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  He laughs so mean. The men who are with him at the table laugh, too.

  “Don’t let it get to you,” I tell the guys.

  “Nothing but turkeys,” Mr. Gunther repeats.

  Donald looks at me. “Your dad said when junk comes at you, don’t swing.”

  I try not to listen to the junk, but Chip Gunther is still laughing, and now he’s saying, “Gobble, gobble . . .”

  I stand up. Turning an eagle into a turkey? No, sir, I can’t handle that.

  Swoop.

  I stand at Chip Gunther’s table. His face is either red from laughing or too much beer—I can’t tell. And I don’t care.

  “Mr. Gunther, you just called the middle school baseball team turkeys. Is that right, sir?”

  He’s laughing. “You’ve got that right, kid.”

  “Mr. Gunther, you were the head of the committee that brought Coach Perkins to town. I’d say you don’t know the difference between a turkey and an eagle.”

  “Whoa, boy!” says one of the men.

  Chip Gunther stands up. “Who do you think you are, kid?”

  The Eagles gather around me. “He’s our assistant coach,” Terrell explains.

  “No wonder you can’t win.” Chip Gunther is laughing big, but nobody is laughing with him.

  I stare at him. “I’m asking you to never use that word to describe our team, Mr. Gunther. We’ve worked hard to get better, and we’re going to keep it up. We want to win, but we’re not going to cheat to do it. We’re not turkeys, Mr. Gunther. We’re eagles.”

  Some people in the restaurant applaud.

  “Let it go, Chip,” another man says.

  Chip Gunther throws money on the table and storms out.

  The Eagles watch him go. Franny stands next to me.

  Their waitress says, “Don’t you kids cause trouble in this place. Do you understand?”

  I look at her, don’t say anything.

  “You do that again, you won’t be welcome here.”

  No one wants any more pizza. We don’t take the leftovers with us. We pay the bill, leave a tip for our waitress, who was nice, and walk out the door. It feels good to leave.

  “Jeremiah, you were awesome,” Terrell tells me.

  “We were awesome,” I say.

  Chapter

  36

  I TELL WALT what happened.

  “You took Gunther down, huh?”

  “I felt a little like we were getting booed, so I did what you did.”

  Walt thinks about that.

  “Do you think I did the wrong thing?”

  “I think Gunther is the kind of man who might not let it go.”

  Chip Gunther calls El Grande and tells him that I don’t know my place—he was just having a little fun, and he doesn’t appreciate some smart-mouthed kid acting like he knows it all.

  “What did you say to him?” I ask.

  “I said I’d talk to you.”

  I explain about the turkey stuff and how I told him to please not call the team that again. “I was respectful.”

  “I believe that. And I would have done the same thing. It helps to be older when you deliver that kind of message. He’ll spout off for a while, then it will be over.”

  Right now, Chip Gunther crosses the street whenever he sees me or Walt coming.

  That’s okay. We don’t have to be friends. But now he knows something he didn’t know before: he can’t push me around, or the team.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  A priest and a nun from St. Peter’s Middle School get off the bus first.

  “They’ve got God on their side!” Logo wails.

  Alvin points. “Look, we’ve got God, too.” Rabbi Tova walks across the field and sits in our section.

  El Grande goes over to meet the coaches as St. Peter’s comes on the field. They have two girl players. Franny runs over to the girls. The nun marches forward. She’s got a big whistle around her neck.

  She shakes my hand hard. “Sister Claire.”

  “Jeremiah Lopper, ma’am. I’m Lutheran.”

  She slaps my shoulder. “That’s close enough.” Sister Claire blows her whistle.

  The priest walks over. The St. Peter’s team bows their heads. Logo waves to Rabbi Tova to get in on this.

  The priest smiles at Rabbi Tova. “Rabbi . . . please . . .”

  Our rabbi bows her head. “May the Source of All Life bless these players with wisdom and strength, swiftness and skill, patience and power. May their efforts on the field be for the good of all who enjoy this game with them, and may the winners show humility in victory and the losers good humor in defeat. And for the umpires—”

  She’s hitting all the bases.

  “—blessed is the Source of Arcane Baseball Rules and those who tend them.”

  All the adults laugh.

  Sky whispers, “What’s arcane mean?”

  I look it up. “Understood by only a few.”

  Sky sniffs. “No kidding.”

  Sister Claire blows her whistle. “Play ball!!!!!”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  There’s a lot of arcane umpiring going on, but despite all that . . .

  We are killing St. Peter’s!

  Franny hits two home runs and helps make a double play at second when she throws to Donald, who makes the tag.

  Sky’s fastball is doing damage to their lineup, although the umpire calls two strikes as balls. That hurts us in the fourth inning.

  Alvin is doing so much better in the outfield: he’s running to catch the pop flies, and he’s not running into his brothers in left and right field. He’s also hitting well.

  And Roy Nader, at shortstop, makes an impossible running catch for the third out in the sixth inning.

