Donuthead (11 page)

“Mother,” I said, covering my mouth with the fabric of my T-shirt, “need I remind you of the effects of perfume on people with multiple chemical sensitivities?”

“Hold your nose, Franklin,” she said, stuffing her wallet into a purse she used only when she went out on dates with men. “I'll be out of here in a sec.”

In went car keys, Chap Stick, Dentyne. This was not looking good.

“How could you buy perfume? You know I'm allergic.”

“I didn't buy it, for your information. It was a gift.”

That's when the story came out. Gifts had been coming her way for a couple of weeks now. First, a dented package of snacks on the driver's seat of her van. Then her benefactor began leaving old copies of
People
magazine for her at work. Finally, she'd received this bottle of perfume on the back doorstep.

“That's it,” I said. “We're calling the police.”

“Whatever for, Franklin?”

I felt a headache the size of Texas crawling up my right shoulder.

“You're being stalked, Mother, and you're too innocent to know it.”

“Stalked with
People
magazines? Get a grip.”

The doorbell rang, and I vowed we'd continue this conversation later. Honestly, without me to look out for her, my mother was a walking time bomb.

“Just answer one question,” I gasped, eyeing Paul suspiciously
as he held the door for her. “Did you eat any of the food you were given?”

“Of course I ate it,” she said. “Those Twinkies were still in the package. Now relax, Franklin. I'm your mother, not the other way around.”

In April, we practiced baseball. I applied myself as well as I could, given my physical limitations. By the second week, I no longer ran away from the ball. By the third week, I stopped dropping the bat. Now, that's what I call progress.

Still, my mother had the habit of pulling off her baseball cap and wiping her forearm across her forehead, the way the major league coaches did.

When it was Sarah's turn, I trotted to the outfield and squinted into the sun. I guess my mother had forgotten our original purpose, which was to give me enough confidence to sign up for the Pelican View Baseball Team. Now she coached Sarah, too. In fact, I would say that Sarah was the only one she coached. For me, it was more about showing up.

I mostly just watched the practice happen at that point, jogging to the ball after it was hit. After all, you can't expect a kid with my physical limitations to play the positions of three able-bodied men. That's a lot of uneven ground to cover.

It was during that time I discovered my hidden talent. My mother says that most of my talents are hidden, but this one stayed hidden on purpose for quite a long while. If Sarah Kervick hadn't been such a hit parade, I might never have discovered the little secret that would make me feel special.

Even when my mother threw her trademark fast curve,
Sarah could whack the stuffing out of the baseball. More than strength, that girl had perfect placement and timing. You see, a batter can never know how a pitch will come in, or even whether or not she's standing at the right angle to meet it. So her reflexes have to be lightning fast. You had to watch closely, but you could see Sarah adjust her stance as the ball was coming in.

Of course, this made it hard to tell where the ball would be hit, but I almost always knew. That was my talent, certainly not as dramatic as hers, but one that fit the scientific workings of my mind. I could predict, with a statistical accuracy that would make Gloria Nelots send out recruiters, where that ball was headed. The fact that I arrived there too late to catch it was purely an act of self-defense. My weak wrists needed protection almost as much as my foreshortened arm and leg.

There's no mystery to where the runner goes after the ball is hit. The thing I couldn't figure out was how Sarah managed to work up so much speed so quickly. On that first day of practice, my mother had measured her footprint from a wet, sandy sample in the infield. After that, Sarah got cleats
and
tennis shoes. With the traction she got from the cleats, she sped around the bases like liquid fire, dirt spitting from the bottoms of her feet and her blond hair flying behind her like the tail of a kite.

By the end of April, Sarah had a baseball jacket, two pairs of jeans, and three regular-looking girl shirts. Her hair was combed, her warts were all but gone, and she'd graduated to second-grade readers. Just walking down the street, someone would definitely mistake her for regular.

After we got home from practice, my mother would make
Sarah a monstrous snack. Thick slices of salami and cheese and lettuce and tomato on huge slabs of bread. It's hard to imagine how she got her mouth around it. I was tempted to point out that swallowing without chewing was putting an unnecessary burden on her digestive tract, not to mention what all the added dyes, fillers, and preservatives were doing to her health profile. But I knew that Sarah would only laugh at me with her mouth open, flicking bits of sausage onto my snack of dry roasted soybeans and unsalted pumpkin seeds.

