Soar (16 page)

WALT AND DR.
DUGAN
are eating a lot of fish together. I go to a couple of those dinners, and I need to warn any kid: do not go on a date with your father.

I mean, the looks on their faces. The arm around the shoulder. The lowered voices.

Can't you guys just talk in regular voices?

Plus they laugh at things too long that are only a little funny. Walt is trimming his beard more, too. There are little beard hairs in the sink every day as opposed to once a month.

And every time I see Dr. Dugan, I feel I should be getting some kind of examination. I can't call her Sarah. I would never call Dr. Feinberg Irving!

Walt is testing a gray SARB on the kitchen floor. It's moving around Jerwal and then Adler really well.

I stagger across the floor like I've been shot. I'm
groaning a little, whispering, “Help. Help.” The SARB rolls up to me and completely shuts down.

I know it takes time to get used to me, but come on!

“What happened?” Walt checks his computer, checks the robot. “Why are you choking?” The SARB gives no clues. Walt picks it up. “You know, little guy, I can relate. I've got something I need to do, and I keep shutting down, too.”

I don't know what that is.

“I've got to make a phone call, Jer.”

Walt makes the call in his room with the door shut. That means he's probably calling Dr. Dugan.

“Something tells me this is deep, Jerwal.” Jerwal and the gray SARB follow me. I try to listen at the door.

Walt shouts, “This is private, Jer.”

I have a feeling this is going to affect me, too. Back to the kitchen with the robots. At least I've got company.

◆ ◆ ◆

“Why are you choking out there, Alvin?”

“I'm not getting to the ball in time . . .”

“You're there in time,” I tell him.

He shrugs.

“Are you telling yourself you can't catch it?”

“I don't know. Maybe . . .”

Last night I was reading about sports psychology. I will need to get a degree in this. “You know what causes people to choke, Alvin?”

“Swallowing a chicken bone?”

He's serious.

“Not that kind of choking; the kind that causes you to not do something you can do.”

Alvin shrugs.

I put my hands in my pockets. “We don't have to talk about this.” I start walking away.

“Wait, Jeremiah. What's the choking thing about?”

I turn around. Give him what I learned.

“You don't tell yourself anything except ‘I'm going to catch this ball that's coming at me and not run into my brother.'”

“I'm going to catch this ball that's coming at me and not run into my brother,” Alvin repeats.

“That's it.” I walk away, but I hear him say it again.

“I'm going to catch this ball that's coming at me . . .”

I tell Franny to hit some poppers to Alvin, and you know what? He catches three out of four.

“What happened with that last one?” I shout.

He looks embarrassed. “I didn't tell myself I could catch it.”

“Talk to yourself out there, Alvin. Be a little crazy.”

He smiles. “Okay, Coach.”

Twice now!

Twice I've been called Coach!

◆ ◆ ◆

The Eagles are getting a good rep in town—not for winning, but for being the kind of team that people want to cheer for. I think it's because we love the game and we're good losers. We'll take all the support we can get.

The Brownie Bakery gives us free samples and has a
GO EAGLES
sign in their window. A bus from the Hillcrest Senior Citizens Center comes to watch us practice. These people have opinions.

I don't think he should be swinging that soon. Doesn't it look like he's swinging too soon, Harold?

That girl out there needs to smile more.

They should have better seats. More people would come if there were better seats.

Pay attention, young man. You're dropping too many balls!

Mr. Hazard puts on his eagle costume, puts his
arm around the old ladies, and shakes his wings. Everyone has a good time. That's what we're about. Come cheer for us—we'll do our best to win, and we promise you'll have fun.

But not everyone in town cares about that.

The team is having pizza at Junk Ball to celebrate that we're getting better. Chip Gunther of Chip Gunther's Sports is at a nearby table with his friends. He looks over at us, shakes his head like we're morons, and says loudly so everybody can hear, “When that middle school team stops playing like turkeys, I'll support them.”

He laughs so mean. The men who are with him at the table laugh, too.

