The Second Base Club

by Greg Trine

  Tuck disappeared inside the house and came back out with a pad of paper and a pen. “Any of you ever write a song before?” he asked.

  “I’ve tried writing lyrics,” I said. The operative word here was “tried.”

  What came first, melody or words? We didn’t have a clue. Where exactly did songs come from? Were they carefully thought out, or did they just drop out of the sky? My guess was that it was a combination. Sometimes they came out of nowhere—sometimes it was just a hell of a lot of tinkering until you got it right. And what made a great song? Was it great words? Probably not. Just like you could have a goofy-sounding band name, you could have pretty goofy words. A great guitar riff covered a multitude of sins.

  A song just plain had to sound good, we decided. Lyrics were not the problem. We needed a great sound. And that put the burden on me. I couldn’t name a single band whose sound was distinct because of the bass player or drummer. It was guitar playing that mattered—that and vocals.

  We fiddled around all afternoon, coming up with various song beginnings, interesting riffs, and words to go along with them. Nothing was clicking, but we had fun trying. After a while, Tuck disappeared inside again and came back with an iPod that he hooked up to a portable player. We played classic song after classic song. Once again, I realized there was no rhyme or reason as to why something worked. It just plain sounded good.

  Before we knew it, three hours had gone by. “Same time tomorrow?” I asked.

  Tuck nodded, and Vern and I piled into the Trap and headed for home.

  “I loved that,” Vern said as we started up Casitas Pass. “We sounded like shit, but I loved trying to make something happen.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I knew what he meant. I couldn’t quite put it into words. We were building something, and we had no idea where we were going with it, or where it would take us. What kind of sound? We didn’t know, and that was the fun of it.

  The three hours I spent trying to come up with songs with the band inspired me. After Vern dropped me off, I got out a piece of paper and kept experimenting with song lyrics. I thought back over our common experiences of the last few months. Time spent with Vern and Tuck. Hours in the Trap. Suddenly I was writing. I had no tune in mind, but I liked the words that were coming out.

  TEMPLIN HIGHWAY

  It’s raining outside and we’re in the Trap

  A cold can of chili in my lap

  You ask me to pull your finger but I ain’t bitin’

  ’Cuz when you let it rip, soon we’ll be fightin’

  Letting ’em go at point-blank range

  Ain’t this song kinda strange?

  Damn. I thought I was onto something. I started on another song. It was called “I Know Your Knees Want Me—How About the Rest of You?” Then I wrote one called “Hey, Jerry, You’re Big and Hairy.” I was on a songwriting roll. I wrote a song called “Kiss Me Quick Before the Porch Light Comes On,” then one called “The Old Man Across the Street Thinks We’re Funny.”

  Write what you know, I’d always heard. And it was working.

  Mom came home in the middle of my songwriting. “What are you up to, Elroy?” she asked. She picked up a sheet of paper off the floor. “ ‘Hey, Jerry, You’re Big and Hairy’?”

  “They’re songs, Mom. I’m starting a band with Vern and Tuck.”

  “Really?” She read the lyrics to the song. I was so glad I hadn’t written anything about jumping bones. Then she grabbed another sheet and read it. Then another. She looked up at me. “Really?”

  “It will sound better when I put it to music. Add a hot melody and some great guitar, you’ll see.”

  She just stood there going through my song lyrics. I couldn’t read her facial expression. Did she like them? Did she not? She wouldn’t say. I kept writing while she went over to the kitchen and started cooking dinner, which smelled like macaroni and cheese.

  After dinner she got up from the table. “I have to go out for a few hours.”

  “It’s dark out, Mom.” My mother never went anywhere at night. Once she was home, she was home for good.

  “I won’t be long. You’ll do the dishes, won’t you, Elroy?”

  I pointed to the window. “It’s dark out. Bad guys, Mom. Monsters.” But she was already grabbing her jacket. “Where are you going?”

  “I won’t be gone long.” She checked her face in the mirror by the door and was gone.

