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James picked Emily up at six o’clock on Saturday night for a big night out on the town. They were going to The Big Dipper. But first, James took a detour.
“Where are we going?”
“I thought a stroll along the cobblestones might be romantic.”
Emily laughed. “Were there ever cobblestones on Cobblestone Street?”
“There must have been. But I don’t know. I’m not that old.”
Emily laughed again and looked out the window. She couldn’t imagine why he was taking her back to the field. She’d only given him the rulebook’s measurements the afternoon before. Unless he’d spent all day at the field.
That’s just what he’d done. Although he hadn’t done it alone. He pulled up next to the field, behind a truck she recognized as belonging to Abe Cafferty. Abe and his son, Noah, were both standing on the first base line, smiling.
She slid out of the truck in a daze. “James, how did you do this so fast?”
“We worked all day. The snow’s gone, so unless we get more, which we might,” he said in a portending tone, “you’ll be able to practice outside soon. So, you needed a field. And a backstop,” he added, his eyes sparkling as he glanced at the new backstop.
She walked over to it and then couldn’t help herself—she leaned on it. It didn’t budge. Solid as a rock.
There were no dugouts, but each team now had a bench, and those too looked incredibly solid.
“James,” she said and then remembered he wasn’t the only one there. “Guys! I don’t know what to say.”
“We didn’t really do it for you, honey,” James said. “We did it for the girls, for the island. And we’re still going to try to get a fence up.” He glanced at the boulder in center field. “I don’t think anybody is going to hit it that far, but just in case ...”
“Hey, don’t count MacKenzie out,” Noah said, obviously proud that his girlfriend would be wearing the Panther pinstripes.
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James had already finished his supper and Emily was almost done when they saw the sheriff’s car go by the restaurant with lights flashing and siren blaring. They looked at each other.
“Well, that’s not something you see every day,” Emily said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that,” James said. Then he looked at her mischievously. “Want to follow him?”
“Seriously?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He got up, put a twenty on the table, and grabbed his coat. “Come on.”
She stood up. “Hang on,” she said, “it’s not like we’re going to lose him. This is an island.” She grabbed her coat and several final fries and followed him to the door.
At first, it appeared they had lost him, but it soon became evident they were not the only ones who had this idea. There were too many vehicles on the road, and they were all headed in the same direction. James fell in line.
They heard the commotion before they saw anything. It sounded like a hundred people were blowing their horns. Emily rolled down her window so she could hear better. Then she rolled it back up. The obnoxiousness of the noise overpowered her curiosity.
James pulled the truck in behind a long string of parked vehicles and shut off the engine.
“Where are we?” Emily asked.
“Not sure, but it sounds like the action is at Travis Payne’s place.” He started walking along the slim shoulder, and Emily had to double-time it to keep up with his long legs.
“Thomas’s house?”
“Well, I doubt he pays the mortgage, but yes.”
The backside of a lovely Dutch Colonial came into view. The front of the house faced the ocean, and Thomas and his family enjoyed a spectacular view of the harbor.
“Wow,” Emily said. “I’m glad I don’t have to pay the mortgage either.”
“No kidding.”
“Seriously, though, what is that noise?” They had started down the driveway, toward a crowd of people.
James started to laugh.
“What?” she said, looking up at him in the darkness. She had to speak loudly to drown out the horns.
“I think they are air horns.”
“What?” she said, even louder now that they’d gotten closer. Then she saw it. Sure enough, there were about twenty people standing immediately behind Thomas’s house, each holding a portable air horn. Some of them held one in each hand. Every air horn was blatting, creating a synergistic effect that made Emily want to die. She had the urge to cover her ears, but no one else was doing that, and she wanted to appear tough too.
Sheriff Pease was trying to break up the crowd but wasn’t having much luck. He now stood in front of the troublemakers and was hollering in their faces, but it appeared that they were all ignoring him. Emily wondered how many pairs of handcuffs he had. She also wondered why on earth they were doing what they were doing.
She saw that James was chuckling. She couldn’t hear him, but he was grinning, and his chest was shaking. She looked at him quizzically.
He muttered something.
“What?” Emily hollered.
“They’re making noise,” James hollered.
“Yeah, I gathered that much,” Emily hollered back.
James looked down at her, and she noticed he was incredibly handsome in the moonlight. “Windmills make noise,” he hollered. “So they’re making noise.”
