The Reluctant Pitcher

by Matt Christopher

  “No. He just played with a team around here, Mr. Lacey. My dad used to play with him.” He squinted against the bright morning sun. “Did you ever play with a professional team, Mr. Lacey?”

  “Had about five years’ experience in minor league baseball, Wally,” answered Cab. A warm light twinkled in his eyes. “I was with Williamsport in the New York—Pennsylvania league most of the time.”

  Wally stared in surprise. “Wow! What position did you play?”

  “Some guy who thought he knew a lot about baseball had tried to make a pitcher out of me. After a few years, my arm went bad and I couldn’t play any other position. Without a throwing arm, you won’t find a place in baseball, Wally. Well, better get going. Chris is waiting for you.”

  After practice all the boys began leaving the field. Luke Hutter asked Wally to wait.

  “I have to tell you, Wally,” Mr. Hutter said. His voice was friendly, his eyes the warmest blue Wally had ever seen them. “You really reminded me of my son, Del, out there today. I suppose that might sound foolish to you. But it isn’t. You two were great pals. I had figured on both of you being on my pitching staff this year. I hope that’s what you want, too.”

  Wally’s throat was dry. He looked at Luke Hutter for a minute, then looked away. He got to thinking about the boat ride two years ago. He got to thinking about the explosion and about Mr. Hutter’s pulling Del out of the water and swimming back out after him. He would have drowned if it weren’t for Luke Hutter.

  He met Mr. Hutter’s warm blue eyes.

  “Uh, sure, Coach,” he said. “I mean, of course I’ll pitch.”

  Coach Hutter clapped him on the back. “I knew it! You’ll be great once you get the hang of it.”

  But Wally wasn’t so sure. No, he wasn’t sure about that at all.

  8

  The day the Pacers were scheduled to play the Blue Raiders was gray and dismal. It looked as if it might rain, and Wally hoped that it would. He wouldn’t have to pitch then.

  He was just wondering what he would do for the afternoon when the phone rang. It was Sawbones.

  “Dad’s going over to the dairy farm today to give all the cows their shots. He needs someone to record their ear numbers so he can be sure he got them all, and he won dered if we’d like to do it. You want to come along with us?”

  “Sure,” Wally replied. He wasn’t as crazy about the big animals as Sawbones was, but sometimes the farmer had other animals, like dogs or goats. He checked with his mother.

  “Okay,” she said. “Be back by supper-time.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Into the telephone he said, “Okay, Sawbones. I can go. See you in a little while.”

  Sharon was in the backyard, practicing gymnastics. She was wearing a white T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, and a ribbon around her head to keep her hair from falling all over her face.

  It seemed as if she could twist her body any way she wanted to. She laid her hands flat against the grass and lifted her legs slowly into the air. When she had them straight up, she held herself steady for a few moments, then did a quick somersault backwards, landed on her feet, and slid her legs straight out into opposite directions — a perfect split.

  She was really graceful at it. She had performed several times at the school and was sometimes asked to perform between acts of a play and at social functions.

  She liked to play volleyball and Ping-Pong, too. Wally was secretly proud of her. He never told her so because she seemed to suspect it anyway.

  Half an hour later, Wally and Sawbones were writing down numbers as Dr. Davis’s assistant called them out. They helped out for an hour, then Dr. Davis told them they could take a break and look around for a while. “Just be sure you’re back here in half an hour so we can head for home,” he reminded the boys before they took off.

  “Let’s go to the dairy store and see if we can get a couple of chocolate milks,” Sawbones suggested.

  “Okay,” said Wally. There was nothing he liked better than a frosty cold glass of milk. The chocolate was a bonus.

  Then Wally thought about the game scheduled to start at six o’clock. He had no idea what time it was. Neither he nor Sawbones wore a wristwatch. And he couldn’t tell anything from the sun, because it hadn’t been out all day. It was as cloudy and sultry now as it had been hours ago.

  They walked up the long driveway to the white stucco building where the dairy store was. To the right of the building was the large white house where Mr. Riker, the owner of the dairy farm, lived. Beyond the stucco building were the great red barns in which were housed the many cows that furnished the milk for the dairy.