  “There it is!” That’s Rabbi Tova.

  Roy comes off the field grinning, but Donald Mole has the biggest smile in Ohio as he high-fives Roy.

  Mr. Hazard does an eagle groove. Donald’s dad is cheering. A row of Hillcrest parents is doing the wave. Walt couldn’t come. He had to work.

  “Way to go!” I tell Roy.

  “Great moves out there!” El Grande shouts.

  Great is not how I’m feeling. I’ve just walked out to the pitcher’s mound to tell Sky to throw his slider to the next two batters.

  But I need to sit down. So I do, on the mound.

  “You okay?” Sky asks.

  “Yeah.” I feel nauseous.

  “You look sick, Jeremiah.”

  I try standing, which is harder than it looks when you’re close to throwing up.

  El Grande is by my side now, holding on to my arm.

  “I just need to call Walt.”

  I sit down on the mound again.

  I feel brain fog creeping in . . .

  I think I hand someone my phone and tell them to call my father.

  Chapter

  37

  “YOUR HEART RATE is quite low, Jeremiah.” Dr. Dugan stands by my bed in the hospital. “I want to keep you overnight.”

  “I have to help the team.”

  She looks at Walt.

  He gives me his eagle stare. “Jer, we’re doing this.”

  “But—”

  Walt shakes his head. “We’re not taking any chances.”

  Both of them cross their arms and put their game faces on.

  We’re outnumbered, Alice.

  Get strong.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Beep beep, beep.

  Beep beep, beep.

  I’ve had three tests and now I’m supposed to sleep in a hospital bed in the land of never-ending white noise and beeping.

  I’m not supposed to use my phone in this room because of the machines.

  Walt took it home.

  My phone!

&
nbsp; I am disconnected from the world.

  The team.

  Franny.

  I don’t even know who won the game!

  I close my eyes. Try to sleep. I have to go to the bathroom. The medicine they gave me does this. I have to call for a nurse to help me. I’m going to have to go soon. I hate this.

  All this stuff about running one day . . .

  Am I kidding myself? I mean, I’m attached to a machine—a machine named Marvin. I decided to name it that.

  Beep beep, beep.

  “Don’t talk back to me, Marvin.”

  Dr. Dugan is standing by my bed. It’s early. “How are you?” she asks.

  “Disconnected from the universe and other galaxies yet to be discovered,” I mention.

  “Well, you know what they say, Jeremiah: we all need to unplug a little, get some rest from the tyranny of electronics.”

  I look at the picture on the wall of a herd of wild horses running across a plain. None of those horses have heart problems. “This isn’t restful.”

  “I hear that.” She’s reading my chart.

  “Do you like my father?”

  She looks up, half-smiling. “I like your father.”

  “On the chart of likes, how far up do you like him?”

  She pushes her green reading glasses up on her nose and looks at me. “I’m not familiar with this chart.”

  “It goes from liking a person a little bit to liking them more than a little bit but not a lot, to liking them a whole lot.”

  “I can’t answer that, Jeremiah.”

  I bet you could. You just don’t want to.

  “Do you have chest pain?”

  “No.”

  “Shortness of breath? Dizziness?”

  “No.”

  “Any other symptoms?”

  “I want to unplug this machine, throw it out the window, and escape.”

  She smiles. “That’s a good sign, actually. You can go home.”

  I push back the sheets.

  “Let me disconnect you first. Your dad will be here pretty soon.” She frees me from Marvin. “And, yes, Jeremiah, I like him a whole lot.”

  Chapter

  38

  WE WON!!!

  That’s the banner hanging across my porch.

  I throw my hands in the air. We’re going to the World Series! Okay, maybe not that, but it feels like we should.

  I’m wearing Baxter, the heart monitor, again. I know it’s recording this intense moment.

  Franny runs over. “Three to two, Jeremiah!”

  She shows me a picture of the team all together after the win. Everybody is there. Benny. The rabbi. Everyone except me.

  “It got in the paper and everything,” she adds.

  “You knew this?” I ask Walt.

  “I wanted you to see the sign.”

  The whole team signed it, plus Benny.

  Franny hugs me. “We couldn’t have won without you, Jeremiah. Everyone said it. Are you coming to practice?”

  I look at Walt, who shakes his head. “I guess I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  “It’ll be a few days,” Walt explains.

  Franny looks worried.

  “I’m fine,” I say, and head up the steps. That’s when Benchant walks over, carrying his bat. He’s never been to my house.

  “You okay, Lopper?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looks at the WE WON banner. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure.”

  Walt and Franny stand there.

  “Alone?” he says.

  “Yeah, sure.” We walk to the back, across the bridge. “Pull up a rock, Benchant.”

  He sits down. “I haven’t liked you much, Lopper.”

  “I know.”

  “But that’s not why I’m quitting the team.”

  Is he serious? “We just won.”

  “I know.” He throws a pebble in the stream. It plops, makes no difference to the stream.

