Screaming at the Ump (3 page)

She was right. There was. A very famous poem. But somehow, neither one of them thought about the fact that they were naming me for a fictional guy famous for striking out. I guess it's better than naming me after Babe Ruth—a pig's name AND a girl's name. So I've got that going for me.

Zeke was running down the student list with his index finger, and he stopped at room 208. “We've got a Bob Franklin and a Robbie Franklin, one from Delaware and one from West Orange. What's the call?”

“Same last name, probably both Robert, but different nicknames. Let's come back to that.”

“Okey dokey,” Zeke said. “Oh, look at this. “Didn't we have a whole group of Mcs and Macs last year too?” Zeke asked. He read their names out loud: “MacGregor, Mackenzie, MacNamara, MacSophal, McDonaldson.”

“I think that was the year before,” I said. “Did we end up breaking those pairs up into different rooms? No, wait. No! We realized later that we should have, because they all called each other
Mac
, remember?”

“But then they started with Big Mac and Fat Mac and Forehead Mac, right? You know I'm a fan of the creative nicknames.”

“Yeah. But let's break those all up this year.”

Zeke was staring at the printout. “MacSophal,” he said. “Remember that name?”

“Yeah, you just said it.”

“Come on. Stay with me, Snowden. MacSophal. Remember J-Mac?”

“That relief pitcher with the Phillies? The steroid guy with the crazy beard?”

“Jimmy
MacSophal
,” he said.

I reached for the dorm roommate form. “This guy's name's Patrick.”

“Oh,” Zeke said. “Different guy.”

“What,” I said laughing, “you thought some former major leaguer was going to attend BTP?”

Zeke shrugged. We got back to work.

I heard a little girl's voice ask “What are you doing?” I hadn't even heard the door open.

Zeke whispered, “No. Make her go away.”

Pop once told me that if you see a stray dog, you don't make eye contact. You remain calm, and you pretend it's not there. You never look its way. That was my plan. And, apparently, Zeke's too. It was one of those unspoken things between friends.

Even though I was busy very much not watching Mrs. G.'s granddaughter, I could sort of
feel
her . . . walking around us. Like she was studying us or something. I wasn't even sure I knew what the word meant, but I had the feeling she was
skulking
.

“So back to the Franklins,” Zeke said. “The call is Robbie/Bob, too close or different enough to be roommates without confusion?”

“I could go for Robbie/Bob under normal circumstances,” I said, still not looking at the girl. “But in this case, we have the same last name. So many guys go by their last names, right? Like remember Mankowitz? Hey, Mankowitz!”

Stan Mankowitz was the shortest student in BTP history. I had no idea who suggested umpiring as a possible profession to him, but that person steered him wrong. You need to be able to see over the catcher. Dad and Pop tried everything, using phone books and stools for him to stand on, but he dropped out after the first two weeks.

Mankowitz!

“What're all these papers?” Sly asked.

“Your name is Sylvia, right?” Zeke said.

“Sly.”

“Don't you have some other place to be?” Zeke asked. His voice was a little nasty, but Sly didn't know him well enough to notice.

She shook her head.

To Zeke, I said, “Split up the Franklins.”

“Got it, chief.”

Sly either hadn't noticed that we were ignoring her or didn't care. “So this is where you teach the baseball?”

I didn't even know where to start. I didn't want to start. Zeke and I waited all year for this, and yeah, it was true that we loved it way more than two guys our age should have, but there was just no room for an annoying little kid here right now.

“Can I help?” Sly asked.

“Not really,” I said, still not making eye contact. “Maybe you could ask your grandmother if there's anything else on the master list you could do. Me and Zeke got this covered.”

“She sent me out to ask you.”

“Well, like he said,” Zeke said, “we're good. Tell your grandma we said thanks.”

I knew he thought that would send her scampering back to Mrs. G., but this girl clearly wanted to hang with Zeke. And me.

“That's okay. I'll just stay here with you guys and help.”

“Oh, you know what she should do?” Zeke said.

