Читать книгу The Last Summer - Chan Howell - Страница 15

A Giant Falls

The fifth game of the season was Travis and Wyatt’s highly anticipated showdown. Both boys circled the game on the schedule. Frankie even closed his store to watch the showdown. Travis was undefeated, and Wyatt and the Castaways were still looking for their first win. The Castaways improved with each game, and I believed at some point Wyatt would lead them to a victory. Mitch was the Castaways’ best pitcher. He struggled most of the time, but he did well for a first-year pitcher. The Castaways’ only chance to win was if a team would challenge Wyatt each at bat and a little luck. The stage was set for the worst team and its best hitter against a giant and the best team.

Wyatt stayed out of trouble the entire week at school, and he avoided detention for a record of three days straight. Our teachers all thought he had turned the corner. Proper motivation kept him in the good graces for at least one week. Principal Overstreet was surely lonely without her weekly visit from Wyatt. Wyatt made sure Travis knew something was going to happen at Thursday night’s game. Wyatt bragged to my sister and her friends that Thursday night he was going to let everyone know why he had nicknamed our Little League bully Ruby. Wyatt was the only one that called Travis Ruby. The nickname did not stick. Wyatt invited everyone and made sure the news of the invitations reached Travis. My sister was the best artist in our grade. Wyatt and Whitley sat together at lunch on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, working on an art project. She drew, and he colored. Whitley laughed at whatever crazy stories he was telling. It seemed as if a spell was cast. It was the first time I observed her listening to a boy.

I thought very little about this activity until she came home with their art project on Thursday. I knocked on her door, but Ace of Base was blaring from the radio and she did not hear me. When I walked in, she was organizing a collage of pictures and a banner saying, “Click your heels, no place like home.” The hairs on my arm stood up, and I had to shake off the cold chills. The pictures consisted of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz with her ruby slippers five times the necessary size, and she had several posters. When she saw me, I expected her to say something, but instead she just said, “If you tell Mom or Dad, I’ll kill you.” Whitley had chosen sides.

The two boys divided everyone. I think she chose Wyatt because they were a lot alike despite their constant bickering. Travis insulted my sister many times when we were younger, and his insults intensified each year.

I simply asked, “Whitley, what is the plan?”

She said, “I’ll tell you only if you go over to the park and help me.”

I reluctantly promised. She told me that she and Wyatt had been working on the plan for several weeks. The plan was to put the posters throughout the park. It was obvious to me it would not end well, but I chose sides too. I helped her hang the posters against my better judgment. We even put a poster covering the memorial to the Scarborough Brothers at the park’s entrance. The red-and-white gardenias were also hidden by one of their posters. The blooming gardenias warned us that summer had arrived, but we defiantly put posters, hiding them. I kept thinking, What would Duckworth say?

Wyatt and Travis’s showdown was the six o’clock game, with Drake and me playing after. Travis and Alex showed up to the field, and both were confused with the signs everywhere. Wyatt acted as if he had nothing to do with it. The main banner was not in sight. Jaxon Leonard started the game, and Wyatt promptly hit a two-run home run in the first. The score ballooned to 2–8 by the fourth, and Alex inserted Travis to face the top of the order.

Travis struck out the first two batters. Wyatt did what he always did prior to stepping in the batter’s box: he looked back at the dugout and made a comment. Most of the comments were something like, “I’ll be right back. Try not to lose the ball in the sun. Maybe opposite field or maybe not.” This time, he stepped in the batter’s box and said nothing. Travis threw the first pitch, and Wyatt rested his bat on his shoulder and took strike 1, then he did it again. He stepped out of the batter’s box to tie his shoe, and as if on cue, Whitley rolled the “Click your heels, no place like home” banner out. Wyatt stood from tying his shoes. He called out to the dugout, “Ruby better click those heels, because he’s going to want to be at home after the next pitch.” The pitch was the hardest ball I had ever seen Travis throw. The ball flew over the fence high into the swaying pine trees beyond the right field fence. I immediately looked at Duckworth, and his squinted eyes said more than any words he could’ve mustered. He was in disbelief of the distance the ball had traveled. Wyatt slowly trotted the bases and, when he touched home plate, in the most obnoxious girly voice, said, “There is no place like home, there is no place like home, there is no place like home.” Then he jumped up and clicked his heels.

