Sticks

by Joan Bauer

  Joseph sent me a postcard from Toronto, Canada, that said to not look at anybody else, just worry about which ball I’m going to shoot next. “Pool games are won one ball at a time,” he wrote. I taped it to the base of my Replogle globe and say, “Pool games are won one ball at a time,” every night before I go to bed.

  The tournament’s four weeks away and I think I’m pretty close to ready. It’s feeling more like spring now—you can almost go outside without a jacket. Arlen’s had to stay after school every day this week to get his enrichment needs assessed because he’s gifted.

  “They don’t want me to be bored,” he explained.

  “How come?”

  “They’re afraid of what I’ll do.”

  The days blend into each other. I’m charting Joseph’s trip by the postcards he’s sending.

  Ottawa.

  Winnipeg.

  Moose Jaw.

  Medicine Hat.

  Mom’s impressed that the postcards keep coming. I say I think that’s the sign of a really responsible person, don’t you, and she says maybe. Big Earl’s been playing me, and Poppy’s taken extra arthritis medicine and shot a few rounds of straight pool. Straight pool’s a hard game. You’ve got to call your shots—that means saying which pocket the ball’s going to go in when you hit it. Poppy never got into nine ball. You play her in her hall, you play her game.

  Snake Mensker touches that rattler scar on his cheek and says I’m becoming downright deadly even though he still beats me pretty bad. I wipe Petie Pencastle over the table and blow off Danny Couriter and Nick Savlanas. I’m playing for serious position now and controlling my game. I even won one game off Perry to his five, which really says something. Perry’s helping me like he helps everybody else. Buck’s practicing death drills, gunning for me.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” says Perry.

  “I’m not.”

  I look over at Buck, who’s half laughing. “Where’s the cowboy, Vernon?”

  “Just ignore it,” says Perry.

  Buck walks over, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, planting his workboots right in front of me, and leans up close to my face.

  “I said, where’s that stupid cowman of yours, Vernon?”

  Perry says, “Get lost, Buck.”

  I look right at him. “Take back what you said!”

  “I don’t take nothing back!”

  “He’s a better coach than you’d know what to do with!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Prove it, Vernon!”

  Buck storms over to table eight and stands there. “You show me how good he coached you, little boy!”

  Perry’s standing in front of me telling me not to listen. “Joseph said not to play him, Mickey. You got to save it for the tournament.”

  “Chicken?” Buck sneers at me.

  “Rack ’em!” I say.

  * * *

  There’s a story about my dad when he was twelve and a man in the hall challenged him to a game. Dad ran ninety-seven balls before missing and the man just sat there and kept asking, “What’s inside you that lets you do that, young fella?”

  Dad said he guessed it was that he wanted it so bad.

  Ganas.

  I rack the balls on table fifteen. I want this bad.

  Buck wins the toss and gets to break. My heart’s thumping in my stomach. People are beginning to gather around the table. Petie Pencastle, T. R. Dobbs, Shelty Zoller.

  Wham! Buck crashes the cue ball down the table and slams the balls apart. The two ball zooms into the corner pocket.

  “You can’t beat me, Vernon!” He makes the one ball in the side.

  I look right back at him. “Yes I can!”

  But it’s like everything Joseph Alvarez taught me went down the sewer.

  My hands are shaking.

  My palms are sweating. Buck makes another ball and misses an easy bank.

  “Didn’t leave you anything,” he says, snarling.

  “Yeah you did.”

  I bend over the table. My brain is fogged in, my heart is feeling crazy. I bank the four in the side in a really good shot. I nail the five, the six. I miss the seven.

  “Tsk, tsk,” he says. “You’re history, little boy.”

  Buck makes the seven in the side and stands over the eight like a vulture over a dead animal. I’m losing to him again.

  I beat Perry once. Buck can’t beat Perry and I’m losing to him again!

  He beats me one game, two. I bend over to break. I make the eight ball, miss the one.

  Buck whispers, “So where’s the cowman now to help you?”

  “Stop it!”

