The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco

by Janice Repka

  Phillip opened the bag and breathed in the memories. He picked off a piece of the pink fluff and tasted it. It melted on his tongue.

  “Veola filled me in on how all this lawsuit stuff got started,” said Leo.

  “Coach says I’m insane for trying to stop dodgeball.”

  “If I thought you were crazy,” said Leo, “I would have sent you to clown school.” He hit a button on his neck strap and his bow tie spun. “Oops, what time is it?” Leo checked the clock. “I’ve got to call your mom and let her know what’s going on.” He rushed for the door. “Bump a nose,” he called on his way out.

  Phillip wished his dad had stayed longer. He began thinking about how much he missed his mom. He really did love his parents. No matter how old you get, he thought, there are times when you could use a hug from your mom or dad. This was one of those times.

  The ticking of the wall clock was the only sound in the room. It was nearly 1:15 already. They would be back soon, and he still hadn’t figured out how to get the settlement he wanted.

  Phillip had read about old-fashioned ways used to determine who won a court case. Using the “trial by morsel” method, the accused would be forced to swallow a chunk of cheese. If it got stuck in his throat and he died, he lost. When Phillip first read about this, he found it barbaric. But even choking on mold now seemed more pleasant than facing off with Mr. Dinkle again.

  Phillip wandered over to a large window and looked down. The courtroom was on the second floor, but there were no obstructions and he had a clear view to the street below. A news crew was set up off to the side of the courthouse steps, probably waiting to talk to the parties as they came back from lunch recess. The kids from his school were sitting on the steps, still finishing their brown-bag lunches. Judge Monn was talking to one of Phillip’s teachers.

  A telephone booth was on the sidewalk across from the courthouse. Phillip could see a brightly clothed person inside. He figured it was probably his dad calling his mom.

  Mr. Dinkle and Mr. Nerp were walking past the phone booth, with Coach, B.B., and Mr. Dinkle’s assistants a few yards behind them. Vice-principal Race was there, too. The news anchor and cameraman sped over to them. Mr. Dinkle appeared to be giving a speech. He had one arm around Mr. Nerp’s shoulder and the other around Mr. Race’s shoulder. He wore a confident smile. As he watched them, it occurred to Phillip that they had probably never been hit by dodgeballs in their lives. He pictured the men as young boys out in the woods hunting bunnies with double-barreled guns.

  “Phillip, are you still here?” Sam’s voice brought Phillip back to reality.

  “I’m over at the window.”

  “Don’t jump,” Sam joked. Phillip turned around and rolled his eyes. He swatted at what sounded like a nearby fly.

  “What is that?” Sam asked.

  “What is what?”

  “That sound,” said Sam. Phillip swatted again at the buzzing. Then he realized there was no fly.

  “It sounds like an airplane,” said Sam. “But there’s something more to it.” Phillip pressed his face against the window and looked as high up as he could. He saw a small cargo plane overhead. It was flying low, like it had recently taken off. The airplane’s cargo door was flapping in the wind.

  “It’s a plane,” said Phillip. “But it looks like something is falling out of it.” He strained to see what it was. It looked like bits of confetti. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of pieces of…

  “What is it?” asked Sam.

  “It looks like…dodgeballs.”

  “Dodgeballs? Falling out of an airplane? Are you serious?”

  Phillip looked down at the crowd of people in front of the courthouse. “They’re gonna get creamed,” he yelled. “I’ve got to warn them.” He tried frantically to open the window. “It’s stuck tight.”

  “I’ll get the window,” said Sam as he felt for the wall. “You get down there and get those people out of the way.”

  Phillip had never felt his feet fly before. They seemed to take off before his brain even had time to send the message. He took the steps three at a time, bounding like a hurdle racer, then zipped through the corridor. This was impossible. It couldn’t be happening. Dodgeballs don’t fall out of the sky. As he pushed through the heavy glass doors, he could hear Sam’s deep voice thunder through the open window.

  “Look out belooooowwwwwww!”

  A small girl pointed skyward as the rubber cannonballs plummeted toward the earth. Phillip cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Run for your lives!” he shouted, but his words were swallowed by the sounds of screaming men, women, and children already bolting for cover.

