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  Sarah walked away, resisting the urge to touch her cheek, which was already sprouting a goose egg.

  “Thanks, Sarah,” Bernie said, giving her the look he usually reserved for my mother.

  “You got promise, Bernie. I mean that,” she said.

  I knew I should apologize. I was nothing but a liability in playground skirmishes. But I am a pacifist, after all. Your values aren’t tested until the going gets rough, right?

  “Why?” I asked Sarah once we were back in the building. “Why did you help Bernie like that?”

  “Good question, comin’ from you,” she said. Then she shrugged. “The kid’s my friend.”

  “But you just met him the other day.”

  “‘Cause he’s your mom’s friend, then, that’s how come. And she’s my friend.”

  We were passing through the lower elementary. Ms. Karwowski, the second-grade teacher, had rows and rows of painted sunflowers displayed outside her room. I looked at Sarah Kervick against the backdrop of all those pretty yellow flowers. There was no other way to explain it. What she did for Bernie was kind.

  “Should we get some ice for that?” I asked, pointing to her swollen cheek.

  “Nah. I had worse.” She was walking fast ahead of me, the torn pocket of her jeans flipping back and forth with her stride.

  She was not a lioness. And she was definitely not a gazelle. As we reached Ms. Linski’s classroom, I realized I was going to need a whole new theory now that Sarah Kervick had reached the jungles of Pelican View Elementary.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Spring Training

  In emergency situations, total strangers can become best friends. Burning buildings, sinking ships. There’s a powerful urge to believe that those who may be sharing your final moments are your nearest and dearest. I admit to having a few soft feelings for Sarah Kervick after she rescued Bernie and his cards from the troglodyte twins. I thought she was noble to go out of her way to see him to safety. With her as my protector, I could envision a future in which my resting pulse rate was the same at school as on a lazy Sunday afternoon. And so the next day, when she began to follow me home, I felt a mixture of affection and sympathy for the way she’d so quickly attached herself to my mother and me.

  But apparently Sarah Kervick had not undergone the same transformation. Maybe she did not consider what had happened on the playground a near-death experience. Maybe she did not have normal human feelings. After all, we have already established that she did not feel pain or fear.

  She walked the traditional six steps away from me in silence all the way home. When I edged a little closer in order to strike up a conversation, she widened the gap. Upon reaching the house, she did not turn around and wait for me to invite her in; she rang the bell.

  “My mother’s not home,” I told her. “She works until four on Thursday.”

  “Oh,” she said, sitting down on the frozen step. “Okay. I’ll wait.”

  I thought of what my mother might do to me if she found a half-frozen Sarah Kervick on her doorstep.

  “You can wait inside, you know,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Sarah nearly leapt off the step. “It’s a deal,” she said. “I won’t hurt you, either.”

  She perched herself on a barstool in the kitchen while I hung up my jacket. Then I began to wash my hands.

  “Is it your birthday?” she asked as I dried each finger individually with my extra-absorbent, waffle-weave towel.

  “No,” I said. I was about to explain the importance of good hygiene and extended contact with anti-bacterial soap when I realized I was the host here. Shouldn’t I offer her something? In my short and uneventful life, I had never willingly invited someone over to my house before. It’s true that Bernie came over to watch the Disney Channel, since the Lepners were philosophically opposed to anything beyond basic cable. Did that count?

  “Let’s see,” I said now, going over in my mind all the snacks my mother had purchased against my advice. “How about some Oreos?”

  “Okay.” Sarah didn’t seem as hungry as the first couple of times she came over. Carefully, she pulled two from the package and placed them on a plate I’d given her. She ate slowly with her head down.

  I think we were both relieved to see my mother’s van pull into the driveway. Sarah jumped off the barstool and flicked at her dress to make sure she was crumb-free. We stood there, both of us fixated on the door, when my mother walked in.

  She didn’t seem at all surprised to see us in the kitchen together.

  “Hey, Sarah,” was what my mother said as she opened the fridge and pulled out a pitcher of iced tea.

