Wall Ball

A real palm tree would have been nice. It would have meant tropical weather. As it was, we were stuck in the middle of the longest, coldest winter on record. Last summer’s terrible heat wave was a distant memory. Back then it got so hot cows dried up and gave powdered milk and I fell into the worst hitting slump of my life. I didn’t want that slump ever to come
back, but I sure hoped the sun would.

Mr. Bones is my dog, a long-nosed, yellow-haired fur ball that strangers often mistake for a bandicoot. He likes to be petted and he likes to lick faces. At the moment, petting was out of the question, because he was completely encased in a green-and-red-tartan doggy coat. You could pet the coat but not Mr. Bones. The hideous garment was a Christmas present from my mother. It fitted him as snugly as batter on a corn dog. He was quite proud of his silly coat.

“What’s next?” I asked, shaking my head. “Two little pairs of plaid galoshes?”

My dog wagged his tail some more and buried his snout in a snowbank.

I was standing with my pals from the Rambletown Rounders baseball team at the bottom of Windsock Mountain in the middle of yet another snowstorm. Windsock Mountain is Rambletown’s ski area. It is really more of a big hill than a mountain. The wind part is accurate, though. It was blowing like stink out here,
snow slicing sideways through the bitter air.

Rambletown is where I live with Mr. Bones and my mom and dad. When it isn’t snowing, I play third base and bat cleanup for the Rounders. We’re the reigning champs of the 10-to-12 division.

“Walloper!”

An elbow dug into my ribs.

“Get ready!” barked my best friend, stellar shortstop Stump Plumwhiff. “Here comes the next chair.”

We backed into position, looking over our shoulders at the fast-approaching lift that would carry us to the summit.

Everybody on the team has a nickname. Mine is the Great Walloper, on account of I like to wallop the hide off the ball. My real name is Banjo Bishbash. Banjo H. Bishbash, if you want to be particular. The
H
stands for “Hit.” Aside from my mom and dad and some teachers, no one much uses my real name. Technically, my parents don’t really use it either. They tend to
call me Banjie. You can see why I prefer the Great Walloper. Walloper for short.

Except, the way this winter was going, it looked as if I would never again wallop another tater. Winter had dragged on for so long, we had run out of months for it. It had eaten up January, February, and March like a hungry man eats flapjacks. It was still going strong when April rolled around. Deep snow covered the ground like a centipede. You couldn’t keep track of all the feet.

An empty double chair swung around on its cable, and I hopped aboard next to Stump. He was also pretty decent on a snowboard.

“Come on, boy!” I shouted.

Mr. Bones took a running leap and landed in my lap, his tail wagging a mile a minute where it stuck out at the back of his ugly coat. He loved chairlifts. He loved riding them to the top of a mountain almost as much as he loved bombing back down with me on my board.

We began our long, cold sweep up the hill.

Sharing the chair in front of us were pitcher Slingshot Slocum and center fielder Gasser Phipps. Directly behind us were first baseman Gilly Wishes and second bagger Ellis “the Glove” Rodriguez. The rest of the guys—catcher Tugboat Tooley, left fielder Ducks Bunion, right fielder Ocho James, and pinch hitter Kid Rabbit Winkle—were scattered over the ski area like sprinkles on an ice-cream cone.

Stump shivered and pulled his baseball cap down low on his head. Stump never went anywhere without his baseball cap. Even in the middle of the coldest winter on record, it was the only kind of hat he wore. His ears were redder than strawberries. They were, in fact, as red as his stand-up hair. Stump was self-conscious about his hair. This was one reason he never took off his baseball cap.

“Why don’t you put on your helmet?” I asked.

“It just makes my ears colder.” He grunted. “I’ll put it on when we get to the top.”

“You should wear a winter hat,” I suggested.

“Don’t like hats.” Stump grunted. “Only like caps.”

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“Crazy fast, you mean. You’ll be eating my spray all the way down.”

“Whatever,” I said.

As the chair soared up the slope, I gazed down at the frozen landscape below and wondered when winter would finally end and baseball season would begin.

Winter had been going on for so long that it made a boa constrictor look short. Just as spring vacation rolled around, when the daffodils should have been in full bloom and the Rounders should have been getting ready for our season opener, the mayor had come on TV and told us all to turn back our calendars to January.

