A yorker is a difficult ball to bowl. The bowler bowls quite long toward the batsman, hoping for a shallow bounce that will pass beneath the batsman’s bat and strike the wicket.
had gotten around Longfellow Middle School. You could tell when you walked into the lobby and saw the huge British flag hanging down from the stairwell, right next to a red-and-blue sign—with a lion rampant again—that said RULE BRITANNIA.
Ryan Moore walked behind me as I stood looking at the flag waving in the breeze from all the Longfellow Middle School students swarming in. “You must love this, Tory,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Do you ever wonder what it would feel like to actually know what you’re talking about?” I said.
“Tory,” he said, and walked away.
“So the answer is no,” I called.
Then Billy Colt came and stared at the flag with me.
“It’s going to look pretty stupid the day India wins by a million runs,” I said.
“But, Carter, India won’t be able to score a million runs, because we’ll be knocking down all your wickets.”
I looked at Billy. “You live in delusion, my friend.”
Billy looked up at the fluttering flag. “I wonder if someone from the monarchy will come watch.”
I looked up at the fluttering flag. “Krebs is not going to put up with this.”
“You think he has a flag of India lying around?” said Billy.
“You think he doesn’t?”
Then a shadow fell across us both.
“Unless you’re going to start singing ‘God Save the Queen,’ you better get to homeroom,” said Vice Principal DelBanco.
Billy Colt got to “Send her victorious” before Vice Principal DelBanco told him to cut it out.
We walked together to homeroom.
“Tory,” I said.
“Takes one to know one,” said Billy Colt.
Mrs. Harknet was about to call attendance when we came in. “Here are our cricket players now,” she said. “Which of you is on Team India?”
Billy Colt pointed to me.
“So, Carter, are you responsible?”
“For what?” I asked.
Mrs. Harknet looked at me. “Are you pretending you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
She pointed to the window, which the entire homeroom was already looking out. So Billy Colt and I did too.
A huge—and I mean huge—flag was flying from the pole in front of the school, and it wasn’t the flag of the United States. A green bar at the bottom, white bar in the middle, orangy bar at the top. “Saffron,” said Mrs. Harknet. In the middle, a blue wheel with spokes.
“Can you guess the nation it represents?” said Mrs. Harknet.
I didn’t have to guess.
The flag of India flew broadly in the fall breeze, slowly unfurling, so big that the wind moved across it like long waves.
“It’s a nice flag,” I said.
“Do you have the combination?”
“The combination?”
Mrs. Harknet sighed. “The pull cable has a combination lock on it now. We can’t take down the flag until we have the combination.”
I looked out the window again. Another set of waves unfurled the flag slowly.
Mrs. Harknet sighed again. “You may as well take your seats,” she said.
In Physical Science, Mrs. Wrubell sort of eyed me when I came in. “So are you one of the miscreants?” she said.
I wasn’t sure what a miscreant was. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“I should hope not,” said Mrs. Wrubell.
In social studies, Mr. Solaski said, “Are you seriously playing a cricket match?”
Billy Colt and I nodded.
“Cricket?”
Nodded again.
“And that’s what the flags are all about?”
Nodded one more time.
“Cricket?”
“The most lovely and sportsmanly game that mankind has yet conceived—or ever will conceive,” I said.
Mr. Solaski looked at me.
“Okay,” he said.
In Math Skills, Mr. Barkus posed a word problem: “If a large flag flying outside decays by ten percent each year, how many years will go by before the flag is unflyable? We will assume for purposes of this problem that a decay of eighty-five percent equals unflyable. And to avoid embarrassingly simplistic responses, I will tell you that the correct answer is not eight years.”
Vice Principal DelBanco never did get the flag down. At the end of the day, the buses waited underneath its broad waves, the pride of India waving and unfurling its green and white and saffron bars above us all.
Late that afternoon, it started to rain. I mean, really rain. Like an Australian tropical thunderstorm.
I decided to clean my room.
Sort of.
I took the photograph of Captain Jackson Jonathan Jones standing in front of an American flag and folded it in half. Then I ripped it in half. Then I ripped the halves in half again. Then I put the pieces in the garbage.
I took the beret from his first deployment and balled it up. I tried to rip it in half, but I couldn’t. So I put it in the garbage.
Then I took the goggles that still had sand in them from Afghanistan, and I twisted them all together, and after I twisted them all together I stomped on them until the eyepieces were broken and the sand of Afghanistan was sprinkled over the floor. Then I put them in the garbage.
I lay down on my bed.
I listened to the Australian tropical thunderstorm.
When the rains came while we were in the Blue Mountains, my father and I would lie in our tent. I wished I could remember what we talked about. I know I tried to talk about Currier, but he didn’t want to talk about Currier, and I almost began to cry whenever I tried, so I never showed him the green marble. Once he tried to tell me about Afghanistan, and Germany, but the rain got too loud and we stopped talking.
Because the rain was too loud.
Before supper, the Butler knocked, opened the door, and looked in.
“You’ll be down for dinner in fifteen minutes,” he said.
“Yup.”
“Yup is an Americanism as barbarous as—”
“Yes, I will be down in fifteen minutes, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick,” I said.
“Much better,” he said.
Then he saw the space on the shelf above my desk.
The Butler looked at me.
I looked at him.
“Did it help?” he said.
“A little,” I said.
“Have you talked with your mother about . . .”
“A little. It hurts her . . .”
The Butler nodded. “Only her?”
I didn’t say anything.
The Butler stood at the end of the bed. “It will hurt to be angry at him, but you will be angry at him.”
“I’m not mad at him,” I said.
“I suspect that is not true,” said the Butler.
“I’m not.”
“Young Master Carter, unless you are Mother Teresa in disguise, I would find it extraordinary if you were not angry. There is no shame in—”
“So I’ll be down in fifteen minutes,” I said.
The Butler nodded, but he went over to the trash can. He took out the balled-up beret.
“In fifteen minutes, then,” he said.
“Yup,” I said.
The Butler left with Captain Jackson Jones’s beret.
I lay on my bed.
And I pressed my feet against the footboard.
And I pressed my hands against the headboard.
And I bounced my head up and down on the pillow.
And I bounced my feet up and down on the mattress.
Because he loved someone else more than he loved us. Someone else in stupid Germany.
Because he went to stupid Germany and he didn’t love us.
He was gone.
If that isn’t a yorker, I don’t know what is.