  “I was just wonderin’,” Sarah began, giving me the now-familiar sideways glance that communicated there was no earthly reason—in her mind—why I had been put on the planet. “The thing is, I—”

  There was an urgent knock on the storm door. We turned to see Bernie’s palms flat up against the glass.

  “That you, Franklin?” he shouted, getting his spit all over the door.

  My mother put up a finger in Sarah’s direction.

  “Come on in, Bern,” she called.

  He didn’t come in, exactly. Bernie stood in the doorway, half in, half out, letting the cold air exchange places with the temperate air in our climate-controlled hallway.

  “Franklin,” he said, all breathless. “You better come quick.” Then his eyes fell on Sarah and he seemed to lose all sense of urgency.

  “Sarah,” he said, gazing at her with a dreamy smile.

  My mother put down the pitcher of iced tea, and we all waited for Bernie to say something more.

  He straightened up and smoothed down his bangs. “I just want to say you look exactly like Alice in Wonderland with your hair all pretty like that.”

  “Thanks,” Sarah said, looking at the ground. While I wasn’t close enough to guarantee this, I think she blushed.

  “Bernie, honey,” my mother said to snap him out of his trance. “What were you going to say to Franklin?”

  “Oh! Mr. Nillson is painting his garage on a stepladder, Franklin, right near the electrical wires.”

  “Wood or metal?”

  “Huh?”

  “The stepladder.”

  “It’s metal.” He grabbed my newly sanitized wrist with his grubby hand. “You’ve got to talk some sense into him!” Bernie pulled me to the door but paused before he plunged into the cold outside air.

  “I can get my pack of cards and we can act out a scene from the book, if you want, Sarah. Maybe the part where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat, or where Alice has tea with the Mad Hatter. Afterwards … on the front steps.”

  Later, I reflected that while I probably saved Mr. Nillson from an untimely heart attack—Hello! Those wires were not grounded—it was a small consolation for the conversation I missed at my house.

  In my kitchen, calmly sipping iced tea and nibbling Oreo cookies, my mother listened to Sarah’s problems. I bet it took about a second for her to decide to put my life on the line so that Sarah Kervick could have “a chance at bein’ regular.”

  Yes, as I was trying to save yet another hapless neighbor from a tragic domestic accident, Sarah was telling my mother that she needed a job so she could buy clothes that made her look more like the other girls—though why that would be her aim, I can’t imagine.

  Did my mother have any ideas, she wondered.

  Oh, yes, indeed she did.

  Finally, my mother had found someone desperate enough to recruit into her evil plan of putting me on the Pelican View Baseball Team.

  “I bet she doesn’t know a thing about baseball,” I said when she told me about how she’d hired Sarah to help us with practices.

  “Doesn’t matter,” my mother shot back. “I can’t pitch and catch at the same time.”

  “What about Bernie? Let him be catcher.”

  “Very funny. We already tried that, remember? He set up his plastic animals at home plate and I almost gave him a concussion.”
/>   Three fleeting days later, I stood on home plate, looking over the vast expanse of desert that was the Paul I. Phillips Recreation League infield. Official practice had not yet begun for the season, so the chalk lines were barely visible and the area around home plate was rutted from dirt bike tires. Sarah sat in the bleachers, her arms folded out of habit or cold, but definitely not stubbornness. Not this time, anyway. Wasn’t she getting what she wanted?

  Overnight, my mother had transformed into a baseball coach. She leapt from her van, went around to the back, and pulled out a huge duffel bag with what looked like a dead body flopping around inside. Dumping the contents on the field, she motioned Sarah over.

  “Here’s your first installment,” she said, producing a padded green nylon jacket with about seventeen pockets and as many zippers. I was all set to issue a standard safety warning about the dangers of loose ties and zippers when boarding the school bus when the look on Sarah’s face kept my thoughts from connecting to my mouth. It was the sort of look I imagine Cinderella having when her fairy godmother conjures up the amazing gown for the ball.