“You know, Franklin, I got a question for you,” she said one day after inhaling two beef tacos and an entire can of pears in heavy syrup. “You're always trying to eat so healthy and not get hurt. How come?”

“You're asking me why I try to avoid risky behaviors? Why I try to eat a healthy balance of foods?”

“Sure,” she said, pouring juice from the can onto her spoon and slurping it. “How come?”

“Well, I think it would be obvious to even the most casual observer that my health is not robust,” I responded.

“You know a lotta big words, Franklin, but I still don't get it. I mean … I know why I do what I do. I do the baseball thing 'cause I get clothes and that makes me look regular. And I read these stupid books about frogs losin' buttons and a bunch of stupid crap that would bore a two-year-old so that someday I can read the stuff in those skating books.

“But as far as I can tell, the only thing that gets you goin' is how sick you are and how deformed you are and all that, so I figure you oughta stick your head in the path of a speeding pitch and get beaned. Then you could spend a coupla weeks in
the hospital hooked up to those machines and talk all day to the doctors and nurses about how sick you are.”

“Well,” I said, re-capping my yogurt. “Well.”

The truth was, I'd never heard Sarah Kervick talk so much. It never occurred to me that she even thought about me, let alone thought about ways to occupy my time.

I liked it and I didn't like it. I mean, I liked the attention, but I didn't like what it all added up to. As she sat there slurping her syrup, I realized that Sarah Kervick had decided I was in this for reasons other than a sterling bill of health. That I had needs, emotional needs, that caused me to act in certain ways. I was about to correct her on several points when I decided I just didn't want to be in the same room with Sarah Kervick right then. What I decided was that two of us could play at this case-study business. How would she feel, I wondered, to be the object of such unflattering scrutiny?

“I need to make a phone call,” I said. “Then we'll get started.

” Gloria wasn't in. She was testifying before the Senate Subcommittee on Food and Drug Packaging, according to her assistant, Miss Tweedell.

“Problem is, kids can't get into those childproof pill bottles, but neither can old people, now can they?” she asked, apparently without expecting an answer. “Want her voice mail?”

“Sure,” I said, walking over to the front door and picking up one of Sarah's sandy tennis shoes. I'd never left a message for Gloria before. I cleared my throat and got ready to enunciate.

“Gloria, I got that information you wanted. Sarah Kervick wears a size six shoe. She's around four feet, ten inches tall, and she can't weigh more than seventy pounds. A couple of
her teeth are brown, and her father smokes.” I paused, wondering if there was anything more I could add to get into Gloria's good graces, and to show that I was thinking of someone other than myself. “She lives in a trailer off a dirt road,” I ended. Then I hung up the phone, went to my room, and shut the door.

Sarah could practice
Frog and Toad Are Friends
on her own today.

The Pelican View Baseball Team had its first meeting April 30. All the kids who wanted to be on the team were there, along with their parents. My mother was doing double duty, bringing me and Sarah to the practice.

“Franklin,” Coach Jablonski said, all jovial, slapping me on the back and bruising my deltoid muscle. “This is a surprise. And you brought your lady friend.” At this he winked.

“You know, dear, the cheerleaders are with Miss Debby in the multipurpose room.”

“She's here for the baseball meeting,” my mother said, stepping forward. “Hello, Hank.”

“Well, hey, Julia. The baseball team. Well …” He looked skinny old Sarah Kervick up and down. “It's just …” Squinting his eyes, Coach Jablonski peered around the bleachers. “She might get lonely, is all. Girls' softball, that's in the fall.”

“No trouble about that,” Sarah said, bruising my other deltoid with a solid slap. “I got Franklin here.”

Marvin Howerton opened his mouth, but then thought better of it.

When it was time to start, Coach Jablonski blew a couple of
short bleeps on his whistle and slapped his clipboard against his thigh.

“Good news, sports fans. The Pelican View Ice and Fitness Center is having its grand opening next month. Now, as many of you know, I played wing for Loggertown State, and I look forward to being the coach of the first ever Pelican View Hockey Team. So I want all of you to think about taking my basic skills class this summer.”

