Billy heard footsteps running down the hall. He could tell it was Breeze by the way she didn’t knock as she stormed into his room.
“Thanks for not knocking,” he said.
“You’re welcome. Billy, I need to borrow a green marker. Mine disappeared.”
Billy glanced suspiciously at the Hoove.
“Okay, I confess,” the Hoove said. “I was doing a little drawing and forgot to put it back.”
Billy reached over to the Dodger mug that he kept on the pink wicker desk he had inherited from the previous room’s occupant, an eight-year-old girl. He looked through the pens and pencils in the mug and found a green marker.
“You can borrow it, but I want it back,” he said to Breeze.
“Ten minutes. I just have to draw the letters of the alphabet for Colin Connors, this cute little first grader I’m tutoring. Green is his favorite color.”
A sudden thought hit Billy. He turned to Breeze, almost hugging her but stopping himself just in the nick of time.
“Thank you, Breeze, a million billion gazillion times!”
“For what?”
“You said the word alphabet. You’re a total genius.”
“And you’re a total weirdo,” she shot back, shoving the green marker in her jeans pocket and backing out of Billy’s room as fast as she could. “Oh, and don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
“Hey, for once I agree with her,” the Hoove said as soon as she was gone. “What was that million billion gazillion hiccup all about?”
“She gave me my topic, Hoove. My ticket to win. I can smell victory already.”
“Do tell, which I wouldn’t mind you doing because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“When Breeze said the word alphabet, it struck me like a bolt of lightning. Something my dad taught me before he and my mom split up. He showed me how to recite the alphabet … backward!”
“Billy Boy, please don’t tell me that is what you’re going to demonstrate. My ears definitely don’t want to hear this.”
“No, no, wait. Here’s the amazing part. I can do it in less than fifteen seconds. How incredible is that!”
“Here is my answer, and it’s got three letters. Give me an N. Give me an O. Give me a T. If I’m not mistaken, that spells NOT, as in NOT incredible.”
“Wait until I show you.”
Billy was already rummaging around in his desk drawer for the stopwatch his mom had bought him for his eighth birthday when he was into timing things, like how long he could hold his breath or sing a note or sustain a burp. He found it buried under his second-grade report on underwater volcanoes and pulled it out, tossing it to the Hoove who caught it with one transparent hand.
“Go ahead. Time me,” Billy instructed him. “Push the top button as soon as I start.”
“Have you started? This is so interesting I think I fell asleep.”
“No, I haven’t started, and stop kidding around. Click now.”
The Hoove clicked the stopwatch and yawned. Billy took a deep breath and began. “Z … Y … X … W … V … U … I forget.”
The Hoove clicked the button on the stopwatch. It read four seconds.
“If I’m not mistaken,” he commented, “I forget is not a letter. And if it is, it doesn’t come after U.”
“Let me try once more,” Billy said. “I’m just a little rusty. It’s been a while.”
“If you don’t get it this time, I’m going to bed. This whole alphabet extravaganza is giving me a boredom rash.”
Billy tried one more time and he got all the way to the letter K, but the attempt took him twenty-three seconds.
“Look at this,” the Hoove commented when Billy was done. “My boredom rash is spreading. I’ve had it, pal. I am this close to suggesting you reconsider Floss-O-Rama.”
“I’m going to get this, Hoove. You just wait and see.”
“Well, as soon as you do, let me know. I’ll be in the closet with a nose clip on.” Hoover floated through Billy’s closet door and settled down in the corner as far away from the socks as he could get. Through the wall, he could hear Billy repeating the alphabet over and over and over. After a few minutes, he thought if he heard it one more time, his head would explode, although that was impossible because his head wasn’t really there in the first place.
Billy kept at it, though. He never lost patience with himself and never thought about giving up. Of all the things you could say about Billy Broccoli, one thing you could never say was that he was a giver upper. After half an hour of practicing, he finally got the complete alphabet correct in seventeen and a half seconds.