“No sense in wasting a good spring on such lousy weather,” he said.

“January!” I had shouted to Mr. Bones. “We can’t go back to January! Opening day is almost here. We’re supposed to play the big, mean Hog City Haymakers.”

Yep.

Those very same Haymakers.

The hard-charging, homer-hitting team we had beaten to win the championship the previous summer.

What a game!

Maybe you’ve heard about it?

Flicker Pringle, the Haymakers’ ace fire-baller, had been one strike away from pitching the first perfect game in the history of baseball. The Rounders had been down to our last hope: me. And a slim hope it was. I’d been swinging the bat like a wet noodle ever since the start of a wicked heat wave. Then, out of the blue, lightning struck. I clobbered a walk-off homer to win the pennant.

My friends and I replayed the game in our heads all winter long. Now we were eager to
get back out on the field and start playing again for real. With actual wooden bats and genuine, cowhide-covered baseballs. Only, the lousy weather wouldn’t let us.

Well, I could complain all I wanted, but nothing I said was going to have any effect on the weather. Mother Nature was like a traffic light. She changed all the time, but only when she was ready. You just had to wait her out.

Which was how Stump and I found ourselves on a chairlift on the last Friday of spring vacation, bouncing toward the top of Windsock Mountain, snowboards strapped to our feet, Mr. Bones snuggled between us on the icy seat. When by all rights we should have been taking batting practice at Rambletown Field.

CHAPTER 2

A
s we reached the summit, Mr. Bones sprang from the chair and bounded down the icy ramp that led to the slopes. Stump and I slid off our seats and glided after him to where Slingshot and Gasser were studying a big wooden trail map planted in the snow like a billboard.

“What looks good?” I asked.

Slingshot pointed at a jagged line on the map.

“We could take a crack at Darkness Falls,” he said with a grin.

In spite of myself I gulped.

Darkness Falls is legendary. It is rated double black diamond. Which means it is the steepest,
fastest, altogether hardest kind of ski trail. It plunges to the bottom of Windsock Mountain like a frozen waterfall, a series of heart-stopping drops interrupted occasionally by snow-covered boulders. Or so I had heard from older kids. I’d never actually braved Darkness Falls myself.

None of us had.

“What’s up?” asked Gilly Wishes as he and the Glove coasted over from the lift. Gilly was on a snowboard. Glove wore skis.

“We were just picking which trail to take,” explained Gasser Phipps. “Slingshot suggested Darkness Falls.”

Glove’s and Gilly’s eyes got as big as Whoopie Pies.

“Just an idea,” said Slingshot. “But we’ve been riding this mountain all winter. And we’ve conquered every single trail at least ten times….”

“Every trail except one,” added Stump.

“Exactly,” said Slingshot. “Darkness Falls has been the elephant in the room.”

“The what in the where?” I asked.

“The elephant in the room,” explained Slingshot. “A thing that nobody wants to admit is there, except it’s too big to ignore.”

“I don’t know what it’s like at your house,” cracked the Glove. “But we don’t have any elephants at home. Chairs, tables, beds. That kind of thing. Definitely no elephants.”

“It’s an expression.” Slingshot sighed. “Who’s up for it?”

As we hemmed and hawed, Gilly’s bright orange parka burst into song:
The 1812 Overture
. It’s a noisy classical song with cannons that’s often played during Rambletown’s Fourth of July fireworks.

Real fireworks would have been nice. They would have meant summer was here at last.

Gilly unzipped his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He flipped it open, and
The 1812 Overture
stopped playing as suddenly as it had started.

“Gilly Wishes here,” he said into the mouthpiece. “My wish is your command. Oh, hey,
Tugboat. What’s up?”

Gilly pulled the phone away from his ear. “Tugboat’s already at the bottom with Ocho, Ducks, and Kid Rabbit. You’ll never guess which trail they took.”

I had the distinct feeling we would guess.

“I don’t believe it,” said the Glove.

Tugboat’s tiny, excited voice spilled out of Gilly’s phone.

“Put him on speaker,” said Slingshot.

