Boys in Control

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  But Caroline knew that Eddie had her heart set on the championship game. If the Badgers didn't make it to the finals, baseball season would be over as far as Eddie was concerned. None of that Saturday-morning neighborhood baseball stuff for her.

  Caroline had mixed feelings as she followed her two blond sisters out to the ball field behind the school. It seemed wrong to wish that Buckman would lose, and for Eddie's sake, Caroline hoped they wouldn't. But if the Badgers won the first game, and they played every Saturday in May, it would be hard to get anyone interested in her play till the games were over.

  Beth, who was in fifth grade, crawled up on the bleachers beside Josh and Peter, but Caroline climbed up farther still and sat a couple of feet away from Wally Hatford, who was leaning his elbows on the riser behind him, studying a branch of the maple tree that hung out over the stands.

  Wally moved a few more inches away from her, and Caroline decided right then and there that if ever she was to persuade Wally Hatford to be in a play with her, she would have to be nice to him, starting now.

  “Hello, Wally,” she said. “Nice day, isn't it?”

  “We just saw each other two minutes ago,” said Wally.

  “So, can't I say it's a nice day anyhow?” asked Caroline.

  “What do you want?” asked Wally, looking at her sideways.

  “Do I have to want something? I just like sitting up here with you because I know you don't like baseball any more than I do,” said Caroline.

  “I never said I didn't like it,” said Wally.

  Down on the field, the coach was yelling at one of the players. “Hey, Mike! You playing baseball or chopping wood?” he called. “Don't start swinging your bat around until the pitch. You could let a ball go right past you if you're not ready.”

  Jake was on the pitcher's mound, and he threw a hard fastball. Sure enough, the boy in the batter's box wasn't ready. As he started his swing, the catcher had already caught the ball.

  Eddie was playing shortstop in the practice game, and when the batter merely tapped the next ball, she leaped forward and caught it. Then the players changed sides and she and Jake were up to bat.

  “I personally don't really care who wins the championship,” Caroline said to Wally, “but Eddie and Jake will be unbearable if it's not the Buckman Badgers.”

  Wally shrugged. “I'm not going to be at the last game anyway, so it's no skin off my nose,” he said.

  “Why aren't you going to be at the game, Wally? Everybody's going to that game if the Badgers make it that far.”

  “Everybody but me and Mrs. Larson,” said Wally, and his voice sounded angry and disappointed.

  “Where are you going with Mrs. Larson?” Caroline asked.

  “I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying home. I have to be in charge of the Treats and Treasures yard sale of the Women's Auxiliary of the Buckman Fire Department the last Saturday of the month,” Wally explained.

  “Somebody goofed and scheduled the sale the same day as the championship game, and it's already on posters all over town.”

  Caroline felt like laughing, but she checked herself in time and put on her most sympathetic face. “How did you get stuck with that?” she asked.

  “Mom's making me, because everyone else in the family likes baseball more than I do. The sale's going to be in our front yard, right up on the driveway and the front porch. If the Badgers play that day, everybody will be going to that, and I have to stay home to watch over the sale stuff till the others get back.”

  “ I'll help you!” said Caroline. “I don't think Eddie will miss me. I'll just come over that morning when everyone else is at the game. I'll make change or show people around or whatever you say.”

  Wally didn't seem to trust her, because he was still looking at her sideways. When a person trusts you, Caroline was thinking, they look you right in the eye.

  “Well, okay,” said Wally finally. “Maybe. If nobody else shows up to help.”

  And maybe, thought Caroline, beginning to smile, Wally had just said yes to taking a part in her play.

  Three

  Thinking Things Through

  When practice was over, Wally and his brothers headed home. Wally and Peter looked somewhat alike, with round faces, brown hair, blue eyes, and thick, square hands like their father's. But the twins, Jake and Josh, had dark hair, and skin that tanned to a golden brown in summer. They were both string-bean skinny.