  Soda cans, backpacks, and briefcases dropped like sweat. Panicked bodies sprinted up the courthouse steps to the safety of a canopy leading to the entry doors. The rush of terrified schoolchildren nearly knocked Phillip over. It was all he could do to keep from being pushed back into the courthouse by the fleeing crowd.

  Like the first few kernels in a bag of microwave popcorn, balls began to explode against the streets and buildings. Below the steps, the television cameraman continued to film. A dodgeball rewarded him for his arrogance with a wham in the derriere that sent him and his camera flying in different directions. The ball ricocheted off a mailbox and returned. It hit the camera dead center, as if aiming, and destroyed the evidence of its bad behavior.

  Judge Monn, who was close to the top of the steps, began running toward the injured cameraman. A screamer nearly got her, then another, forcing her to flee back up the steps and dive for the relative safety of the canopy. Phillip fought his way through the current of rushing children. He caught a glimpse of B.B., trapped in an open area. She and Coach, along with Mr. Terry and Ms. Jones, had stopped to help the fallen cameraman. There was nowhere for them to go and no time to get there.

  Suddenly, the door to the phone booth flew open, and Leo jumped out. Phillip wanted to yell for him to stay inside, but deafening thuds and crashes would have made it futile.

  Mr. Dinkle had somehow made it past the airborne land mines and across the street. He was fleeing up the steps, holding his arm. Mr. Nerp was close behind. As Mr. Dinkle got near the top, a ball slammed into his left leg. His wounded howl rose above the chaos. Judge Monn ran out and grabbed him by his good arm and began pulling him to safety. Phillip helped her pull. Mr. Dinkle slid up the last of the steps on his belly.

  It was hard to see through the rain of dodgeballs. The merciless spheres were hitting the ground and ricocheting off buildings from every conceivable angle. Phillip ducked as a ball sailed straight for him. With a flagrant lack of judicial decorum, the shameless ball creamed Judge Monn in the face. She dropped to the ground.

  Aunt Veola and another security guard appeared with a first-aid kit and helped Judge Monn sit up. With gloved hands, Aunt Veola pulled out some thick gauze and pressed it against the judge’s head.

  “Help me!” Mr. Nerp sobbed as he crawled up the steps. Aunt Veola lifted Judge Monn’s hand to make her hold the gauze to her head.

  “Hold this here,” she instructed the judge. She and the other guard raced to help Mr. Nerp.

  Judge Monn began to teeter backward. Her pupils rolled behind her eyelids. Phillip slipped his lap under her head just as it was about to meet the concrete and applied pressure to her wound. As he strained to see if B.B. had made it to safety, he witnessed something amazing.

  His dad, darting between balls as only a well-trained circus clown can, was helping a stunned Mr. Race into the safety of the phone booth. In a flash of bright-colored clothing, Leo ran over to Coach, who had the cameraman slung over his broad shoulder, and pushed them into the booth, too. One by one, he plucked the remaining people from danger—B.B., Mr. Terry, Ms. Jones—and squashed them into the burgeoning booth. Then he expertly pressed himself into the already overstuffed space and, using all of the rushing adrenaline inside him, yanked the door shut. Completely shut.

  The balls were coming down with full force now, going
every which way, like elbow macaroni boiling in a pot on the stove. Phillip leaned his body over the judge to give her as much cover as possible and repeated a prayer that Bartholomew the Giant had taught him. Judge Monn, still only semiconscious, began mumbling along.

  When the roar of impacting balls finally subsided, Phillip looked up. The glass was covered with spiderweb cracks, but the phone booth was still standing. Slowly, the door cracked open and seven dazed occupants spilled out.

  The judge moaned.

  “What happened?” she asked Phillip.

  “He did it,” said Phillip proudly. “After all these years. My dad stuffed more than six clowns into a telephone booth.”

  Victor the Voracious Fire-eater tried three times to teach Phillip’s dad how to swallow fire. The first time, Leo burned his tongue. The second time, Leo got frostbite on his tongue from the ice he used to prevent a burn. The third time, Leo got a severe stomachache from accidentally swallowing the bandage he had secured around his tongue to prevent burning and freezing. Nonetheless, as Phillip looked around at the injured lawyers in Judge Monn’s office the next morning, he wondered if fire-eating might be safer than lawyering.