“Did you hear that, Hoove?” he called into the closet. “I did it perfectly, and shaved three seconds off my last attempt. In another hour or two, I’ll have it in less than fifteen seconds.”
This was not what the Hoove wanted to hear. As a matter of fact, he was done listening altogether. Sticking only his head through the closet door, he said to Billy, “Is there anything I can say that will put an end to this right now? Because if you continue, you’re going to drive me out of my skull and out of this room.”
“You know what, Hoove? You’re selfish. I’m so close. Instead of grumbling about it, you should be out here cheering me on.”
“Easy for you to say, Mister Repeat Yourself. If you had to listen to what I’ve had to listen to tonight, you’d be exasperated, too.”
“You’re supposed to be helping me.”
“You don’t want to be helped.”
“Who says I have to do everything your way?”
“I already told you the alphabet thing is a snore and a bore. And what do you do? Refuse to listen, that’s what. You go right on your merry way, reciting that thing until my eyes spin and my ears shrivel up like raisins. A guy has limits. Even a dead guy.”
“I’m not interested in your limits,” Billy said, raising his voice impatiently. “I have to get this right before morning. You’re not the one who has to be up there in front of everyone and be embarrassed. I am.”
“You’re right, Billy Boy. And guess what? I don’t have to be here, either. So I’m going to leave you to your backward letters and your stopwatch, and go find someone who says things only once.”
The Hoove’s full body materialized out of the closet. He had grown very impatient with this kid. Without even so much as a backward glance, he shot across the room, through the window, and out into the night, leaving Billy with a perplexed look on his face and a stopwatch in his hand.
It was an unusually foggy night for Los Angeles. A gray mist hovered just above the ground, and the lamps on Fairview Street cast an eerie yellow glow. Hoover drifted down the block, straining his eyes to see if anything interesting was going on that could eliminate the ringing memory of the backward alphabet. He saw a cat roaming through a half-open trash can, licking the remains from a tuna fish can.
“Trust me, kitty, your cat lady friends are not going to appreciate your fish breath when you’re done,” he said. “Personally, I would have gone for the half-eaten cheeseburger.”
Even though the cat couldn’t see Hoover, it certainly felt his presence. The hair on its back stood straight up, and with a giant yowl, it jumped out of the trash can and into the fog.
“No wonder they call you scaredy-cats,” the Hoove hollered after it. “Don’t get your undies in a bunch. I’m a ghost, for crying out loud, not a zombie.”
As the Hoove floated by the Brownstone house, he noticed Rod sitting at a window seat in the living room, looking down the street with infrared binoculars. He looked frustrated, probably because the fog was impairing his view into other people’s windows. The Hoove decided it would be fun to mess with Brownstone. Breaking off a small branch from the avocado tree growing in their front yard, he floated up to the window and waved the branch right in front of Rod’s binoculars.
From Rod’s point of view, it looked like the avocado leaves were suspended in midair with nothing holding them up. He pulled the binoculars
down and rubbed his eyes with his palms. Seeing that his little prank was getting to Rod, the Hoove tore off two of the leaves and actually floated through the window to hold them up to the lenses of the binoculars. When Rod looked through them again, all he saw were veins of the green leaves.
“Amber!” he called to his little sister. “What have you done to my binoculars?”
Rod Brownstone was the kind of guy who would blame anyone for anything, whether it was their fault or not.
“I’m not even in the same room with you, you big moose lip,” she shouted. “I’m in bed.”
“You’re the moose lip,” Rod shouted back, in what might have been the most unimaginative retort in the history of the world.
Hearing the argument, Rod’s dad came into the living room, boxer shorts pulled up to his chin and a can of diet root beer in his hand.
“Stop calling your sister names,” he ordered Rod, “or you’re grounded for the weekend.”
The Hoove felt satisfied that he had sufficiently messed up Rod’s night, and, dropping the avocado leaves, he sailed through the window and happily flew off down the street.