“What might that be, Ezekiel?”

“Room fresheners!”

I loved that guy. Seriously, sometimes he just pulled one out.

LEMON-SCENTED HAIL-MARY PLAY SAVES DAY
.

I told Sly to ask her grandmother where to find the plug-in room deodorizers and to put one in each dorm room and one in each bathroom outlet. Umpire-school students, for some reason, tended to be on the stinky side.

Zeke and I high-fived each other all over the place when she left and moved through the list a little faster than we might have otherwise, knowing we were on limited time. Everything went well, but there was no great roommate name pair to be found this year. We ended up with one guy in a single room—June Sponato had thrown off the even matchups.

We went to the dorm and worked our way down the hall, starting on the first floor. The carpet was getting kind of rundown here, and there was this old-building smell. I didn't think it was mold, but it had something to do with moisture or humidity or something. That was just how it was—old boarding schools don't smell great. Maybe the room fresheners would help.

We started to hang names on the doors—all doubles, except for a single name on June's room and one on the door for Jorge Washington. It reminded me of the time a few years ago when Zeke tried hanging his own name on one of the doors. But he never needed to do that. It was just a fact that he practically lived here for the whole Academy. His parents didn't expect him to even check in with them—they knew where to find him.

We finished hanging all the names. But it seemed like way too many rooms were empty. Were there really just eighty students this year?

O
UR
house used to be the headmaster's house, back in its reform-school days, and there was a certain old weirdness to it that I really loved. There were a lot of little rooms, and we used many of them in ways that probably were not intended whenever this house was built. Like one room that was probably supposed to be the dining room was stuffed with dirty old equipment bags filled with baseballs, gloves, catching gear, and old bases. Another had the furniture from Pop's house, from back when Grandma was still alive, when I was just a baby. It was a dark room with dark wood furniture, really heavy, sitting up against the walls, some of it covered with cloth. A lot of framed photos that used to be all over the house were now in that room, too, mostly wedding pictures of my parents.

There was one of Dad and Pop on the day my parents got married. Pop was taller than Dad then. And now he was shorter. (They were briefly the same height again after Pop's double knee replacement surgery. Apparently new knees make you taller.) And there was one of my dad—at least they told me it was my dad—when he was about my age. My mother, or Mrs. Bob the Baker, as I called her, always loved that picture. The weirdest thing was that how he looked then, in that picture, looked just like me now, except his hair was darker and shorter. Mine was on the brown side of blond, and his was more straight-up brown. But everything else—the sort of long shape of the face, skinny kid body, even the way he was standing—seemed just like me. I kept meaning to bring that picture to my room.

When my mother left, we closed off the whole third floor. Three guys just didn't need that much house. All that used to be up there was her office and a room she called the craft room but hardly ever used, a bathroom with a leaky tub, and a guest room that we didn't need because the only guests who came were students, and they stayed in the dorms. A long time ago, Pop lived up on the third floor too, but as his body parts started giving out, he moved down to the second floor, near my room and Dad's.

The one room that got a lot of use at our house was the kitchen. At dinnertime. Zeke and I joined Dad and Pop there for our annual day-before pizza. Like always, Dad had sent staff to have dinner in town at the Well.

I sometimes checked on Pop for signs of wear. That was a term Mrs. G. used when she inspected old classroom equipment. Every year when Academy rolled around, I looked at Pop to see if he seemed like he was getting really old. But he was like one of those old-school baseball managers who look the same every year. Maybe it was the baseball cap he always wore, but I bet it was more than just that. Those old-time managers, usually ones who played ball before managing, have these smart-seeming eyes, eyes that have seen a lot of ball. Pop's eyes were like that. When Pop watched students, his eyes often had something like fire in them. But when he looked at me, there was this really obvious . . . love.

There were probably more wrinkles near his eyes and mouth than there used to be, but that was okay. He still looked like Pop, and he hadn't needed a new body part in a couple of years. That was pretty good.

“'Isisooogood,” Zeke said, a slice of pizza in his mouth.