  Before I started on the dishes, I wrote another song: “Gotta Get Home Before the Monsters Come Out.” Then I wrote one called “Late-Night Rendezvous.” If she had a boyfriend, I was going to shoot myself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The band was coming along. I decided to make “Templin Highway” into a regular road song, no farting references. It was all about getting out of Dodge, or Highmont Ridge, for that matter. But it was very California. Vern and Tuck put in their two cents about heading to the Eastern Sierra, about certain highways we’d been on. Guess it made sense. I couldn’t see a farting song gaining wide acceptance, even with a really great guitar riff.

  Our strong points seemed to be guitar and drums, although Vern was getting better on bass. He stepped up his lessons to three days a week. We’d be ready for Battle of the Bands.

  “You’re not going for the torn-jeans, ripped-T-shirt look, are you?” Juana Maria put a finger down her throat and fake-gagged. “It’s so overdone. Be original, Elroy.”

  “What would you call original?”

  Juana Maria and I had worked the lunch shift together. Now we were off and walking through the mall. I felt a little weird wearing my puffy work shirt, but she was in her peasant-girl outfit—if she could handle the stares, so could I.

  Turns out, no one was staring.

  “You know what I think is sexy?” she asked.

  “Scarlett Johansson?”

  She elbowed me. “I mean, you know what I think is sexy on a guy?”

  “What?”

  “A bow tie.”

  “Thank God you didn’t say a G-string.” She elbowed me again. “Seriously, Juana Maria, a rock band wearing bow ties would be ridiculous, don’t you think?”

  She stopped and looked at me. Really looked at me, from top to bottom. “Pretend like you’re holding a guitar.” I struck my best rock-star pose. “Now strum.” I did, while she stared at my Adam’s apple. “Yeah, I guess that would be a little weird. No bow tie, but don’t go for the grunge look, either.”

  I stopped strumming my imaginary guitar. People were beginning to look at me funny. “So what do you suggest?” I asked her.

  We were standing before the entrance to Macy’s. She pulled me inside. “Come with me.” She led me through the store to the men’s department and started going through a rack of dress shirts. “Okay, my second choice. Know what else I think looks great?”

  “Beyoncé?”

  This time she punched me in the arm. “I mean on a guy.”

  I shrugged.

  “Blue jeans and a dress shirt. You can still rock and you won’t look like you’re a homeless dork.”

  “I’d hate to look like a dork,” I told her.

  She pulled a blue dress shirt off the rack and held it up to me. “Here, try this on.”

  “What?”

  “The dressing room’s over there.” She pointed behind me. “Go try it on. I’ll keep looking.”

  I took it and went into the dressing room. While I was buttoning it up, another shirt hit me in the face. “Here’s another one,” she called. “I’ll be waiting out here.”

  I checked myself out in the mirror, then opened the door to let her see. She walked up and did some tugging, checking the fit. “Oh, I’m good. This is it. This is the look for—” She stopped. “What was the name of your band again?”

  “Templin Highway.”

  “Yes, Templin Highway. Wear jeans and dress shirts, Elroy. You look hot!”

  It was the first time a member of the opposite sex had said I looked hot. She wasn’t so bad herself, standin
g there before me, flashing her dimples. “Uh . . . can you say that again?”

  “You look hot!”

  I blushed—big-time.

  “You’re not too bad yourself,” I told her. Which was a major understatement. If only she had a normal father. Getting your knees bashed by a baseball bat had to hurt. Ernesto had made it clear that Juana Maria was off limits. Damn shame.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  During band practice, I introduced the idea of dress shirts to Vern and Tuck. “Dress shirts?” Vern said.

  “Dress shirts?” Tuck repeated. “Who wears dress shirts? I thought we could go bare-chested and wear war paint.”

  I thought this over. After all, I did have pecs. I shook my head. “Nah.” And Vern looked relieved. He was practically pecless. “We’re not a metal band. We need to wear shirts. I have it on good authority that jeans and dress shirts are sexy.”