He looked around, as if expecting us to say something, but nobody did.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “Just thought I'd give you a preview of coming attractions. Now let's play ball. Can I have a parent volunteer to pitch for batting practice?”

Marvin Howerton's father, who looked just like Marvin only super-sized, stepped forward. So did my mother.

“Thanks, Jim,” Coach Jablonski said. “That'll be all. The rest of you can take a seat in the bleachers. I've got the health forms all ready on clipboards for you to sign.”

Another few bleeps on the whistle, even though no one was talking. I was tempted to ask if Coach knew the decibel level of his whistle blasts, but I changed my mind. It was better not to draw attention to myself.

“Count off,” he roared.

There were only seventeen kids total who signed up for the privilege of playing on the Pelican View Baseball Team. All the really good athletes joined Little League, I guess. I felt a brief and intense sense of gratitude that this thought had not yet occurred to my mother.

Luckily, I turned out to be a two. We were to take the field.
I ambled toward right, glancing back at my mother, who was installed in the bleachers, looking disgusted.

Marvin Howerton was first up to bat. From his stance, I could tell the ball wouldn't come anywhere near me, so I could relax. Mr. Howerton pitched his son an easy lob, slow and level. If he hit the ball with proper force, I predicted it would crest the third base line, just over Graham Dewar's head.

But I underestimated Graham, who leapt into the air like a frog as soon as Marvin hit the ball and caught the drive squarely in his glove. Marvin pounded home plate with the bat, muttering.

“All right, boy,” Mr. Howerton shouted. “It was a good hit.”

Denny Price was up next. Mr. Howerton lobbed an easy one to Denny, who popped up to center field. We didn't have enough players to cover center, so Leonard Morris came flying in from left field to miss the catch and sprawl on the ground. Personally, I could have told him that he didn't have enough acceleration to make the catch. I did, if I'd started with the pitch, but why place myself in a dangerous spot for a practice session?

I began to limp painfully toward the ball, just to show I had a grasp on the rules of the game. Secretly, I was giving Leonard the opportunity to jump up, remember the direction of home plate, scoop up the ball, and fling it crazily toward Mr. Howerton, who had run in to cover.

After that, Mack Simmons grounded to short, sending Leonard flying forward. His heart rate must have been off the charts.

Now Sarah was up to bat, and I could see Mr. Howerton
change his pitching strategy. The ball came in fast and low on the inside, nearly clipping off Sarah's knees in the process. The second one sailed right past her nose. My mother practically climbed the backstop.

“Throw her a decent pitch, Jim. Or I'll relieve you,” she shouted.

“Now, Julia. That'll be my decision,” Coach Jablonski called out from the first base line.

“Like hell it will,” she replied.

Sarah walked away from home plate and whispered something to my mother at the fence. For some reason it made me feel awfully lonely out there in right field, getting all these twinges in my legs from the uneven ground and watching, from a distance, my mother and Sarah Kervick with their heads together.

Before she returned to her stance, Sarah waved her bat at me.

That's when I knew she was headed in my direction. Instead of banging a hit to the ghost man in center field and streaming around the bases all triumphant, she was going to lob me an easy one. She didn't care how Mr. Howerton pitched. That was what she was going to do.

I could see her change her footing and lower her bat. All I needed to do was keep a cool head and place myself under the ball. So what if I got hit, I said to myself. The doctors in the hospital might finally confirm what I'd been telling my mother all along. Baseball was no kind of game for a sensitive, asymmetrical guy like me.

I predicted Mr. Howerton would pitch a strike. He did. But
it was low and fast. I had to move back quickly to reach the right spot. I began to backpedal, hoping that my mother was paying attention. Could she see the effort I was putting into this?

Breathing in little gasps, I was almost to the spot when I heard the thundering crack of the bat. It was at that exact moment that my short heel hit a rock. I lost my balance and careened toward the ground, stretching out my arms to cushion the blow. As I fell in a long, slow-motion arc that ended on hard-packed earth, I spied, out of the corner of my eye, crazy Leonard Morris. He'd been streaking over to back me up, but when I fell, he froze, his eyes following the trajectory of the ball like it was a meteor streaking toward earth.