  Usually their mother called them around three-fifteen from the hardware store where she worked to make sure they'd gotten home safely. But when they stayed for baseball practice, they called her instead.

  Wally dialed the number, and as soon as his mother answered, he said, “We're all lying poisoned on the floor.”

  Mrs. Hatford seemed to know that meant everyone was okay because she said, “Peter didn't get his new shoes muddy, did he?”

  “No, we kept him on the bleachers during practice. We didn't let him run around any.”

  “Good,” said his mother. “You can have crackers and peanut butter, but the spaghetti is for supper, so don't touch that. The applesauce either.”

  “Okay,” said Wally, “bye,” and put the phone back down.

  It used to be that as soon as the Hatfords got home from school, they would sit around the kitchen table with their afternoon snack and decide what kind of trick they were going to play next on the Malloy girls. It used to be that nothing was too awful for those girls, and the boys would do whatever they could to make them persuade their father to move them back to Ohio.

  The Whomper, the Weirdo, and the Crazie, the boys called them. Eddie was the Whomper because she could hit a baseball so far—way out in center field sometimes; Beth was the Weirdo because she read such gross and scary books; and Caroline was the Crazie because she would do almost anything to be the center of attention.

  But now, with Jake and Eddie on the same team, and with all the things they'd been through together, the boys had to admit that if they weren't quite friends with the Malloys, they weren't exactly enemies, either. The brothers had found themselves cheering every time Eddie made a really good play out on the field, and the Malloy girls cheered when Jake did something special.

  “But if it wasn't for baseball…,” Jake said almost to himself, with a mouthful of crackers.

  “If it wasn't for baseball, what?” asked Wally.

  “Nothing,” said Jake.

  Wally seemed to know what Jake was thinking, however, because he said, “If you guys win the championship, you won't mind having Eddie around so much. You'll have your pictures in the paper and you can brag all over the place.” While he spoke, Wally was fooling around with the magic trick he had traded for the two baseball cards at school. You put a quarter in one drawer, but when you pulled the drawer out a second time, the coin appeared to be gone. Then you closed it and pulled it out again and there was a fifty-cent piece in it. Except that it wasn't the same drawer. It only looked as though it was.

  “And if we don't win?” said Jake. “What if we bomb on our very first game and then all we can play are neighborhood games for the rest of May?”

  “Then…I don't know,” said Wally, and leaned over to show Peter his trick.

  “If the Bensons were here, and Steve was on our team…,” Jake said.

  “Oh, Jake, good as he was, Steve was never as good at baseball as Eddie, and you know it,” said Josh.

  “Yeah, but at least if we lost out then, we'd have the guys to hang around with, do things with for the rest of the month.”

  “We can hang out with the girls!” Peter said helpfully.

  “Eeee-yuck!” said Jake and Wally together.

  “I don't need any more to do,” Josh told them. “I promised Mom I'd make signs for her Women's Auxiliary sale.” He got up from the table then and went into the dining room, taking his colored markers from a drawer in the buffet. Then he reached around behind the buffet, where Mrs. Hatford stored sheets of white cardboard from the hardware store that she
saved for Josh's art projects. He sat down at the table and began to make some signs.

  Wally watched from the doorway. ONE TO FIVE DOLLARS Josh penciled carefully, and when the letters were straight, he went over them again with colored markers. Then he began to draw a decorative border.

  Jake came and stood in the doorway too. “Hey,” he said. “If we lose this weekend—if we're out of the tour-nament—will you guys go camping with me the rest of the weekends in May? I mean, I don't think I could stand losing and having to hang around with the Malloys.”

  “Sure,” said Josh. “I'll go camping with you.”

  “Me too!” said Peter.

  “Not me,” said Wally. “I have to be here for the yard sale—” He stopped suddenly. “But if you lose, you won't be playing that day, and Mom will be here!”

  “Smart boy,” said Jake. “Don't go wishing we lose, though.”

  “Just look at it this way, Jake. No matter what happens, one of us wins,” said Wally.