As always, he longed to go floating around the city looking for adventure, but his options were limited. The Higher-Ups’ rules stated that until he proved himself, he could not leave the boundaries of his family’s original ranchero where he’d been born and lived until he crashed Georgie’s father’s Model T car. That gave him about three blocks from Billy’s house in any direction — enough to get to the middle school, to three of the six theatres in the Cineplex, and to Tony’s Express Dry Cleaners (which he didn’t need because ghosts don’t sweat). He could get to the drugstore, but only to the shampoo and indigestion aisles. Sadly, the candy display was off-limits. Many an evening had he spent drooling over the Baby Ruths from afar.
The Little League field in Live Oak Park was one of his favorite destinations, but he could only go as far as the left field fence. The rest was out of bounds, which was a huge frustration for him. In life, he had been the star pitcher of the San Fernando Junior Cougars, and even as a ghost, he still itched to get on the mound and throw some fastballs. As he floated through the fog to the baseball field, he remembered how he had begged the Higher-Ups to give him another ninety feet so he could get to the pitcher’s mound. But they were strict and not inclined to make deals.
When the Hoove reached the left field fence, he glided to a stop and gazed longingly into the outfield. There wasn’t a lot to see because the fog was so thick. In the stillness and quiet of the night, his mind drifted back to Billy. He wondered if the Little Nerd Man was still reciting the alphabet backward. That was one extremely determined but highly annoying kid.
As the Hoove stared through the chain-link fence, his eyes started to play tricks on him. Was the fog forming something in the outfield, or was that actually a man stepping through the misty curtain? And if it was a man, where had he come from? It was as if he’d appeared out of nowhere … and he was heading straight for the Hoove. Hoover Porterhouse was quite used to scaring people, but now, oddly enough, he was scared by the sudden appearance of this strange presence. Before he could fly away, the man was standing in front of him with his hands on his hips, looking very annoyed.
“Hey, don’t you move an inch, kiddo. I was sent all the way here just to see you.”
If the Hoove hadn’t been freaked out before, he certainly was now. Squinting through the fog, he saw an older man wearing a beat-up Yankees cap. His face looked very familiar.
“I was just leaving,” he said to the man.
“It’s late.”
“Oh yeah,” the man answered with a chuckle. “It gets late early out here.”
“Wow, Yogi Berra used to say that.”
“Apparently, he still does.”
The Hoove’s eyes grew wide with disbelief.
“Are you telling me that you’re him?” he asked. “That you’re the legendary manager of the New York Yankees? The same Yogi Berra who’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame?”
“I’m not here to talk about me, kiddo. I’m here to talk about you.”
For once, the Hoove was speechless. He watched, fascinated, as Yogi approached him and grabbed the chain-link fence with both hands. He had a weathered face, round glasses, and ears that seemed just a little big for his head. He wore the number 8 on his pin-striped Yankees uniform.
“Were you sent here by the Higher-Ups?” the Hoove asked him suspiciously. “Because if you were, I already know what they told you to say.”
“I don’t take orders from nobody,” Yogi answered. “I’m a team manager. I give orders.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“That’s a very good question. Six minutes ago I was at a Yankees reunion dinner, cutting into a medium rare steak in New York City and enjoying a Caesar salad on the side. And in the middle of a forkful, a pale guy in a velvet tuxedo taps me on the shoulder and says there’s a kid with an attitude problem he wants to introduce me to. Next thing I know, I’m here in front of you, still chewing on a garlic crouton. I assume you’re the kid with the problem.”
“I don’t have an attitude problem,” the Hoove answered. “I’m supposed to help this kid, and he’s so thickheaded, he won’t listen to me. He’s the one with the attitude problem. He didn’t want to take my advice, so I left him there in his room, playing with his stopwatch.”
“I see the problem already,” Yogi answered. “You can observe a lot by watching. And what I see is a guy who’s throwing down his glove before the game’s over.”
“Excuse me,” the Hoove said, “but your sentences are taking a left when my ears are going right.”
“When I was a player, and then a manager, I always used to say that baseball is ninety percent mental, and the other half is physical.”
