by Paul Haven
“Good. Then your essay can be four pages long,” Mrs. Sherman said, jerking her head up to put a quick end to the smattering of laughter that broke out behind Danny. “Anybody else have something to say?”
Nobody did.
After class, Molly and Lucas came over to console Danny on losing the first ground war against the Sherman Tank, but he had already been cornered by the Barnibus debate team and they couldn't get close.
Danny had never been the popular kid at school before. Far from it. Now he was in demand wherever he turned. He felt as if he were walking on air—other than with Mrs. Sherman, of course. Danny wondered if maybe the Wrinkled Spinkle would be willing to put in a good word with her, now that they were such close friends.
By the time Danny left John J. Barnibus, he felt as though he'd grown eight inches taller. He had walked two blocks already and said goodbye to a dozen sixth and seventh graders who wanted to talk to him about the Sluggers when he realized he had forgotten to wait for Molly and Lucas in front of school so they could all go home together.
“I'll call them later,” Danny thought as he rushed home.
What he came across on the corner of Highland Avenue and Renseller Street nearly made his eyes pop out of his head. A long line of people, most with Sluggers caps on their heads and copies of the Daily Bugler under their arms, began at Willie's hot-dog cart and stretched as far as the eye could see.
“Get your hot dogs! Get your world-famous lucky hot dogs here!” Willie was shouting as he frantically sloshed sauerkraut and onion goop on another frank. In front of the cart, two television reporters were peppering Willie with questions. He was doing his best to answer them while his hands kept pace with hot-dog demand.
“The full name is William de la Bosque de Montecarlo, but people just call me Willie,” he said. “Yeah, I've been involved in the culinary industry for fourteen years…. Oh, yes, always as a hot-dog man.
“How long have I known Danny Gurkin? Well, let's see … ages, I guess. He is one lucky kid. Two hot dogs before every game. That's exactly right.”
Danny was about to cross the street when he noticed a long black car driving slowly up the other side of the street. It had a diamond-studded hood ornament that glinted in the sun like a prism.
He glanced at the license plate: DB-IV.
Danny had a strange feeling that the car had been behind him for a while. Was the same black car outside school when he left? Danny tried to think back, but he'd run out in such a hurry he couldn't remember.
Inside the car were two men in expensive-looking suits and clip-on sunglasses. They were staring straight ahead at the road, but Danny had the sense they had been looking at him just a minute before. The driver was big and round with meaty red hands, and the man in the passenger seat had a pasty face and a dark goatee.
As Danny looked over, the two men quickly turned their heads away.
Was it his imagination? There was only one way to find out.
Danny turned around and hopped back on the curb, pulling his Sluggers cap low over his eyes. He hustled back down Highland Avenue and glanced over his shoulder as casually as he could. The car had turned around and was about half a block behind him.
“Who are they?” Danny wondered. The men looked too rich to be reporters.
When Danny finally got to Chorloff Street, he broke into a run, then scurried up the front stoop and up the stairs to his apartment.
He dropped his backpack on the living room floor, then ran over to the window. The black car was parked on the corner just across the street from Danny's house, and the two men were sitting in the front seat munching on what appeared to be tacos.
Thump!
The front door of the apartment slammed shut, and Danny practically jumped out of his skin. He shot away from the window and crouched down behind the television.
“What are you doing behind the television?” Max said, glancing over at Danny with amusement.
“Behind the television?” Danny replied. “Oh, I just dropped something.”
“It looks like you're hiding down there,” Max said. “What's the problem? All this fame going to your head?”
“You heard about the newspaper article?” Danny asked, standing up as nonchalantly as he could.
“Heard about it? How could I not?” said Max. “Everyone at Canfield has heard about it. I spent all day explaining about my weird superstitious brother.”
“Really?” said Danny.
“At least you're good for something, though,” Max went on, plopping down on the living room chair and fishing his headphones out of his jacket. “I got a date with Sarah McAllister out of it, which isn't too shabby. She's been ignoring me since I was your age.”
