The Wednesday Wars (11 page)

"Merry Christmas," he said.

Again I almost cried.

I sprinted to the Baker Sporting Emporium, the blue cape straight out behind me, the baseball in hand. Who knows what the white feathers were doing.

And I made it. I really did. I slammed through the door, and there he was—Mickey Mantle.

He was sitting at a table, dressed in his street clothes. Behind him, Mr. Mercutio Baker, who owned the Emporium, had put up a bulletin board full of Yankee photographs, most of Mickey Mantle swinging away. Above them was a jersey with Number 7. Mickey Mantle had signed his name below it.

He was bigger than he looked on television. He had hands as large as shovels, and the forearms that came from his sleeves were strong as stone. His legs stuck out from beneath the table, and they looked like they could run down a train on the Long Island Rail Road. He yawned a couple of times, big yawns that he didn't even try to hide. He must have had a long day.

In front of me, standing at the table all by themselves with Mickey Mantle, were Danny Hupfer and his father. Mickey Mantle was just handing a baseball back, and Danny was just taking it into his hands. It was sort of a holy moment, and the light that shone around them seemed to glow softly, like something you'd see in one of the stained glass windows at Saint Andrew's.

"Thanks," said Danny. He said it in awe and worship.

"Yeah, kid," said Mickey Mantle.

Then I came up.

I held out the new perfect white baseball and whispered, "Can I please have your autograph?" And he took the ball from my hand and held his pen over it. And then Mickey Mantle looked at me. Mickey Mantle, he looked at me!

And he spoke.

"What are you supposed to be?" he said.

I froze. What was I supposed to say?

"You look like a fairy," he said.

I coughed once. "I'm Ariel," I said.

"Who?"

"Ariel."

"Sounds like a girl's name."

"He's a warrior," I said.

Mickey Mantle looked me up and down. "Sure he is. Listen, I don't sign baseballs for kids in yellow tights." Mickey Mantle looked at his watch and turned to Mr. Baker. "It's past nine thirty. I'm done." He tossed my new perfect white baseball onto the floor. It rolled past my feet and into the folds of my blue cape.

The world should split in two. The world should split in two, and I should fall into the crack and never be heard from again.

Holling Hoodhood. Me. The boy in yellow tights with white feathers on the butt and a blue floral cape.

The boy Mickey Mantle wouldn't sign a baseball for.

And Danny Hupfer had seen it all. The yellow tights. The cape. The ball. Everything.

Danny Hupfer, who stepped to the table and slowly placed his baseball—his baseball signed by Mickey Mantle—back in front of the greatest player to put on Yankee pinstripes since Babe Ruth. "I guess I don't need this after all," Danny said. He lifted his hand from it, and I could tell it wasn't easy.

"What's the matter, kid?" said Mickey Mantle.

"You are a pied ninny," said Danny Hupfer. "C'mon, Holling."

I picked up the bus driver's baseball and handed it to Danny. We turned, and left Mickey Mantle behind us.

We didn't say anything.

***

When gods die, they die hard. It's not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you're not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you'd ever want another god to fill their place. You don't want fire to go out inside you twice.

The Hupfers drove me back to the Festival Theater. I went in to see if the men's dressing room was unlocked. It was, and Mr. Goldman was holding forth.

"My dainty Ariel!" he called, and threw his arms out wide, and the company—the men, that is, for the record—all clapped. "Where have you been? You, the star of the Extravaganza? Something should be wrong?"

I shook my head. How could you tell Mr. Goldman that the gods had died, when they lived so strongly in him? "Was 't well done?" I asked.

"Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free."

And I was. I changed, and left the yellow tights with the feathers on the butt in a locker. Mr. Goldman told me I should stop by the bakery for some cream puffs "which will cost you not a thing," and I left. That was it. Outside, it was the first really cold night of winter, and the only fire in sight was the stars high above us and far away, glittering like ice.

The Hupfers were waiting, and drove me home.

We still didn't talk. Not the whole way.

When I got back, my parents were in the den watching television. It was so cold, the furnace was on high. The hot air tinkled the silver bells that decorated the white artificial Christmas tree that never dropped a single pine needle in the Perfect House.

