembling a little. “Let me go in. Please.”

Coach Higgs frowned. “I thought you didn’t feel well. I was surprised that you even showed up.”

“I—I just said that because my uncle is here today and I wasn’t playing well,” confessed Tim. “But, Butch—he just can’t—”

Coach Higgs smiled. “Okay, Tim. Get ready.”

A Tiger forward dribbled the puck across the center line and then across the Bobcats’ blue line. Jack Towns tried to take
it from him, but the Tiger passed it to another forward. The forward dribbled it toward the net, then snapped it.

Like a streak, the puck shot toward the left side of the net. Tim pounced on it like a cat and caught it in his mitt. A save!

“Yea!” screamed the fans. “Thataway to go, Tim!”

A few moments later, Chip blasted the puck past the Tigers’ goalie. Bobcats, 2—Tigers, 3. In the second period the Bobcats
seemed to be back in form. They tied the score, then went into the lead 4 to 3, then 5 to 3. And Tim was making one save after
another. He missed one later, a high one that grazed past his ear, but the Tigers deserved that goal. The Bobcats scored
again and the game ended 6 to 4 in the Bobcats’ favor. And Tim had never been so happy—or so tired—in his life.

In the locker room, Coach Higgs and the guys praised him for his defensive job at the goal. “Guess practice paid off, didn’t
it, Tim?” Coach Higgs smiled. “And so did that extra effort.”

“I guess it did,” said Tim.

Then Uncle Al came in, a big smile on his face. “Say, fella, you really showed me something,” he said. “I’m glad I came!”

Tim grinned as he took Uncle Al’s outstretched hand. “So am I, Uncle Al,” he said.

YOU could tell it was spring. Baseballs were flying like happy, white butterflies fresh out of cocoons, and George Maxwell
Jones was perched on a branch of a cherry tree, gently detaching handfuls of delectable fruit and eating them with gusto.

The tree, a mighty stanchion that had withstood many winter storms, was one of several on his father’s land. Far below in
the valley was the Jefferson High School baseball field, where figures were scooting around like worried ants.

George Maxwell Jones uttered a deep-throated sound in indignation at the sport going on down there and cast another hand
ful of cherries into his mouth. Once or twice he had pictured himself in a Jefferson High uniform and had to admit to himself
that it didn’t look bad on his six-foot-two frame. Only when he visualized himself scampering after a ground ball did he switch
off the picture as he would a TV show. Somehow his long legs never wanted to progress at any speed that demanded extra exertion,
and a slowpoke could never make the team.

A bumblebee the size of a golf ball decided just then to have some fun with George. He made a semiorbit of the tree and charged
in, all afterburners turned on full. When George saw the insect, he yelled and ducked. His head hit a branch and bounded back
like a rubber ball. The bee came to a dead stop six inches from George’s nose. Suddenly it zoomed and George moved with the
most exertion he had ever shown in his sixteen years. He fell backward, and with a crashing of branches and a scream, George
went through space. Trying to ease his fall, he put
out his hands. He made a one-point landing on a soft mound of earth and then felt pain in his right wrist that shot through
his body like an electric charge. Once more George howled and then looked for the monster that had sent him to his disaster.
The flying beast had landed on a glowing, bruised cherry and was, no doubt, sucking its delicious nectar.

“You rat!” said George.

He rose to his feet, brushed the dirt from his pants, and looked at his hurt wrist. There was a bump on its left side about
the size of a large marble.

George had no way of knowing then that his fall was going to make him a figure of distinction at Jefferson High.

When his wrist continued to hurt the next day, he asked some of his friends what to do about it.

“Best way to cure a sore wrist is to throw a baseball,” advised Eddie Vassy, second base-man for Jefferson High’s baseball
team. “Isn’t that right, Walt?”

“And who knows better than me?” quipped the stocky, yellow-haired catcher who was having a pitch-and-catch game with Eddie.
“Didn’t I get a sore wrist last year? And didn’t I throw to cure it?”