That was—almost—the first nice thing Max had said to Danny in about three years.
“Hey, Max,” Danny asked nervously. “I was wondering, did you notice that black car parked outside?”
“Nope,” said Max, sticking the earphones into his ears.
Danny hesitated, but he had to say something.
“Max, I think somebody might be following me,” Danny said. “That's why I, uh, was behind the television.”
“Who would want to follow you?” his brother laughed.
“I don't know, but they're still parked outside,” Danny replied. “Just down the street. You can see them from the window.”
“No way!” said Max, getting up and moving over to the window. “Where?”
Danny pointed toward the spot where the car had been, but it was gone. The only evidence that the men had been there at all was a discarded taco box lying on its side against the curb, next to two crumpled-up copies of the Daily Bugler.
The Search for the Lucky Kid
The state of Texas awoke the following Thursday to a call to arms. From the scorched plains of the Panhandle to the prairies of the northeast, a mysterious poster suddenly appeared. Written in the old style of the Wild West and signed by Diamond Bob Honeysuckle IV himself, it said simply:
WANTED: ONE LUCKY KID
His Tornadoes had lost the final two games of the series to the Sluggers, but Diamond Bob was not concerned. He was certain his executives would soon find him the luckiest kid money could buy. He would not spare any expense in the search. Overnight, an army of blue-haired secretaries was assembled to man the phone banks in a glass-walled conference room overlooking Tornado Field.
The oil magnate paced back and forth in his luxurious office, his ten-gallon hat in his hands, and waited for news of the calls flooding in from downstairs.
At ten a.m., Diamond Bob couldn't take it anymore. He adjusted his solid-silver belt buckle, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and marched down to the conference room to see what was going on.
There was a quick shuffling as the telephone operators stashed away their magazines and nail files when the tycoon swung into the room. Other than that, there was quiet.
The posters had reached every corner of the Lone Star State, but it was hard to motivate fans who had known nothing but a century of success, people who had never before been asked to do anything for their team but purchase overpriced nachos at the concession stand.
“What in blazes is going on?” Diamond Bob screamed at his personal assistant, Wallace, who was already cowering against the wall in anticipation of just such an outburst. “The only things ringing in here are your hands!”
“Uh, sir, that would be ‘wringing,' with a w,” said Wallace.
Diamond Bob glared at Wallace in a way that made it clear he should be looking for a new job. He shifted his weight from one double-stitched alligator-skin cowboy boot to the other.
Finally, a phone rang at a desk in the back of the room.
Diamond Bob and his staff ran over and stood behind the poor telephone operator as she answered the call.
“Yes, this is Tornadoes headquarters,” the operator said.
“Yes, we are looking for a lucky kid, that's exactly right,” she went on, glancing nervously over her s
houlder at the executives behind her.
“Yes, we want someone who really loves the Tornadoes,” she gushed. “But are you lucky?
“Hmm, hmm, right. Well, I'd have to ask, but I'd say that being extremely rich is a good sign that you are lucky,” she said, turning to Diamond Bob, who nodded his approval.
“Yes. Yes. Yes,” chirped the operator. This sounded promising! Perhaps they had their lucky kid. A Tornadoes' Danny Gurkin.
“There could be big money in that,” Diamond Bob thought. He imagined a line of Tornado Kid action figures, maybe even a new kind of gasoline that he could sell at a premium. Lucky Unleaded, or Fortuitous Fuel. He liked the sound of that.
But suddenly the operator's smile fell away.
“No,” she said dejectedly. “No, sir, you can't have the job if you are forty-seven. No, you have to be a child, sir. I'm sorry.”
Diamond Bob turned and kicked the wall with his cowboy boot.
Danny in Demand
“That's H-O-R,” Lucas gloated as Danny's shot clanked off the rim. He grabbed the ball and passed it on a bounce to Molly. “You might be the most famous eleven-year-old in the world, Danny, but you still suck at horse!”
