Wing Ding (2 page)

T
he next morning Rambletown Field starred in the daily paper. Rather, what was left of it did. A big picture on the front page of the
Rambletown Bulletin
showed our ballpark buried to the bleachers in chomping insects.

Small print beneath the picture identified Gabby as the photographer. In the course of following our team over the years, she had written about droughts, blizzards, heat waves, and a giant ice mountain. Now she added gobbling grasshoppers to the list.

Never a dull moment in Rambletown.

Her story said:

I tossed aside the paper and spooned up some Pirate Crunch from my breakfast bowl. The cereal was the kind with frosted cannonballs, which crackled as I chewed them. The sound reminded me of all those grinding locust jaws. I pushed away the bowl in disgust.

Mr. Bones darted over and stood beside my chair, his tail wagging a mile a minute. It was his way of asking if I was finished eating and if he could have what was left.

“Knock yourself out, pal,” I said. I got up from the table and dumped my soggy cereal into his bowl. His tail swept the air like a broom as he buried his nose in milk-soaked Pirate Crunch.

A real broom would have been nice. A huge one. We could have used it to sweep away the bugs.

I supposed things could have been worse. We could have been infested by rattlesnakes. On the other hand, snakes would make for a pretty good home-field advantage. Other teams would be jumpy as kangaroos if they had to visit a field crawling with diamondbacks. Kangaroos can't play baseball worth beans. If we could master our own fear of snakes, we'd win every game by a landslide.

“Good morning, champ!”

My mom breezed into the kitchen. She wore gardening clothes. Dad followed right behind
her. He was dressed for the office: jacket, tie, dark trousers. His tie was red with tiny green fishing lures embroidered all over it. The lures looked like insects. Or what a fisherman thinks a fish thinks an insect looks like. To me Dad's tie just looked like a bad joke.

“Is that supposed to be funny?” I asked.

“What's funny about ties?” he said. “I'd rather wear a T-shirt, but this morning I'm meeting with a guy who happens to love trout fishing.”

“I thought maybe you were commenting on the situation over at Rambletown Field.”

“The situation?”

“Grasshoppers, honey,” Mom reminded him as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

Dad could be forgetful.

“Oh, right! Wow! Maybe I should go with stripes instead. I don't want people to get any wrong ideas about my loyalties. What's the latest on that?”

I showed my parents the paper. Dad whistled at the picture.

“They sure do look hungry,” he said. “Speaking of hungry, how about an omelet?”

One thing my dad loved was making omelets for breakfast, the bigger the better. If the
Guinness Book of World Records
had an omelet category, Dad would own it. Normally, I loved eating his moon-sized creations. But not this morning. Thinking about those locusts munching away on our beautiful field had completely killed my appetite.

“I already ate,” I said as Mr. Bones slurped up the rest of my Pirate Crunch.

“Just as well,” Mom said, sounding relieved.

She popped a bagel into the toaster, then flipped on the radio. The rich voice of Louie “the Lip” Leibenstraub flooded the kitchen.

The Lip said:

My ears pricked up. The kite festival was awesome. Every year it drew thousands of people to Rambletown Park. In the past I'd loved watching the amazing show. It would be a blast to actually enter a kite this year.

Even better than kites was the promise of wind. Slingshot had said a good blow could drive away the grasshoppers.

The Lip continued.

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Dad. “Rewind.” He turned down the volume. “You don't like my omelets?”

“They're top notch,” Mom said with a smile. She retrieved her bagel from the toaster and smeared some butter on it. “What I could live without is the aftermath. Last time you made one, it looked like a tornado had touched down in the kitchen after passing through a farm stand. Diced veggies everywhere.”

A real tornado would've been nice. It would've taken care of the grasshoppers.

“Ouch,” Dad said.

“Joke,” said Mom soothingly. “Your omelets are world class.” She put her bagel on a plate and turned up the radio again. Out poured a harmonica riff, followed by jangly guitar music. Then a cat with a head cold started to sing. At least that's what it sounded like to me. The cat moaned about the wind and some friend of his and how his friend blew an answer in the wind.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

I just hoped the grasshoppers would blow away with it.

“I love this song,” Mom said, grabbing Dad by the hand and dancing him across the floor.

Smiling again, omelets forgotten, he raised Mom's hand in his own to make an arch, and she twirled under it.

“Gross,” I said. Next thing you knew, they'd be holding hands in public. Mr. Bones did not see how wrong this was. He scrambled over and started darting around their feet as if he were trying to herd shoes.

“Don't encourage them,” I said.

Dad started singing along with the radio. His voice was even worse than the other guy's. He howled about the wind and the mysterious answer floating on it.

I still didn't know what the question was.

The only one I could think of was about the All-Star Game. What would happen to it with our field in shambles?

I
got an answer a couple hours later. A possible answer. And a lousy one at that. I did not get it from the wind, which by midmorning, however, definitely had picked up. An occasional gust rattled the window of my bedroom, where I sat anxiously taping and retaping the handle of my favorite Louisville Slugger and wishing for a hurricane.

Be careful of what you wish for, is all I can say.

I was working to get the bat ready for our game against the Hog City Haymakers the next day. I wanted everything to be perfect. It would be our final tune-up before the All-Star Game.

If there was going to be an All-Star Game.

We were scheduled to play in Hog City. I hoped the swarm wouldn't be an issue over there. As far as I knew, those greedy grass grubbers had invaded only Rambletown.

The phone rang. I dropped my stick and darted into the hall.

“What's up?” I said, expecting to hear Stump or Slingshot at the other end of the line.