"You're done earlier than I thought," my father said. "Bing Crosby is just about to start 'White Christmas,' as soon as this commercial is over."

"How did it go, Holling?" said my mother.

"Fine."

"I hope Mr. Goldman was happy with what you did," said my father.

"He said it was just swell."

"Good."

I went upstairs. The crooning notes of Bing Crosby's treetops glistening and children listening and sleigh bells in the snow followed me.

Just swell.

Happy holidays.

When we got back to school on Monday, there were only three more days before the holiday break. They were supposed to be a relaxed three days. Most teachers coasted through them, figuring that no one was going to learn all that much just before vacation. And they had to leave time for holiday parties on the last day, and making presents for each other, and for looking out the window, hoping for the miracle of snow on Long Island.

Even the lunches were supposed to have something special to them, like some kind of cake with thick white frosting, or pizza that actually had some cheese on it, or hamburgers that hadn't been cooked as thin as a record. Maybe something chocolate on the side.

But Mrs. Bigio wasn't interested in chocolate these days. It could have been the last holidays the planet was ever going to celebrate, and you wouldn't have known it from what Mrs. Bigio cooked for Camillo Junior High's lunch. It was Something Surprise every day, except that after the first day it wasn't Something Surprise anymore, because we knew what was coming. It was just Something.

But I didn't complain. I remembered the Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Bigio had come into Mrs. Baker's classroom and the sound of her sadness, and I knew what burned guts felt like.

Everyone else didn't complain because they were afraid to. You don't complain when Mrs. Bigio stares at you as you're going through the lunch line, with her hands on her hips and her hairnet pulled tight. You don't complain.

Not even when she spreads around her own happy holiday greetings.

"Take it and eat it," she said to Danny Hupfer when his hand hesitated over the Something.

"You're not supposed to examine it," she said to Meryl Lee, who was trying to figure out the Surprise part.

"You waiting for another cream puff?" she said to me. "Don't count on it this millennium."

And, on the last day before the holiday break, to Mai Thi: "Pick it up and be glad you're getting it. You shouldn't even be here, sitting like a queen in a refugee home while American boys are sitting in swamps on Christmas Day. They're the ones who should be here. Not you."

Mai Thi took her Something. She looked down, and kept going.

She probably didn't see that Mrs. Bigio was pulling her hairnet down lower over her face, because she was almost crying.

And probably Mrs. Bigio didn't see that Mai Thi was almost crying, too.

But I did. I saw them. And I wondered how many gods were dying in both of them right then, and whether any of them could be saved.

You'd think that Mrs. Baker would try to make up for the holiday disappointments of the Camillo Junior High kitchen over those three days. But she didn't. We went back to diagramming sentences, focusing on the imperfect tenses. She convinced Mr. Samowitz to start some pre-algebra equations in
Mathematics for You and Me
that Albert Einstein couldn't have figured out. She even bullied Mr. Petrelli into buckling down and making us present our "Mississippi River and You" projects out loud to the class.

Mr. Petrelli had us finish in a day and a half, but Mrs. Baker didn't let up all three days, and we were the only class in Camillo Junior High who sweated behind a closed decoration-less door, in a hot decoration-less classroom. And did we complain? No, because at the first hint of a complaint, Mrs. Baker folded her arms across her chest and stood still, staring at whoever had started to rebel until all rebellion died. That's how it was as we came up to the happy holidays—all the way until that last Wednesday afternoon.

As everyone got ready to leave for Temple Beth-El or Saint Adelbert's, I figured I'd probably be diagramming sentences for the next hour and a half, since we hadn't started another Shakespeare play yet.

Just swell.

But I was wrong.

"Mr. Hupfer and Mr. Swieteck," said Mrs. Baker, "I've arranged with your parents for you to stay in school this afternoon."

Danny and Doug looked at me, then at each other, then back at Mrs. Baker. "Okay by me," Danny said.

"I'm so pleased to have your approval," said Mrs. Baker. "Now, the rest of you...," and there was the usual hubbub of leaving, while Danny and Doug sat back at their desks.

"What's it about?" Danny asked.

I shrugged. "Erasers or sentence diagramming. Maybe Shakespeare," I said.

We looked over at Doug Swieteck. "You didn't do Number 166?" I said.

He shook his head.

