Mudville (17 page)

“Not so much for the fireworks, no.”

“Did my dad go in, too?”

“Nah, he just dropped me off. Said he had friends of his own in Sutton he could visit.”

“I guess he does.” My dad has friends scattered around the state. “Why didn't you go before then?”

“My grandma. She didn't want anything to do with him after a while,” he says. “She didn't want anything to do with the outside world anyway, but she especially didn't want any-thing to do with him.”

“Oh yeah. You lived with your grandma.”

“Yeah. This crummy old house in the middle of nowhere.” He boots a stone and sends it skipping down the road.

“My dad said she couldn't take care of you anymore,” I tell him.

“That's my fault,” he says. “I went out to the highway and threw rocks at cars. I don't know why. Just to see if I could hit any, I guess. I did hit one, and it turned out to be an off-duty cop. I ran into the marsh, thinking he wouldn't follow me, but he did. One thing led to another, and they found out how I wasn't getting proper homeschooling or whatever. They decided Grandma wasn't fit to take care of me, and that's how I ended up with you guys. It's kind of bogus.”

“It turned out all right,” I say.

“I guess.”

“Hey, do you still believe all that stuff about Ptan Teca and the curse?” I ask him.

“I don't know,” he says. “Yeah, probably a little bit.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. At least, I don't not believe it.”

“Why do you think it stopped raining when it did?”

“It stopped just before the Fourth of July.”

“So?”

“So I bet that Ptan Teca kid was hoping there'd be a baseball game. He finally got sick of waiting for the rematch.”

“Hard to have a game with no teams and no field.”

“Kids don't always think about stuff like that.”

We've finally arrived at the store, just fifteen minutes before my dad gets off his Saturday shift. We go in through the lumber entrance and find him in his orange apron, telling a couple of other guys in orange aprons what to do. He does a double take when he sees us. He says something to the two workers and comes over to us.

“What are you guys doing here? For that matter,
how
did you get here?”

On Sunday, my dad takes Sturgis to see his grandma, as usual. I camp out on the couch with Yogi, watching the Cubs play the Pirates. Mark Prior is having a good outing, and the Cubbies are winning. It's a pretty good game.

There's a knock on the door, and when I glance through the window, I forget all about the Cubs. It's Shannon and Rita, hanging out on my front porch. I gulp and go get the door.

“Um, what's up?”

They both look pretty cute. I'm used to seeing them a little scuffed up, wearing shorts and T-shirts. Now they're wearing the kinds of things the mannequins wear in the store windows of the mall in Sutton. I'm usually able to set my thing for Rita aside on the baseball field, but when she shows up at my house, kind of dolled up, I feel nervous and tongue-tied.

“We were wondering if you and Sturgis wanted to go get sodas or something,” Shannon says. She's blushing a little.

“Sodas, huh?” I ask. “I feel like I'm in an Archie comic.”

The girls laugh, and I loosen up a bit.

“Sturgis is out,” I tell them. I explain how he sees his grandmother on Sundays. “I guess I could go, though, or we could wait for him to get back. You can come in, if you want.”

They go about halfway down the walk to whisper to each other and decide what they want to do.

“We'll come in for a few minutes,” says Rita finally.

“It's a nice house,” says Shannon.

“Yeah,” I say. “I've lived here my whole life. How long have you guys lived in Moundville?”

“We moved here about eighteen months ago,” Rita says. “Cheap houses.”

“About three years,” says Shannon. “Same reason.”

“So how do you guys know each other?”

“From Barrett,” says Rita. Barrett is a private school in Sutton, the girls’ equivalent to St. James. I think the two schools have box socials together or whatever private school kids do.

I notice Rita is carrying a book and ask her if I can see it. She holds it up, and I see it's
To Kill a Mockingbird.

“I've read it like four times already,” she tells me. “It's my favorite book.”

“Yeah?” I've never read it, but I've seen the movie with my dad. “I think the black guy in that book is named Tom Robinson, same as Steve's dad,” I tell her, which might be the dumbest thing anyone has ever said about a book.

“Oh,” she says. “I guess it is.”

The girls sit on the couch and make a fuss over Yogi until he gets tired of the attention and runs away.

“He's a pretty old cat,” I explain. “He gets tuckered out fast.”

“So,” Shannon begins, but whatever she was going to
say gets lost on the way to her mouth. She looks to Rita for help.

“What happened to Sturgis anyway?” Rita asks. “We've been wondering.”

“Nothing. He's just visiting his…,” I trail off, realizing what they really want to know. “You mean, what happened to his face?”

“I don't mean to be nosy.”

“Oh, don't worry about it.” I explain about the dogfight in Sutton.

“He had his ear ripped off by a dog?” Rita asks, looking at me with wide eyes.

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry. That story sounds a little made up.”

“Well, that's what he told me.” I remember how Sturgis told the story. Like it was something he'd seen in a movie. Or maybe read in a book, knowing him, although I bet in the book he stole it from it was a space alien instead of a wolf dog.

Shannon leans over to say something in Rita's ear. I turn my attention back to the ball game, the score of which doesn't register. I'm too preoccupied by the girls and Rita's suggestion that Sturgis lied to me. I guess it could be made up, but what if it was? Maybe the real story wasn't as good.

“So that's your favorite book, huh?” I ask Rita, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah. Do you have a favorite book?”

I am not, by habit, a big reader. I read part of
The
Catcher in the Rye
once but quit when it became clear that the guy telling the story wasn't going to play baseball, either as catcher or as anything else. I also read
The Natural
because that's my favorite movie, but in the book, the hero strikes out at the end. I felt cheated. So when she asks me my favorite book, the best one I can think of is
Catch You Later,
which is the autobiography of Johnny Bench.

