"He didn't say anything until we got to the park," Dad said. "Then he started talking, but he could only sorta whisper. I guess 'cause he hasn't used his voice in so long."
Dad reached out and gave Maggie's hair a gentle tweak. "Maggie-o, when we got back home, before he left, I asked him—I said I wanted to tell you everything and I hoped he wouldn't mind. He didn't say yes—he was done talking by then—but he didn't say no, either. So I'm telling you, 'cause I think ... I think you got a right to know."
Maggie's heartbeat slowed a little. She couldn't speak, but managed a nod.
"What happened to Jim, it was bad," Dad said. "I mean, bad things always happen in a war, that's just the way it is. But I guess there's some things you can't never expect."
Dad looked down for a moment. "You remember about the battle, right?" he said.
Maggie nodded.
"Well, it was a tough one. And it was even worse because a report had come in from Recon that there were Commie spies around somewhere."
"Recon?" Maggie said.
"Reconnaissance," Dad said. "Those are the guys who go out ahead of everyone else and scout things and send back reports. Anyway, the reports said that the spies were dressed like civilians. To try to sorta blend in with the villagers.
"So during the battle Jim is going back and forth from camp to the front, bringing back soldiers who are hurt. Sometimes bodies too. And the fighting keeps going on, and he works through a day and a night without a break, and half the next day too. And on his last trips to the front, he's not bringing back soldiers anymore."
Dad stopped. Maggie didn't speak. She didn't blink or breathe, either.
"Civilians. People from the village, women, old men, kids." Dad turned toward her. "And while Jim was working on them, bringing them back, he talked to some of them, the ones who weren't hurt too bad, and it was clear that it was—that they had got hit by friendly fire."
He answered before she could ask. "Friendly fire—that's when you get hit by your own side."
Maggie gasped. "By your own side? How could that happen?"
He shook his head. "I guess things get pretty crazy in a battle like that. It might be a unit's supposed to be in one place, but somehow things get confused and they end up somewheres else, and then they get fired at because everyone thinks they're the Reds.
"What happened where Jim was ... well, maybe nobody will ever really know. But these villagers, they'd been hurt by American weapons, he could tell that for sure. And some of them said it was on purpose. That it wasn't a mistake."
"No," Maggie said immediately. "It had to be a mistake." Why would soldiers shoot at people who were friendly to them—people whose village they were trying to protect?
"It was because of them spies," Dad said. "There was a bunch of villagers who took cover under a railroad bridge. A whole big crowd of them, all huddled together. The soldiers thought the spies were hiding in the crowd, but they couldn't tell who they were. So they just—"
Dad stopped and swallowed before he went on. "They shot at everybody. That's what Jim heard, but nobody knew for sure what really happened. And the worst of it was, there was this kid—"
Dread clogged Maggie's throat. "Oh, no," she choked out.
"Their tent boy." Dad was almost whispering now, the softest Maggie had ever heard him speak. "He was hurt real bad, and Jim and the medic worked on him out in the field, and they brought him back, but there wasn't nothing anyone could do...."
Maggie felt as though the blood had stopped running through her body, like she might never be able to move again.
Dad cleared his throat. "Jim said when the fighting first got started, he sent the kid home. Told him to go back to the village, thought he would be safer there. So he blames himself, see—he thinks that if he hadn't sent the boy home, then he wouldn't have ended up under the bridge, and maybe..."
The words trailed off. It was quiet for a long time.
Maggie didn't know if he was finished talking, but she couldn't listen anymore. She stood up slowly. Her legs and arms felt like they each weighed a thousand pounds.
Dad took the leash from her and whistled for Charky. They took him to the firehouse and left him. Dad went in to hang up the leash while Maggie waited well away from the bay doors so she wouldn't have to talk to the guys.
She didn't say a word during the entire walk home.
But at the front door, she stopped and put her hand on her father's arm.
"His name was Jay," she whispered.
Maggie sat on her bed, holding the letter Jay had written to her.