  In the summertime, the cows were permitted to graze outside in the huge fields of the farm. In the early morning hours of each day, and in the evenings, they were brought into the barns and milked with electric milking machines.

  Wally and Sawbones entered through the front door. There was a large glass-door refrigerator in a corner filled with containers of milk. On a table was a small cash register. There was no one in the room.

  Sawbones led the way into a large room where all the machines that filled the containers with milk were kept. The place was silent. No one was around.

  “Hello!” Sawbones called.

  They found a large door standing wide open.

  “That’s the cooler,” explained Sawbones, who walked around the place as if he had been here before. “Maybe Mr. Riker’s in there.”

  They walked into the cooler. A pale yellow bulb was on, furnishing very little light.

  “Hello?” Sawbones yelled again, a little less certain this time.

  Still no answer.

  Sawbones led the way around the dozens of cases of quart and half-gallon containers of milk. Wally felt the cool air gnawing through his clothes to get at his skin.

  He was becoming scared. The place was dark and creepy. He didn’t like it. Maybe they shouldn’t have come in here. Maybe they should leave right now. It was obvious that no one was in here.

  And then there was a loud slam! as the door shut. At the same instant the light went out, too.

  9

  Hey!”

  Again and again Sawbones and Wally yelled out. But the big door didn’t open.

  Fright took a tighter hold of Wally. His eyes were wide open, but it was like being blind. He was in complete darkness.

  And the place was silent as a graveyard.

  Wally shuddered.

  “Sawbones,” he whispered.

  “Yeah?” Sawbones croaked back.

  “Let’s walk straight ahead. When we come to the wall, we’ll turn left and follow the wall back to the front of the cooler. We can find the door that way.”

  “Okay,” whispered Sawbones.

  Very slowly they walked through the pitch darkness straight ahead. Wally held his arms extended in front of him.

  Suddenly Sawbones cried out, “Ouch!”

  Wally froze. “What’s the matter, Sawbones?”

  “Ran into a case of milk,” mumbled Sawbones sourly.

  Wally heard his feet scrape across the floor.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” replied Sawbones.

  Wally started to go straight ahead again. Soon his hands touched the cold, clammy wall. It sent shivers running through him.

  “I’ve reached the wall.” His voice quavered.

  “Me, too,” whispered Sawbones.

  They walked along the wall to the left. They reached the corner, then turned left again. Seconds later Wally felt the crack where the door adjoined the casement. About the same time he heard the clang of metal and then Sawbones crying out that he had found the door handle.

  The metal kept clanging.

  “Well, open it!” Wally cried. “What’re you waiting for?”

  “I can’t!” exclaimed Sawbones. “It won’t open!”

  He tried and tried, but the door wouldn’t open. Then Wally tried. It was a strange sort of a handle, with a large knob on the end of it. He pus
hed it down hard, but the latch didn’t budge.

  His heart began to beat like a hammer. “We’re locked in,” he said, panic taking hold of him. “We . . . we’ll freeze in here, Sawbones!”

  He looked down toward the bottom of the door. There was a faint strip of light showing underneath. He got on his knees and groped along the crack with his fingers. A narrow space was there, but not wide enough to get his fingers through.

  He stood again. It was getting colder by the minute.

  “What’re we going to do, Sawbones?” he hissed. His heart hammered in his throat.

  “I . . . I don’t know!” Sawbones answered. He pounded against the door again and again. And he yelled for his dad.

  But no one came to the door.

  Sawbones’s teeth chattered. Wally could hear them. He held his own tightly together. But he was scared. Real scared. We’re freezing! he thought. We’re freezing to death because nobody can hear us! Where is Dr. Davis? Isn’t there anyone around here?

  Suddenly — “Sawbones, I have an idea!” he shouted.

  “What?” Sawbones asked.

  “Get me a container of milk,” Wally demanded. “Somebody will know that we’re in here . . . sooner or later. I hope sooner.”

  He heard Sawbones’s shoes scrape across the floor. He heard the milk being lifted from a case. A moment later Sawbones was handing it to him.