  Jake opened his book bag and spread his homework out on the other side of the dining room table, across from Josh. Peter took a saucer of Oreo cookies into the living room to watch TV, and Wally checked the bookcase to see if there were any books he hadn't read yet that he might like to read for his book report.

  Hatchet he had already read. Same with Maniac Magee. There was another book by Jerry Spinelli he hadn't read yet, though —Wringer. Maybe he'd read that one.

  Mr. Hatford got home from work first that day. He took off his postal jacket and hung it on a hanger. Then he went upstairs and put on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. “Now, this is the kind of weather that makes me glad I'm a mail carrier,” he said when he came back down. “Days like today I can drive with the window of my truck open. I can carry mail up the hill to a house, the breeze blowing at my back, and think I've got the best job in the world.”

  “Just the same, I don't think I want to be a mail carrier,” said Wally.

  “Nothing wrong with that. You can be whatever you want,” said his father. “What do you want to be?”

  Wally shrugged. “I just like to study things.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “I don't know. Just things.”

  His dad poured himself a glass of cold tea from a pitcher, then put the pitcher back in the refrigerator.

  “Well, you could be a biologist and study cells under a microscope.”

  “Maybe,” said Wally.

  “You could be a zoologist and study animals.”

  “That'd be okay,” said Wally.

  “Or you could be a sociologist and study people.”

  “I'll stick with animals,” said Wally. He settled down in one corner of the couch to start reading Wringer. It was about a town in Pennsylvania where there was a pigeon shoot every year to raise money, and boys about Wally's age worked at grabbing any pigeons that were shot but not dead yet, and wringing their necks, and this one boy didn't want to do it.

  I wouldn't want to do it either, thought Wally. What kind of a person would want to twist the head off a pigeon? Maybe he should study people after all.

  When Mrs. Hatford came home, she found all the members of her family busy. After checking on everyone in turn, she set about making supper, humming to herself.

  “I feel so much better knowing you will be here to look after things at the sale, Wally,” she said when he came in to see if the food was ready yet.

  And I feel so much worse, thought Wally.

  After supper he took his book bag up to his room to work on his math assignment. He was surprised to find two boxes, a lampshade, and a framed picture in one corner. He went to the top of the stairs.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “What's that stuff doing in my room?”

  His mother came to the foot of the stairs. “Oh, I hope you don't mind, Wally. We've told all the women not to bring their sale items to the house until the day before the sale, but some of them will be out of town then, and others just want them out of the way. Better to have them early than not at all, I guess.”

  “But what are they doing in my room?” Wally bellowed.

  “Well, I looked in the twins’ bedroom, and they've got so much stuff in there, and so does Peter, that—”

  “What about the basement?” Wally wailed.

  “Things might get musty down there, dear. Be a good sport, please, Wally. It's only till the end of the month, I promise.”

  Wally went back into his room and lay facedown on the bed. Just because he kept his room neat—just because he put things back in the right place—did he have to be punished? If he were a slob like Josh or Jake or Peter, would she have put the sale stuff somewhere else? Or did the middle child get the worst of everything? Wouldn't want to store stuff in the twins’ bedroom because they're the oldest. Wouldn't want to put it in Peter's room. He's the youngest. So good old Wally—

  The phone rang and he heard Jake answer at the foot of the stairs.

  “Oh, hi, Eddie.” Jake's voice was flat. “…No, I don't think so. I've got too much to do…. Yeah, bye.”

  Wally got up and went downstairs. “What did she want?” he asked, curious.

  “Wanted to know if I would go over to the school and get in some extra practice. I told her no.”

  “How come?” asked Wally.

  “Because Eddie doesn't need more practice. If I help her get even better, Coach'll let her pitch all the games. What kind of a fool does she take me for?”

  “But you'd get better too!” said Wally.

  The phone rang again. This time Wally picked it up.

  “Is this the Hatford residence?” came a woman's voice.

