Donuthead (12 page)

I wish I could say it was a heroic dive to catch the ball, but I'm an honest guy. I bounced on the ground a couple of times before realizing it was coming straight at me. I threw my hands up to protect myself. There was nothing between me and that speeding bullet but a thin layer of cow skin. By some miracle it worked. The material held, and I took the fly on the ground.

I could hear my mother cheering and rattling the backstop.

“Way to go, Franklin,” called out Leonard Morris.

Despite the fact that the tendons in my hand were sure to need months of physical therapy to recover, I have to admit, at that moment I felt pretty good.

In addition to team practice twice a week and drills once a week, my mother drove me and Sarah Kervick all over the county scouting out the competition. We'd rattle up to some dusty field in her Cable Country van, get out, and take to the bleachers. Sarah didn't have much use for sitting. Mostly, she paced the baselines with my mother. But every once in a while, she'd sit up high in the bleachers with me.

I found watching to be the best part of joining the Pelican View Baseball Team. Every player I saw gave me greater opportunities to practice my newly discovered skill of knowing just exactly where the ball would be hit. Yes, I had to take into account several factors: speed of pitch, player's stance, level of swing. Then I'd process it all with the speed of nanotechnology. I've always preferred exercising my brain to my body anyway.

Honestly, I could get into quite a trance while I was watching those players. Sometimes I would forget all about Sarah and my mother and just enter this zone of processing impact, force, acceleration. That's why I was completely unprepared one afternoon for Sarah to turn to me and say, “So, where is your dad, anyway?”

“Haven't got one,” I answered after a long pause.

“Everybody's got one.” She snorted.

“Midcenter, pop fly. If the shortstop were back ten feet, he'd
catch it,” I said, thinking out loud so Sarah would know where my mind was.
On the game, not on the elements of human reproduction.

“I said, ‘Everybody's got one,' Franklin. Even you.”

Taking a hint was not her specialty.

“Technically, that is correct. Grounding out down the first base line …”

“So where is he?”

“I don't know. We never met him.”

“You're sayin' your mom never met your dad?”

“That is correct. Look at his shoulders. That kid's going to foul over the third base line.” We both sat still, watching to see if my prediction came true. It did.

“You're lying to me.”

“No, I'm not. Look, there's something called artificial insemination. When a woman wants a baby, but she doesn't have a partner, she can pay to get a man's sperm—”

“That's pure crazy to pay for that,” she said. “All you have to do is go down to a bar and start buyin' drinks.”

“That's how you came about? I think there's a little issue called quality control here.”

Sarah Kervick grabbed hold of my lapels in a way she hadn't in a long time. “What are you saying about my mother? She married my dad good and proper. Only, it's just—” She broke her hold and sat back, sitting on her hands to keep them from tearing my neck off my shoulders.

“She was just too young,” she said quietly.

“Well, at least you knew her,” I responded, my feelings hurt as much as my collarbone.

“He didn't get like that till after,” she said. “We even had a place over in Wing Rock, a little house. It was just one story, but it had a dormer upstairs and I slept there. I remember that house … when I was real little we lived there.”

I kept my eyes on the field, but I had stopped seeing the action. I couldn't have called the next play if it was in slow motion.

“She took me to one of those shows at the arena. You know, where they tell a story on the ice. She loved to watch the skaters on TV.

“ ‘Look at her!' she used to say to my dad. ‘That's as close as we humans are ever gonna get to flying.' ”

Practice was over. My mother started climbing the bleachers toward us.

“My mom was all right,” Sarah said, squinting fiercely at home plate, even though no one was up to bat. “She was just too young.”

“So where is she now?” I asked. “You ever see her?”

“Hmmph.” Sarah hunched up her shoulders. “I guess she lives in your dad's neighborhood now.”

“Hey.” My mother had reached us, slightly out of breath. She sat down next to Sarah and patted her knee. “I keep meaning to say thanks for the Twinkies. Vanilla's my favorite.”

Sarah searched the empty space beneath the bleachers like she had dropped something. She was smiling.