  “Sexy is good,” Vern said. He turned to Tuck for confirmation.

  “Sexy is good,” Tuck said. “But who’s your good authority? Say your grandma and you die.”

  “A girl I know,” I said. “She’s our age. I trust her taste.”

  “I’ll think on it,” Tuck said.

  “Me too. But sexy is good, Tuck.” Vern and I were on the same page. Rock and roll was a means to an end. And if a girl our age said something was sexy, we’d better pay attention.

  I plugged the guitar into the amp, and we started in on our lead song, “Templin Highway.” Vern was getting pretty good on bass. As a test, I sped up the song, and he stayed with me, anticipating each chord change.

  “Guys!” Tuck yelled. “Stay with your drummer. Hear that?” He stepped on the foot pedal a few times. “That’s what you call the beat. We need to be together on this.”

  “I know.” I pointed my pick at Vern. “Just testing our bass player here. One more time. Two, three, four . . .”

  We started in again on “Templin Highway.” I couldn’t wait to do it before an audience.

  There was no longer an empty rectangle on my dad’s whiteboard. It had more detail. I squirted some maple syrup onto my pancakes and pointed. “One of your mental irons in the fire?”

  “Kind of,” he said. “The beginning stages of something. Actually, way more than the beginning stages, but we’ll see.”

  The rectangle had a line drawn down the middle, dividing it into two sections. Obviously, some kind of crude architect’s drawing. In one of the boxes it said “Shop.” The other side was left blank. It also showed entrances, exits, windows, and a bathroom.

  “Shop?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “What’s the other area for?”

  Dad swallowed and took a sip of coffee. “I’ll tell you later.”

  How vague. “You know, Dad, Mom’s not real big on you being an entrepreneur.”

  “I know that,” he said. I could tell he didn’t want to discuss it further. In fact, he got up from the table and wiped off the whiteboard.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I told him. When he sat back down, I decided to change the subject. “We’re thinking of wearing jeans and dress shirts for Battle of the Bands. What do you think?”

  “The Beatles wore suits.”

  “Suits?”

  “Yep, jackets and ties.”

  Tuck was having a hard time swallowing the idea of dress shirts. I knew he wouldn’t go for jackets and ties. “I can’t see wearing a suit and trying to rock,” I said.

  “The Beatles rocked in suits.”

  I grabbed the plates and took them to the sink. “Maybe I’ll wait until my first gold album.”

  “If you get a gold album, I’ll pay for the suit.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said.

  I started winning in wrestling, and in a roundabout way I had Carol Ann to thank for it. It began the Monday after the backwards dance. Maybe replaying the Elroy Gets Rejected tape over and over in my head did something. At practice that day, I took Mike Thomas down. Not in some kind of forced cartwheel move; I just double-legged him. Then I let him up and did it again. When he went down a third time, everyone in the room was watching, as if some third-grader had just slam-dunked over LeBron James.

  Coach Grogan pulled me aside after practice. “What’s gotten into you, Elroy?”

  “Exactly,” Mike said.

  Getting rejected by two girls had gotten into me. Being threatened by a big, hairy, ugly guy had gotten into me. The Second Base Club in general had gotten into me. And it just happened to come out at practice that day.

  It was perfect timing, because our league tournament was coming up. Maybe getting dumped would keep me focused, make me hungry to win.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The number-two man in the Second Base Club had it in for me. I knew that. If I ever found myself alone with him, he’d kick my ass. Of course, I was never alone. I made sure of it. But Sampson Teague was another matter. He was nothing like Hairy Jerry. He was never anything but friendly toward me.

  We were at weight-training class, working our way around the universal gym. Shoulder press, bench press, lats, triceps.

  “How’s the band coming along?” he asked after a while.

  “Not too bad.” I told him about Battle of the Bands. “If you’re not doing anything on April 7, come on by the fairgrounds. I’d like an honest opinion: Do we rock or do we not?”

  He said he would. We were both sweating now as we kept working through our circuit.