  Judge Monn’s chambers looked like a hospital ward. Her eyes were swollen, and she had a patch on her head covering six stitches. Mr. Dinkle had his left leg in a cast and right arm in a sling. Coach had a bandage on his nose, which had been smashed against the phone booth. Ms. Jones, Mr. Nerp, Mr. Terry, and B.B. appeared to have sustained no physical injury, although Ms. Jones’s skin seemed two shades lighter than it had been the day before.

  Mr. Race, who was still being treated for shock at Hardingtown Memorial Hospital, was not in attendance.

  “Ouch! That must have really hurt,” Phillip said when he saw Judge Monn.

  “Darn right, young man,” she said, her voice shaking, “and I assure you, it still does.”

  “But not as much as the class-action lawsuit that I’m bringing against the Hardingtown Airport for dropping that load is going to hurt the people responsible for this disaster,” said Mr. Dinkle. “I’m assuming Your Honor will want to sue the airport, too?”

  “You don’t get it, do you, Mr. Dinkle?” Judge Monn asked. His expression confirmed her suspicion.

  “I believe things happen for a reason,” Judge Monn said. “Some higher power made that shipment of dodgeballs from the factory fall out of the airplane cargo hold at that exact moment in time. He, or She, was trying to tell us something. I intend to listen.”

  Mr. Dinkle stared at her as if she had lost her mind.

  “Those dodgeballs didn’t just knock my socks off,” she continued. “They knocked some sense into me. Mr. Stanislaw, you and I may have gotten off on the wrong foot. But, given recent events, I can understand why you would think a dodgeball is an unreasonably unsafe product. I am inclined to agree.”

  “But, Your Honor,” Mr. Dinkle began.

  “There are no buts,” said Judge Monn. “The only question is what to do about it.”

  Phillip put his hand up. “I have a suggestion,” he said. “Maybe if the balls were softer, they wouldn’t hurt so much.”

  “How about it, Mr. Nerp?” asked Judge Monn. “Have you considered making softer balls?”

  Mr. Nerp straightened himself to a standing position. His bloodshot eyes shifted around the room. “A vinyl-coated, foam-rubber ball would be softer, but it would cost more,” he said. “Switching to foam-ball production couldn’t happen overnight. There would be lag time while we retool.” His eyes darted to a crack in the ceiling, as if he expected it to burst open so dodgeballs could continue the prior day’s assault. “But all things considered, we might be willing to do it.”

  “Excellent,” said Judge Monn. She turned to Coach. “Until the new balls are in production, perhaps you could play something else in gym class.”

  “The kids have to practice,” said Coach.

  “What if,” asked Phillip, “you let the dodgeballers practice, but let the other kids play a different sport?”

  “I can’t supervise two sports at once,” said Coach.

  “Any other suggestions?” asked Judge Monn. She learned back in her chair and beat her fingers against her desk. B.B. raised her hand.

  “Maybe if Dad had an assistant,” said B.B., “we could have regular dodgeball and an alternative sport.”

  “Do you have someone in mind?” asked Judge Monn.

  “Yes,” she said, “Phillip.” He looked at her in astonishment.

  “I don’t know how to play any sports,” Phillip said.

  “Yes, you do,” said B.B. “You can juggle.” The group turned to Coach for his response. He adjusted the bandage on his nose.

  “Technically,” Coach admitted, “I suppose juggling is a sport.”

  “It’s settled, then,” said Judge Monn. “Phillip can teach an alternative class of juggling for kids who don’t wish to participate in dodgeball. Is everyone satisfied by the terms of the settlement?”

  Phillip removed a piece of paper from his pocket. It listed his settlement terms. “There are a couple things that are missing, Your Honor,” he said.

  Judge Monn leaned back in her chair again.

  “First,” said Phillip, “I would like the school to adopt the rules used by the National Amateur Dodgeball Association, which prohibits head shots.”

  “I can live with that,” said Coach.

  “Second,” said Phillip, “I still need to pay Aunt Veola the two hundred and forty-nine dollars for my new glasses.”

  “Who’s willing to foot the bill?” asked Judge Monn.