“Don't let it get to you,” I tell the guys.

“Nothing but turkeys,” Mr. Gunther repeats.

Donald looks at me. “Your dad said when junk comes at you, don't swing.”

I try not to listen to the junk, but Chip Gunther is still laughing, and now he's saying, “Gobble, gobble . . .”

I stand up. Turning an eagle into a turkey? No, sir, I can't handle that.

Swoop.

I stand at Chip Gunther's table. His face is either
red from laughing or too much beer—I can't tell. And I don't care.

“Mr. Gunther, you just called the middle school baseball team turkeys. Is that right, sir?”

He's laughing. “You've got that right, kid.”

“Mr. Gunther, you were the head of the committee that brought Coach Perkins to town. I'd say you don't know the difference between a turkey and an eagle.”

“Whoa, boy!” says one of the men.

Chip Gunther stands up. “Who do you think you are, kid?”

The Eagles gather around me. “He's our assistant coach,” Terrell explains.

“No wonder you can't win.” Chip Gunther is laughing big, but nobody is laughing with him.

I stare at him. “I'm asking you to never use that word to describe our team, Mr. Gunther. We've worked hard to get better, and we're going to keep it up. We want to win, but we're not going to cheat to do it. We're not turkeys, Mr. Gunther. We're eagles.”

Some people in the restaurant applaud.

“Let it go, Chip,” another man says.

Chip Gunther throws money on the table and storms out.

The Eagles watch him go. Franny stands next to me.

Their waitress says, “Don't you kids cause trouble in this place. Do you understand?”

I look at her, don't say anything.

“You do that again, you won't be welcome here.”

No one wants any more pizza. We don't take the leftovers with us. We pay the bill, leave a tip for our waitress, who was nice, and walk out the door. It feels good to leave.

“Jeremiah, you were awesome,” Terrell tells me.

“We were awesome,” I say.

I TELL WALT
what happened.

“You took Gunther down, huh?”

“I felt a little like we were getting booed, so I did what you did.”

Walt thinks about that.

“Do you think I did the wrong thing?”

“I think Gunther is the kind of man who might not let it go.”

Chip Gunther calls El Grande and tells him that I don't know my place—he was just having a little fun, and he doesn't appreciate some smart-mouthed kid acting like he knows it all.

“What did you say to him?” I ask.

“I said I'd talk to you.”

I explain about the turkey stuff and how I told him to please not call the team that again. “I was respectful.”

“I believe that. And I would have done the same thing. It helps to be older when you deliver that kind of message. He'll spout off for a while, then it will be over.”

Right now, Chip Gunther crosses the street whenever he sees me or Walt coming.

That's okay. We don't have to be friends. But now he knows something he didn't know before: he can't push me around, or the team.

◆ ◆ ◆

A priest and a nun from St. Peter's Middle School get off the bus first.

“They've got God on their side!” Logo wails.

Alvin points. “Look, we've got God, too.” Rabbi Tova walks across the field and sits in our section.

El Grande goes over to meet the coaches as St. Peter's comes on the field. They have two girl players. Franny runs over to the girls. The nun marches forward. She's got a big whistle around her neck.

She shakes my hand hard. “Sister Claire.”

“Jeremiah Lopper, ma'am. I'm Lutheran.”

She slaps my shoulder. “That's close enough.” Sister Claire blows her whistle.

The priest walks over. The St. Peter's team bows their heads. Logo waves to Rabbi Tova to get in on this.

The priest smiles at Rabbi Tova. “Rabbi . . . please . . .”

Our rabbi bows her head. “May the Source of All Life bless these players with wisdom and strength, swiftness and skill, patience and power. May their efforts on the field be for the good of all who enjoy this game with them, and may the winners show humility in victory and the losers good humor in defeat. And for the umpires—”

She's hitting all the bases.

“—blessed is the Source of Arcane Baseball Rules and those who tend them.”

All the adults laugh.

Sky whispers, “What's
arcane
mean?”

