The Domino Effect (25 page)

Sammie sat crisscross on the floor, switching up CDs. I sat in the window, pounding a ball into my glove and looking out over campus. A week had passed since the conversation upstairs with Pop. April had arrived, but spring and everything after seemed secondary to making things right with Terence.

Around the dorm, he was Godzilla, breathing fire and looking for trouble. Outside, he bumped kids in the hall, skipped meals, and piled up Sunrises left and right. Someone had to save him from himself, which wasn’t going to be easy, since you couldn’t get close to the kid. I avoided him, since I knew that, if we went at it again, I’d be done for sure at Hamden Academy. And while I wanted to help him and everything, I still had plans for next year. Big plans.

A bunch of wrestlers, all the ones who’d stood up during the basketball game and yelled, including Chester (but not McCoy), had been suspended for a week, though their punishment wouldn’t begin until after their season ended. Unbelievable.

“Please, Sammie,” I begged, as he began to plug in another gloom-rock album. “Any more of those crybabies and I’m moving down to the laundry room.”

“Let me guess,” he said. “You want ‘Thunder Road,’ right?”

“There you go,” I said with a wink. I’d been playing a lot of Brenda’s favorite Springsteen song lately. And after a quick trip in my head to the Connecticut seaside, I went back to smacking the ball into my glove and thinking about Terence.

I understood where he was coming from, I really did. I’d been hurt, too, and it messed with everything. All your hope goes away, and you think of the world as unfair and vicious. It practically makes you blind. And it definitely makes you stupid (especially in my case).

And I knew Terence blamed me like I blamed my father, because we have to blame someone for our suffering, and the easiest person to blame is usually right in front of us, though rarely responsible. And I knew that it wasn’t just me and Terence who suffered. It was part of growing up, and almost every kid everywhere goes through it in some way or another, including those we never think of, even though they’re sometimes right in front of us.

“Hey,” I said to Sammie. “Let me ask you something.”

“Sure, Danny,” he said. I could tell he was kind of happy again, having me back in his room, and I hated to scare the crap out of him like this.

“You still have them shoes, or did you get rid of them already?”

“What shoes?” he asked, trying to look all perplexed, though he knew, right away, what I was talking about.

“The wrestling shoes.”

He jumped up. “I don’t have them!” He said it in a voice about two notes higher than normal.

I hopped off the window ledge and walked toward the middle of the room to turn off the music. “Bullshit,” I said. “At first I thought it was that retard Rice, but that was before I figured out it was you who stole them shoes.”

He stood up and faced me, for the first time, with confidence, like he knew he was smarter than me. He was, but I had him here.

“You know how I know?” I asked.

“How?” he said, daring me

I walked over to the closet and put my finger on the door. “Right here,” I said. “This picture right here. That’s how I know.”

He came over and squinted at the photo of his friends from home, caught in some hilarious moment with Sammie right in the middle, sunglasses on and his head thrown back in laughter,
wherethehellishamdenville?
printed across the front of his shirt. My shirt.

“I’m sorry, Danny,” he said. “It must have gotten mixed up with my laundry before we left for the summer, and I forgot to bring it back. That’s all. So what?”

“That was my lucky shirt, Sammie,” I said. “You knew that.”

His eyes were wide, and the little giblet under his chin wobbled.

“Why’d you take my shirt, Sammie?” I asked. I was right in his face now.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t.”

I asked him again. When he opened his mouth, I cocked my fist. He collapsed on his bed.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Sammie yelped. “I was so mad at you. I was so mad. I thought we were friends and you dumped me. You dumped me for those jerks. Didn’t you know how mean they were to me? Didn’t you know how bad that made me feel?”

He buried his face in his hands and began to cry. I didn’t need to think for a second about what he’d said. I knew. And I told him so, and that I was sorry. Then I sat right next to him on the bed and draped an arm over his shoulder. We sat like that for awhile.

Chapter 17

S
pring showed up for real, with showers and flowers and all that, but a dull sense of something, like an invisible fog, hung between our young heads and the new blue sky. It kind of felt that way ever since that whole deal with Terence and the wrestlers, and while Terence practically disappeared, the wrestlers were everywhere. They’d won the state tournament, and were into the regional semi-finals. If they won the northeast part, they’d be going to the national finals somewhere in Missouri or something.

I knew all this because of the announcements they made practically every night at dinner, and the new banner that hung from the Arch and, of course, because of the
fagakada
signs they kept putting up in the mail room: Support Wrestling. I started to think the same genius who designed their uniforms came up with that slogan, too. I started to think that the students who didn’t wrestle, and who didn’t like being told what to do and when to do it, needed a slogan of their own.

The point would be that we were tired of being second class students, tired of being bullied, tired of having our school divided by a minority of knuckleheads who didn’t even care about the rest of us. Pop had taught me to stand up and do the right thing, and standing up to the wrestlers seemed like the right thing to do. It reminded me of back home, in the old neighborhood, when things started to go wrong. If more people had stood up, the outcome would have been different. Much different. For everyone, not just me. So I started working on a plan.

