CHAPTER 8

FOLLOWING THE HERD

We didn’t say much else as we drove to Gas City. The road threaded its way through small towns, past silos and farms and cornfields. The land was as flat as a game board, so different from the hills of San Francisco, where you could ride your bike just one block and your legs would cry out in pain.

The road we took had just one single lane in each direction. At one point, we got stuck behind a trailer carrying a horse. When I told Dad to try to pass, he told me to “be patient and enjoy the ride.” But patience has never been one of my strengths. A few minutes later, I told Dad to honk the horn and motion for the driver of the truck to move over. He turned to me and said, “Are you crazy? That could scare the horse.”

The road finally widened when we pulled into Gas City. At the first stoplight, a truck pulled up next to us. The guy in the passenger seat had a thick beard and no neck, at least that I could see. When he grinned, he showed off a gap between his teeth big enough to fit a pencil. It looked like he was trying to say something to us. So, friendly guy that he is, Dad rolled down his window.

“I see y’all are from Jonasburg,” the man said slowly.

Uh-oh. One of our first weeks in Jonasburg, I suggested to Mom and Dad that it might help business to put some bumper stickers on the car. It would let people know that, even if we were new in town, we supported the community and were part of the same group.

People love to be part of a group. Doesn’t matter if you go to the same church, live in the same neighborhood, or root for the same team—the point is doing it together. So the bumper stickers were supposed to show that Mom and Dad were a part of Jonasburg—and, hey, their art gallery was, too.

I didn’t think about how that would play out anytime we left town, especially on the night of a big game when we weren’t the home team.

“Right on, we’re from Jonasburg!” Dad said proudly.

“Hey, I like your costume,” the guy in the truck said, and the other guys in his truck started laughing.

“Sorry, friend,” Dad said. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

“I said that I like your costume, being a hippie for Halloween and all.” Again, the guys in the truck laughed. “Trick or treat, hippie!” Mom looked in the rearview mirror, probably trying to see whether I was scared.

Maybe some dads would respond to that by yelling something they’re not supposed to yell in front of their kids, or even getting in a fight. I mean, a guy pulls up next to you and insults you? For no good reason? In front of your wife and kid?

Dad saw it differently. He made a V sign with two fingers. “Peace, my brothers.”

The light turned green, and the truck blew past us, kicking up some dust, as the passenger leaned out and yelled “Hippie!” right after something that sounded like a nasty curse word.

“What a bunch of obnoxious jerks,” Mom said.

“Oh, don’t sweat it,” Dad said. “Just some guys from a small town out on a Friday night. Let ’em have some fun.”

I’m sure those jerks had more fun than we did once they got to the game. It was the same old story for Jonasburg. The way the players handled the ball, you would have thought it had been covered in oil. There were dropped passes and fumbles and snaps to the quarterback that squirted away.

On one play, the Gas City quarterback threw a pass that looked like it was aimed right at Nathan Isaac. It was a sure interception, a chance to redeem himself for running the wrong way in the previous game. Except that the ball collided violently with his hands and hit the ground. The way he gripped his helmet reminded me of Homer Simpson saying “D’oh!” after putting a knife in a toaster or eating a piece of charcoal. I guess that, on the bright side, by dropping the football, at least Nathan spared himself the embarrassment of running in the wrong direction.

Still, late in the fourth quarter, the game wasn’t totally out of reach. Gas City was leading 20–7 when Kevin caught a pass and shuffled past the defense to score his third touchdown of the season. That made the score 20–13. In the bleachers, my parents gave each other a high five in that clumsy way adults do it.

Coach Williams then decided to go for a two-point conversion, rather than kick an extra point. This didn’t make much sense to me, but he called the exact same play as before, Kevin caught the pass again, and it was 20–15. Sitting next to me, Mom and Dad beamed, and other parents patted them on their backs.

After the Jonasburg defense did its part, the offense got the ball back again with two minutes to play and a chance to score one more touchdown and win the game. Following a couple of running plays, Coach Williams called his favorite: “Hoosier 23.”

