Wing Ding (8 page)

W
hen we finished the Loser's Lap, Skip tried to run some batting practice. But nobody had much heart for it. Between the yips and the kite festival, now in full swing across the park, we couldn't concentrate. After a while he made like the sunset and called it a day.

“Pack it in, fellows,” he said. “I can see your minds are elsewhere. Let's meet back here first thing tomorrow morning. We'll see if we can get the field in any kind of shape for the All-Star Game. In the meantime, go and try to have some fun.”

With that we grabbed our kites and took off across the park, where flying objects of every
size, shape, and color painted the sky like a rainbow. Bat kites, bird kites, butterfly kites, box kites as big as refrigerators, traditional diamond-shaped kites sporting hot colors and long, streaming tails. Snarling red-and-gold Chinese dragons, silver flying saucers, stunt kites, stacking kites. Kites cut to look like biplanes and pirate ships, octopuses and sting-rays, puppy dogs and polar bears—all soaring among the high-flying clouds.

Down on the ground, a huge crowd milled about gawking, eating, and swaying to the loud music that thumped from a white tent emblazoned with the logo of the radio station WHOT 102.5. Some vendors peddled fried dough from red-and-white-striped carts. Others sold hamburgers, and hot dogs sizzled on a grill. Souvenir sellers hawked T-shirts and bumper stickers. Kids wrestled on the ground, dogs barked, the wind raced.

Flicker Pringle was there, too, flying his Death Star high overhead.

Eager to launch, I handed my winder to Stump. “Let out some line,” I told him, backing away with the kite. He hadn't brought one of his own. As rattled as he looked after bucket ball, I wanted to rope him in to the fun.

He nodded and peeled off twenty feet of string.

“Run!” I said, taking up the slack. He charged into the wind, and I let go of the kite. Instantly it climbed into the air.

“Let out more line!” I hollered.

“How much?”

“All of it!” I cried.

Stump unspooled, and the yellow owl rose and rose, joining the frenzy high overhead. A second later, the Glove's gray shark soared up to meet it. Next came Tugboat's big pillow of a kite in the shape of a catcher's mitt, followed by the rest of our colorful assortment.

The wind whistled and the kites dipped and bobbed, wings flashing, tails snapping to wake the dead.

We hooted and hollered. Billy Wishes
pumped his fist in excitement. Mr. Bones ran around leaping and licking. I glanced over at Stump and saw that even he, for the first time in days, wore a big smile on his face.

Suddenly the music stopped and a deep voice boomed over the PA system: “And now, the event you've all been waiting for! Highlight of the annual Rambletown Kite Festival: the electrifying, blue-skying, death-defying, high-flying, mind-frying Kite Delight Dogfight!”

Stuff my ears with cotton and lock me in an echo chamber, I'd recognize that buttery voice anywhere: it belonged to none other than Louie “the Lip” Leibenstraub. But the Kite Delight Dogfight? I had no idea what that meant. I must have been the only one, because the crowd let out a deafening whoop.

“If you are not participating in the dogfight,” continued the Lip, “now's the time to reel in your kite. I repeat, combatants stay in the air. Everyone else bring down your kites RIGHT NOW.”

About half the fliers instantly lowered their kites.

I exchanged glances with Stump.

He shrugged. “Better take her down, I guess,” he said, starting to crank.

Before he could make much headway, a menacing red dragon swooped over and smashed my little yellow owl smack between the wings.

“Hey!” Stump shouted. He jerked on the line as the dragon struck again and the crowd roared.

“The battle is drawn!” cried the Lip. “Score one for the dragon!”

As the DJ spoke, the dozen or so kites left in the air launched furious attacks on one another. Jabbing, ripping, pecking, and poking, they tore at one another like enraged hyenas. Wings were shredded, tails torn clean off. One after another, wounded kites crashed to the ground.

“Wait! Wait!” Stump cried, his right arm
jerking wildly on the winder. “I'm trying to get down!”

I reached out to help. “Let me take it,” I shouted.

Too late.

The red dragon lunged and dealt another crushing blow.

“No!” Stump shouted, maniacally jerking the string.