Umpire Smelly Kelly called the coaches together, then he warned Wyatt. Ogre laughed out loud, and Travis glared at him. Mitch came up, and Travis drilled him in the shoulder. While Mitch squirmed in pain. Travis refused to take a knee, and he simply stared at Wyatt. Two innings later, the game was over, 3–11. Alex refused to shake Wyatt’s hand after the game. Travis ran over to rip my sister’s banner down. Whitley was grounded for two weeks, and she was forced to apologize. Her apology dripped with sarcasm. “Travis, I am so very sorry if I caused you any embarrassment.” She held her head down in an attempt to hide her smile.

Coach Alex responded, “The scoreboard says a lot more than childish banners.”

Ruby pointed at the scoreboard, then said, “I am undefeated. What’s your record, Carson? I know you lost one game.” He was referencing beating me and Drake.

My punishment was one week. It was the first time Whitley seemed to displease my parents, but it would not be the last.

Wyatt had become the alpha dog that day, and he knew as well as Travis. The nickname Ruby stuck that day, and Wyatt was no longer the only one that called our giant Ruby. The story of the home run drifted through school, and a legend was born. The ball was never found, and the distance it traveled only grew each time the story was told. It was hard to feel bad for Ruby; he had made our lives at school and in sports hell. His physical size was matched by his taunts. He always seemed to win at every sport, and he and his father made sure you knew how bad you had lost. Most of us idolized the giant at first, but his taunts began to turn everyone against him.

One is not born the hero or the villain; it takes time, but occasionally it happens in a split second. Ruby had always viewed himself as our hero, and the laughter and the high fives for Wyatt proved him wrong. Ruby’s giant ego had turned him into a villain, and he did not know it until Wyatt’s home run sailed into the pine trees. He would embrace being the villain just as he had embraced being a false hero. Travis wore the nickname Ruby as a badge of honor. He was glad to be our villain, and the name signified he was special.

Preston Loflin was one of the few that stayed loyal to the slain giant. Preston had benefited from Ruby’s dominance a few years prior, and he still idolized him. Among the eleven-year-olds, Preston was the leader, and he tried to learn from Ruby. Preston rarely spoke while at practice, but he was a wild child at school. Rumors of his nonsense reached us, and we were all in disbelief. He hated wearing a shirt. He frequently warmed up with no shirt despite the displeasure of both his parents. He was the first person I knew that took a pill to stay calm.

Preston’s team was coached by his dad, Doug. They lived in a big house on the lake, and he was generous with his time and money. Doug’s parents had died in a car accident due to faulty equipment, thus his sizable home but modest job. His teams always had the best jerseys and equipment. Doug was the organized drill coach. His practices rarely seemed like a game and more like a carnival, with his players going between carnival booths. Wherever he went, he had a bag of orange cones, jump ropes, and other equipment that seemed out of place. The truck he drove looked like a rolling equipment room. Everything was meticulously placed, and everything had a specific location. Preston had an older brother, Ayden, that looked down on us from his lofty title of coolest kid in the middle school. He sat beside his mom, Angie, at our games in misery all summer. Preston’s mom was the outcast of the other moms because she had crossed Missy two years earlier. She was friendly and did not have a mean bone in her body, but she seemed to constantly yell, “Sit down!” to Preston. Angie brought dugout drinks, among other things. Preston chewed a pack of green gum every game and offered us his bright-green gum.

Preston sat with Frankie and Troy to watch his idol, Travis, as he called it, “defend his territory.” Preston turned pale and was inconsolable when Wyatt turned Travis into Ruby. Frankie told Preston, “Maybe Travis will get revenge someday.”

Troy laughed, then said through a mountain of sarcasm, “Someday may never come.”

After the game, Preston approached the giant, then said, “Travis, I think he just got lucky. Next time you’ll strike him out for sure.”

Ruby barked back, “Call me Ruby! Wyatt lives on luck.”

Wyatt force-fed Ruby his own medicine. We all enjoyed the look on Ruby’s face that day, but I knew his embarrassment would not stay for long. Ruby changed that day too. The embarrassment became his fuel, and he became more obnoxious and difficult. Wyatt became even more confident, and his ego began to swell. My sister’s hatred for Ruby intensified, as did his insults. Ruby taunted Whitley even more, and he constantly embellished stories of Whitley’s love for Wyatt. Wyatt became her ally, and he always confronted Ruby when he taunted her. Ruby and Wyatt despised each other, and their relationship would stay fractured for a long time.