Neil Butwipe would take two steps back, pretend to hand the ball off to A.J. Kumar, and hide the ball behind his hip. As the defense tried to tackle A.J., Neil would throw the ball across the field to Kevin.

It worked perfectly. The Gas City players ganged up on A.J.—only to realize that he didn’t have the ball. Meanwhile, Neil threw a perfect pass to Kevin, who caught the ball as if it were drawn magnetically to his hands. He did a fancy dance step to free himself from the defender covering him and then started outrunning the Gas City players toward the end zone, widening his lead every ten yards. In the bleachers, the Gas City fans were all booing and yelling something about a penalty and were the refs blind? But the Jonasburg fans and parents were cheering louder than they had cheered all year. “Forty, thirty, twenty, ten, TOUCHDOWN!”

A few weeks before, when we played a touch football game in the street after school, I scored a touchdown and did a funny dance. (I thought it was funny, anyway.) Kevin got upset and told me not to be a show-off.

“Act like you’ve been there, Mitch,” he said. “Act like you’ve been there before.”

“Been where?” I said.

“The end zone,” he snapped.

I knew what he meant. But Kevin didn’t realize that, for some of us, scoring a touchdown isn’t something that happens every day. “What if I haven’t been there before?” I asked him.

“Act like it anyway,” he said.

But now, as he scored and his teammates followed him down the field to congratulate him, Kevin forgot all about his modesty. He put the ball on his waist and rotated his hips, like he was hula-hooping or something.

On the sidelines, the coaches were high-fiving each other. Cheerleaders were hugging, and, I could swear, one was wiping tears that were racing down her cheek. Parents behind my parents were hugging. The curse? It was over. Everyone had just gotten immunized from the losing sickness, as Kevin called it.

Except that when I looked at the field, I noticed that the Gas City section was cheering, too. And their coaches were also high-fiving. And their cheerleaders were hugging, too.

Uh-oh.

And then I saw something else. A yellow eyesore. It was like a huge zit on your face. Like an ugly stain on a beautiful painting. It was a penalty flag that one of the officials had thrown down on the grass.

Pretty soon, everyone else on the Jonasburg side noticed it, too. Three officials came together in the middle of the field, looking like grazing zebras standing in the grass with all their black-and-white stripes. They had a short conversation, and one guy broke away from the others. Facing the Gas City side of the field, he pointed to Jonasburg and gave the signal for holding. Kevin’s touchdown wouldn’t count.

The Gas City side cheered and whooped. So did their players. Our players slammed their helmets to the ground in frustration. In our bleachers, people said things I can’t repeat.

“Boooooo! Hissssssss!” someone nearby yelled angrily. I looked over and it was… Dad?

On the one hand, I should have known. No one else would say “hiss.” On the other hand, Dad was the guy who got called a hippie by a bunch of bullies earlier in the evening and let it glide off his back. Now he was red-faced with anger over a referee’s call? He caught my eye and knew what I was thinking.

“What?” he said. “Those refs are a bunch of cheaters!”

In my new, non-annoying state, I knew that it wasn’t the right time to mention this. But the officials probably weren’t cheating. They were just acting like… well, like normal people act.

Like I said before, we all want to be part of a group. Let’s say you take a test and one of the questions is “What is the capital of Michigan?” You write “Lansing,” and you’re pretty sure you’re right. But after the test, the first eight people you talk to all wrote “Detroit.” So now you’re probably second-guessing yourself, right?

Now imagine you have to yell out the answer, quick, instead of writing it down. Eight people are yelling “Detroit!” right in your ear. Even if you think they have it wrong, you might go with their answer.

Now pretend you’re that referee in the football game at Gas City. You have to make a split-second decision. The home crowd is screaming at you to make that decision one way. (Hardly anyone on the opposing side is screaming at you to make it the other way.) It’s easy to see how you could listen to the crowd and do what they want. And, don’t forget, these refs probably live in Gas City and have to deal with the people in the crowd the next day after the game.

This is why home teams get a lot more favorable calls—whether it’s pitches in baseball, fouls in basketball, or penalties in football.

Not that this was the time to explain this to Dad.