  Wally took it, knelt down, and started to spill the milk through the crack underneath the door.

  “Hey, that’s smart, Wally,” said Sawbones. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Wally grinned. “Now let’s hope somebody will see the milk,” he said. He spilled the whole quart of it on the floor.

  Minutes passed.

  All at once a terrible thought flashed through Wally’s mind.

  “The game’s going to be starting soon, Sawbones. Maybe your dad thinks we already left to go there!”

  “That’s right!” cried Sawbones. Then he groaned hopelessly. “You know what this is, Wally? It’s my punishment for the mean things I said about Helen Lacey!”

  Wally didn’t know what to say to that. Under different circumstances, it would have been funny. But Wally didn’t feel like laughing just now.

  10

  Let’s hop up and down,” suggested Sawbones. “That’ll keep our blood circulating and keep us from freezing.”

  He started hopping as soon as he mentioned it. So did Wally.

  “We wouldn’t freeze, anyway,” Wally observed suddenly. “If the milk doesn’t freeze, how can we freeze? Anyway, we can’t hop all night. We’ll be dead tired.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Sawbones sighed despairingly. Wally knew that his hopes of being rescued tonight from this dark prison were shattered.

  And then there was a sound outside of the door. A voice!

  The boys started hopping. They began banging upon the door with their fists.

  “Open up! Open up!” yelled Sawbones.

  The metal latch clicked. The door squeaked open. For a moment the light blinded the boys, but Wally could see a man standing before him. It was Mr. Riker, the owner of the dairy.

  “What in the devil’s name is this?” Mr. Riker cried. “Sawbones . . . Wally! How did you boys get in there?”

  The air inside the machine room felt like a hot oven as the boys stepped out of the cooler. Mr. Riker shut the door behind them, and they took turns blurting out what happened. Then Wally saw a cat near his feet, lapping up the milk he had spilled through the crack underneath the door.

  Mr. Riker chuckled. “It must have been me who closed the door, Sawbones. When your dad came looking for you, I thought I’d better check back here in the store. I saw that milk on the floor and Mickey lapping it up and wondered what happened. Couldn’t you open the door? It wasn’t locked.”

  The boys stared dumbfoundedly at him. “But it was! We tried it!”

  “Did you try pushing the handle in?” inquired Mr. Riker.

  Sawbones and Wally stared at each other, looked back at Mr. Riker, and shook their heads.

  “No. We just pushed it down.”

  Mr. Riker shook his head. “That was your trouble,” he said. “You have to push it in to open it.”

  He illustrated by going to the door and pushing in the handle. Sure enough, the latch opened easily.

  Wally remembered the baseball game. No matter what he had thought about it before, he just had to get to that game. Even if Coach Hutter wanted him to pitch.

  “What time is it, Mr. Riker?” he asked quickly.

  Mr. Riker looked at his wristwatch. “Twenty after six,” he answered.

  “Holy smokes! Let’s go, Sawbones!”

  They took off with Mr. Riker staring after them. They ran down to the road and then turned toward the barn just as Dr. Davis’s car pulled up next to them.

  “Hey, William! Wally! Where have you two been?”

  Nobody called Sawbones William except his mother and father.

  “Come on, get in here!” he ordered before they had a chance to answer.

  The boys piled into the car. Dr. Davis stomped on the accelerator, and the car shot forward. The boys explained where they’d been and what had happened.

  Dr. Davis laughed. “No wonder I couldn’t find you! I’ll take you boys home. Get into your uniforms as fast as you can, and I’ll drive you to the ball field.”

  By the time Dr. Davis arrived at the field with the boys, the game was in the top of the fourth inning. Wally and Sawbones approached Coach Hutter nervously. He gave them a chilled look.

  “Sorry we’re late, Coach,” Wally said. “We were locked in a cooler.”

  “You . . . what?”

  Wally wet his lips. “We were locked in a cooler. Me and Sawbones. In Mr. Riker’s milk cooler.”

  “That’s right, Luke.” Dr. Davis had come up behind the boys. He went on to explain what had happened.