The handwriting a little crooked and unsure, like a first grader's. And the whole thing was only eight words long.
But it was enough to make her feel as if she had known him. It was a piece of paper that Jay himself had touched, words that he had written with his own hand and sent especially to her.
She thought about him huddled under that railroad bridge, where everyone would have been scared, even the grownups, and then the soldiers showing up, and Jay must have thought they'd be safe now, the soldiers would protect them.... And then the gunfire starting, and everything going crazy, people screaming.... Jay terrified, until the moment he got shot himself—
She clutched the letter tightly. He passed out right away—he never felt a thing. That had to be how it happened. Anything else was too awful to imagine.
She thought about Jim too—what it had been like for him. To get to the scene and see all those people hurt—ordinary people, not armed, not soldiers—and start working on them and trying to save them even though he was already beyond exhaustion ... and then to find Jay, unconscious and bleeding, and remember what had happened earlier—that it was he himself who had sent Jay home, sent him right into terrible danger.... Jim, his face stained with sweat and soot and blood, holding Jay's pale limp body...
She closed her eyes to shut out that last image. When she opened them again, she found herself staring at the shelf above her bureau. Her war notebook was there, and she thought of the maps she had drawn.
"The line," she whispered.
The line across Korea that showed how much territory each side had.
Dad hadn't said exactly when the battle happened. But it was sometime in the summer of 1952 for sure, because that was when Jim had stopped writing to her. And she knew from her war notebook that the line hadn't changed since June 1951.
Maggie felt like she wanted to scream at somebody, beat them with her fists, kick them. But who? Whose fault was it? The government people? Why hadn't they just stopped the war, stopped the fighting, as soon as they saw that the line wasn't moving?
If we were getting more territory—if we were winning—if we were beating the Commies, then maybe—maybe there would be at least a chance to feel like it was worth it. Jay dying and Jim getting so sick—instead, it was for nothing.
Maggie made the sign of the cross against her thumb. Sometimes that helped make her feel a little calmer. This time, though, it made her think about how she hadn't begun praying for Jim until long after the battle, after he had been back in the U.S. for a good while.
At least I did pray for him. But I didn't pray for Jay at all.
Never. Not once.
Did it matter? Would it have made a difference? If she had prayed for him, would that have stopped the spies, the soldiers, the shooting?
She crossed her arms over her stomach, hugging herself hard.
No. Only little kids think like that. It wouldn't have made any difference. Just like scoring the games doesn't help the Dodgers.
Nothing I do changes anything.
Maggie wept.
***
The next day she learned that Dad had called Carol, only to find out that Jim had gone back to not talking.
The phone rang. It was Treecie.
"Can I come over?" she said. "I wanna talk about our birthdays."
Last year Maggie and Treecie had celebrated their birthdays together. They were getting too old for the li
ttle-kid kind of party; instead, their mothers had taken them downtown for lunch and shopping. Treecie probably wanted to do the same kind of thing again, only different.
"I guess so," Maggie said.
"What's wrong?" Treecie said immediately. "Never mind. I'm coming over, you can tell me when I get there."
Within a few minutes, Maggie heard Treecie's knock at the front door. Treecie came in and greeted Maggie's mom cheerily, filling up the place with her presence. Maggie had to smile a little. Treecie was like Dad that way; you always knew when either of them was around.
She came up to Maggie's room and sat on the bed next to her.
"Oh Maggie, I'm so sorry," Treecie said after Maggie told her about Jim and Jay-Hey. "That's awful, just awful."
Maggie blinked several times, hard. There wasn't any way to stop tears from filling your eyes once they had decided to do it. You could blink them away, but only after they were already there.
She swallowed before she spoke. "Treece, I feel so bad," she said. "I really, really wanted to help, but nothing I did—"
"That's not true," Treecie said. "You wrote to Jim all the time and you could tell how much he liked getting your letters 'cause he wrote back every time up until—well, as long as he could. And you know how much Jay liked those cards—he even learned to write English so he could thank you for them!"