“That’s one hundred and forty percent,” the Hoove pointed out.
“The numbers ain’t important, kiddo. You’re missing the point. The point is that success is in your head. And if you’re going to be successful with these so-called Higher-Up guys, whoever they are, you got to get out of your own stubborn self and help the kid…. What’s his name, anyways?”
“Billy Broccoli.”
“Tough break for him. I can see why he needs you to be there for him a hundred percent. And the only thing one hundred percent about you is that you’re not.”
“This math is numbing my brain.”
“Well, get your brain around this, kiddo. Those Higher-Ups are telling you to help Billy Broccoli. That’s your team assignment, your job. You have to deliver for the team, which means sticking with the kid to the end, even when it’s frustrating or boring or annoying. In other words, it ain’t over ’til it’s over. Now if you’ll excuse me, my steak’s getting cold.”
And with that, Yogi turned and walked back into the fog, disappearing as suddenly as he had appeared.
“Wait a minute,” the Hoove called after him. “Don’t go yet. I didn’t even get to ask you what it was like to play in Yankee Stadium.”
There was no answer.
“Hey, someday can I play for your team, Yogi?” the Hoove shouted into the fog.
“Not ’til you get it right, kiddo,” came a faraway voice.
Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the Hoove sensed that Yogi was right. He was expected to stick it out, hang in there with Billy. And what had he done? Left the minute things got too annoying. And it wasn’t the first time, either.
The Hoove knew what he had to do. Without another thought, he turned and headed back toward his house and the room he shared with Billy.
Billy was sound asleep in his pink desk chair, still clutching the stopwatch. The hours and hours he’d spent practicing the backward alphabet had worn him out so much that he couldn’t even change into his pajamas or make it to the bed. He had just passed out in his chair, visions of letters spinning backward in his head.
The house was dark when the Hoove arrived, except for a small reading light next to
Bennett Fielding’s side of the bed. While his wife slept, he liked to stay up late reading articles about mild to moderate tooth decay. Just for fun, the Hoove tapped on Bennett’s window. When Bennett looked up, he saw nothing and assumed it was the wind blowing one of the orange tree branches against the window.
The Hoove was feeling frisky so instead of floating in through one of the house walls as he usually did, he flew up to the roof and stood at the edge of the brick chimney. Holding his body straight as a pencil, he jumped feet-first down the chimney and shot to the bottom, landing in the fireplace. He stepped out and checked his look in the mirror over the mantel.
“Perfect as always,” he said to himself, snapping his suspenders with a confident air. “Hoover Porterhouse, you may be dead, but you are still the cat’s pajamas.”
The Hoove drifted down the hall to Billy’s room and, floating through the closed door, found Billy asleep in his chair. He checked the stopwatch in Billy’s hand. It was stopped at exactly fourteen and three-quarters of a second.
“The kid actually did it,” he said to himself. “He’s persistent. Boring, but persistent.”
He gave Billy a little poke in the ribs, but since he was not made up of matter, Billy couldn’t feel it. So he promptly blew in his ear, startling Billy awake.
“Hey,” he said. “Why do you keep doing that?”
“I wanted to congratulate you. I see by the stopwatch that you did your alphabet thing in less than fifteen seconds. I don’t know why you’d want to, but you made it.”
“I only did it once before I fell asleep. That doesn’t mean I can do it again.”
“It doesn’t matter, Billy Boy, because I can’t let you continue. I am here to help, and in my official capacity, I have to tell you that this alphabet trick of yours is not something a live person should be caught dead doing.”
“I’m doing it anyway, Hoove. I have no choice. I was desperate for a project and I didn’t hear any helpful suggestions coming out of your non-mouth.”
“Well, trust me on this, Billy Boy. If you stand up and do that thing, every kid in your class is going to think that you’re one guy they don’t want to get within ten feet of or that you’ll bore them so much they’ll fall asleep facedown in their cheese burrito.”
Mind If I Read Your Mind? Page 3
