by Phil Wohl
forehead. Hartwell simply reacted by protecting the spot between his eyes with his flat paddle. Somehow, he made enough contact with the speeding ball to not only send it back over the net but propel it with sidespin resulting from a slightly angled block. The ball started floating down the center of the table but then started to drift toward Hartwell’s right and Cal’s left, landing on the outside line on the extreme left of the table, which made it take a funny bounce away from the table.
It was Cal’s turn to leave his feet as he shuffled around his end of the table and then dove toward the spot where he thought the ball was going to land. Hartwell recognized the shift in momentum and returned to his feet while Cal made contact with a desperate backhand return. Hartwell’s experience in the game taught him that the ball would be coming over with an extreme amount of backspin, which meant that it would pull back toward Cal’s side once it landed in his side. Instead of waiting behind his side of the table, Hartwell moved to his right and rushed to the side of the table, where he almost made contact with a sliding Cal Brewster. He stopped short as the ball was about to hit the surface, only two inches from the back line, and then waited as Cal rolled several times to his right and then scrambled to get back to an area where he could play effective defense.
Hartwell noticed that Cal still wasn’t in position as the ball spun back toward him and he simply held his paddle in front of him, like he was a waiter serving a drink at a cocktail party. Cal slipped slightly as he was able to get to his feet as the ball gently touched Hartwell’s stationary paddle and headed softly over the green mesh net. If this had been a regular fight in a field in the middle of the night, Cal would have given up his body and not even thought of the consequences. But, this was in the public eye at Beach Haven Games and there were 50-or-so spectators that had gathered to watch the later stages of the incredible game. So he made a last-ditch lunge for the ball, which had just barely cleared the net, because a full-out dive would have surely destroyed the table and looked particularly barbaric. Not that Cal was adverse to the occasional bought of barbarism, but this was not the place for that.
He arrived at the ball as it bounced for the second time on his side of the net, but managed to only push it into the net. Hartwell raised his arms in victory and then the two men shook hands and embraced.
“You know I could have gotten that ball,” Cal imparted in Hartwell’s left ear.
Hartwell laughed, “I think we have to put a table in the house.”
The broke the hug and Cal smiled, “It would look perfect in the sun room!”
Hartwell nodded, “Yes it would.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Daniel bounced the basketball on the ground of the indoor court and then flipped the ball behind his back, sailing toward the backboard, calling “Off glass,” as the leather ball softly thudded off the backboard and nestled gently through the nylon net. Andrew stomped his feet as he had done repeatedly during the morning hours of their basketball competition. He then clumsily attempted to repeat his cousin’s trick, but the ball went from behind his back and bounced off the padding on the wall behind the basket.
“That’s HORSE,” Daniel stated. “What do you want to lose at next?” he asked with a cocky, yet disinterested tone.
Drew had a short fuse, even on a day when the competition was supposedly friendly.
“Enough with these silly games! I don’t want to do anything but play one-on-one the rest of the day.”
Daniel was happy to oblige as he said, “I’ll shoot for it,” walking toward the top of the foul line and then taking a shot to see who would get the ball first. The ball swished through the net and Daniel’s head was back in the game because he knew it would be a war, “My ball.”
The ball spun back to Daniel and he flipped it up in his hands by using his right foot.
“Check,” Drew said as he moved in front of Daniel, who bounced the ball to his cousin and then Andrew bounced it back to him. Game on. Drew was just like his Uncle Cal in the way they were able to take a beating, learn from it, and then come back even stronger. Daniel kept using his height advantage on Drew as he backed him down and would repeatedly shot over him, winning game after game. It wasn’t until the last game of the day that Drew finally enacted some sort of revenge for the beating he was taking.
The boys were playing games to 15, with each score accounting for a single point. If you were soft enough to call a foul then you would simply get the ball out again, and if you made a shot you would keep the ball on offense, which was affectionately called “winners out.” Unlike the ping-pong rules, the game only had to be won by a single point, so with the score tied at 14 the entire enchilada was on the line.