“The dragon means business!” cried the Lip. “Can the owl retaliate? Or is this the end for our yellow friend?”

Sensing a kill, three more kites moved in like vultures. One of them, I realized, was Flicker Pringle's Death Star. I glanced around and saw him standing twenty yards to my right, grinning as he played his line. Panicking, Stump yanked on the reel. The owl sliced through its attackers, its wings ensnaring their strings. Stump twitched again. A pair of bats drifted harmlessly away, their lines severed. The Death Star split open and began
spiraling out of control.

“Noooo!” Flicker howled as his kite plunged to the ground.

“That's what you get for messing with the best!” Billy Wishes shouted.

“The owl fights back!” roared the Lip. “There's life in it yet.”

“Go get 'em, Stump!” Billy cheered, setting off a team chant: “Stump! Stump! Stump!”

More kites joined the fray, swooping, swirling, slamming. It was like a demolition derby, except the punishment was being dished out high in the air. A pirate ship keeled over and plunged, taking down a tattered space shuttle as it fell. Lines frayed, kite frames snapped like toothpicks. A stingray with shredded wings whistled to the ground.

“Oh, the humanity!” wailed the Lip as a blimp crumpled and crashed.

When the action cleared, only four kites still flew: the fierce dragon that had started the mayhem, a mangled blue biplane, a long-tentacled
jellyfish—and my owl with Stump at the controls.

On the ground, jacked-up operators took stock of one another. A couple of tall high-school girls, twins by the look of them, owned the wounded biplane. They did not look happy. The other two kites both belonged to adults. A pony-tailed man wearing jeans and a T-shirt controlled the jellyfish, while a slim guy in sunglasses and a red satin windbreaker piloted the fearsome dragon. Gold lettering on the back of his jacket said “Elite Dogfight Club.” Underneath that was a motto: “Death from Above.” The old guys had both brought their own cheering sections.

“Roll, Jelly, roll!” cheered the fish fans.

The dragon supporters offered nothing so cheerful. Their chant was simple, direct, and chilling:

“Die! Die! Die!”

Smiling wickedly, the assassin in the shiny jacket quickly maneuvered his dragon into the
wounded biplane and coolly slashed its line. Instantly the plane spiraled downward, its two crestfallen fliers dashing to intercept it before it broke up on the ground.

“A surgical strike by Fred Smedley,” crowed the Lip, as the dragon man turned his sights on Stump. “Can anyone stop the reigning dogfight champ?”

Cap pulled low, Stump desperately paid out line. The owl shot upward at warp speed, smashing into the underside of the hovering jellyfish. Snap! The breaking line sounded like a gunshot. The owl wobbled and broke free, wearing the slack jellyfish like a hat.

“The owl lands a brilliant uppercut,” gushed the Lip. “Who saw that coming? But watch out! He's flying blind, and here comes Elite Dogfight's dangerous dragon! Da-dump! Da-dump! Da-dump!”

Stump's arm bounced like a jackhammer. Still the jellyfish clung to his kite, weighing him down. He was dead in the water. Make that
the air. Tail flowing, jaws agape, the dragon swooped ever closer. At the controls, the flying ace known as Fred Smedley licked his lips in anticipation.

“Die! Die! Die!” roared the bloodthirsty members of the Elite Dogfight Club as the dragon slashed. “Death from above!”

Mr. Bones ran over and buried his face behind my knees. He couldn't bear to watch. I hardly could, either.

Stump yelped and his chicken wing danced. A spasm ran through the owl. It bounced like a yo-yo on a string.

“Unorthodox!” screamed the Lip. “Unusual! Unconventional! It's the weirdest fighting style I've ever seen!”

Jitterbugging out of control, nowhere to hide, the owl knifed straight into the onrushing dragon. The crowd gasped. It was curtains.

Curtains torn to rags, that is.

I glanced at Fred Smedley. He whipped off his sunglasses and stared, a look of utter shock
etched on his face. Way up in the sky, the red dragon stopped slithering. For a second it stood perfectly still. Then it slowly split open right down the middle, its two halves peeling away and falling limply to earth. Stump jiggled his line, and the owl slipped loose from the jellyfish, whose rainbow tentacles waved good-bye as it fluttered harmlessly away.

