Authors: Gary D. Schmidt
CHAPTER FIVE
The Yellow Shank
Plate CCLXXXVIII
HERE ARE the stats from the last two weeks of October:
Three fights in the downstairs hall. No wins. One loss. Two ties. Mr. Ferris stopped them.
One fight in Mr. McElroy's class with barbarian hordes. A tie. Mr. McElroy stopped it.
Two fights in the upstairs hall. No wins. One loss. One tie. Mr. Ferris stopped it.
Two fights in the PE locker room. Two ties. Otis Bottom stopped them both, since the So-
Called Gym Teacher was nowhere around.
One fight while running the cross-country course in PE. One loss.
One fight in the boys' bathroom. A tie. James Russell stopped it.
Two fights between school and The Dump. No wins. Two losses. But they were close.
Twelve near-fights. Probable record: Eight wins. Four losses. You don't believe me? So what?
So what?
Five days of After School Detention.
Two threats of school suspension, because I was the instigator of the PE locker room fights,
according to the So-Called Gym Teacher. Liar.
Things were not going so well at Washington Irving Junior High School. Mr. Barber told me I needed
to put a new brown-paper book cover on
Geography: The Story of the World,
which I hadn't
bothered doing since I was leaving it in my locker instead of bringing it to class and I think Mr.
Barber was starting to suspect that I'd taken his new book and destroyed it. I hadn't turned in my
Chapter Review Map on the culture of China to Mr. McElroy, and no, I didn't know if I was going to
get it done or not. Jane Eyre still hadn't figured out that she was in love with Mr. Rochester, and I
mean, how many more clues do you need? I didn't raise my hand anymore in Mrs. Verne's class, and
after the first time I didn't bother answering even when she called on me, she stopped calling on me. I
spent PE running the cross-country course while the rest of the class started in on the Wrestling Unit.
No one said anything when I went out, not even the So-Called Gym Teacher. And I didn't do anything
on the next two lab experiments in Mr. Ferris's class. Lil did them both. Even the smelly chemically
stuff. And so what that
Apollo 7
successfully detached from the Saturn rocket to practice the
rendezvous they would have to perform perfectly for a moon shot? So what that they landed a mere
third of a mile from the landing site? So what? Clarence is a stupid toy horse. Who cares if he's
rocking like anything?
Because no matter where I went in stupid Washington Irving Junior High School, there was the
look. And the laugh. And the smirk. Jerks.
And no matter where I went in stupid Marysville, there was the look. And the laugh. And the smirk.
Jerks.
Do you know what that feels like?
I stopped helping Miss Cowper with her County Literacy Unit. Who were we kidding?
I did do the Saturday deliveries. Guess who wanted the money and wouldn't let me stop?
I didn't meet Mr. Powell at the library afterward either. I don't know if Lil was waiting there or not.
I didn't draw anymore.
I didn't even want to.
It was like the Black-Backed Gull had laid its head down and given up the sky.
So you can see why, on the day of the Annual Ballard Paper Mill Harvest-Time Employee Picnic, I
wasn't overcome with happiness and joy.
Neither was my father.
It was pretty clear that Mr. Big Bucks Ballard was an idiot, he said, and that my father or Ernie Eco
could run the paper mill blindfolded and do it better, a hundred times better, than he could, he said.
All Mr. Big Bucks Ballard did was sit around his big office wearing his nice white shirt and silk tie
and telling everyone else what to do, he said. But he never got
his
freaking hands dirty, no he didn't.
You never saw
him
at a forklift. You never saw
him
backing a truck into the loading dock. Wood
pulp? Big Bucks Ballard wouldn't recognize it if he tripped and fell into it over his freaking head, he
said. That's what happens when you get rich. You leave all the real work to the little guy, and you sit
back and enjoy all the profits, he said. And it was going to take a whole lot more than a Harvest-Time
Employee Picnic to change things to the way they ought to be.
When my father was home—and it wasn't often, since Ernie Eco came over most nights and they
drove off together—but when he was home, that's pretty much what he told us.
So no one wanted to go. Not to a picnic thrown by a jerk like Mr. Big Bucks Ballard. But on the
last Saturday in October, my father made all of us get in the car and drive to the Annual Ballard Paper
Mill Harvest-Time Employee Picnic—even my brother. You can imagine how happy we were.
Especially when my father said that Mr. Big Bucks Ballard was the skinflint of skinflints, and there
probably wouldn't be much to eat. And what there was wasn't going to be all that good. You don't
expect a jerk and a skinflint to be grateful to his employees, do you?
The only reason we were going, he said, was the Trivia Contest. And this Trivia Contest,
according to Ernie Eco, was all about Babe Ruth. And who knew more about Babe Ruth than my
father? No one, and I'm not lying. Do you know how many World Series home runs Babe Ruth hit?
No, you don't. But my father did. Fifteen. You probably know that in 1927, Babe Ruth hit his famous
sixty home runs in a single season. But do you know when he hit fifty-nine home runs? Probably you
don't. But my father did: 1921. Do you know how many home runs Babe Ruth hit in the final game of
1928? Three. In one game.
My father could tell you that and a whole lot more, because he had once met Babe Ruth. He shook
Babe Ruth's hand and bought him a beer, and Babe Ruth had winked at him and said, "You're a
helluva good guy."
My father loved Babe Ruth.
And Ernie Eco said that the prize for the Trivia Contest was going to be a baseball signed by a
Yankee. It was probably, Ernie Eco said, a baseball signed by the Babe.