  Pulling off her ratty, unraveling sweater, Sarah dropped it in the dirt by the batter’s box. Gingerly, she slid one arm into the jacket sleeve. Halfway through the procedure, she bit her lip and looked down at the ground.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, and I could tell she was close to tears, so I limped away to distribute the bases. My mother busied herself unpacking the rest of the bag.

  “This is for you, Franklin,” she said, holding up the traditional batter’s helmet with the protective disk that dipped down over the exposed ear.

  Standard issue safety equipment could hardly be considered a generous gift under the circumstances, but I tried to look grateful.

  My mother and I had had a long talk the evening before.

  “Look, Franklin,” she said. “I just want to do something normal for once. Just a normal mother and son kind of thing. No crash dummies, no fatality statistics, just … I don’t know … typical.”

  In my mind, I searched crazily for a sport or activity that was completely safe, that we could both enjoy without fear. And to my horror, I discovered there wasn’t one. Everything that flashed through my mind—street fairs, bowling, nature center hikes—sent up red flags of danger.

  There must be something, I reasoned. Finally, it came.

  “As long as it is combined with a sensible exercise program and done in the comfort of your home, I would say that reading is a perfectly safe hobby for us to share.”

  My mother looked disgusted. “You’re wrong,” she said finally. “Reading can be very dangerous. Authors can get people very worked up with their writing. Reading has caused revolutions, Franklin.

  “Even FDR didn’t trust reading. Don’t you remember his annual address of 1944? He had the flu, so he insisted that the radio program be broadcast from his bed in the White House rather than have people read about the speech in the newspaper?”

  “I’m not sure he was actually in bed …”

  “Don’t try to distract me with details, young man. The fact is, reading is one of the most dangerous things around.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that kind of dangerous,” I argued. “I was talking about the getting-hit-by-a-line-drive kind of dangerous. Physical dangerous.”

  “What difference does it make? A guy could die of a broken heart after reading a Dear John letter. A story in the newspaper could cause a riot.”

  She was just being stubborn, and she was old enough to know it.

  “Fine. I give. Uncle. Reading is more dangerous than stock car driving.”

  “I’m just trying to make a point, Franklin. Anything is dangerous if you look at it a certain way. Just getting up in the morning is dangerous.”

  “Exactly!” I said. “We’re in total agreement.”

  But I knew we weren’t. And my mother knew we weren’t, so I had to keep returning to the subject and mulling it over.

  Was it possible that I, Franklin Delano Donuthead, could be overreacting to the dangers of childhood, as my mother was suggesting? Why wasn’t my mother overjoyed to have a son who took such diligent care of himself? Was there something I was missing here? Was something greater expected of me? Was the maternal pleasure of watching a son field a hard grounder down the third base line more important than taking precautions to ensure that same son survive to adulthood?

  When I agreed to her plan, I have to admit that my mother looked happier with me than she had in a long time. And happiness, according to Gloria Nelots, is a major boost to longevity.

  “Okay, kids,” my mother said now, leaning on two bats, one wooden, one aluminum. “Here are the ground rules. We’ve got three weeks before baseball season officially starts. Our goal is to get Franklin enough skills so that he feels comfortable signing up. We’ll practice every day after school for one hour, except Thursday, when I work late.”

  Sarah’s hand shot up. “Me and Donuthead, I mean, Franklin, can practice on our own on Thursday. You okay with that?” she said to me in her own agree-or-I’ll-rearrange-your-body-parts kind of way.

  I attempted to give my mother a see-what-I-have-to-put-up-with look, but she would not make eye contact.

  “Great,” she said. “That’s great. And, Sarah, I’m going to have to talk to your parents about this.”

  Before Sarah could disguise her reaction as anger, a troubled look crossed her face. Then she sat right down on the cold ground and hugged her knees.

  “I can’t be keeping you after school and sending you home with clothes without their permission, dear,” my mother said, kneeling beside Sarah and resting one hand on her bony knee.

  “Him, it’s just him. My dad,” Sarah said quietly. She was shaking her head and dragging her finger through the wet sand near her feet. When she finally did look at my mother, it was like Sarah was trying to decide if she was poisonous or not.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Whatever.”