  “Why, Bobby?”

  “My dad said I need to do football so I can play in high school, since the Hornets . . . you know . . .”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  “I think sometimes I’m better off in a game where I can shove people out of the way.”

  “Has your dad seen you play baseball?”

  “Nah . . .”

  That’s hard.

  “I’m done, Lopper. I wanted you to know.”

  “Well, whatever you do, you’ll be good at it. I’ve been thinking about your strengths. They are many, Benchant.”

  He looks shocked. I don’t think too many people say this to him. “They are?”

  I nod. “Many.”

  “Many,” he whispers.

  “You’ve got the strength to be an awesome hitter.”

  “I do?”

  “Plus you have the ability to drive a pitcher up-the-wall, into-the-stratosphere crazy.”

  A little smile forms on Benchant’s face. “I like doing that.”

  “Jackie Robinson, the greatest ballplayer in history, drove pitchers nuts. He stole bases. He threw their focus. You can do that, too, Bobby.”

  He’s nodding.

  “I’m sure you’ve thought about all the athletes who were so good, they couldn’t pick one sport. They gave their all to baseball, then they gave what was left to something else, like football. I’m sure you and your father have talked about this.”

  He grips his bat. “Not exactly.”

  “You hold that bat like it’s part of you, Bobby.”

  Benchant stands up, swings it hard.

  “That’s power,” I tell him.

  “I could talk to my dad again.”

  I nod. “Mention the power of your swing.”

  “He already knows how irritating I am.”

  Benchant takes out his phone, walks to our fence. I hear: “Listen, Dad. I’ve been thinking . . . No really! I want to . . .” He walks farther away. He’s deep in conversation.

  The little stream keeps running like none of this matters.

  I throw a pebble in the water. Baseball matters.

  Benchant walks back with his bat over his shoulder. “I’ll be at practice,” he says.

  I stand. “That’s great, Bobby!”

  “You’re okay, Lopper. You’re weird, but okay.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  SARBs are everywhere in my house. It’s like a convention. You have to look where you’re stepping. Jerwal tripped over a little blue one that likes to go fast. Walt and I had to put Jerwal’s right hand back on.

  I warn Franny about this before she comes over. Walt is working at the big table. “You,” he says to the blue SARB, “get a time-out.” He turns the SARB off and puts it on a shelf, lifeless.

  Franny giggles as another SARB rolls by. “Hi,” she says to it. The SARB doesn’t respond. She and I are in the kitchen watching the eagle cam. Nature, unfortunately, is showing its dark side.

  “This is usually inspiring to watch, Franny. I’m sorry about the predator.”

  We’re watching new baby eagles in their nest as a hawk circles overhead.

  “You said eagles were good parents, Jeremiah.”

  “They are. They might have gotten stuck in traffic.”

  “Isn’t there someone to protect these babies?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Franny stands up. “Why are we watching this?”

  I’m trying to introduce the soaring concept, but—

  “Are we going to watch the babies die?”

  “No! A parent will come.”

  “You said they took turns guarding!”

  “Well . . .”

  “What’s going to happen?” Franny shouts.

  “Th
ey’re eagles, Franny. They’ll work it out!”

  This isn’t the best introduction to what I need to tell her, but I take the card out of my pocket. It has a picture of an eagle flying through a storm. It’s the same one I gave to Yaff before I left St. Louis.

  “In my opinion, and I’ve dealt with these things before, you’re an eagle, Franny. You just don’t know it.”

  She turns the card over. On the back is written one word:

  SOAR

  Franny looks at the eagle cam with the helpless babies. She looks back at the card.

  This concept takes time to sink in.

  She says, “Eagles molt, right?”

  “Yes.” This means they lose their feathers.

  “And they’re bald, right?”

  “Some have white feathers on their heads; they just look bald.”

  We watch the circling hawk. The unfairness of the wild.

  “I’m not sure I want to be associated with a bird who doesn’t care about its babies!”

  She gets up. A SARB rolls in front of her. “Excuse me,” she says, and heads for the door.

  Chapter

  39

  TO PLAY ONE more game—that’s what we’re all hoping for. And the latest we can play it is next week. After that the best teams battle it out for the championship. I need to know how much longer I have in Hillcrest.

  Walt doesn’t know. This isn’t like him. “It could be much longer or shorter. I’m sorry. It’s complicated, Jer.”

  No kidding!

  I try to get him to zero in.

  “Ten days, Walt? More?”

  “I hope so.”

  I take out my phone, look up “What you can do in ten days.”

  ◆ Get your kitchen remodeled (at least according to one kitchen contractor).

  ◆ Write a screenplay (probably not a good one).

  ◆ Lose five pounds.

  ◆ Visit China.

  Note that “Save baseball” is not on this list.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Are we ever going to play another game?” Logo asks me.

  I gulp. “Of course.”

  “Against who?” He looks around the park. “Squirrels?”