  “Yes,” said Wally.

  “I understand you are collecting things for the Women's Auxiliary sale on May twenty-ninth?”

  “Yes,” said Wally.

  “I was wondering if I might come by early and look over what you've collected so far, and make a purchase.”

  “I don't think so, but I'll ask,” said Wally.

  He went to the kitchen and asked his mother. When he came back, he said, “No, we can't sell anything before the sale opens at noon on that day, but if you'll give me your name and phone number—”

  The phone at the other end clicked as the woman hung up.

  Four

  Out!

  Jake Hatford is a jerk!”

  Eddie Malloy stood in the upstairs hallway, phone in hand, before plunking it disgustedly down in its cradle.

  “What now?” asked Beth from her bedroom.

  “All I did was ask if he wanted to go back to the school later and get in some practice, and he said no.”

  Caroline followed Eddie into Beth's room.

  “Maybe he had homework,” Beth suggested, putting her finger between the pages of her book to hold the place.

  “It was just an excuse, I could tell,” said Eddie.

  “Doesn't he want to get any better before Saturday?”

  “Maybe he just doesn't want to see you get any better,” said Beth.

  “That's ridiculous! We're on the same team!” Eddie fumed. “Doesn't he want us to win?”

  “Not as bad as he wants to see you not win,” said Beth.

  “I will never understand boys as long as I live,” said Eddie. “They were all born with half a brain.”

  “Peter's cute,” said Caroline.

  “Cute won't cut it,” said Eddie.

  “Josh is nice at times,” said Beth.

  “If you like the arty type,” said Eddie.

  Beth and Caroline exchanged glances.

  “And what type do you like, Eddie? The sports type?” giggled Beth. “Maybe you thought Jake would jump at the chance to go over to the school with you alone, and he didn't. Maybe that's why you think he's a jerk.”

  “Give me a break,” Eddie said. She turned on her heels, walked into her room, and shut the door.

  Caroline sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall. “What kind of book are you reading?” she
asked.

  “Mystery,” said Beth.

  “That's your favorite kind, isn't it? Scary stories?”

  “Mystery and science fiction and romance—those are my three favorites,” said Beth.

  Caroline thought about that a moment. “If someone gave you a play that had mystery and romance and science fiction in it, all mixed up together, would you read it?”

  “Whose play?”

  “Mine,” said Caroline.

  “No,” said Beth.

  “Why not? Miss Applebaum said I could write a ten-page play instead of a book report, and if I can get it performed in front of the class, I'll get extra credit.”

  “Well, don't look at me. I'm not going to be in your play. I'm not getting up there on the stage at school and making a fool of myself.”

  “All I want you to do is read it when I'm done and tell me if it's any good,” said Caroline.

  “Sure,” said Beth. “Now go away and let me finish my book.”

  It rained on Wednesday and Thursday, and the ground was still too wet for practice on Friday, so when the time came on Saturday, Eddie had been without practice and was feeling nervous.

  Caroline had never seen her sister so jumpy. Usually Eddie was pretty much in control, but by the time the Malloys pulled into the parking lot of the high school in Elkins, where the game would be played, she was nibbling at her lower lip and looking tense.

  “What's the matter, Eddie?” Caroline whispered.

  “I don't know. I'm just jittery,” Eddie confessed. She was sitting between her two sisters in the backseat, and kept taking deep breaths. “I feel rusty without practice.”

  “I don't know why you should be nervous,” said Beth. “You're better than almost any boy on the team, and no one else got in extra practice either.”

  “But you know what will happen if we lose,” said Eddie. “Especially if we lose our first game. They'll blame it on me. They'll say it's because there's a girl on the team. And nobody will ever want to talk to me at school.”

  “Eddie, that's ridiculous,” said her father. “You know what? You're a lot more nervous sitting here in the car thinking about how you'll play than you'll be when you're actually out there on the field.” He turned off the engine. “Okay, girl. Go!” he said.