"I know. But it didn't make any difference in the end."
Treecie thought for a moment, then looked Maggie right in the eye. "How do you know?"
"How do I know what?"
"How do you know it didn't make a difference?"
A little nettled now, Maggie sat up straighter. "What I mean is, this terrible thing happened, and there wasn't any way for me to stop it, and I can't even help Jim feel better about it, and nothing you say is gonna change that."
"And what I mean is, you don't know what's going to happen next," Treecie said, nettled right back at her. "Jim might still get better—I mean, he probably will get better, he talked to your dad, didn't he? I bet it was because he saw your dad after the game, and that was all your idea, to get everyone together for a game. So it isn't over yet, and you shouldn't talk like it is."
Maggie shook her head and stared down at the bedspread. "It's over for Jay," she whispered.
That shut Treecie up. Neither of them said anything for a while.
"Well," Treecie said at last, and her voice was quieter, "what are you gonna do now?"
Maggie looked at her. "I'll be fine, I just have to give it some time," she said—in a sarcastic pretend-grownup voice.
"Why do they always say that?" Treecie said, energetic again. "You don't care how you're going to feel later, you care about how you feel now, and they act like that doesn't matter."
She reached out and gave Maggie several exaggerated pats on the head. "'You're young, you'll get over it.'"
Maggie wagged her finger. "'Run along and play now.'"
Treecie stood and put her hands on her hips. "'Never mind, leave that to the grownups.'"
Maggie again: "'Forget it—you'll understand when you're older.'"
Treecie flung herself back down on the bed and spoke in her regular voice. "We understand plenty. And just because we don't understand everything doesn't mean we should forget. You won't ever forget Jay, even if you do feel a little better someday."
Then she looked at the wall and frowned. "Hey, what happened to his picture?"
Maggie bit her lip. "I put it away. To—to keep it safe."
Treecie snapped her fingers. "Hey, I know what," she said. She jumped up. "I'll be right back."
It was close to an hour before Treecie returned. She handed Maggie a brown paper bag.
"It's not your birthday present," Treecie said. "That's why I didn't wrap it. It's just a ... present-present."
Maggie reached into the bag and pulled out a picture frame.
"It'll keep Jay's picture from getting torn or anything," Treecie said. "Where is it?"
"It's around here somewhere," Maggie mumbled. "I'll find it later."
Treecie started to say something, then stopped and studied Maggie's face. "Okay," she said.
Maggie opened her bureau drawer to put the frame away. "Thanks, Treece," she said. "It's perfect. Really."
She didn't say what she was thinking: that Treecie must have spent some of her precious camera money on this gift. Maggie found herself blinking hard again as she stroked the smooth wood of the frame for a moment before she closed the drawer.
PROOF
Maggie had just reached home after school when she heard loud voices down the street. It was Joey-Mick and his friend Davey.
"You're nuts!" Davey was yelling. "It was ONE-and-oh, not oh-and-one."
"Just you wait," Joey-Mick yelled back. "I'M tellin' ya—" He caught sight of her. "There she is—hey, Mags, wait up!"
Both boys ran the rest of the way, Joey-Mick's long arms and legs pumping, all elbows and knees. He beat Davey to the stoop by three steps.
"Maggie—remember the Thomson home run—" he panted.
Davey broke in. "I say the first pitch was a ball—"
"—and I say it was a strike. Branca had him oh-and-one—"
Maggie looked at Joey-Mick and then at Davey. "It was..." she paused dramatically. Neither of the boys moved, but she felt like they were both sort of leaning toward her.
"It was a strike," she declared. "And I can prove it, too!"
"I'll get it, I'm faster," Joey-Mick said, already in the house.
"In my closet!" Maggie yelled. "At the bottom!"
A short silence. Then Davey shook his head. "What'd you do, save an old newspaper or somethin'?"
Before she could answer, Joey-Mick burst out onto the stoop and waved the scorebook at Davey.
Maggie held out her hand. "I'll find it," she said.