  “I’ll take care of it,” said Mr. Nerp.

  “No, I’ll pay for it,” said Coach. “I’m the one who forced him to play.”

  “But I’m the one who creamed him,” said B.B. “I should pay. If it’s okay for me to pay a little at a time.”

  “How about ten dollars a week?” Phillip asked.

  “I can live with that,” B.B. said.

  Phillip told the judge there was one last issue, and when they were done working out the details of it, Judge Monn picked up a tape recorder and immortalized the terms of the settlement. When she said they were adjourned, they started shaking hands and saying good-bye.

  B.B. asked Phillip if he would come over to her house sometime to teach her juggling, since she was still probably going to take dodgeball in gym class, and Coach said it would be okay. Judge Monn gave Phillip a big hug and thanked him for having such a comfortable lap.

  Mr. Nerp told Phillip he ought to consider a career in the law. Mr. Terry and Ms. Jones, and even Mr. Dinkle, agreed and said if he ever needed a recommendation to get into law school he should call their firm.

  Hardest of all was shaking hands with Sam, because trying to tell him how much he had helped made Phillip stumble over the words.

  “Don’t thank me,” said Sam. “You’re the one who did it.”

  “But you believed in me,” said Phillip. “Even when I didn’t believe in myself.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” said Sam. “Remember our deal?”

  “Anytime you need someone to share your problems with, you come see me,” Phillip said.

  “That’s right. And anytime you need me, I’ll be there for you. It all evens out in the end.”

  He extended his hand and Phillip shook it for a long time. The whole thing was terribly serious until the group wandered out into the hallway, and Phillip’s dad heard the good news.

  “Put it there, son,” Leo said. Phillip shook without thinking.

  Bzzzzz. His dad’s buzzer made Phillip’s whole hand tingle.

  They all laughed—even Phillip. Not because he thought the gag was funny. Phillip laughed because it felt good having his circus dad and his legal friends share a joke.

  The real world is like a dodgeball game, Phillip realized. A place where, as his dad said, it’s better to have your eye on the ball than a ball in your eye. Some people scramble to survive, others fight to win. If
Phillip became a lawyer when he grew up, he could help people learn to get along and play by the rules.

  At the same time, Phillip didn’t want to give up his circus life entirely. He actually missed the circus. Not the banana-cream pies. But lots of other things, like hearing the relief of a crowd when an acrobat makes it safely to a platform and watching the quiet dignity of Bartholemew the Giant when he rides on Einstein the elephant. The circus was still a part of him, and it always would be.

  He wouldn’t just become a lawyer, he would become a circus-law lawyer.

  But how would he tell his dad? After all, becoming a circus-law lawyer wasn’t exactly a regular thing to do, and he had made such a fuss about wanting to be a regular kid. Wasn’t that why his mom had sent him to live in Hardingtown to begin with?

  “Regular?” asked Leo as he and Phillip waited for Aunt Veola to bring her car around. “Is there such a thing?” Phillip expected his dad to toot his horn or spin his bow tie, but he didn’t. He was serious.

  “I know about the Dodgeball Cheerleader Fiasco,” Phillip said. “Sam told me.”

  “Did he tell you what happened after the fiasco?”

  Phillip shook his head.

  “Your mother ran away from Hardingtown that day,” said Leo. “Ran away because she felt she didn’t fit in. Really, she was trying to run away from herself, because she didn’t think she would ever fit in anywhere. I’m not sure how she got the circus ticket and ended up at the afternoon matinee in Kansas City the next week. She was still upset about what Stinky did. When one of the clowns threw a bucket of confetti on her, she got so mad she chased him around the ring.”

  “Did she catch him?” Phillip asked.

  “Almost,” said Leo. “He jumped into the tiger cage for protection. The audience thought it was part of the show. They loved it. When Matilda realized they were clapping for her, she took a bow. The Windy Van Hooten Circus signed her to a contract before the third act, and she was learning how to juggle flaming arrows the next day. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”

  Phillip felt his eyes tearing up. He was proud of his mom for having the courage to find her place in the world. Leo used his sleeve to wipe his own eyes. The greasepaint left a white streak on his costume. They stood in silence, faces to the wind.