Picking up the cup, Bucky savored the carbonated drink, swirling the tiny slivers of ice in his mouth contentedly. The fast-food restaurant was only half-filled. Through the windows next to their booth Bucky gazed idly at the afternoon mall shoppers ambling past.
Popping an onion ring into his mouth, Dan reached for a napkin. “Well, are you ready to switch from hoops to home runs in one week?”
The younger boy groaned. “Boy, there ain’t much time between seasons, is there?”
“Hey, that’s the price us talented multi-sport stars gotta pay.” Dan grinned, thinking about the previous week’s championship triumph over the Tornadoes. It was a pleasant memory.
“Mmmmm.” Bucky bulged his eyes as three girls tripped past their booth. “My heart.”
“They go to Hampton?” Dan asked, lowering his voice.
“I dunno. I think I’d have remembered any one of them.”
Dan kicked him under the table. “How ‘bout that real tall blonde girl? What’s her name? Deirdre? When are you finally gonna get something going there?”
Bucky stuck an accusatory finger in his friend’s face. “I was just about to make my move last month when you interrupted me. Remember? In the library?”
“Huh?”
Bucky took one of Dan’s onion rings and chomped down on it. “Just gettin’ ready to ask her out when you walked up to tell me about that playoff schedule. Had her all softened up and everything.”
“Oh, that.” Dan frowned. “That was a long time ago. You can’t blame me if you haven’t gotten your nerve up again since then.”
“Too busy signing autographs.” Bucky laughed as he took another swallow of his drink. Suddenly he set it down, sloshing it all over Dan. “Sam!”
“Hey!” Dan started to complain, then turned to see the tall Vietnamese student approaching. “How’s it goin’, Sam?”
The older boy surveyed them. “OK.” He elaborately inspected Dan’s damp shirt. “You know, this place does provide bibs for people who need them.”
Dan laughed. “I just happened to mention that blonde junior that Stone’s in love with, and he got so excited he spilled his drink all over me.”
“Sounds like Bucky.” Sam eased into the booth next to his friend and swiped an onion ring. “Dear Deirdre . . . still no progress to report?”
“Hey, two against one,” Bucky protested. “Why don’t you boys let me pursue her at my own speed?”
“Ah, yes.” Sam turned to Dan. “This is the same guy who practically found a wife for me last summer, just so he could get a free ride to the lake.”
“I don’t see you complaining much,” Bucky interjected. “Denise hasn’t been too hard to have around, has she?”
“Yeah.” Dan reached down and scratched aimlessly at his ankle. “You two boys have really hogged the babes this last year. I’d be happy to settle for your castoffs when you’re tired of them. ‘Specially that one you sent off to Washington.”
Bucky’s face sobered at the mention of Lisa. “Yeah, she wasn’t too bad.” He stared off into space, remembering.
“What are you guys doin’ here anyway?” Sam tried to bring the conversation back to reality.
“Oh, I needed new baseball cleats.” Dan hefted a large package on the bench next to him, then winced. “$95. Ouch!”
“Litton and Stone to the rescue again, huh?”
Bucky looked at Dan. “Gonna try, anyway.” He drained his cup and set it down against the salt shaker.
“Poor Brayshaw hasn’t got anywhere else to go,” Sam said with a straight face. He reached and slipped a second onion ring out of Dan’s bag.
The next day at school Bucky crossed the quadrangle looking for the elusive blonde. “She must be out sick,” he muttered to himself as he reached the outer boundary of the lunch area without spotting her.
Then suddenly his heartbeat quickened. Coming out of the science complex, knapsack in her hand . . . there she was. Tossing a remark over her shoulder at someone still inside the building, she wandered over to the nearest table and sat down alone.
Trying to stop the flustered blush he knew was creeping into his cheeks, Bucky walked over to Deirdre. “How’s it goin’?”
Startled but still composed, she looked up, “Well, Mr. Stone.” That voice! The same offbeat twinkle flashed in her eyes. “I thought you had left our little campus to be inducted into the Hall of Fame or something.”