"You're sure?" said Danny.

"Don't you think I'd know?" said Doug Swieteck.

We weren't so sure. But actually, he hadn't.

After everyone left, Mrs. Baker went to her desk and opened her lower desk drawer. She took out three—no, not books of Shakespeare, like you might think—three brand-new baseballs, their covers as white as snow, their threads tight and ready for fingers to grip into a curve. And then she reached in again and took out three mitts. Their leathery smell filled the room. She handed them to us. The leather was soft and supple. We slipped our hands in and pushed the new baseballs into their deep pockets.

"My brother-in-law, whom I believe Mr. Hupfer and Mr. Hoodhood both saw the other night following the Extravaganza, has asked me to give you these as holiday gifts, compliments of the Baker Sporting Emporium," said Mrs. Baker. "And after telling me what happened during your time there, he and I made some arrangements for you to break the mitts in. So take them down to the gymnasium—and don't throw balls in the hall. And dropping one's jaw in surprise happens only in cartoons and bad plays, gentlemen."

Danny grinned as we went out. "The gym is empty last period. She's giving us the afternoon off."

But he was wrong, too.

The gym wasn't empty.

Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke were waiting for us in the bleachers. In their Yankee uniforms. Number 25 and Number 20. The two greatest players to put on Yankee pinstripes since Babe Ruth.

Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke.

Can you believe it?

"Which one of you is Holling?" said Horace Clarke.

I pointed to my chest.

"And Doug?"

Doug Swieteck slowly raised his hand.

"So you're Danny," said Joe Pepitone.

Danny nodded.

Horace Clarke held up his mitt. "Let's see your arm, Holling," he said.

I threw with Horace Clarke, and Danny and Doug threw with Joe Pepitone. Then we switched, and Danny threw with Horace Clarke, and Doug and I threw with Joe Pepitone. Then we went outside, and under a warm sun and on a diamond that hadn't been used since October, Horace Clarke crouched behind the plate and I threw fastballs to him, and even, once, a knuckleball. Really. And then Danny got up and Horace Clarke pitched and Joe Pepitone and I shagged balls in the outfield. And then Joe Pepitone got up and Doug and I shagged balls in the outfield. And then we took some infield practice from Horace Clarke. And then we stood around the diamond—Joe Pepitone at home, Danny at first, Horace Clarke at second, Doug at deep shortstop, me at third—and we whipped the ball to each other around and around and around, as fast as we could, while Horace Clarke chanted, "Out of there, out of there, out of there," and the balls struck soft and deep in the pockets of the gloves, and the smack of them, and the smell of the gloves, filled the bright yellow air, while a breeze drew across us the whole time, as soft as feathers.

Afterward, they signed our baseballs and signed our mitts. They gave us each two tickets for Opening Day next April. And they gave Doug and Danny their caps.

And for me? Joe Pepitone gave me his jacket.

Can you believe it?

His jacket.

When they drove off, it felt like a place inside me had filled again. Our revels were
not
ended.

Danny and Doug and I ran up to the third floor to find Mrs. Baker. Mr. Vendleri was already taking down the Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. The halls were ghostly dark, and the classroom doors shut with the lights out behind them.

Mrs. Baker was gone, but she had left a note on the door.

"Mr. Hoodhood," it said, "read
The Tragedy of Macbeth
for the first Wednesday of January."

"Too bad," said Danny.

But Doug went on in, and he came back out carrying the cardboard box for Number 166 from the Coat Room. He looked at us, shrugged, and hauled it away down the hall, staggering under its clumsy weight.

We never saw it again.

***

The next day, President Johnson declared a Christmas ceasefire in Vietnam, and the bombs stopped dropping.

And so the happy holidays finally began.

On New Year's Day, the
Home Town Chronicle
devoted itself proudly to celebrating the many accomplishments of those, young and old, who had made outstanding contributions to the life and culture of our town in the past year. It wasn't a very big issue. Most of the stories were about librarians and the Kiwanis Club officers and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Mr. Guareschi for something and even about my father for the enormous success of Hoodhood and Associates and how he had been voted the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of 1967. The paper printed grainy headshots of people looking distinguished—like they were already thinking about their next outstanding contribution to the life and culture of the town.