Molly grabbed the ball and dribbled over to the side of the basket.
“Underhand. Eyes closed. Off the backboard,” she said, before swishing in the shot. “Beat that, Hot Dog Boy!”
It was Saturday morning at Quincy Park, and they all had survived the first week of school.
The park was packed with kids, each of them with one eye on the games they were playing and the other on Danny Gurkin. Danny had expected the attention to fade away, but it only grew with each Sluggers victory.
Wherever Danny went, people stopped and shook his hand. Grown men asked for his autograph; teenage girls giggled at his approach. At hospitals around the city, at least three newborn babies had been named Gurkin in his honor. It was surreal.
The Sluggers lost only once all week, when Mrs. Sherman ordered Danny to take the Kosmic Kranberry out of his mouth during a Friday-afternoon game against the Baltimore Bobcats. Danny wasn't sure if chewing the gum would work if he wasn't watching the game on TV or listening to the radio, but he figured he'd give it a shot.
“Is that bubble gum I smell?” said Mrs. Sherman, spinning around to face the class, then slowly making her way down the row of desks until she got to Danny's. It wasn't hard to find the culprit because the Kosmic Kranberry smelled so bad.
“Mr. Gurkin! I should have known,” Mrs. Sherman said with a sneer, extending a khaki glove and gesturing for Danny to hand over the gum. Danny panicked and swallowed it instead, earning an hour's detention and a two-page essay assignment on the importance that respecting one's elders had played in the history of the United States of America.
With a dozen games left in the season, the Sluggers were now just six games behind the Tornadoes, and only three behind the Oakland Ogres for the wild-card spot. They had passed seven other teams in the standings since their winning streak began.
Danny had not seen the black car or its passengers since the first day of school, but he kept finding clues that the men might still be around. One morning he spotted a half-eaten burrito on his stoop, and another day a crumpled-up paper bag from the House of Tacos blew by him on the street in front of school.
“I must be imagining all this,” Danny thought.
He had other worries as well, particularly what to do about his dwindling supply of Kosmic Kranberry. He had just eight sticks left, nowhere near enough for the rest of the season and the play-offs, if the Sluggers could make it that far.
“Your shot, Danny,” Molly said, snapping her fingers in front of Danny's face. “Earth to Hot Dog Boy.”
“Sorry,” Danny said. “What's the score?”
“You're losing,” said Lucas. “That's all you need to know.”
Danny lined up a shot from the foul line but missed badly, the ball clanking off the rim and ricocheting straight down at the ground.
“Man, you're awful today,” Lucas said.
“I know,” Danny replied meekly.
Between his sudden fame, the mysterious black car, and the burden of keeping the biggest secret of his life, Danny couldn't concentrate on basketball.
Three times that week he had picked up the phone to tell Molly and Lucas about the Kosmic Kranberry, and three times he had hung up. He'd almost told them after his run-in with Mrs. Sherman in history class, but he'd been sidetracked by a crush of new friends and hangers-on and forgotten all about them.
Now Danny was on the verge of spilling the beans again, but something held him back.
“Hey, you guys haven't noticed a black car around school with these two guys inside?” Danny said instead.
“Maybe,” said Molly. “There are a lot of black cars.”
“Yeah, but this one has a sparkly hood ornament that looks like it's made out of diamonds, and a weird license plate, DB-IV.”
“DB-IV?” said Molly. “What could that stand for?”
“I don't know,” said Danny. “I think it's following me.”
Just then, Briny Anderson sauntered over from the seventh graders' court, casually spinning a basketball on his index finger as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do.
“Hey, Danny, my man!” Briny said, giving him a high five, then holding his palm out behind his back to receive one from Danny. “How you doin'?”
“Oh, I'm cool, Briny,” Danny said. “Just shooting some hoops, you know.”
“Yeah, right,” Briny said, nodding at Molly and Lucas. “Hey, Mandy, Louis, how you doin'?”