  Coach Hutter laughed. “That was quite an experience! Okay, Wally, you and Sawbones play some catch. I want you to pitch the next inning.”

  From the scoreboard in left field, Wally saw that the score was 5–2 in favor of the Blue Raiders. The Blue Raiders were batting. On the mound for the Pacers was Terry Towns.

  Wally got a ball and walked to the bull pen with Sawbones. Sawbones took the team’s extra catcher’s mitt with him. After a few warm-up pitches, Wally began putting steam on the ball.

  The Blue Raiders got out, and the Pacers came to bat. Wizard McGuire, the husky southpaw pitching for the Raiders, mowed down the Pacers with eight pitched balls and walked off the field with the Raiders’ fans giving him a big hand.

  Coach Hutter had Wally replace Terry on the mound and Sawbones replace Alan Pierce in left field. Wally worked hard to make his pitches good. They were too good. The Blue Raiders knocked out two singles and scored a run before the Pacers could stop them.

  Coach Hutter tried to bolster Wally’s confidence just before he went back up on the mound in the top of the sixth inning. It didn’t do any good. The Blue Raiders knocked across another run. The Pacers failed to score during their turn at bat, and the game went to the Raiders, 7–2.

  Coach Hutter was really disgusted. You could tell that by the dark look on his face and the dark blue of his eyes. Wally wasn’t quite certain whether the coach was disgusted because they had lost the game or because he hadn’t pitched a strong game. Wally hoped it was because they had lost.

  Wally and Sawbones looked around for Dr. Davis, expecting to ride home with him. But he wasn’t there.

  Cab Lacey told the boys that Dr. Davis had left just before the game had ended. He had to attend a meeting of the Board of Education, of which he was a member, so Mr. Lacey had offered to give Sawbones and Wally a ride home.

  They got out of the car in front of Wally’s house. Sawbones thanked Mr. Lacey and started to walk the rest of the way home. He lived only five houses away from Wally.

  As Mr. Lacey began to drive away, a voice shouted from the backyard of
Wally’s house. “Cab!”

  Mr. Lacey stopped the car. Wally saw that it was a woman. A stranger. She was sitting on one of the lawn chairs.

  He walked through the gate and saw Sharon doing her tumbling act. That sister of his. Boy! She wasn’t shy to perform for anyone.

  And then he saw another girl twirl through the air in a backward somersault, then do a cartwheel — doing practically the same things Sharon was doing. She was wearing a red leotard and red tights. She was — at least, she looked like — a stranger, too.

  Suddenly she stopped spinning, landed on her feet, turned to him, and smiled. She didn’t say a thing to him, because she couldn’t.

  She was Cab Lacey’s daughter.

  11

  Wally, this is Mrs. Lacey,” Wally’s mom said. “And this is her daughter, Helen.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Lacey,” Wally said. Then he flushed a little as he looked at Helen.

  “You’ve met her before,” said Mrs. Lacey, smiling. “She told me.”

  Wally swallowed. “Yes,” he said, remembering the truck incident. He tipped his head toward the girl. “Hello, Helen.”

  She nodded, too, and lifted a hand in a wave.

  “She’s good at reading lips,” said Mrs. Lacey proudly.

  Wally noticed that his dad was sitting on a lawn chair, smiling. Mr. Morris wanted to know how the game turned out, and Wally told him.

  “Wish I could’ve seen it,” said Wally’s dad. “But I had a hectic day and just got home.”

  Another girl was there, too: Jeannie Hutter, the coach’s daughter. She was younger than either Sharon or Helen, but that didn’t stop her from going to bigger girls’ houses. She liked to make friends with everybody.

  Wally’s mom was sitting on a lawn chair beside his dad. “Bring out a chair for Mr. Lacey, Wally,” she said. “Did you miss much of the game?”

  “Four innings of it!” he shouted over his shoulder as he ran up the porch steps.

  He brought out a chair for Mr. Lacey, then sat on the porch steps. The girls were performing an act again. They bent over backwards and touched the lawn with their noses, then stood on their hands with their bodies straight in the air, as motionless as if they were statues.