He slipped into the seat across from her. “Sorry I haven’t found you since we talked in the library,” he said, his voice almost even. “Did you come to the finals?”
She nodded, her mouth full of a bite of her pastry. “Yes, I did,” she responded at last. “Very gratifying performance, Mr. Stone.”
He managed a grin as his heartbeat returned to normal. “What’s this ‘Mr. Stone’ business?”
Her deep laugh. “Oh, it’s nothing, really.” She paused. “Helps to maintain that little touch of formal distance.” Again she flashed that mysterious smile. “‘Till I decide I don’t want any formal distance anymore.”
“Oh, really?” He leaned forward. “Tell me more about that.”
“You tell me something first.” Deirdre paused, looking him over. “Last month in the library. You said you wanted to ask me something. Now a month later I still haven’t heard the question. Mr. Stone, pray, what would you like to know? A geometry answer, perhaps? Chem formulas?”
He almost laughed. “Well, let’s see,” he mused, trying to match her. “I’m so dazzled by your presence I can hardly remember. Something about Saturday night. The pleasure of your company. Yes, I think it might have been something along those lines.” He looked directly at her.
She nodded slowly. “Uh huh. I thought maybe it might be like that.”
“Well?”
“Oh, is the same offer still on?” She cocked her head to one side.
He nodded. “You bet.”
She dabbed delicately at her mouth with a paper napkin. “May I inquire about the details of our evening together?”
His mind a blank, he stared at her. “I . . .” He shook his head, forcing an embarrassed laugh. “You’re not gonna believe this. I have no idea. I just kinda walked over and . . . I don’t know. What would you like to do?”
She rolled her eyes upward, then reached out and grasped his wrist. “Young men with their racing pulses and fevered but empty questions,” she said, a slight mocking tease in her voice.
“Yeah.” Nothing more brilliant came to his mind.
Abruptly she dropped his wrist. That smile again. “Oh, I’m only kidding. Sure, let’s do something. You decide.” The same husky voice, but the teasing formality was gone. Just like that.
“Really?”
“Sure. I was just teasing you.”
He thought hard. “I don’t know. What do you like to do?”
“That new 3-D Dracula film’s out now. At the mall. Have you seen it yet?”
Bucky swallowed hard, then shook his head.
“Well, there you are. Let’s go to that.”
He hesitated.
“What?”
Taking a breath, he began, “I . . . don’t really . . .”
“You don’t go in for horror?”
“Oh, it’s not that,” he said, shrugging. “It’s just . . . those films are always rated R.”
“Oh, you’re a big boy,” she laughed. “They never check at that theater anyway, and you know it. I’ve been going there since I was thirteen.”
He took a breath. “It’s not that.” A pause. “It’s just . . . the violence and language in them – I just don’t go.”
Resting her chin in her hands, she studied him. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
Bucky shook his head. “No,” he responded at last, taking a deep breath and knowing what his next sentence had to be. “When I became a Christian, I stopped going to stuff like that.” He braced himself. How many times am I going to have to explain all my principles to the girls in this high schoo
l?
Across the campus a basketball game was in progress. In the awkward silence between him and Deirdre, the thumping of the dribbled ball seemed to boom like thunder.
Deirdre raised an eyebrow, eyeing him curiously. “I remember now,” she said. “That stuff was in the paper, even. About you and God and all.”
With a sigh, he said, “Sorry.” He looked away for a moment, then back again. “I don’t want to be a drag. If you’d rather not . . .”
She reached out and gave his forearm a flick with her manicured fingernails. “Oh, it’s OK,” she interrupted. “I’m an open-minded lady. We can do something else.”
Bucky tried to look hopeful. “Ever go bowling?”
An amused grin. “Bowling? Oh, my God – not since I was about five.” Then a shrug and a cynical laugh as she tossed her blonde hair. “Sure, why not? Last athlete I dated thought running laps together was a fun Saturday night.”
• • • • •
“Where are you going, anyway?”
Rachel Marie put her chubby hands on the wooden frame of Bucky’s bed and tried to do a somersault onto the quilt. Instead, she slipped off the side and landed in a heap on the floor.