“Uh, it's Molly and Lucas,” Danny said.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, right,” said Briny. “Listen, Danny, the guys on the baseball team are having a little party tonight at my place and we were wondering if you wanted to come. It's mostly just for the starting players actually, but we decided to invite you too, seeing as you might be trying out for the team. We're serving hot dogs.”
“Wow,” said Danny. “That'd be great. Can I bring my friends?”
Briny glanced over at the others.
“Well … it's really just for the team, actually,” he said slowly.
“Oh,” said Danny. “Right.”
Molly was staring at them with her eyes narrowed like a cat's. Lucas's smile had quickly turned to a scowl.
“Anyway, I'll see you there,” Briny went on, giving Danny another high five, this one with his elbow.
“So long, Marnie, Leroy,” he called back as he walked away.
Mayor Fred Frompovich Gets an Idea
If there was one thing Mayor Fred Frompovich knew, it was how to win an election. You had to have vision. You had to have strategy. You had to have compassion.
None of those things, however, was as valuable as a superstitious eleven-year-old who had captured the public's attention.
“I'm not asking for the moon, Harold. I just want fifteen minutes with your son,” the mayor said, leaning against the mahogany desk in his office at City Hall and beaming at Harold Gurkin. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up and his black suit jacket draped over his chair. The office had the distinct smell of cigarette smoke, but Harold Gurkin figured it was better not to go into that with the mayor, who had sworn he was going to quit following the spontaneous combustion fiasco.
“Maybe we could be photographed together at a Sluggers game. Yes, that would be ideal,” said the mayor.
Harold Gurkin was sitting in a plush leather armchair in front of the mayor's desk, fiddling nervously with a pencil. He was stalling for time.
“I don't know, Mr. Mayor. I'd have to talk to my wife, and ask Danny if he even wanted to do something like that,” he said. “That's a lot of attention for a kid to deal with.”
The mayor pressed a button on his intercom and called through to his secretary.
“Margaret, can you get us two cigars? The Cuban ones I save for special occasions,” he purred, and then turned his gaze back to Harold Gurki
n.
“Don't think I don't understand your reservations, Harry,” the mayor said, though the look of determination on his face made it clear that Harold Gurkin's reservations were not his primary concern. “But as my campaign manager, you have to admit we need that lucky kid of yours. The whole election might depend on it!”
Harold Gurkin had to agree. It would probably help, and Danny would be excited to do it. But he grimaced at the prospect of telling Lydia. She was already tired of the campaign, and this would not go over well.
“I'll ask,” Mr. Gurkin told the mayor.
“That's great, Harry. Thanks a million.” The mayor grinned.
The Gurkin Report
Diamond Bob sat alone at the head of his conference table and stared down at the leather-bound report in front of him. This is what he had been waiting for from his high-priced spies for two long weeks, even as his own lucky-kid search had proven an utter failure.
Diamond Bob was nervous as he ran his fingers over the gold embossed lettering on the front cover:
GURKIN REPORT, TOP-SECRET
The oil tycoon took a deep breath, then flipped the report open and began to read. What he found was truly disturbing.
The document was laid out like a traditional scouting report from one of the Tornadoes' fleet of talent scouts, but instead of sections on batting, throwing, and baserunning, it was broken down into categories like dedication, innovation, and luck.
Diamond Bob had never seen anything like it. Danny's scores for every category were off the charts. Diamond Bob bit down on his thumbnail as he came to the conclusion:
“We are dealing with a boy who can name the favorite toothpaste of every player on the team and who has a different superstition for each of them. A child who never misses a pitch, whose unwavering belief in his awful team is infectious. Someone who lives and breathes baseball. In short, a fanatic,” it read. “A talent like this comes around once in a generation, perhaps once a century. In our opinion, the Tornadoes have two choices: buy every hot dog in North America, or sign the Gurkin kid up immediately … and at whatever the cost.”