"No, lemme do it." Joey-Mick began paging through the book. "Look—here it is, see that little backwards'S? That's the pitch count, and backwards means strike looking. If it was a swing, she woulda made a regular'S. Oh-and-one, that's what the count was, right there in black-and-white!"
Davey took the book and studied it for a moment.
"See?" Joey-Mick said again. "You owe me an egg cream!"
"Yeah, yeah," Davey muttered ungraciously. A pause. "How come you don't got the home run written down?"
It was true. Maggie remembered how she hadn't been able to fill in the square that day. "Didn't feel like writing it in," she said. "Stupid Thomson."
"Stupid Thomson," Davey echoed, shaking his head in disgust. He turned a few more pages. "Hey, look at this one, 13–1, over the Reds." He chortled. "Look at all those runs."
Then he looked up at Maggie and raised his eyebrows. "Pretty neat, Maggie-o."
"Thanks," she said. She could feel her cheeks getting pink.
"I gotta go," Davey said. "See you after supper, maybe."
Joey-Mick didn't even say goodbye; he was busy studying the scorebook. After a few moments he glanced up.
"Know what?" he said, waving the book at her. "This book makes you probably the biggest Bums' fan in the neighborhood. And around here that's sayin' somethin'."
For the first time in weeks, Maggie felt a little warmth inside her chest.
"It's like a—a country or somethin'," Joey-Mick went on. "Baseball, I mean. A place where everybody's crazy about the same thing. But you can't play 'cause you're a girl, so you found another way to—to live there, and talk baseball and everything. I mean, you know more about baseball than most of the guys I know!"
Maggie's eyes widened. That was a pretty long speech for Joey-Mick, and his voice hadn't cracked the whole time, not once. If Treecie had been there, she would have said what's the big deal, of course girls could learn about baseball same as boys. But Maggie knew that he meant it as a compliment. She tried to cover her surprise with a shrug, and tilted her head in thanks.
Then she sighed. "I don't know," she said slowly. "I was thinking that ... that I'm done kee
ping score. I'm not gonna do it anymore."
There. She had said the words out loud, and it felt even worse than thinking about it.
"Why not?"
"Well..." She looked up at him and then away. "This is going to sound really stupid, but when I was keeping score, it felt—I felt sort of like I was helping. I mean, I know I wasn't really helping, but..." She stopped.
Joey-Mick nodded and grinned. "One time I wore the same shirt ten days in a row 'cause they were on a winning streak."
"I remember that!" Maggie exclaimed. "Mom was really mad that you wouldn't let her wash it."
Then she lowered her head. "But none of that stuff helps, not really," she said. "So I figure it's just a big waste of time."
Joey-Mick handed her back the scorebook. "With some things, you don't know for sure."
She frowned. Hadn't Treecie said almost the same thing? "Don't know what?"
"Whether it's a waste of time or not." He shrugged. "All that time I spent playing baseball? And it turns out I'm way better at basketball." He cocked his head a little. "I'm gonna be first-string this season. Varsity. At guard. Coach told me today"
Varsity? Joey-Mick was only a sophomore. In baseball last season, he hadn't even been a starter on the freshman team.
Maggie had been to some of his basketball games. He was good, all right, but she didn't know much about basketball, so she hadn't realized how good.
"Really? Wow. Gosh, that's pretty neat, Joey- Mick."
"Yeah," he said. "So you could say all that baseball practice was a waste of time. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe it taught me stuff that'll help me in basketball, too. I don't mean skills, but you know—discipline, focus, stuff like that."
Then he grinned. "Know what they started callin' me? 'Not-So-Teeny Joe.' But that was too long, so they tried 'Not-So Joe,' but that didn't make any sense, and then one of the guys said I was a maniac on the court, so now they're callin' me 'Nutso Joe'."
"Nutso Joe.... Maybe that'll get shortened again, and you'll be plain old Nuts."
Joey-Mick made a fist and pretend-jabbed it at her. "You call me Nuts, I'll call you a taxi," he said.
Keeping Score Page 13