“Are you OK?” her brother asked.
“Uh huh.” She rubbed her bottom for a moment before asking again, “Tell me where you’re going.”
“Oh, just bowling.”
“Can I come?”
He pulled on a shirt over his head. “Do you know how?” It was a safe question.
The second-grader shook her head. She hopped up on his bed again. “Can’t I come watch?”
“Better not. I’ll be out past your bedtime.”
“Who are you going with?”
“Seems like I just had this conversation with someone else,” he laughed. “I’m going with a girl from school.”
“Lisa?”
He sat down next to her, pulling his shoes out from under the bed. “Lisa’s gone to Washington, remember?”
“Oh yeah.”
He reached over and messed up her hair. “No, this girl’s name is Deirdre.”
“Do you like her?”
He paused. “Sure.”
Rachel Marie gave a little squeal. “Bucky has a girlfriend. Bucky has a girlfriend.”
“Shut up or I’ll pinch you till you bleed.”
She scurried out into the hallway, still singing the little tune.
Sam dropped Bucky off at the huge family entertainment center where the bowling lanes were. “There you go, Stone. That’ll be forty-one cents a mile.”
Bucky gave him a little sock on the arm. “One more month, man, and your chauffeuring days are over for good.”
“All right!” Sam turned down the volume on the car radio. “You got a way home?”
“Well, Deirdre’s coming straight here from shopping in Sacramento. She can give me a ride home, I guess.”
“Mommy’ll be waiting by the front door looking out through the curtain,” Sam said with a mocking grin.
“Probably.” Bucky motioned him away and headed toward the entrance. Moments later, he saw Deirdre waving toward him from just inside the door.
She hung up her cell phone just as he walked up. “Ready to get beat?” He grinned.
“‘Course I’m only kidding,” she laughed. “Remember, I was five last time I played. So I’ve got an excuse.’’
Forty-five minutes later, she sank down into the seat next to him. “Just keep remembering that excuse I told you about.”
Bucky’s sides ached from laughing. In just two games she had rolled more gutter balls than anything else.
“You’re supposed to try to hit the pins, not miss them,” he had pointed out once.
“What?” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Now you tell me. I thought this was like golf. The lower the score the better.”
“Sorry. Wrong rules.”
“Isn’t that what those little gutters are for, to help your ball roll nice and straight?”
“Well, ain’t nobody rolled ‘em straighter than you tonight.”
“Thanks!” She slapped his arm. “I’ll bet you say that to all your girlfriends.”
Taking aim, she let another ball fly. It rolled down the lane for a mere ten feet before rumbling straight into the gutter on the left-hand side. “Another good one!” Deirdre raised both hands in a victory sign. The bowling party in the adjacent lane snickered.
“Hey, these zero scores are costin’ me about twenty cents each,” he complained.
“Aaaaah, you can handle it. A rich basketball star like you.”
“Who has to hitch rides to go on his dates.”
She sat down again and took a sip of her soda. “Yeah, what’s up with that? You get your license next month, huh?”
“Yep.”
Deirdre gave a little nod. “Good. You can take me out for real then.” A mysterious little glance. “Anyplace but prayer meeting.”
Afterward the couple pulled up at the curb next to Bucky’s house. Sam’s comment about Mrs. Stone peeking through the curtains echoed in his mind. Instinctively he glanced toward the house.
“Well, thank you, Mr. Stone.”
“Oh, it’s my pleasure.” He grinned. “And congratulations on getting the lowest score ever recorded since Hampton Beach Lanes was built.”
“You’re just jealous, so ‘ha ha.’”
He reached for the door handle. “Yeah, you’re right. Not everybody can break forty.” He paused. “Thanks for the ride.”
She tugged on his shirt sleeve. A memory of Lisa’s familiar gesture flashed in his memory. “Cab fare’s five bucks, mister. Unless we can work something out.”
Confused for only a moment, he turned to face her. Deirdre gave him an expectant look, her face just inches from his own.
Brushing aside the memories of the past and an unexplainable feeling of guilt, Bucky leaned over and gave her a kiss. Then another one.