“What's up yourself, Walloper?” replied a deep voice. “I've got some good news for you.”

“Uh, good morning, Skip Lou,” I said with a cough, recognizing my coach's voice.

Skip Lou coached the Rambletown Rounders. During the school year, he taught music at Rambletown Elementary. The nameplate on his door said Mr. Clementine, but to members of the Rounders he would always be Skipper Lou “Skip-to-My-Lou” Clementine, Skip Lou for short.

I figured good news could mean only one thing.

“The bugs have bugged off?” I shouted with joy.

“Not exactly,” Skip Lou admitted. “They're still there and the field's a total mess, but things aren't all bad.”

“They've agreed to a trade to Lumleyville?” I joked. The Lumleyville Lumberjacks were one of the teams in our league. They were pretty good guys, but they couldn't play ball a lick. A big, scaly locust in the clean-up spot probably wouldn't hurt them. It might make them better, actually.

“Huh?” said Skip Lou. “Listen, I just got off the phone with Coach Burlap over in Hog City. He called to say their field is fine, no bugs in sight. We're on for tomorrow.”

“Great,” I said.

Playing our archrivals at their home field was kind of like getting a cavity filled. It wasn't exactly fun, but it was better than not having any teeth.

“He also offered to host the All-Star Game,”
continued Skip Lou. “Swell, huh?”

Swell?
I thought.
Sure, it's swell. If by “swell” you mean lousy, no good, no fair, the Haymakers always get everything, this stinks like rotten eggs!

What I actually said was “At their place?” Meanwhile, a hideous slideshow of Hog City Park packed to the rafters with obnoxious Haymaker fans flickered through my mind. The boos. The taunts. The cowbells.

“Pretty generous,” Skip said brightly.

“But it's our game,” I shouted. “We earned it! We won the pennant. It has to be here!”

We were planning to decorate the ball field with red, white, and blue bunting, just like the pros do. The school marching band was going to lead a parade to the field. Right before the first pitch, we would raise our championship banner. They couldn't take that away from us!

“Just an offer,” Skip Lou soothed. “Maybe we won't need to take Coach Burlap up on it.”

“Pray for wind,” I said.

“Sure thing, Walloper,” Skip said. “And remember, the bus leaves three thirty sharp tomorrow afternoon.”

“See you then,” I said, clicking off.

I went back to my room, sat down on the edge of my bed, and finished rolling gauzy white tape around the handle of my bat. I couldn't believe Hog City wanted to steal the All-Star Game from us, the weasels. We'd earned it fair and square! I would not let a bunch of bugs ruin things.

“We've got to hope this wind everyone's talking about does the trick, Mr. Bones,” I said. “If it doesn't, we're going to have to take matters into our own hands!”

Mr. Bones looked up from where he lay at the foot of my bed, and I swear that dog smiled. You could tell he wanted nothing more than to take a run at the locusts.

When I had the bat just the way I liked it—a clean, grippy layer of tape stretching from the knob to six inches below the label—I put it aside and got my glove out from under my pillow.
I always sleep on my glove. It gives me good dreams. It also puts a nice hinge in the mitt.

I pulled off the thick rubber bands that held it closed and took the ball out of the pocket. Keeping a ball in the mitt and wrapping it with rubber bands helps shape the leather. The glove gets used to holding a ball. Then, come game time, it knows what to do.

I slipped my left hand inside the mitt and gave a few quick snaps. It clapped shut with the precision of a mousetrap. Perfect. That glove was ready to squeeze hot grounders like an alligator snaps up lunch.

A real alligator would've been nice. We could've sent it after the locusts. Assuming gators eat grasshoppers.

With my equipment in order, I went downstairs to the den and logged on to the computer. I wanted to find out as much as I could about our enemy.

Not the Haymakers. I already knew those guys inside and out.

I typed “migratory grasshopper” into the search box and hit return. Slingshot had mentioned the scientific name, but I couldn't remember it. I knew “migrate” meant to move from place to place. That seemed to describe the Rambletown bugs. What I wanted to know was how to get them going again. Away from Rambletown.

A second later I had about six gazillion hits. There must have been a website for practically every single grasshopper in the world. I clicked on a promising link and began reading. Almost immediately my skin started to crawl.

Here's what I learned:

1. Migratory grasshoppers are serious pests. They destroy wheat, vegetables, vines, bushes, trees, and grass.
   
2. When large outbreaks occur, the insects quickly exhaust food supplies. Then they take flight to look for fresh fields to munch.
   
3. The bugs swarm on clear, breezy days. With the wind at their backs, they fly at speeds of about ten miles per hour. They can cover sixty miles a day. Airplane pilots have encountered swarms flying as high as thirteen thousand feet above the ground.
   
4. You can use screens or cloth barriers to protect plants from grasshoppers. However, hungry grasshoppers can chew through most fabrics. If screens don't work, you can send chickens after them. Apparently chickens are bonkers for grasshoppers.
   

I clicked off the web page and shut down the computer. I didn't want to read any more. Chickens?! Rambletown Field was a ballpark, not a farmyard.

Plus, once the chickens got rid of the grasshoppers, how would we get rid of the chickens? It sounded too much like that song about the
old lady who swallowed the fly. She eats a spider to catch the fly. Then she gulps a bird to get rid of the spider, chases the bird with a cat, and chokes down a dog to deal with the cat. Before you know it, half of Noah's Ark has slipped down her throat. And her chances of coming out alive do not look good.

Then again, neither did our chances of holding on to the All-Star Game if we didn't get rid of those grasshoppers.