I look it up. “Understood by only a few.”

Sky sniffs. “No kidding.”

Sister Claire blows her whistle. “Play ball!!!!!”

◆ ◆ ◆

There's a lot of arcane umpiring going on, but despite all that . . .

We are killing St. Peter's!

Franny hits two home runs and helps make a double
play at second when she throws to Donald, who makes the tag.

Sky's fastball is doing damage to their lineup, although the umpire calls two strikes as balls. That hurts us in the fourth inning.

Alvin is doing so much better in the outfield: he's running to catch the pop flies, and he's not running into his brothers in left and right field. He's also hitting well.

And Roy Nader, at shortstop, makes an impossible running catch for the third out in the sixth inning.

“There it is!” That's Rabbi Tova.

Roy comes off the field grinning, but Donald Mole has the biggest smile in Ohio as he high-fives Roy.

Mr. Hazard does an eagle groove. Donald's dad is cheering. A row of Hillcrest parents is doing the wave. Walt couldn't come. He had to work.

“Way to go!” I tell Roy.

“Great moves out there!” El Grande shouts.

Great is not how I'm feeling. I've just walked out to the pitcher's mound to tell Sky to throw his slider to the next two batters.

But I need to sit down. So I do, on the mound.

“You okay?” Sky asks.

“Yeah.” I feel nauseous.

“You look sick, Jeremiah.”

I try standing, which is harder than it looks when you're close to throwing up.

El Grande is by my side now, holding on to my arm.

“I just need to call Walt.”

I sit down on the mound again.

I feel brain fog creeping in . . .

I think I hand someone my phone and tell them to call my father.

“YOUR HEART RATE
is quite low, Jeremiah.” Dr. Dugan stands by my bed in the hospital. “I want to keep you overnight.”

“I have to help the team.”

She looks at Walt.

He gives me his eagle stare. “Jer, we're doing this.”

“But—”

Walt shakes his head. “We're not taking any chances.”

Both of them cross their arms and put their game faces on.

We're outnumbered, Alice.

Get strong.

◆ ◆ ◆

Beep beep, beep.

Beep beep, beep.

I've had three tests and now I'm supposed to sleep in a hospital bed in the land of never-ending white noise and beeping.

I'm not supposed to use my phone in this room because of the machines.

Walt took it home.

My phone!

I am disconnected from the world.

The team.

Franny.

I don't even know who won the game!

I close my eyes. Try to sleep. I have to go to the bathroom. The medicine they gave me does this. I have to call for a nurse to help me. I'm going to have to go soon. I hate this.

All this stuff about running one day . . .

Am I kidding myself? I mean, I'm attached to a machine—a machine named Marvin. I decided to name it that.

Beep beep, beep.

“Don't talk back to me, Marvin.”

Dr. Dugan is standing by my bed. It's early. “How are you?” she asks.

“Disconnected from the universe and other galaxies yet to be discovered,” I mention.

“Well, you know what they say, Jeremiah: we all need to unplug a little, get some rest from the tyranny of electronics.”

I look at the picture on the wall of a herd of wild horses running across a plain. None of those horses have heart problems. “This isn't restful.”

“I hear that.” She's reading my chart.

“Do you like my father?”

She looks up, half-smiling. “I like your father.”

“On the chart of likes, how far up do you like him?”

She pushes her green reading glasses up on her nose and looks at me. “I'm not familiar with this chart.”

“It goes from liking a person a little bit to liking them more than a little bit but not a lot, to liking them a whole lot.”

“I can't answer that, Jeremiah.”

I bet you could. You just don't want to.

“Do you have chest pain?”

“No.”

“Shortness of breath? Dizziness?”

“No.”

“Any other symptoms?”

“I want to unplug this machine, throw it out the window, and escape.”

She smiles. “That's a good sign, actually. You can go home.”

I push back the sheets.

“Let me disconnect you first. Your dad will be here pretty soon.” She frees me from Marvin. “And, yes, Jeremiah, I like him a whole lot.”