“Stump! Stump! Stump!” we roared again.

“A shocking upset,” blared the Lip. “Electrifying! Death-defying! High-flying! Mind-frying! Folks, say hello to the new champ!” He stalked over and thrust his microphone in Stump's face.

“What's your name, son?”

“Stump,” Stump told him.

“And what's your secret? How'd you do it? How did you take down the Elite Dogfight dragon?”

Stump tugged at his cap. He shrugged. He mumbled something under his breath.

“Speak up,” urged the Lip. “The world wants to know.”

“The yips,” Stump repeated. “The yips did it.”

“Folks, give it up for Stump and the Yips, whoever they are!” the DJ urged.

A fresh round of applause rolled over Stump like a wave. Blinking, he acknowledged the crowd with a curt little wave. From where I stood, it was impossible to tell whether he was laughing or crying.

E
arly the next morning, one day to go before the All-Star Game, the team met again at Rambletown Field. In place of bats and gloves, we packed rakes, shovels, hammers, and nails. Gabby showed up too, her camera, as always, at the ready.

Skip Lou met us with a smile. As he had the day before, he carried buckets—two of them this time. We wouldn't be using them for target practice. They were full of green paint.

Mr. Bones gave them a quick sniff, then tore across the outfield and through the opening where the wall had collapsed, making a bee-line straight for the locust trees.

“Stay out of trouble!” I called after him.

“Guys,” said Skip Lou, “let's make this place shine!”

He divided us into crews and handed out assignments: one team to raise and paint the wall, another to rake smooth the bare dirt of our once lush field.

Stump, Slingshot, Velcro, the Glove, and I grabbed rakes and got to work breaking up clods of dirt and removing knotted clumps of roots and other bits of vegetation left behind by the grasshoppers. The guys avoided eye contact with Stump. I waited for him to turn his back for a second, then shot a quick glance at Slingshot. He nodded.

Excellent!

The little arts and crafts project at his house had gone off without a hitch the night before. With Stump nearby, we dared not discuss our secret.

Soon a steady chorus of hammer blows provided a rhythmic beat to our work, and we found ourselves in a race with the wall builders to see who would finish first. The guys in
the outfield might have won, except we had a secret weapon: Stump. Say what you will about the yips, Stump's flapping elbow served him as well at yard work as it had at kite fighting. He pumped like a piston, driving his rake across the dirt with short, powerful chops.

Following Stump's lead, we made quick work of the dusty job. First the outfield, then the foul territories, finally the infield. Just as we finished, the hammering stopped and a cheer rose from right and center field: the wall was back in place.

Only one question remained: now what?

I mean, what good was a new wall when all it enclosed was a dirt patch? A neatly raked and leveled dirt patch, for sure, but dirt all the same. Fit for beach volleyball maybe, but not baseball. You can't play baseball without a green carpet underfoot. And grass doesn't grow in a day.

My eyes darted to Skip's paint buckets. Surely he didn't mean to paint the field?!

As I contemplated the possibility, a Rambletown Fire Department tanker, lights flashing,
wheeled onto the diamond at the head of a convoy of flatbed trucks. The vehicles swept past us and stopped near second base. A guy wearing an orange safety vest hopped down from the leading flatbed. Like the other trucks, it was piled high with what looked like big tubes of dirt.

“What in the world?” I asked nobody in particular. “Dirt we don't need. Dirt we have in spades.”

The driver met Skip in the first-base coach's box, and the two men shook hands. I recognized him as the foreman of the tree-clearing crew Skip had spoken to the day before.

“All set?” he asked. Then, nodding in our direction: “Howdy, fellas.”

“I think so,” Skip said. “Really appreciate what you're doing, Pepper.”

“Not a problem. We're as excited about the game as anyone. About time this town put on an All-Star Game again!”

Skip nodded and the man he called Pepper strode off toward the trucks.