  I fly at him, pushing him down. I’m punching him, kicking him. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  Guys are trying to break it up. I’m going to get him! Hurt him! We’re punching each other on the floor; he throws me off. I land hard on my hand.

  “Ahhh!”

  Perry runs over.

  I see Big Earl’s worried face over me.

  “My hand!”

  I can’t lift my left hand, can’t bend it.

  Big Earl’s helping me up. I’m dizzy. The pain is bad. He shouts at someone to find my mother. T.R. tears upstairs. Earl says if I got to throw up, go ahead and do it.

  Mom rushes into the hall.

  “Dear God!”

  Earl and Mom help me out to the car. We’re going to the hospital.

  I’m crying, “My hand! He broke my hand!” as Mom rams her old Chevy through traffic.

  CHAPTER

  The doctor in the long white coat stands back and adjusts the splint on my left hand. Her face looks tired. She says she’s got a boy just my age, like that’s supposed to make me feel better. Two nurses help a man with a bloody eye lie down. Mom is standing next to the doctor looking plenty worried.

  “That’s a mean sprain you’ve got,” the doctor says. “You’re lucky it didn’t fracture. Are you right-handed or left?”

  “Right.”

  “Well,” she says, “at least that’s something.”

  “I’m a pool player!” I shout. “I’ve got a tournament in four weeks.”

  She shakes her head. “No pool for three to four weeks, Mickey.”

  “I’ve got to practice!”

  “Not with that sprain,” she says firmly. “You’ve got to let it heal.”

  I flop back on the hospital cot. “The tournament . . .”

  The doctor sits down. “I’m sorry about that, using it for anything! We’ll check you in three weeks.”

  “That’s not enough time!”

  I close my eyes and try to push back the tears.

  I might as well be dead for being so stupid.

  Mom puts a hand on my shoulder and I just lose it, crying and sobbing like a baby.

  * * *

  Mom drives me home. I can’t talk. We pull up in front of Vernon’s and see the poster for the tournament in the window.

  WE’RE LOOKING FOR THE BEST AND THAT COULD BE YOU!

  I close my eyes—I can’t look at it.

  It won’t be me.

  Poppy’s all upset and Big Earl is saying, “Okay now, you’re going to get through it.”

  I don’t tell him he’s wrong.

  I’m not going to get through it.

  To beat Buck I have to practice every day!

  Camille comes over and hugs me, which she hasn’t done for a long time. She makes her special hot milk chocolate with little marshmallows, but I can’t eat the marshmallows because I need a spoon and I’m using my good hand to hold the mug.

  I can’t put my pajamas on without everything hurting. I get put to bed like a baby with the medicine the doctor gave me for pain. Nothing ever hurt worse. Mom pulls the covers over me like she did when I was small. I feel like my whole wrist has been chopped off.

  Mom touches my head. “Oh, sweetie . . .”

  I bite my lip and start to cry.

  “I have nothing smart to say, Mickey. I just want
you to know that it’s not going to hurt forever. I know it seems like it will, but it’s not.” She kisses my forehead. “Keep that hand elevated. That’s what the doctor said.”

  I can’t believe I didn’t listen to Joseph!

  * * *

  It’s been a long, mean school week.

  I sleep a little and wake up and the pain’s still there, hovering over me like a thick, dark cloud.

  I failed Joseph Alvarez, failed the Vernons.

  And the postcards keep coming.

  From Thunder Bay: “Remember to center-stroke the ball.”

  From Toronto: “Remember—easy stroke, easy win.”

  I’m not winning anything!

  I can’t get my coat on without help. I can’t get my bookbag on my back without someone lifting it up there because I have to wear a stupid sling.

  “I can do it myself!” I scream at Mom when she tries to help me.

  “Sit down,” she says.

  I sit, but I don’t want to hear.

  “Let me tell you about something that I am well acquainted with, Mickey. Disappointment. When you look it in the face, admit how much it hurts, when you can forgive the people involved, including yourself, you can move on.” Her face looks gray. “I don’t always follow my own advice. I wish someone had told me this when I was your age. It would have made things—”

  “I’m okay,” I lie, trying to zip my jacket.

