Sledging is the act of a fielder—sometimes with good nature, sometimes with aggression—who seeks to distract the batsman through taunts and heckles as the batsman tries to concentrate.
In the Blue Mountains of Australia.
I was wet and cold and the wind was up, and my father had scattered my fire and now he was kneeling by the fire he had built and he was stacking twigs onto it. You could already feel the warmth. Then he was putting on bigger branches and the twigs were crackling and my father held out his hands to the flames.
“You see?” he said.
“I guess,” I said.
“You guess?”
A long quiet. Shrieks from the white birds.
“Currier would have loved this,” I said.
Currier would have loved this. He would have loved the fire, the trees, the tent, the blue air, the birds—he would have loved everything.
“Max too,” he said, leaning another branch into the flames.
I looked at him. “Max?”
“Currier,” he said. “I meant Currier.”
He reached for another branch.
“Who’s Max?”
“A kid I met off base. I took him camping once or twice with his mother. You’re right. Currier would have loved this.”
“Okay,” I said.
“In a little while, it will be time to gather some more wood,” he said.
“Young Master Carter, it’s time.”
I was shivering hard.
Because I was mad.
Because Currier was . . .
Because my father was . . .
Because everything in me was about to come out and I couldn’t stop it.
“Young Master Carter, the wicket is yours.”
I could feel the green marble hard in my pocket.
Currier’s marble.
Currier, who was dead.
I fingered the cricket ball.
“Warming up is in general a—”
“I know,” I said. “Okay? I know.”
The Butler took a couple of steps back. “Your wicketkeeper is ready,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
The first warm-up to Yang didn’t even bounce before it got to him. In case you’ve forgotten the rules, that’s not a good thing.
The second hit the ground by his ankles.
Yang looked at me, sort of confused.
The third bounced twice and dribbled in.
Yang looked at me, really confused.
Krebs ran in. “You do remember how to do this, right?”
“I remember how to do this,” I said.
“So you’re just kidding around with those deliveries, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Because Chall can always bowl first.”
“I can do it.”
“Good,” he said. “So let’s see some bowling.”
The next ball bounced just where I wanted it to bounce and it sprang up into Yang’s hands like it meant business.
The next one would have taken the bails off.
And the next one.
“Good,” said Krebs, “because you don’t want to screw up now.” And he went out to talk to the slips.
I could hardly breathe.
The screeching of the high birds.
I stood on the wicket. I held the ball.
The little kid in the stands, cheering.
His father holding him.
His father wrapping a blanket around him.
His father laughing and cheering and holding the blanket tight around the little kid.
“Time,” said the Butler.
Currier would never see the Blue Mountains of Australia.
“It’s time, young Master Carter.”
Maybe Max would—but never Currier.
The ball almost fell out of my hand.
In the Blue Mountains of Australia, the air is blue, and everywhere you can hear the water falling, and the trees are so thick you can’t see the sky, and you can’t go off the path because there are dinosaurs hunting, and poisonous snakes slithering everywhere in the low grass, crocodiles—maybe huge crocodiles—scrambling through the underbrush, and it’s stupid to try to start a fire with wood that’s wet.
“So is that why you didn’t get home before Currier? You were camping with Max and his mother?”
“Don’t be stupid, Carter. I tried to get home.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Pay attention to the fire.”
And I screamed, “When do you pay attention? When do you?” And Captain Jackson Jonathan Jones looked at me, and I said, “Never. Never. You weren’t home. You never come home. You didn’t even come home when Currier was sick. You didn’t come home until he was dead. Until he was freaking dead!”
“Shut your mouth,” Captain Jackson Jonathan Jones said.
“So who’s Max?”
“A kid. Just a kid. And see? Look at the fire. You screwed it up.”
“You screwed up!” I think I screeched that. “You screwed up!”
And Captain Jackson Jonathan Jones kicked the fiery branches into the wet grass and water spilled from the thick leaves above them and the white birds screeched at the smell of the smoke. “Get a dry shirt on,” he said.
“You didn’t come home.”
“It’s not my fault Currier died.”