“I didn’t know you cared about sports so much,” I said.

“We don’t, Mitch,” Mom said. “But we care about justice and treating people fairly.”

And she patted my dad on the arm and got him to sit down and look a little less crazy.

That Sunday, Jamie didn’t just want to check in over the phone. She wanted me to come over. So we sat in her backyard, throwing a slobbery tennis ball for her golden retriever, Pepper.

“Mitch,” she said quietly, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing the betting thing anymore.”

“What?”

I turned to stare at her. “Why? It’s going great. How much money have you made?”

“You know how much, Mitch.”

“About two hundred and fifty dollars,” I said proudly.

Pepper came galloping back with the drooly ball in her mouth. Jamie continued, “I don’t know. I think we’re going to get into trouble if we keep it up.”

“It’s not against the rules.”

“Come on, Mitch. If it’s not against the rules, why didn’t you go to Mr. Pearlman on Monday when Josh walked off with our two dollars?”

“Okay, then.” I wrestled the ball out of Pepper’s mouth. “So maybe Mr. Pearlman wouldn’t like it that much if he found out. But it’s not like we’re doing something wrong. Are we?”

She shrugged.

“We’re not making anybody bet. We’re not cheating. We’re not stealing money like Josh Burke!”

“Yeah, Mitch, I know. But even so. It’s almost not fair. Look.”

She took out her notebook, folded back a few pages, and showed me a chart that she had made.

Week	$Bet	$Won
1	$10	$18
2	$10	-
3	$10	$18
4	$10	-
5	$10	$18
6	$10	-
7	$10	$18
8	$10	-
9	$10	$18
Total	$90	$90

“What are you showing me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to notice?”

“Look at it closely,” she said. “You’re always so impatient!”

I looked again. She must have seen that I still didn’t get the point that she was trying to make.

“So this person bets ten dollars for nine weeks. They won five times in nine weeks. And they only broke even. Look here, they put in ninety dollars and they got back ninety dollars.”

“So what?” I asked.

“So, they won five out of the nine games—that’s more than fifty-five percent, more than half. That’s pretty good. And they only broke even.”

“So?”

“So…” Now she was the one getting impatient. “Let’s say we each put in five bucks and flip a coin nine times, splitting the total ten dollars based on how many times each of us wins. You win five times, more than half of the flips. I only win four. But you still only get your five dollars back.”

Ah-ha. Now I got her point.

And I had a comeback.

“But that’s the thing!” I said. “Flipping a coin is random. It’s a fifty-fifty chance, heads versus tails. So I would insist on fifty-fifty odds. This is different. I probably think I know more about football than you do, that I have a special skill, that I’m going to be right. So I’ll settle for less than fifty-fifty odds.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but imagine you took a test and got more than half of it right and still ended up with no credit. You might as well not have taken the test at all!”

“Okay,” I said, “but they have fun betting on their teams. Much more fun than taking a test, right? It isn’t just about winning.”

“It just doesn’t feel right, Mitch.” She sighed and flipped the notebook shut, then turned to her dog. “Look, Pepper, you have to drop the ball if you want me to throw it again.” The big shaggy dog loved fetching that slimy ball, but she hated giving it away.

“Listen, Jamie.” I was starting to feel weird about this. Panicky, even. I didn’t want to quit running the business. And I didn’t want Jamie to quit either. “Anybody could figure that out, right? What you just did with your notebook?”

“Sure, but I don’t think anybody has.”

“That’s not our fault, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

I didn’t let her finish. “And we don’t know it’s against the rules. Right? Nobody ever said. So you can’t quit now! Please. We have to keep it going.”

“Why, Mitch?” She turned to me, looking a little worried. “What’s the big deal? Why can’t we stop now, before anything goes wrong?”

It was a good question. What was the big deal? Why couldn’t we just quit?

I looked away from her, across her yard. It was a nice yard. A big deck. Chrysanthemums in pots. Maple trees starting to turn yellow and orange.

Pepper whined eagerly around the tennis ball in her mouth.

“I never told you why we really left California,” I said.