“And everybody at work's been fighting over that
People
with the interviews of death row inmates who get married. That's just hard to figure.”

“Yeah.” Sarah swallowed and looked up at my mother like
she was the one thing that made sense in this crazy world. Like if she were a death row inmate, Sarah Kervick would marry her.

“Franklin, I'll just be a minute, okay? I want to find out what that coach has done to his pitcher. Did you see those strikes?”

The wind had picked up again. She zipped her warm-up suit right up to her chin, then put her hand back on Sarah's knee. “A month ago, at the beginning of the season, that kid couldn't even find the strike zone. Okay, then. See you two back at the car.”

“I know what you're thinkin',” Sarah said after she'd left. “But I didn't steal anything. Your mom wouldn't like that.”

“Well, where's it all come from?” “Grace gives me the magazines when the library in Wing Rock's through with 'em,” she said simply.

“And the perfume?”

“Found it in the bathroom at Megamart.”

I started to feel faint. “And the food?”

“Get that from the garbage at school. Kids throw that stuff away. Perfectly good Twinkies and stuff. They just throw the whole thing away, right in the package. I got four of those little cans of peaches to give her next week.”

And then she laughed and gave me a little punch on the arm. “Don't look like you're gonna die, Franklin. I never take stuff that's been opened. Same as gettin' it right from the grocery store.” She patted my knee as if that would make me feel better. “Only it's not stealin' and I don't have to pay for it.”

I just stared at her, speechless. All this touching was getting contagious.

These new developments, the touching and the gifts, were
going to need a lot of processing. But I have to admit, the first question that popped into my mind was a very uncharacteristic one:

What was so wrong with it?

Giving things to people who made you feel happy. It was like one big circle with Sarah Kervick and my mother. One big circle filled with Twinkies and cream rinse and low-rise jeans and wrinkled-up copies of
People
magazine.

It made everybody even happier, didn't it?

Why wasn't I happy, then? Why was I so sick with jealousy at the way Sarah looked at my mother? Maybe I should get in the circle and start doling out Baby Ruth candy bars and sparkly barrettes and Jean Naté perfume and jawbreakers I might find rolling under the candy dispenser.

Maybe … Was that really all it took?

On the way home, my mother swung into the parking lot of an immense new building. Workers out front were lowering trees into the ground. On an artificial hill topped with wood chips, a sign read: P
ELICAN
V
IEW
I
CE AND
F
ITNESS
C
ENTER.

“So, what's this?” Sarah asked, squinting at the sign.

“You can read that,” I told her.

“The new ice rink,” my mother said, craning her head around to see the reaction. “Thought you'd like to take a look.”

Sarah gripped the door handle and her seat belt simultaneously. The next moment, she was tearing for the entrance.

“Whoa, missy. Hold up. It's not open yet.” A man in a hard hat stood just outside the glass front doors, smoking a cigarette.

“She's with me,” my mother said.

“Oh.” He took in her uniform. “You here to hook up the office?”

“Just seein' what I need first. Got the kids with me.”

“Office is through those double doors,” he said, pointing. “Hang a right. Mind the paint.”

“Shouldn't we ask for masks?” I wondered aloud. Painting releases all manner of volatile compounds into the air.

But no one seemed to hear me. We entered a wide corridor where workers were installing a bank of vending machines. Beyond that was a sports shop. A woman was putting the finishing touches on a mannequin. I stopped to look at her handiwork, transfixed.

There in front of me was the most complete set of protective gear I'd ever seen. Every muscle, every inch of skin seemed to be covered. A helmet with a cage over the face was connected to a chin guard that extended down to protect the neck and throat area. Wide plastic gloves like flippers traveled halfway up the arms. There was sufficient padding for the midsection and thighs and practically a knight's shield to cover each lower leg.

“Get a move on,” Sarah hissed. “I want to see the rink.”

“It's a goalie's uniform, Franklin,” my mother said, gently taking hold of my shoulders and turning me toward the office.