  “So, Sampson,” I said, “you’re not with Marisa anymore?” It was the question I’d been dying to ask ever since seeing him with a different girl at the backwards dance.

  He was in mid-curl and stopped. “Marisa Caldwell?” He let the weights fall.

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head and began curling again. “No. Nice girl, but no. I’m more of a love-’em-and-leave-’em type. Variety is the spice of life. Isn’t that right, Elroy?”

  I wasn’t sure, although I’d heard that was the case.

  “You know Marisa?” Sampson asked.

  “Kind of. Almost had something going with her, once upon a time. Haven’t talked to her in a while, but I used to see you two together. Now I don’t. Just wondered what happened.”

  He put down the dumbbells, and I grabbed some and started curling. Sampson gave me a weird look.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Just kind of surprised, I guess,” he said. “You and Marisa Caldwell? Nice going.”

  “I said I almost had something going with her.”

  “Still,” he said, “Marisa Caldwell. You aim high, Elroy. I’m impressed.”

  “Thanks.” I finished my set of curls, and we moved on to the leg press.

  That afternoon, Vern and I met up at Tuck’s for band practice. We worked out the kinks in our signature song. Vern was getting better on bass, Tuck and I were pretty tight on guitar and drums, and vocals were coming along. We planned on surprising a few people when we got onstage to perform it in front of an audience.

  Once we got “Templin Highway” to where we could do it forward and backward, with our eyes closed, standing on our heads, we went on to a few backup numbers. We played until someone complained of sore fingers or arms. This was usually Vern, since he had the least experience.

  “No more! Uncle!” Vern said finally, showing me his dented fingertips.

  “You need to build up some calluses,” I told him.

  “Believe me, I’m getting there.” He waggled his fingers. “You could strike a match on these babies.”

  I looked at Tuck, who was rotating his shoulders from two hours of drumming. “See you guys tomorrow,” he said. “We sounded good today.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Hairy Jerry was giving me some pretty serious death stares from across the quad. I knew about the Second Base Club, and he knew I knew. I watched my back like never before. If I had to pee I used the bathroom in the administration building—didn’t want to get jumped—and I nev
er went alone. Vern or Tuck, usually both of them, were always with me.

  I finished wrestling season with an 8–8 record. Most of my wins came the second half of the season. I called it my post–Carol Ann victory streak. And at our JV league tournament I placed third. Not bad for a first-year wrestler. Mom and Dad were there to see me step on the block to receive my medal.

  Even though I joined for all the wrong reasons (reason), I have to admit that I loved being on a team. I didn’t love it as much as I loved making music with Vern and Tuck, but I loved competing. I loved working hard at something. And seeing Mom and Dad together so much gave me all kinds of hope. They were together because of me. How could that be bad?

  We went out to dinner to celebrate my fairly successful wrestling season. The three of us. Mom and Dad sat across from me in a booth over at Mickey Moose.

  Dad held up a glass of iced tea. “To Elroy,” he said.

  I clinked glasses with him. So did Mom.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I survived.”

  “You did way more than survive,” Mom said. “You medaled.”

  “Thanks,” I said again. “By the way, you two look good together.”

  “Well, she looks good anyway,” Dad said.

  And Mom gave me her don’t-get-your-hopes-up look.

  I couldn’t help it. They did look good together. My hopes were way up.

  There were two weeks left before the band competition at the fairgrounds. We practiced every day, long hours, ignoring Vern’s complaints about sore fingers, letting our schoolwork slip. We had bigger goals than getting good grades. We wanted to woo women. At least, Vern and I did.

  When April 7 came around, we were ready. I was able to talk Vern into wearing a dress shirt, but not Tuck. He said he planned to break a sweat and would be wearing a tank top. I was fine with that. He’d be hidden behind the drums. Vern and I would be out front.

  “Leave the John Deere cap at home, Tuck,” I told him. “This is rock and roll, not Hee Haw.”

  “Yes, master.”