Okay for Now (16 page)

Then most of the adults started to gather around the cleared tables and I went over to the deserted

horseshoe pits to see what was so all-fired important about throwing horseshoes. Someone yelled that

the Trivia Contest was going to start soon and everyone should choose a partner to work with. I

looked back. My father was standing with Ernie Eco. They were whispering together. They'd

probably win.

I picked up a horseshoe and threw it. It came up short. By a lot.

I tried another. It came up short again. By a lot.

I heaved another. Long. By a lot.

Terrific.

I threw the last one. It hit short again, but rolled until it flopped in the sand near the post. Not bad.

Which is what an old guy said when I went to gather up the horseshoes. "Not bad. But I think if you

hold it on the bend, you might get a little more distance."

I picked up the four horseshoes. "You want to show me?"

He took a shoe and held it with the ends out. "Like this," he said. He walked over to the post. "You

stand with your heel here, and swing it back." He did this a couple of times. "Then you release it on

the upswing." Which he did. It wasn't a ringer, but it clanged the post. "Everything after that is just

practice," he said.

So I tried it. I stood with my heel like that, and swung my arm a couple of times like that. I looked

at him. He nodded. So I let one fly like that.

"I think," he said, "you might want a little more arc to the throw. That way they won't run away after

they hit the ground."

I let another one fly. Short. Too much arc.

"Not bad," he said.

I handed him the last shoe. I'm not a chump.

He took the shoe into his hand like he had done it a million and a half times. He set his heel. He

swung his arm.

The horseshoe left his arm and carried up into the blue air. It turned once, slowly, like it was taking

its time. As it fell down toward the post, it threw out its two ends like a diver and dropped onto the

sand without even bouncing, without even touching the post, but circling it so perfectly that it was like

someone had walked up there and set it down that way on purpose.

I looked at him.

"I told you, it's all practice from here," he said. "But what I could use some help on is the Trivia

Contest. I've been working at it for twenty-five years and never even come close to a ringer."

He held out his hand.

We shook.

"Partners," he said, and we went over to the cleared tables.

Back there, a few kids were eating the last of the ice cream sandwiches, while a bunch of the men

had lit cigars, and their long smoke whispered up into the golden trees. Piles of yellow pads and

pencils were on the tables, and partners were taking them and writing their names on top. Some of the

partners were pretty serious about it all, and they sat there numbering their pads. (This was my father

and Ernie Eco.) Most were leaning back and laughing, probably because they didn't know two cents

about the Babe, and they figured they weren't going to win anyway.

They were right.

Then some guy wearing a tie—a tie! at a picnic!—this guy stood up on a chair and held a black

notebook over his head and everyone cheered. I figured the guy with the tie must be Mr. Big Bucks

Ballard, the jerk who didn't know how to run the paper mill as well as my father and Ernie Eco could

blindfolded. "The Trivia Contest Questions!" he hollered, and everyone cheered and clapped again.

"Ten questions," he said, "and a tiebreaker if we need one. The team with the most correct answers is

the winning team. The prize this year: a baseball signed by..."

Okay, you're going to think that I made this next part up, but I didn't. Sometimes, you just have to

trust me. This is what the guy with the tie said:

"...a baseball signed by Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, and Joe Pepitone!"

Cheers from all around, except from my father and Ernie Eco.

"Plus, this year, a fifty-dollar bonus for each partner."

You can bet there were cheers at this.

"Plus, assigned parking spots right by the mill entrance for one whole year."

I guess this sounded good to a whole lot of people, since there were a whole lot of cheers with this

too.

"So let's get started."

A baseball signed by Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, and Joe Pepitone! Who, if you remember, were

the three Yankees to hit home runs in Game Six of the 1964 World Series against the St. Louis

Cardinals.

Who cares if Mr. Big Bucks Ballard is an idiot!

I looked at my partner.

"Do you think we have a chance?" he asked.

"You bet," I said.

"Question Number One," said Mr. Big Bucks Ballard. He was still standing on the chair. "How

long was Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak in 1941?"

My partner looked at me. "Do you know?" he said.

I took the pencil and wrote down
56.
If he didn't even know that one, I thought, he wasn't going to

be much help.

"Are you all ready? C'mon, folks, either you know it or you don't. I wouldn't bother guessing if you

don't. Next question: How many consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play has Whitey Ford

pitched?"

Groans and laughter all around us. "Are you kidding?" someone hollered.

I handed the pencil back to my partner. "Thirty-three and two-thirds," I whispered. He wrote it

down.

"Next question. In 1960, the Yankees hit more home runs than any other team in baseball history.

How many did they hit?"

More groans. More laughter. I whispered, "One hundred and ninety-three." My partner wrote it

down.

"Okay, ready for an easy one?"

Cheers.

"What two years did Roger Maris win back-to-back MVP awards?"

"Even I know that one," said my partner. He wrote down
1960
and
1961.

"All right, let's see how you are with batting averages. What is Joe DiMaggio's lifetime batting

average?"

"Three twenty-five," I whispered.

"What was Mickey Mantle's best batting average for any year of his career?"

"Three sixty-five," I whispered.

"What was the team average for the Yankees in the 1960 World Series?"

Groans.

"Three thirty-eight," I whispered.

"Calm down, calm down," said Mr. Big Bucks Ballard, pulling at his tie. He must have been getting

hot. "There have to be some hard ones to separate the men from the boys—apologies to Mrs. Stenson

there." Laughter. "Okay, try this one: How many American League pennants did the Yankees win

under Casey Stengel?"

My partner looked at me. "Ten?" he said.