“It's a thing of beauty,” I mumbled. “Do they have something like this for baseball?”

But my mother didn't hear me because I had my mouth up against the fabric of my shirt, trying to filter out the fumes from the new paint.

We continued down the hall and through another set of
double doors. The entire area was carpeted with the kind of rubber matting that seemed appropriate for all indoor office environments, if you ask me.

“This is so you can walk in your skates,” my mother explained. “See, you change into your skates here,” she said, pointing to a row of benches with cubicles underneath. “You stick your shoes there. Then you don't damage your blades getting to the rink.”

“That's real sensible,” Sarah answered, nodding. But she seemed a million miles away just then. I was watching her. Her eyes were fixed on another set of doors.

“Is it there?” she said.

“Yes.”

She started walking slowly toward the doors.

“But it's not an ice rink yet,” my mother warned her. “It's just a big oval that …” Her voice trailed off. There was no use talking anymore. Sarah disappeared through the swinging doors.

“Just give me a minute, Franklin. I need to see how they've wired the office so I can figure out how much cable I need.”

She disappeared, too, and I was left alone in the hallway. My sinuses were throbbing from the fumes, but since I'm also allergic to dust and pollen, and those earth-moving machines were operating with decibel levels unsafe without proper ear protection, I wandered back down the hall to the goalie uniform.

Who was the packaging expert that put this together?
My eyes traveled the length of the player's body, looking for openings in
his armor. This would definitely have applications on the Pelican View playground.

“Franklin.” My mother had poked her head through the door. “I think you should see this.”

“That your kid?” a man in a paint-spattered coverall asked my mother as I came back into the room. He wasn't referring to me. That was clear. He was pointing to the windows above the changing benches.

“Yeah … well, I brought her.”

“Seemed so excited I didn't have the heart to tell her there wasn't no ice yet,” he said.

I stood up on one of the changing benches to get a clearer look at what the painter and my mother were staring at.

“Then again, doesn't seem to matter, does it?”

There, in the middle of an immaculate, glassy oval, stood Sarah Kervick, her discarded shoes the only other spot of color on the clean white surface.

Throwing her arms out to her sides, she began to twirl. Slowly, at first, and then faster and faster. If she kept it up, she was headed for a fall.

“That looks like glass,” I said to the painter. “What kind of cushioning have they installed beneath the surface?”

“Beats me, kid.” He shrugged, his eyes glued on Sarah.

“For heaven's sake, Franklin. I didn't call you over here to assess the hazards of what she's doing. Look at her face.”

Only Sarah Kervick could find a way to look relaxed as she twirled dangerously over that slippery surface. Her eyes were closed like she was in a trance, and her body was all limp and fluid, not like the way she usually held herself, rigid as a flagpole.

“She looks like a little angel out there,” the painter said, sighing. “A pretty little angel.”

“I've never seen her so at home,” my mother said softly.

The paint fumes in that place must have been very bad, because my mother started rubbing her eyes.

You could hardly stand there for long without your eyes watering.

If you experience something every day, it gets to be normal, even when it's not. In Pelican View, few things are considered normal, which might lead you to believe it's kind of a crazy place. That's not it at all. The goal seemed to be to push everyone and everything into that narrow band of what was considered normal. People figured if they worked on it long enough, just about everyone would either fit or pick up and move away.

By now, it should be pretty clear that I was not normal. And neither was Sarah Kervick.

She was especially not normal on the baseball diamond.

I don't care how many girls have been the prime minister of England. In Pelican View, girls did not play baseball.

But that's what I mean about force of habit. After a couple of weeks of practice, having Sarah on the team
did
become normal, even to Coach Jablonski. She came to every practice. She consistently hit over the infielders' heads. It was no surprise to me to read on our first game roster that Sarah Kervick was batting cleanup.

Marvin Howerton could not let this pass, however. He scuffed at the ground and whined, “You got a girl batting cleanup?”

“I got our best batter at cleanup,” Coach Jablonski said,
putting his hands on Marvin's shoulders. “You get on base and let her boot you in.”