“Holy cow,” Stump gushed, his eyes wide. “Is that…is it really…”

“Yep,” said Skip. “My old teammate Pepper McGraw. Pretty good shortstop in his day.”

“Only the greatest!” corrected Stump, who knew baseball history like most people know their own names. “No offense, Walloper, but that guy could hit! He once blasted three homers in a single game.”

“Actually, it was four.” Skip smiled. “And as I recall, he did it more than once.”

“He could play defense, too,” Gabby said. “My dad tells me stories about some of the catches he made.” She took a picture of the legendary ballplayer.

“Still loves Rambletown baseball,” Skip said. “He and the boys over at public works have waited a long time for another All-Star Game. They even roped in some buddies at the fire department to make sure it happens. Good bunch of guys.”

We watched as a couple of firefighters screwed a hose to a nozzle embedded in the
side of their truck. They cranked a valve, and water instantly gushed from the hose. They began spraying the field.

Gabby fired away.

“Should we tell them it's not smoke?” asked Ocho, who had drifted in from the outfield with the rest of the team. “It's only a cloud of dust stirred up by the wind? No fire here. By the way, Walloper, Mr. Bones is totally scoping those grasshoppers. He's parked under the trees like a guard dog.”

“Turf,” said Skip.

“Turf?” I cried. “You mean that horrible plastic stuff?” I shuddered. I'd almost rather play on a painted field. At least paint wouldn't give you carpet burns when you slid, the way artificial turf did. “Why do they need water for fake grass?”

“Watch.”

Starting in left field and working toward right, the firefighters hosed down every inch of Rambletown Field. Pepper McGraw and his gang let the water soak in, then sprang into
action. Moving like clockwork, they unloaded the flatbed trucks, dropping big dirt bundles every ten feet or so around the field. Then they unrolled the bundles like rugs, revealing the lushest, thickest, greenest strips of grass—real growing grass—I'd ever seen.

“Turf,” repeated Skip, his eyes gleaming. “Honest to goodness, one-hundred-percent natural, field-grown grass. What are you waiting for, guys? Go help lay it. We've got a ball field to get ready and an All-Star Game to play!”

We didn't need to be asked twice.

By lunchtime we had that ball yard looking as good as new. Better, even. The wall stood straight once again and sported a fresh coat of green paint. Springy natural grass blanketed the field, a thousand strips of it fitted seamlessly together like one big jigsaw puzzle.

“Awesome job, guys!” Gabby said. “It looks great.” Suddenly she frowned. “In fact, it looks almost too good. It makes me mad that you have to share it with Flicker Pringle and some of those other Haymakers.” She spit out the team
name like it put a bad taste in her mouth.

“It's the All-Star Game, Gabby,” I said. “For one day, we put aside our rivalry.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I just can't get used to the idea of you and those guys actually playing on the same team.”

“Don't worry,” I assured her. “Once the game is over and the regular season starts again, we'll still want to beat them.”

“You better!” she said.

Before the city crew left, Pepper McGraw shook all our hands and thanked us for helping. When he got to Stump, he drew the shortstop aside and whispered something in his ear.

Stump nodded seriously.

Pepper said something more; then, with a wave, he climbed up into his truck and drove away at the head of a column.

The firefighters stuck around to give the turf a good watering before they, too, called it a day. Two rode in the cab and two more stood on the truck's gleaming silver back bumper.

“See you in the morning, Rounders!” cried
one of the bumper riders as the tanker rolled off the diamond. “We'll be leading the parade!”

The only thing left to do was lay chalk stripes down the lines, and the field would be perfect.

“We'll wait until morning for that,” Skip said. “The wind will only carry it away if we do it now.”

“What about the locusts?” I asked, warily eyeing the trees just outside the fence. “How do we keep them off the new field for the next twenty-four hours?”

“As long as the wind keeps blowing out toward center, we don't have anything to worry about,” Skip answered. “The grasshoppers aren't strong enough to buck the breeze. They can only go where it carries them, and ever since they rode it here in the first place, it's been blowing hard to the east.”

I nodded. Made sense. Then I crossed my fingers that the weather wouldn't pitch a changeup.