So we all went to the Annual Ballard Paper Mill Harvest-Time Employee Picnic, because my
father wanted to win a baseball signed by Babe Ruth.
Terrific.
I had to run through the Saturday-morning deliveries pretty quickly, which wasn't hard, as you might
remember, since not everyone knows the basic principle of physical science. Mrs. Mason hadn't
ordered any doughnuts. Mr. Loeffler didn't have a single light bulb to change. Mrs. Daugherty's kids
were playing upstairs when I came. And Mrs. Windermere never came into the kitchen.
I really wished that at least the Daugherty kids had been...
So what? So what? I'm not a chump.
I made it back as quickly as any human being could, which wasn't good enough for guess who.
It was a Saturday that you somehow knew was going to be one of the last beautiful days of fall. The
sun was shining hot, like it thought it was still July, and November drizzles were a whole season
away. The sky was blue, and a few white clouds were easing themselves along like they didn't care.
The grass was warm and sweet, like April, but the trees hadn't forgotten it was October. They were
all on fire, and behind their leaves, the birds were singing their last songs. Waves of heat shimmered
above the stone walls, and the granite sparkled.
"Such a beautiful day," said my mother.
My father didn't say anything. He was probably thinking about Babe Ruth.
The Annual Ballard Paper Mill Harvest-Time Employee Picnic was always held at Mary's Lake,
and since we got there late, we had to park about a mile away—all because, my father said, I hadn't
finished the deliveries on time, not that it mattered, since Douggo couldn't hurry up if there were an
atomic bomb on his butt. But even from a mile away, you could smell the chicken grilling as soon as
you got out of the car. And you could hear hollering and cheering. People called and waved at each
other as we walked toward the lake, and then they waved at us, and two women came to meet my
mother and took her by the arms and brought her over to introduce her to someone else she had to
meet because they didn't live very far from each other at all, and hadn't they seen her this fall at St.
Ignatius?
My father and brother and I passed by some long tables and someone called out to us and my father
grunted back and then the someone looked through a bunch of wrapped packages and picked two up
and called to me and my brother and handed them to us.
Inside was a Timex watch. I'm not lying. A Timex watch with a second hand and a real leather band
and numbers for regular time and numbers for military time. A Timex watch. Compliments of the
Ballard Paper Mill.
My brother looked at me. I looked at him.
Sometimes—and I know it doesn't last for anything more than a second—sometimes there can be
perfect understanding between two people who can't stand each other. He smiled, and I smiled, and
we put the Timex watches on, and we watched the seconds flit by.
It was the first watch my brother had ever owned.
It was the first watch I had ever owned.
My father looked at our wrists. "The metal will turn your skin green," he said. "Wait and see."
I did not know that so many people worked at the Ballard Paper Mill. It looked like all of Marysville
was there. There was a group playing volleyball, and no one was even pretending to keep score.
There was a baseball game going on, husbands against wives. I guess you can imagine how funny
that was. My father went over to stand with Ernie Eco, to laugh and smirk.
There were about ten guys throwing horseshoes, and the clangs and the cheers that came from them
made it seem like it was all-fired important—like it probably was to a bunch of chumps.
I went down to the lake, and it was so hot that there was a whole bunch of kids swimming (which I
decided not to do because of you know why) and about eight teams were doing chicken fights and
some were diving off each other's shoulders, and James Russell was there and he waved at me to
come in but I shook my head and he nodded.
And drifting over everything was the smell of grilling chicken, and the snap of buttery fat when it
fell in the fire, and the smoke that drew up over the baseball game and the volleyball and the
horseshoes and drifted over to the rows of long tables with bright white cloths over them, where the
women—including my mother—were setting out the bowls of salad and plates of rolls and pitchers of
pink lemonade and platters of corn on the cob that were steaming and more bowls of salad until
people started to crowd away from the baseball game and then one of the cooks by the grills hollered
out, "We're all set here!" and everyone came and found a place in line while the cooks carried the
long trays heaped with chicken, and the smell in the hot blue air was so wonderful and I looked over
at my mother and she was smiling to beat the band, like she had come home after a long time away.
It turned out that my brother was the first one in line. There's a shock.
But it didn't matter, because even if the whole town of Marysville had been there, they couldn't
have eaten everything that was loading down those tables. It was like something out of a fairy tale.
When a platter was empty, it got lifted away, and another one, even fuller than the first, magically
appeared in its place. And there was more chicken cooking, and more vats of hot water with steaming
corn, and then onto the line came all the kids from the lake, who were dripping wet, and they were all
hollering that it didn't matter if they ate like slobs because they were just going back into the water
anyway, and then everyone finishing the salad and chicken and corn and trying to sit back and rub
their stomachs and then big aluminum carts being wheeled across the lawn and every kid in the place
running to them and reaching in for lime Popsicles and strawberry shortcake and ice cream
sandwiches and James Russell grabbing me and yelling "C'mon!" and I was running over too and
reaching in for an orange Dreamsicle.
An orange Dreamsicle. You know how good an orange Dreamsicle tastes on a blue fall day when
you're full of grilled chicken and your mother is laughing a real laugh like she used to and once you
look over and your father is holding her hand like they haven't in a long long long time?
Until Ernie Eco came and she walked away.
Then all the mothers cleared the tables and swept off the long white tablecloths and, all laughing,
folded them together and boxed up the extra food, and there was a lot. The kids ran down to the water
again and James Russell yelled, "C'mon!" but I shook my head again. So he ran down to the lake and I
tried not to hate him when he took a flying dive and skimmed into the water, came up laughing, and
some little kid was climbing on top of him for more chicken fights.