Authors: Kurtis Scaletta
Mamba Point
Also by Kurtis Scaletta
Mudville
A Booklist
Top 10 Sports Book for Youth
A Midwest Connections Pick by the Midwest Booksellers Association
“Mudville
will hit a home run with baseball fans of all ages.”
—
Sports Illustrated Kids
“Scaletta’s debut is a gift from the baseball gods. … Scaletta is steeped not only in baseball lore but in such movie classics as
The Natural
and
Field of Dreams
, and that sort of larger-than-life magic realism lends his story the aura of a proper tall tale. Sports nuts, including reluctant readers, will sense they are in good hands with this one.”
—
Booklist
“[Scaletta] balances perceptive explorations of personal and domestic issues perfectly with fine baseball talk and … absorbing play-by-play. Readers will cheer Roy on as he struggles to get his team in shape, clicks with a girl who is new to the game but turns out to have an unhittable natural screwball, and weathers some rough waters with moody Sturgis on the way to a rousing climax and a fitting resolution.”
—
School Library Journal
“This humorous and tender ode to baseball is as full of hope and suspense as Casey’s famous turn at bat. … Baseball fans or not, readers will sympathize with Sturgis for his painful past and root for Roy and his team to win the big game.” —
The Horn Book Magazine
“This novel has all the elements of a classic sports tale: mystery, rivalry, betrayal, and the hold that a game like baseball can have on families and communities alike. Told from the perspective of twelve-year-old Roy, the narration at times reads like a memoir, adding to its charm.”
—
Voice of Youth Advocates
“Scaletta offers a nifty combination of baseball action, tall tale, interesting characters and even a little romance in this hugely entertaining first novel.” —
The Buffalo News
For the good friends I’ve had and lost along the way—
especially the ones I had in Monrovia, 1982–1984
.
Linus’s Mamba Point, Monrovia, Liberia, 1982
Summer 1982CHAPTER 1
My brother changed his name on the plane ride to Africa.
“From now on, my name is Law,” he said. “Law Tuttle.” He said it to himself a few times, practicing. “Hey, I’m Law. Law Tuttle.” He tossed his bangs back with a casual nod as he said it. He’d only recently begun growing his hair out, so he didn’t have much to toss.
“I’ve never heard of anyone called Law,” I said, not looking up from my book. I was reading
Tarzan of the Apes
in comic-book form, which was a going-away present from Joe, my buddy back in Dayton. He wrote on the wrapping paper that it was something to get me ready for the great African experience. If
Tarzan
was at all accurate, I was in big trouble. According to the comic, Africa was all cannibals and savage apes and hungry lions. I’d read the encyclopedia article, too, though. It said Liberia was founded back in the 1800s by some freed American slaves. They went back to Africa and created their own country. That was why they spoke English in Liberia, and why their flag looked like ours, only with one big star instead of fifty little ones, and why their currency was dollars and cents. There was nothing in the article about ape tribes or cannibals, so those guys must have civilized it by now.
We were moving to Africa because my dad got a job at the American Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia. I didn’t know exactly what he’d be doing there, just that he’d be working for two years and then we’d probably move somewhere else.
Dad said it was a big embassy with lots of families and that we’d have plenty of friends. That would be a big change from Dayton, where I had a few pals but not
plenty
, like they were swarming around me when I left the house. Dad also told us that the embassy compound had a swimming pool and tennis courts and a clubhouse for teenagers and a library with books and videotapes. I wouldn’t be able to go to that teen club until I turned thirteen on December 11, but I was looking forward to swimming and the other stuff.
“Law is short for Lawrence,” my brother insisted. “It makes more sense than Larry.”
“Whatever you say,
Law.”
I made as much noise as I could turning the page. Tarzan was about to do battle with a savage man-eating gorilla, and it was a lot more interesting than Larry making up new names for himself. The gorilla took up most of the next page, its muscles rippling, saliva dripping from its fangs—lots of nice details. I would try and copy it later.
“You could come up with a name, too,” Law suggested. “You hate your first name.”
“No I don’t.” I didn’t, either. Kids made fun of it sometimes, but it wasn’t my name’s fault people were jerks.
“Yes you do,” he insisted. “How about you go by L.T. or, um, Wheels, since you like skating?”
“No way.”
“Fine. Go on being Blanket Boy.” His point made, my brother sprawled out and drifted off to sleep, probably dreaming of a better life as Law than he’d had in Ohio as plain old Larry.
My first name is Linus. Most people hear that name and think of the kid in the cartoons who totes a blanket around and never combs his hair. Usually, within five seconds of meeting me, they ask, “Hey, where’s your blanket?” Like no one ever thought of
that
before. So Larry had a point about changing my name, but I didn’t think I would.
First of all, even if I had the coolest first name in the world—like Indiana in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
—my last name would still be Tuttle, which sounds like “Turtle,” and kids would skip on to the turtle jokes. “Where’s your blanket?” would become “Where’s your shell?”
Second of all, it’s not necessarily about the name. I knew this kid back in Dayton named Percy Schaefer. Percy is the sort of first name that they ought to not allow by law. The thing was, Percy Schaefer was cool about it. When he said his name was Percy, he said it like it was a great joke and he was in on it. Percy had long hair and wore a denim vest year-round with a bunch of weird patches on it and carried a deck of cards in the vest pocket. If he had five minutes to spare, he’d challenge you to a game of knock rummy—he’d play you penny-a-point and win, but then he’d take the whole pocket of change down to the arcade and treat you to video
games. Percy was one of the coolest kids in Dayton, and after a while you felt like you could have been cool, too, if only your name was Percy instead of Larry or Linus or Joe. So maybe the name wasn’t really the problem. Maybe it was me.
Larry was right about one thing—Africa was full of people who didn’t know anything about us, so we could be entirely different people if we wanted to be. I wasn’t going to change my name or get a denim vest and a deck of cards, but I could be a whole new Linus.
They didn’t have those giant tubes that connect the airplanes to the airport, so we had to take stairs down to the tarmac and walk over to the building about fifty yards away. It was even smaller than the airport in Dayton, and mostly concrete instead of having big panes of glass so you can watch the airplanes.
We all had jet lag, but Larry—
Law
—had it the worst. Because of him, we were the last ones off the airplane and trailing everyone else by about a hundred paces. He was barely moving, and my dad was trying to nudge him along.
“Look human,” he said. “We don’t have clearance to bring in a pet sloth.”
“What’s going on?” Law asked, pointing at something in the distance. I looked where he was pointing, and saw an African guy running at us with a machete. My mother took a step back and shielded us with her arm. My father grabbed the handles of his carry-on bag and let the strap drop from
his shoulder, getting ready to give it a swing. It wasn’t a very good weapon, since all that was in it was a couple of paperback novels and a box of Dramamine. Law stepped in front of me and held up a hand like a traffic cop, signaling for the man to stop.
I froze with fear. I just watched the man running toward us in what seemed like slow motion, wondering whose head he would lop off first and thinking,
I knew it
. I’d known it since Dad said we were moving to Africa. I didn’t know that we would get attacked by a maniac the second we got off the plane, but I did have a hunch that something terrible would happen. I had bad feelings a lot, and usually they didn’t come true, but this would make up for all of them.
The man finally reached us and took a big swing with the blade, right by my mother, making a big
oof
noise. But he swung at the ground, and that was when I looked and saw the snake that had been slithering around at our feet. It was really long, but skinny, and a dull gray color that made it hard to see against the concrete. Now its head was six inches from its body. The man swung again and again. Pretty soon the snake was in about eight pieces. I felt a sickening lurch in my stomach.