  “All right, then.” My mother slapped Sarah’s knee and sprang up. “Let’s play ball. We’ll start with batting practice.” She tossed the catcher’s mitt to Sarah. “I’ll pitch. Franklin, which do you prefer? Aluminum or wood?”

  I opened my mouth to explain that either instrument, when applied with the proper force, could prove deadly. But as I watched my mother dance out to the pitcher’s mound, I didn’t have the heart to say it. I set the batting helmet on my head. It tilted to one side, exposing my left earlobe.

  “I may have to have this fitted correctly before we begin,” I announced. My mother jogged back to home plate and slapped the top of my head. While this did help with placement, it seemed unnecessarily cruel. Now my ears were ringing.

  “Sarah,” she called out, “you stand here, behind Franklin. Okay, now squat down and put the mitt between your legs.”

  “Hey, my new jacket could get dirty,” Sarah complained, stopping at a bend.

  My mother sighed. “That’s one of the dangers of baseball. You might get dirty.”

  Sarah stood up, pulled off her jacket, and hung it on the chain-link fence. Then she returned to squat in the dirt behind me, pushing her flimsy dress down between her knees.

  “That’s right,” my mother said, “but bring the mitt higher. Gives me a target to aim for.”

  For a moment, she looked at us the way you do pictures in the art museum that you can’t quite figure out. Then she dropped her glove and walked back over to me.

  “Now, Franklin, we’ve been over this before, but just for review …,” she began.

  How many times my mother had tried to get me in this position I could not tell you. I make every effort to block out painful experiences. In fact, I think I can trace the onset of my post-traumatic stress disorder to the first time she pitched me a softball.

  “This is the strike zone,” she said, touching my shoulders and my knees. “When the ball is thrown between these two points, a good ump will call a strike. That means you should swing at it, becaus
e if you don’t, they’re going to hold it against you.”

  “Why do they call it a strike if it means you don’t hit the ball? In the dictionary, strike means ‘to hit, with a hand, tool, or weapon.’ ”

  “Quit stallin’. We’re gonna play ball whether you recite the dictionary or not. I don’t plan to be in this position all day,” I heard Sarah’s voice behind me.

  “Okay now, Franklin,” my mother said, trying to recover her earlier enthusiasm. “You know the drill. Feet shoulder-width apart, bend your knees … no, that’s a slight forward bend.” She twisted me like a pretzel.

  “Wouldn’t common sense dictate that I lean away from the strike zone, rather than into it?”

  Huge sigh. “Franklin, imagine you want to hit the ball as opposed to avoiding it. Imagine that you want to get that offending ball as far away from you as possible.”

  “There’s an easy solution to that,” I said, taking a step back.

  “No, dear,” she said, firmly propelling me forward. She walked backward to the pitcher’s mound, just to make sure I stayed.

  “Don’t balance the bat on your shoulder, cock your elbow in the direction of the pitcher, watch the ball …”

  Her words crackled around me like static electricity as I entered into an advanced state of panic.

  “Try to remember what FDR said, Franklin.” My mother pulled the implement of destruction out of the duffel bag and stepped onto the pitcher’s mound. “The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”

  I thought I detected a slight tremor in the ground below me. She threw the ball directly at me and I jumped away, dropping the bat. In the distance, I heard a thud as the missile found its mark in Sarah Kervick’s palm.

  “Are you all right?” I shouted, craning my neck to see her. My mother started toward us, but Sarah tossed back the ball and held up her finger, as if to say, Just give me a minute here.

  “I have an idea.” She stood up and stepped around me.

  Keeping her back to my mother, she said, “Look here. If you don’t learn to play ball, I don’t get any clothes. If I don’t get any clothes, I walk around lookin’ like this. If I walk around lookin’ like this just because you don’t learn to play ball, then we have a problem. Because then I’m gonna be very angry. And there is nothing this ball can do to you that my fist can’t do better and harder and more times….”