Drew had possession of the ball and decided to take a quick jump shot from behind the three-point line. He had clawed his way back into the game by using his speed to drive past Daniel and convert a bunch of layups. He must have been nervous about winning the game because he hoisted the quick shot, which never really had any chance of going in. Daniel turned and collected the rebound off the rim and then dribbled it back across the foul line, as the take-back rules dictated. Drew was kicking himself internally for choking and taking such a quick shot, so he slapped the floor and readied himself to play defense again. He was being quite physical with Daniel by placing his elbow in his cousin’s back and making sure his body was always between him and the basket.
Daniel readied himself for a turnaround jumper, but Drew made a quick move and stole the ball as Daniel tried to complete his last dribble. He dribbled quickly back to the edge of the foul line and as Daniel came up to guard him, he stepped back like he was going to shot and then blew past Daniel as he fell into the trap and walked toward him. Drew’s move was so fast that Daniel couldn’t even reach out to foul him on the way to the basket, as is customary on game point in an open shot situation.
The ball dropped through the hoop and Drew yelled, “Game!”
Daniel smiled and said to himself, “Yes it is.”
Garrison and Thaddeus had more fun than competition on the first day at the beach on the dunes with their buggies. After lunch they both agreed to work on their cars a bit to give them a little more oomph. A few hours later, they were really ready to race with cars that they made their own, Thad preferring to stock up with more horse power and Gary leaning more toward the side of agility and nimbleness.
The course was the entire 75-mile stretch of beach, which made the 150 miles a down and back race. Top speed of the average dune buggy was about 60 miles per hour, but Thad’s buggy could go in excess of 75 miles per hour and Gary’s car could run just under 70 miles per hour. The difference in power was evident off the start as Thad left Gary in the dust, but Gary stayed within striking distance as his car was much better at negotiating the many large dunes in their paths. These dunes were like giant hills of sand, which made it difficult for the cars to maneuver and then recover. Gary structured his car to handle these situations better and Thad was dominant on more level ground.
By the half-way point, Thad had stretched out his lead to at least ten buggy lengths. That was, until he reached the pylon and had to turn around for the second leg going home. Thad’s buggy slid and slipped as he tried to cut the wide turn and Gary then made up the stagger by executing the extremely sharp curve in a tighter turning radius. Of course his lead was short-lived once Thad righted his buggy and got back on the straight path. Gary challenged him at times, taking to the higher ground and closing the gap to three buggy lengths with less than a half-mile to go in the race.
Gary made a key decision at that point to drive down and dune to build up speed and then climb back up another dune and go airborne. He did that just that with a ¼-mile remaining, so the element of surprise – Gary’s buggy floated above Thad’s and crossing the finish line – would be at its optimum strength. Everything was working perfectly for Gary as he hit the dune and took the sky, some 20 feet above the lower beach level.
In fact, Thad never saw him coming but he did see him tilt over to the side and lose control of his vehicle, which sent the Gary’s buggy spinning toward the finish line as Thad put the pedal to the medal. Gary’s buggy finally stopped rolling about three feet from the line, enabling Thad to zoom across the line and win the day’s events.
Thad came back around after he spun out in a victory buggy dance near the shore. He stopped right next to Gary, who had now regained his non-spinning mind but was obviously thrilled, yet happily disappointed with the finish.
“Are you all right, Gary?” Thad asked.
Gary smiled, “Just one more spin and I would have had you!”
TWENTY-FIVE
While Sharon and Agent Blake were holding their breath under water, Maggie was at the Beach Haven Shelter serving meals and Kayla took the streets to hand out her own sandwiches and cook vegan hamburgers on a portable grill down the block from the shelter. Belinda was busy knitting sweaters and Emily was needle-deep in scarfa-palooza. Maxwell and Aaron were sitting in the main room of the house all day playing pong and asking for samples of Nicole and Carla’s chili, Aaron predictably liking Carla’s recipe and Max preferring his mother’s