  Mom’s eyes are so sad, they take over her face. “Think about what I said.”

  I’m too busy being miserable.

  I can’t take gym.

  I can’t do good work on my Zulu warrior mask in art because I need my left hand to hold it steady while I’m painting.

  I’m researching my soldier letter. Arlen and I both picked Valley Forge as the place where our soldiers were stationed. It was such a bad winter for the American army: not enough food, cold weather, sickness. They’d lost some important battles, too. All their hope was gone while the British hung out in Philadelphia, warm and well fed. History sure can be hard. I’m trying to picture Lieutenant John Q. Milner, wondering how he felt.

  I’m pretty sure my wrist is never going to get better. Everybody keeps asking me how I hurt my hand.

  I’m sick of telling.

  Arlen and I are painting the poster, THE AMAZING SECRETS OF THE POOL TABLE. Arlen’s really worried because Francine talked Marna into spying on Rory and the news is not good. Rory’s building a five-foot erupting volcano that’s getting delivered to Town Hall in a truck.

  “How,” Arlen shrieks, “do we compete with a volcano?”

  I shake my head and look at my bandage.

  I come home from school and go up the back way so I won’t have to walk through the pool hall. I stick cotton balls in my ears so I can’t hear the click, click of the pool balls below my room. Everyone’s doing the chores I can’t do—Poppy gets more cooking and vacuuming, Mom takes out the garbage, Camille gets more laundry. Camille’s getting sick of it, too.

  “I know you can’t help it,” she says, coming back from Crystal’s with the basket of folded clothes, “but I have a life. I have a fashion debut I’m trying to get ready for.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Then she goes into her room, where she stays up late and sews. I’m replaying every dumb move I made with Buck—it’s like a movie running through my head.

  Mrs. Cassetti is bringing me cookies from the bakery. Mr. Kopchnik asked if I wanted to help him take apart an old vacuum cleaner. Mr. Gatto said I could have any candy bar I wanted every day until I was better.

  I just want my hand back.

  It’s purple and swollen and I feel the hurt going up my arm to my elbow. Sometimes kids push past me in school and bang my hand without meaning to and I have to stop where I’m at until the pain passes.

  Arlen’s upset. He’s forgetting things again. He lost his Red Sox cap, left his bookbag in the park, forgot his vocabulary sheet three days running.

  I’m not helping him remember like I should.

  I’m not much good to anybody, that’s what Camille says. She’s been in a foul mood; she messed up on one of the costumes for the play and had to fix it and help with dinner because Mom’s got citizens’ patrol tonight. By the time Camille slams the pasta and meatballs on the table, anything good about eating is over. Poppy has to work late—lucky her.

  “I’ve had it, Mother, I feel like a slave. Mickey just sits around here doing nothing while I—”

  “I’m doing stuff!”

  “Right. You eat, sleep, and talk about Joseph Alvarez! I’m sick of hearing that man’s name!”

  Mom puts her fork down. “Camille, that’s enough.”

  Camille shakes her head. “No. All he does is talk about Joseph Alvarez like he’s . . . like he’s . . . Dad come back or something!” Camille pushes away her dinner plate and starts crying. “I don’t know why Daddy didn’t send someone to look in on me!”

  Mom reaches out to her. “Oh, honey.”

  “I try so hard not to think about Daddy. But sometimes I just need to have him here so bad . . . .”

  Mom’s staring straight ahead. “I understand.”

  We’re all looking down at the table. I say I think Joseph Alvarez came for all of us.

  Camille’s standing now. “No he didn’t. He doesn’t care about me. He’s helping you with pool and—”

  “He’d help you with your game, Camille, if—”

  “I don’t like pool! I don’t like living in this town! I feel like I don’t belong anywhere!”

  Mom gets her car keys and the big mega-flashlight the citizens’ patrol uses. Camille starts running out of the dining room and Mom grabs her arm. “We’re all going,” she says. “Right now.”