Chapter Two: High and Tight
As he trotted the assigned two laps around the track, Bucky’s breath came in short, even bursts. Dan, quite a bit heavier, panted as he struggled to keep up with his younger friend. “Hey, ease up!”
Bucky slowed his pace just a trifle. It was a perfect March day in the Bay Area, and even Coach Brayshaw’s strict regimen of exercise couldn’t dampen his enthusiasm. Time to play baseball!
As they crossed the unofficial finish line marked by the home plate backstop, Bucky looked behind him. Most of the JV baseball squad lagged behind. Bill, the Panthers’ husky catcher, was barely halfway through his second lap and fading fast.
“Boy, everybody’s pretty rusty,” he murmured.
“First day back.” Dan sank down in the grass next to Bucky. “Not everybody’s been playin’ basketball all winter like us. Some of these guys haven’t been out of the TV room since last May.” He plucked at a blade of grass and casually peeled it into two identical halves.
Bucky spotted Coach Brayshaw busily calculating a lineup on his ever-present clipboard. Without meaning to, he let his mind recall last year’s bitter confrontation over his decision to report a cheating scandal. It was surprising, he noted, how the memory remained, but now without the pain. God really had helped him to forgive.
Dan suddenly began laughing. Bucky glanced up and snickered as well as the Panthers’ catcher literally staggered across the finish line. “Yikes, call an ambulance,” he murmured. “Good thing you and I kept in shape, Litton.”
“Litton! Stone!”
Dan looked up at the sound of Coach Brayshaw’s piercing voice. “Oh, man, everybody’s lined up but us.” He scrambled to his feet and began to trot over to the rest of the team, Bucky following.
The coach stared at them. “Glad you boys decided to join the fun.” Then he scanned the ragged row of athletes quizzically. “I think we’ve got a good squad this spring. If we dig in and work hard, ain’t no reason we can’t follow up our JV basketball championship with one out here as well.”
<
br /> A murmur of assent spread through the group. Several of the players looked over at Dan and Bucky. One of them, Bucky noted, had a dour expression on his face, almost a glare. He waited until the tall boy turned away, then whispered to Dan, “Who’s that guy?”
Dan leaned closer to his friend. “‘S name’s Jeff. Pitcher.”
Bucky glanced over to where the coach was giving instructions to one of his assistants. “See that look he gave us?”
“Aaaah, he’s just bent out of shape ‘cause he was on the JV squad last year and got bumped down to frosh.”
“What for?”
“Temper.” Dan laughed. “And a lot of walks.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll just tell ya this: he ain’t got no use for you.”
Bucky wrinkled up his nose. “Why?”
A shrug. “Oh, that stuff last year. Thinks you’re a Jesus freak and all.”
“But he wasn’t even on our team!”
“Yeah, I know. He was still cranked about it, though. Thinks you’re the school turkey. Face it, he’s just the kind of guy who’s always mad about something.”
Coach Brayshaw set down his stack of papers. “OK, let’s put some practice in. You outfielders get some flies. Mr. Richards, here, will head up infield practice. Then batting practice for everybody.”
Bucky stretched lazily in the outfield, then casually picked off a routine fly ball that sailed right toward him. “Work, work, work,” he laughed.
Dan’s instincts were still sharp, he noted, as the left fielder whirled back to snare a deep drive that appeared headed for the warning track. “Good grab.”
Minutes later the two boys headed for the batting cages and donned helmets. “Well, listen for the sound of a rusty gate,” Dan laughed as he swung the bat.
“Make that two.” Bucky picked up a bat and gave several practice swings. “Oh, ouch!” He stared across the playing field. “That’s that guy, Jeff, isn’t it?”
Dan nodded. “Give him credit. That’s a pretty mean fastball.”
Coach Brayshaw glanced over at them. “Stone, you’re up.”
Bucky took a deep breath. “Here goes nothin’.”
“Hey, you’re still hot,” Dan teased. “Last at-bat you had was a walk-off game-winner in the bottom of the seventh.”
Bucky Stone: The Complete Adventure (Volumes 1-10) Page 33