George looked uncertain. The boys were always kidding him, but these two seemed absolutely earnest about what they were saying
now. Maybe this time they were being honest with him. Maybe Walt really did cure his sore wrist throwing a baseball.

“Here, try it,” said Walt. He tossed the ball to George, who made an ungraceful stab at the ball and miraculously caught it.
“Go ahead,” Walt encouraged. “Throw it to Eddie. You remember; he’s that boy standing there with the glove on his hand.”

George gripped the clean white sphere between his thumb and first two fingers, reared back and threw. As the ball left his
fingers pain pierced his wrist and he let out a violent yell. He cut the yell short, though, as he saw the ball suddenly twist
into a spiral! Eddie’s
jaw dropped and his eyes widened in disbelief as he tried to follow the ball with his glove. It twisted in and hit him on
the chest.

“Hey! Where’d you get that pitch?” cried Walt excitedly. “Never saw anything like that before in my life!”

“Don’t throw it to me any more!” scowled Eddie, rubbing his sore chest. “Who do you think I am, Jerry Grote?”

“But, Eddie! That curve! Did you see how crazy it was?” Walt couldn’t get over his amazement at George’s throw. He was turning
red with excitement and perspiring as if he had just completed a hundred-yard sprint. “Give me that ball, Eddie! I’ve got
to see this hayseed do it again. You can do it again, can’t you, George? Because if you can, you’re the man our team’s looking
for. We didn’t win a game last year, not one. Know why? We didn’t have a pitcher, that’s why. Not one guy could throw a single,
measly curve. Here, George, throw him another one, just like that first one you threw.”

“Not to me, he isn’t!” yelled Eddie. “You come down here, pal! See how
you
like catching it on the chest!”

“Chicken!” said Walt, and ran down to replace Eddie. “Okay, George! Fire it!”

George stared intently at the baseball. A cold chill formed in a spot in his back and began to spread. He had thrown a baseball
a few times in his life but it had never performed the way it had this time. Of course, it was an accident. He’d never do
it again in a million years.

“Come on, George! Hurry up before the bell rings, will you?”

Scarcely had the words left Walt’s lips when the bell began to shrill.

“George! Throw it, will you?”

Quickly, George reared back and once again fired the ball, aiming at the target Walt was giving him. Breathlessly he watched,
wondering if the ball was going to repeat its fantastic performance. It was shooting straight as a bullet toward the outside
of Walt’s glove. Then, suddenly, it cut sharply to the left,
curved up, shot to the right exactly as it did before! Walt was a little better in getting a glove on it than Eddie. The
ball struck his thumb and
then
his chest.

“You did it again, George!” screamed Walt.

“What kind of a pitch is it?” asked Eddie excitedly. “What do you call it, George?”

George’s brows rose as far as they could go. “Kind of pitch?” he asked. “How should I know?” And then he turned and ran toward
the open door of the school. “Come on! The bell’s rung!” he cried over his shoulder.

At practice that afternoon it didn’t take Coach Bobo Wilson more than ten seconds to recognize outstanding performance when
he saw it. He was even satisfied by the brief rejoinder, “I don’t know,” to his question: “Where and how did you learn to
throw that crazy curve?” The coach even had to teach George how to stand on the rubber when the neophyte pitcher prepared
to make his delivery. George had never played baseball in his life and didn’t know any of the rules.

“Just throw that ball over the plate and don’t balk,” said Coach Wilson. “Those are the only rules you have to worry about,
kid! Keep pitching like that and you’ll break our losing streak!”

Barton High was Jefferson’s first opponent. The game was on a Tuesday, right after school, and a crowd had assembled even
before the teams got onto the field. Evidently word of George Maxwell Jones and his crazy curve ball had spread like wildfire.
The sky was overcast, the air warm, and George’s wrist, although the bump had not changed in shape or size, felt fine.

The teams had their pregame warm-up, and Jefferson took the field. The coach had procured the biggest mitt he could find for
Walt to catch George’s throws. George lobbed three pitches with just enough thrust to get them to the catcher. Then Walt pegged
to second and the umpire shouted: “Play ball!”