  * * *

  I’ve only ridden on patrol a few times. It’s so cool. I’m in the front seat of the Chevy with Mom, feeling at least thirteen. Camille’s in the back not talking. Mom’s driving slowly down Flax Street, past the fix-it shop, Cassetti’s Bakery. I’m watching hard for anything suspicious—open doors, trucks parked where they shouldn’t be.

  “Camille,” Mom says, “I can’t make you care for a place that I love. I wish I could. I don’t even know if I can explain to you what this town means to me. I’ve lived so many places I didn’t care about that finding one that was special was a gift. There isn’t much in Cruckston that’s pretty the way we think beauty should be. There isn’t much here that distinguishes us from other places. We don’t live above Vernon’s because I’m still hanging on to the ghost of your father. We stay because the values that I hold dear in this world—loyalty, hard work, love, determination—are here. And there’s no better way I know to teach my children what I believe in and care about than to have us live in a place where they see these things happening around us every day.”

  Mom turns left down Mariah. “I’ve never told either of you this—I could never count on my father. He’d go off places and come back weeks later than he said he would. He’d promise we’d go on vacations, promise he’d be there for us. He just couldn’t stick around or didn’t want to. It was awful for my mother. For a long time it was hard for me to trust people and feel secure.”

  I look at Mom. I don’t know what to say. I hold up my bad hand because it’s beginning to ache.

  Mom points to the apartments above the stores lining Mariah Boulevard. “When your father died, all these people poured out to comfort me. They didn’t give me pat promises at the funeral. They didn’t tell me that everything was going to be all right. They stood with me, they cried with me until it was all right. No one here is a fancy dresser, Camille, and the colors you love so much aren’t in grand display, but if you can focus your eyes to look inside the hearts of these people, you will see a rainbow of colors. That’s what I see. That’s why I stay.”

  Camille’s crying soft in the backseat. “Mom, I’m so sorry . . . .”

  Mom hands her a tissue. “I know.”

  I turn to Camille and say there�
�s no hard feelings. Camille nods and keeps crying.

  Mom lets me shine the flashlight back and forth along the row of cars behind the fence at Zeke’s Towing. The light’s so strong it shines anything bad out of hiding. A rat runs underneath the tow truck.

  Mom picks up the cellular phone the phone company donated to the patrol and punches buttons.

  “This is Ruth at the south end,” she says into the receiver, turning past St. Xavier’s onto Botts Street. “It’s looking safe and sound from here.”

  * * *

  The next morning I’m in my room lying on my lower bunk bed on the quilt that Mom dyed poolroom green to go with the pool-ball pillows Camille made for me. She dyed the curtains green, too, which Arlen says just multiplies the experience. I put my autograph collection of the pool greats of the world in my closet because I didn’t want to look at it.

  Joseph Alvarez just got back from Canada. I hear the Peterbilt and don’t get up. I don’t want him to see me like this.

  I can hear him running up the stairs.

  Hear him talking to Mom.

  Hear his big boots clomping on the floor as he moves toward my room. He knocks on my door.

  “It’s open.”

  He walks in sad, looks at my splint. “Oh, son . . .”

  “I’m sorry.” I fight hard not to cry. “I can’t play in the tournament!”

  “You don’t know that for sure now.”

  I start shouting that even if I can play, I can’t play good enough to win because I can’t practice for being an idiot!

  Joseph Alvarez stands there holding his hat. “I’m so sorry, Mickey.”

  We don’t say anything for the longest while.

  Joseph Alvarez puts down his hat and starts talking about living in Mexico when he was a boy. His family was poor. His mother sold flowers on the street; his father drove a taxi. He said once some tourists were riding by his village on horses, going fast through the streets, and a girl fell off her horse, hurt bad. All the people in the village came out to help. The women brought water, the children brought cloth for bandages, the men lifted the girl gentle into an old truck and took her to the hospital, where the doctor fixed her up.

  “See, we’re all connected to each other,” he says. “Some people you just know for an instant, others are for life. And when things get bad, like when we get hurt, we’ve got to let the people around us help.”