Gilly pressed a button and Tugboat’s voice got big.

“We did it!” he exulted. “It was insane! You guys HAVE to go for it! You don’t know what you’re missing!”

“Thanks for sharing,” Gilly said. “Save us a seat in the lodge. We’ll be down pronto.” He zipped the phone back into his pocket.

“So what do you think?” asked the Glove.

“I think we don’t have a choice,” said Gasser with a grin. “I think we’ve got to take Darkness Falls.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I
said, snapping my goggles into place.

Stump strapped on his helmet.

Mr. Bones danced excitedly on his hind legs, nipping at the snowflakes that fluttered around us like popcorn in a popper. I would have laughed, except my stomach hurt too much.

It felt like the lid of a pickle jar. Tight.

Really, really tight.

“What are we waiting for?” Stump asked. “It’s not getting any warmer up here.”

With that he shot away. In a second he was twenty feet below us. Two seconds after that and he was gone, obliterated from view by the falling snow.

Slingshot went next, flashing a quick thumbs-up before scooting over the edge.

“Showtime!” said the Glove, clattering away behind Slingshot.

Gilly followed, leaving only me and Gasser.

“After you,” the center fielder said.

“No, no, after you,” I replied, edging behind him. “I insist.”

“Age before beauty,” he shot back.

“Rock paper scissors?” I suggested.

I played rock. Gasser draped me with paper. I went next.

“Ready, boy?” I asked.

Mr. Bones stepped on to my board, tucking himself under the bridge of my legs. I squeezed my knees against his sides, gave him a quick pat for luck, and let gravity work its magic.

Away we went. Trees flashed past. Boulders. Then everything ran together in a blur of speed.

We hit a bump and the ground dropped away like a trapdoor. We hurtled through space, weightless as astronauts. With no snow to rattle over, my board fell silent. The only noise was the wind in my ears and a faraway roar that sounded like a train howling through a tunnel.

Soon I realized that the roar came from me. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, a wordless, adrenaline-fueled howl.

I was still shouting when the woods opened,
revealing Windsock Mountain’s wide-open base area. Down near the lodge, a group of small hemlock trees swayed in the breeze. As we rocketed toward them, I saw that they weren’t trees at all. They were the guys. They waved madly as we sliced through the air like a couple of genies riding a runaway magic carpet.

We landed ten feet in front of them, throwing up a big cloud of snow, and skidded to a stop close enough to shake hands.

Mr. Bones stepped off the board as if it was no big deal. Like flying was something he did every day. I lay down and stretched full-out in the snow. It felt good to get reacquainted with planet Earth.

My eyes watered. My legs quivered. But I was smiling. At least I think I was. I couldn’t tell for sure, because my face had less feeling than a block of ice.

“That,” I panted, “was sick!”

A second later the sound of the roaring train returned. This time it came from Gasser.
Looking up, I saw him shoot out of the woods as if he’d been launched from a cannon.

“It’s a bird!” cried Kid Rabbit as Gasser soared toward us.

“It’s a plane!” chimed in Ducks Bunion.

“It’s super center fielder,” we all sang out together.

Gasser grabbed the tail of his board and waggled it stylishly. Then he tucked his head and went into a forward roll, just like something you’d see the Flying Tomato do.

He almost made it too.

Almost nailed his landing.

In horseshoes, Gasser’s touchdown might have been worth a point. But close doesn’t count in snowboarding. Close in snowboarding is about as useful as a flat tire in the Indy 500.

Gasser struggled to swing his board beneath him. The ground rushed up to meet him. It was a sprint to the finish between Gasser and the ground.

The ground won.

Gasser hit once, hard, like the first big skip a flat stone makes when you skim it across a pond. A series of smaller bounces followed as he tumbled sideways across the landing area.

Gravity 1, Gasser 0.

“Ouch!” said Ocho James, speaking for all of us.

We raced after our friend and teammate. When we caught up to him, he was lying motionless on his back in the snow.

His two gloved fists shot in the air.

“Yes!” he exclaimed.

“Dude!” I exclaimed as Mr. Bones gently licked his face. “Are you all right?”

“Actually, no,” he replied. “I did something to my leg. I’m going to need some help here.”