“A baseball player wrote your favorite book,” she says flatly after I tell her that.

I explain how Johnny Bench is probably the best catcher of all time, even better than Yogi Berra and Carlton Fisk, how he changed the image of catchers from dumb guys who didn't know better to smart guys who handle pitchers and manage the defense, and how he might have been more im-portant to the great Reds teams of the seventies than even Pete Rose. So maybe I babble a bit. What can I say? I like Johnny Bench.

“I'm sure he's a great baseball player, but he's not really a writer. Do you read novels?” Rita asks.

“Sure,” I tell her. “Sometimes.”

“Suuure,” she says, rolling her eyes. I think she's just kidding me, but I can see now what Steve said about her being a book snob.

“So do you think Sturgis will be back soon?” Shannon wonders.

“It's hard to say,” I tell her. “Usually they're back around the seventh inning.”

“You tell time by baseball games?”

“Well, I don't think to look at the clock when they walk in, is all.” I realize I'm sounding dumber by the second and should quit while I'm ahead. “They could be back any minute.”

They whisper to each other a bit.

“I think we should go,” says Shannon.

“Oh?”

“We have to meet somebody.”

“Well, I'll tell Sturgis you came by,” I tell them. “And I'll try to read a novel. I promise.”

“We'll see you at practice tomorrow.” Rita smiles at me on her way out. Maybe she's just being nice, but I think it's kind of her way of saying, “It's okay. I like my boys dumb.”

Sturgis and my dad get back about forty minutes later. I follow Sturgis into the bedroom so I can tell him about the girls dropping by.

“Yeah? They must have wanted to see you.” He's changing out of his grandma clothes into jeans and a T-shirt.

“I don't know. I think they came to see both of us. They waited for you and everything.”

“It's all for show.” He's finished dressing and decides to forgo shoes. Instead, he grabs a book and sacks out on the bed. “I think Shannon digs you.”

“I like Rita,” I remind him.

“That's why Shannon wanted to blow. She saw you chatting up Rita and wanted to split.”

“I don't know.”

“Yeah, neither do I,” he admits. I can see he's lost interest in the topic and wants to get back to his book.

“Hey, that reminds me, I need to read something.” I look at his shelf of fantasy and sci-fi, a few odds and ends tucked in here and there—like that book about motorcycle maintenance.

“Do you have a favorite book?”

“I don't know.
Lord of the Rings,
I guess.”

“You've read the whole thing? All three books?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Like four times.”

“I've only seen the movies.”

“They made it into a movie?”

“Three movies. Wait—you never heard of the
Lord of the Rings
movies? They're only like the biggest movies ever.”

“No, I just don't really see a lot of movies.”

“Come on, everybody has seen the movies. Or at least
heard
of them.”

“What do you want from me? My grandma never took me to movies, is all.”

“Sorry. I'm just surprised.”

“So is the movie any good?”

“There's
three
movies. They're pretty good.”

“Probably not as good as the books,” he says. “My dad gave me the whole set when he went to jail. I've read them probably five times. Every winter, I start over at the beginning. Man, I love those books. I've got the whole trilogy, if you want to read it.”

“I don't know,” I tell him. “It's pretty long, and I already know how it ends.”

“Then don't. Your loss.” He looks really disappointed in me. He just doesn't get that I'm not looking for a great reading experience. I'm just trying to make a good impression on a girl. None of Sturgis's books look like they would impress Rita—not if her favorite book is
To Kill a Mockingbird.

I check my dad's bookshelf. He doesn't read much either, but he has a few books from when he was taking those night classes in Sutton. He doesn't have that book about the mockingbird, so I grab one called
Their Eyes Were Watching God.
The cover says it's a classic. I don't start reading it, though. I just set it on my dresser, thinking I'll read like a chapter a day.

Late that night, Sturgis suddenly wakes me up.

“Hey, Roy!” he whispers.

“Yeah, what?”

“How do they do Gollum? In the movie?”

“It's a computer animation.”

“A cartoon? That sounds lame.”

“It looks pretty realistic. They do amazing things with computers these days.”

“I'd hate the movie if Gollum looked fake,” he says. “He's my favorite character.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He was pretty cool.”

“He's kind of a bad guy.”

“I don't know,” he says. “It's all in how you read it.”

“Maybe.”

“It's not all cut-and-dried,” he says. “It's like being the visiting team in baseball. You're the bad guy, right? But when you're at home, you're the good guy. But you're the same guy, just doing your job, both times.”

“Yeah, but Gollum kills people and stuff.”

“The good guys kill people,” he says. “Aragorn and Legolas and those guys.”

“That's different. They just killed Orcs.”

“So?”

“They aren't really people.”

“Neither are Hobbits.”

“It's different, and you know it.”

“Sure, Roy,” he says. He's quiet for a while.

“Anyway,” he says, “I didn't say he was a good guy. I just said I liked him.” He's snoring before I can think of a response. I'm just not cut out for literary conversations, I guess.

When I head to practice the next morning, I stuff my dad's book in my back pocket, like I'm so caught up in it I can't leave it behind.

When the players start scuffling in, a lot of them look a little down and aren't too eager to begin. The shabby treatment at the academy is still weighing on everyone. Anthony and P.J. don't even show up. It's pretty familiar from my Little League days. As you go along, some kids just stop coming.

“Hey, we're getting better,” I tell the team before we start. It seems like a nice captainly thing to say. “We held those St. James guys scoreless for three innings.”

“That's only 'cause we had Sturgis pitching,” says Shan-non. The others mutter their agreement.

“I remember outs recorded in the infield
and
in the outfield,” I remind them.

“We didn't even get to hit,” says David.

“Lucky for them!” I tell him. “Lucky for them.”

He laughs a bit, and the others join in.