I nodded. He wrote it down.

"Question Number Nine: We all know that in 1961, Roger Maris broke the Babe's home-run record

with sixty-one home runs. How many did Mickey Mantle have in that same year?"

"Fifty-four," I whispered. My partner wrote it down.

"The last question: Which five years in a row did the Yankees win the world championship?"

"That, I can remember," said my partner, and he wrote down
1949, 1950, 1951, 1952,
and
1953.
"I

was at the last game for every one of those," he said.

"Every single one?" I said.

He nodded. "There's no pleasure in getting to be an old coot unless you have some fun along the

way."

Do I need to tell you that when Mr. Big Bucks Ballard read out the answers, we had every one

right? Do I need to tell you that my father and Ernie Eco did not? Do I need to tell you what my father

thought about that? Or what my father thought about a Trivia Contest on the New York Yankees that

didn't have a single question about the Babe?

But it wasn't over yet. When Mr. Big Bucks Ballard asked if anyone had gotten all ten right, three

teams raised their hands.

Terrific.

"Here you were all grumbling and carrying on," said Mr. Big Bucks Ballard, "but I guess it wasn't

as hard as everyone thought." He took a sheet of paper from inside the black notebook. "So now we

go to the tiebreaker question, and this time, I admit, it's a doozy! Okay, here we go, for just these three

teams, to see who gets the baseball, the bonus, and the parking spots. Ready? You all ready? Okay,

and no help, folks. Ready? Okay: What is important in baseball about the number two hundred and

sixteen?"

It was like all Creation stopped, it was that quiet.

"Could you repeat the question?" called one of the teams.

"What is important in baseball about the number two hundred and sixteen?"

I watched the other teams. You might as well have asked them to name the atomic numbers of all

the inert gases.

My partner looked at me. "I have no idea," he said.

I whispered to him.

"Are you sure?" he said.

I nodded.

"Really?"

"Really."

"How do you know that?"

"I counted once."

He smiled—not like my mother, but it would do.

"Does anyone know?" hollered Mr. Big Bucks Ballard from his chair.

The other two teams shook their heads. My partner kept smiling. He leaned down to me. "Tell

them," he said.

So I did.

But if you think I'm so all-fired smart, you won't think so after I tell you what happened next.

There was some scattered clapping, and Mr. Big Bucks Ballard came down off his chair, walked

over, and shook our hands. "How did you know that last one, kid?" he asked.

"He counted once," my partner said.

Mr. Big Bucks Ballard worked at his tie some more. He looked really hot. "How are we going to

award these prizes?" he said. He looked at me. "You're not driving yet, so you don't exactly need a

parking spot. And it's hard to give you a bonus when you're not even working at the mill."

"We'll figure it out," said my partner.

Then Mr. Big Bucks Ballard looked at my partner. "And how about you? You know you're not

supposed to win."

"How come?" I said.

He laughed. "Kid, how do you think it would look if the boss won all the prizes?"

"Pretty bad," I said. "But you weren't even playing."

"Not me," he said. He pointed to my partner. "But he was."

I looked at my partner. "Bob Ballard," he said, and held out his hand.

The ride home was pretty quiet except for my father, who pointed out how unfair it was not to have a

single question on the Babe, not one, and how the whole contest was a setup anyway, how Mr. Big

Bucks Ballard knew the questions all along, because how else could anyone know that last question

about
316?

"
Two
hundred and sixteen," I said.

He glared at me in the rearview mirror. "Don't you get it?" he said. "He set you up more than

anyone. He just strung you right along and made it look like you were answering when he knew the

answers from the beginning. What a freaking cheapskate. He didn't want to give away the money. He

didn't want to give up the parking spots. He probably doesn't even have the stupid baseball. What a

con artist. He probably didn't figure that anyone would see right through him. Did he even give you

the baseball?"

"He told me to come to his office tomorrow after school."

"You shouldn't count on anything. That's the way it is in this freaking world. You're nothing but a

jerk if you do."

I looked over at my brother. He was polishing the glass face of his Timex watch.

Maybe my father was right.

I didn't go to Mr. Big Bucks Ballard's office on Monday.

I didn't want to find out if that's really the way things were in this freaking world.

Here are the stats for the first week of November:

No fights in the downstairs hall, even though I came close.

One fight in the upstairs hall. A loss.

Two fights in the PE locker room. Two wins, after I showed I would kick just about anywhere.

Two fights in the boys' bathroom. Two losses. There
might have been a whole lot more fights

in there, but I stopped going. You're right. It was pretty uncomfortable.

Four fights on the way home from After School Detention. Four losses.

After After School Detention on Friday, I decided I didn't want to make it a week with five

consecutive losses on the way home, so I gave the jerks who were waiting the slip by going out

through the gym entrance—I had to hope the So-Called Gym Teacher wouldn't see me, which he didn't

—and across the track and out the back field and around toward The Dump.

It took me right past the Ballard Paper Mill. So I figured, Why not?

When I got to the mill—and I'm not lying, you know when you're getting close to a paper mill, and

it's not because of the pretty scenery—when I got to the mill, I walked around to the mill entrance,

facing the river. Right by the front door, right next to the stupid front door, in the best parking spot in

the whole paper mill, my father's car was parked. Next to it was Ernie Eco's pickup.

He never said a thing. Not one thing.

I went inside, where a woman on the phone smiled and raised her hand to tell me she'd just be a

second. It was a swell place, a really swell place. Thick green carpet. Paneled walls. Pictures of the

board of directors. Lamps with green shades. Red leather furniture. And by the windows looking out