One afternoon, I walked off campus, down past the waterfall and into town. At the old general store, I bought a can of spray paint, some duct tape, a box of rubber gloves, a bottle of prune juice, a ball of twine, and a pack of gum. The old lady behind the counter looked at me like I was nuts. She was right. Back in the room, I sat in the window, chomped on the gum and worked out the details. I had to admit, what I came up with was crazier, and more dangerous, than anything I’d ever considered.

Baseball began in the middle of the month. We’d been practicing for a couple of weeks, and the team rolled through some scrimmages against some local high schools. We figured we might be pretty good again, maybe even better than last year. The first league game would let us know for sure.

On the April afternoon that we waited on York, the sky was bright blue with white clouds exploding in the distance. I was the first one on the field.

An untouched baseball diamond is so beautiful. The justcut grass, fresh-raked dirt, and that white chalk, like cake frosting, always reminded me of my first time at Shea Stadium. I was 5 years old, and the second we cleared the tunnels and saw the field, I knew the world was full of magic. The Mets got smoked that day, 8-tonothing, but still, Pop and I stayed to the end. We snuck down to the box seats after the big shots left early and sat there, right behind the dugout, eating peanuts until the very last out. I remember that day, and that feeling of wonder, every time I come across a fresh field.

Across the grass of the Far Fields at Hamden, my teammates approached in their blue and white uniforms. Coach warmed us up with some basic drills. We looked good, which was important, since York was supposed to be the best prep team in the state this year. They had smoked us pretty good last year (I think it was 8-tonothing), and probably expected to do the same that day. I felt a little intimidated when their players appeared around the bend by the gymnasium, taking the 200- yard walk in their red pinstripes.

Our team came to the bench and sat there as the boys from York unpacked their gear and ran crisp drills in their sharp uniforms. We watched from the bench with our hats yanked down.

I called out to my catcher and went to warm up. Behind the bleachers, we tossed the ball back and forth until he squatted to take some real throws. The warm, moist air helped my arm get loose in a hurry. My fastball popped as it hit where I aimed. I thought back to when Pop and I used to play catch in the alley, and he would insist, every time, that I throw exactly where he held his glove. “Focus on your spot, Pal,” he would say. “Then hit it.”

That day, during warm-ups, I hit my spots alright, like never before. I was worried about leaving all that good stuff on the sidelines, so I gave it a rest and went to each guy individually, shook his hand, and told him we would win. I swore we would.

Our team took to the field, and the guys behind me did their warm-ups while I threw some from the mound. “Play ball!” the umpire yelled, and our catcher fired the ball down to second base, where it went around the horn and back to me. I looked over the field to make sure everyone was in position and then turned to face York’s lead-off man.

He got himself ready with tugs on his crotch, squints, and spits. Classy sport, that baseball. I went into a slow wind-up and then snapped off a nasty curve. The batter jumped back just as the break began, leaving him out of place as the ball arched over the plate. “Strike one!” the umpire called. Things got quiet. I missed a couple of fastballs outside, then smoked two down the middle for the first strikeout of the day.

From there, the pattern was set: fastballs and curves, like a one-two punch, working in tandem, each more devastating due to the threat of the other. After mowing down the other two batters, I walked straight to our bench without looking around. I remembered the way the air smelled — clean, with the coming of moisture — but there would be no rain that day. That day belonged to me.

Each inning during warm-ups, I reminded myself of what Pop had told me about focusing first, and then hitting the target. I tried to think about what the batter was expecting. Fastball or curve? Inside or outside? Then, I did the opposite. I felt invincible, like a superhero or something. A superhero and a mind reader all wrapped up into one. Everything moved in slow motion, expect for the pitches, which zipped from my hand to right where I aimed. There was no sound in my world, no peripheral vision. Just straight ahead. After each inning, I walked right to our bench and sat on the end.

We’d put together a few threats with our bats, but hadn’t scored either, so when I came out to start the fourth inning, the York bench started riding me. They must have figured the little show was over, and that the expected script would now play itself out.

Their lead-off guy came swaggering up for a second taste. I motioned with my head for him to get in the box, which he did to the even louder calls from his teammates.

I blew three pitches by him, just like that. Then, I told him to have a seat on the bench. He studied me for a moment, like he was seeing me for the first time, before walking back to the bench. The following guy popped out to third on a pitch in on his hands.

I knew the next guy mattered most, since he was their best player. He lumbered his bumpy torso up to the plate with a look on his face like he’d just eaten something insulting. He gave me a glare and spit through his teeth.

I looked him over and called “Three pitches” loud enough for everyone to hear. The guys behind me came alive, and the York bench jumped to its feet. The batter smiled and shook his head while digging into the box. Again, he spit through his teeth in my direction. It was loud and tense, but not a problem for me.

After agreeing to the first pitch, I made eye contact with the batter and told him, “Fastball.” He snorted and dug in some more while I went through my wind-up, and I blew one in on the inside corner. Mr. Manners couldn’t catch up.– His swing finished after the ball had already passed. I’d never thrown a ball so hard in my life.

“Strike one!” the umpire yelled. Screams continued from both sides. I took the next signal, addressed him again, and said, “Fastball.” He might have been closer to this one, but not by much.

“Strike two!” was announced, and I could see the blood start to swell in the batter’s face. When the ball came back, I tucked it into my glove and walked to the front of the mound. “You ready for the bender?” I asked.