I accidentally looked in his direction; he was a truly disgusting eater. There was food where there shouldn't be food, and the combination of chewed-up pizza and his very metallic mouth was not one of my all-time favorite sights. I never knew if it was because of the double-dentist-parent thing or what, but he had more braces than you'd ever seen in a mouth.

Dad put a slice on his plate. “I'm just going to say this,” he said. “I had to call a couple of guys and tell them not to come this year. Phillip Masterson, Steamboat, and To-Go. We don't have enough students for me to pay everyone.”

Wait, WHAT? This is what they were not talking about in front of me? But. But. But. This never happened. I wanted to plug my ears with my fingers and hum so I didn't have to hear this.

I loved Steamboat. When I was little, he gave me a rookie baseball card of my favorite player, Jackson Alter. I still have it. And I think I'm the only person who knows Steamboat's real name: Kelly. He told me because he said we shared a girls'-names bond. So no Steamboat? I couldn't even find words. I guess no one could, because we ate the rest of the meal in silence.

Finally, Dad asked, “Are we remembering everything?”

Pop nodded, slow and steady as a rocking chair.

It was the same every year. Dad wondered if he was forgetting something. He always worried, but he never really forgot. They used the same master list every year. The same worksheets and homework and tests for the students. The same everything.

“Baseball doesn't change, so we don't need to change,” Pop always said.

That always used to feel true. But we'd never had to cut back on staff before.

***

Right after Zeke went home, I realized I'd been meaning to ask if I could go with him and his mom to get school supplies. I tried his cell, but I knew no one would answer. I didn't even know why he had it, other than his parents claiming they wanted to be able to call him at any time (even if they never actually did). Dad and Pop would be meeting with staff until too late, after Paper Depot closed. Our BTP store had lots of supplies but not all the right kinds. (If I had needed a ball and strike indicator for any of my middle-school classes, I'd have been in business.) My teachers wanted all kinds of notebooks and folders and stuff, and we had to have everything by tomorrow.

There was this sign that hung in the gym. It said
SURPRISE IS THE ENEMY OF THE UMPIRE
, and it was true. Like any good umpire, I did not like to be caught off-guard. By anything. And yet as I tried to figure out a way to get to Paper Depot, I got caught off-guard by a memory. A memory! I was suddenly thinking about the last time Mrs. Bob the Baker packed my backpack, in third grade: I could still see a row of perfectly sharpened pencils in a brand-new pencil case.

I started to think about how long it had been since then, but before a whole mess of feelings started pouring down, I turned them off.

And I asked Mrs. G. if she could drive me to Paper Depot.

Mrs. G. was always able to bail me out when there was no parent around to help. But instead of smiling and grabbing her keys, she winced, like maybe she'd bitten the inside of her cheek.

“Baby, Dana picked up Sly, but now she needs me to get home and watch her. You know I'd never say no to you if I had—”

“That's okay. Do you think you could maybe drop me at the store and I'll—”

“What? Walk home by yourself? I don't like the sound of that. No, sir. Here's what we're going to do. I'll swing by to pick up Sly and take her with us. Then I'll drop you home afterward.”

I knew that after a long day she'd probably rather just go home, but I really did need to get notebooks and a ruler and protractor and compass. And about a thousand other things. She reached into her bun—this is true—and pulled out her car key. “Let's go, Baby.”

***

It didn't take long for me to regret asking Mrs. G. From the minute she climbed into the back seat, Sly pelted me with questions about lunch boxes and spiral notebooks and in what grade you get to start using pens, because she was getting pretty sick of pencils, and did I ever see the
SpongeBob
episode where Squidward turns the adults into babies. Seriously, I thought my head was going to burst.

I had lived among men for a long time. Men knew that quiet was fine. Quiet could be good.

I walked up and down all the aisles and finally filled the cart with everything I needed. Sly insisted on helping me unload the cart at the cash register. But when the time came to hand over my money, I was embarrassed. Really embarrassed. I'd forgotten to bring any!