“I hope you never come home.”
“We’re leaving,” he said.
“Young Master Carter!”
He goes into the tent, and I stand outside, breathing as hard as a human being can breathe, and that’s when the snake slithers out of the low grass, winding in curves across the clearing, his flat head so low, his body so long and perfect, the end of his tail swaying, and when he hears my father rustling in the tent, his whole body pauses.
He stops.
He stops right where my father will come out.
Right where my father will step.
And then the Butler was in front of me, and his face was next to mine, and his hands were on my shoulders, and he looked at me.
Then I see my father’s hand at the tent flap.
I don’t say anything. Oh, I don’t say anything.
My father’s head comes out.
The flat head of the snake rises.
My father’s knee, and then his foot.
And I don’t say anything. Because he isn’t paying attention. And we won’t make it to any ranger station. We just won’t.
Then I scream. I think I scream.
“So it has come to you at last,” whispered the Butler.
A shot. All the screeching birds rise up, and the echoes of the shot come back, and back, and back.
And my father looks at me with this look that is surprised and shocked and scared and is filled with anger and—
“Carter,” said the Butler.
“When were you going to tell me?” Captain Jackson Jonathan Jones says.
And I’m not sure that I had been going to tell him—and he sees that.
The Butler put his hand on the side of my face.
And I said, “My father isn’t coming home because I didn’t—”
“No. You had nothing to do with it.”
I looked at the Butler. “How could you know?”
“He blabbed.”
“He blabbed?”
The Butler nodded. “He told me what happened.”
Things got kind of blurry.
“I almost let him get bitten by a snake.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I—”
“Carter,” said the Butler, “you did not screw up. Your father did. He did not come when he should have—a pattern, I’m afraid. And he could not face what he had done, and what he was doing, and so he looked for reasons where there were none. In such circumstances, men will do, shall we say, ungentlemanly things.”
“Do you know what I said to him?”
The Butler nodded.
“That I never wanted him to come home.”
“Which is not true,” said the Butler.
“I was mad at him.”
“Angry. And that is true.”
Blurry.
“But because of me—”
“Stop that. What happened is his dishonor, not yours. Do not heft onto your shoulders burdens you do not own. You are a good and honorable young man, and a loyal and true brother and son.”
He paused.
“And a gentleman,” the Butler said.
“A gentleman?”
The Butler stood straight. “Young Master Carter, I am a gentleman’s gentleman. I am honored to serve only a gentleman.”
More blurry.
“I’m not crying, you know.”
“Of course not.”
“Hey,” called Singh. “We going to play?”
“Are we going to play?” said the Butler to me.
The echoes of the shot were dying away.
I nodded.
The Butler nodded as well. “We are all in our whites, so we may as well have a go at it,” he said. He tightened his hands on my shoulders, and then he let go, and turned, and called out to the eighth-grade varsity cricket team. “Captain Singh, have your first batsman take his guard. Master Hopewell, are you ready? And Master Bryan? So, cricketers, with both batsmen ready, and the bowler properly warmed, it is time. Team India, mind your positions. And Bowler—”
I looked at the Butler.
“Bowler, let us make a good beginning.”
You know what? The Blue Mountains of Australia are horrible.
They’re horrible.
Everything is wet. The leaves, the path, the air. Everything. The only thing the trees do is drip. Your tent gets wet and smells like it. Your sleeping bag gets wet and smells like it. You can’t go off the path because you might die because of the dinosaurs or snakes or crocodiles, and that’s all you’re thinking about. And when you’re trying to go to the bathroom behind a tree—where the dinosaurs or snakes or crocodiles are waiting—you realize that there’s a whole lot of you that’s sort of exposed and you don’t want to get bitten there. And it’s so hot but nothing dries out because it’s like being under the ocean, it’s so humid. And whoever you’re with is crabby and blames you for everything and even blames you for stuff you had nothing to do with and . . . the Blue Mountains of Australia are horrible.
“Let’s see that ball,” said Hopewell.
Horrible.
“Shall we oblige?” said the Butler.
And I did.