might have been the best Rally ever, the one when Betsy Plogger painted a front door pink instead of painting some fingernails. The one when Marcus snuck the cart out of the stadium and drove a bunch of sweet peas around the long way. The one when Betsy insisted we do the outfielders’ leap and chest bump, the one that took three people, instead of a high-five, which was just for two. The Rally I’d skipped most of—except for the turtle race.
After watching the paint dry enough so we could loop those lights and greens on the door, Betsy and I ran back to the Rally just in time for Triple’s big moment. The turtles raced the length of a parking space, the one reserved for the Ridge Creek Rockskippers Fan of the Month. I think it’s a parking-space-sized course mostly because you can’t trust turtles to race in a circle, and besides, the Rally only lasts for one afternoon.
“On your mark!” the shortstop shouted.
“Hey,” I whispered to Garland, who’d gotten there first.
“We have to chat,” he said, and there was that face again.
“Get set!”
Marcus slipped up behind Triple to see how his grass cuttings had helped, and to cheer on his team. And Triple was channeling focus from somewhere any skipper would appreciate, and not even Charlie’s wiggling, giggling, and gum-smacking would break that.
“I always beat you, Triple Clark, and this time I’m buying a bunny with my prize money,” Charlie said, inspecting her Lollie-done manicure more than her turtle at the starting line. “I’m retiring at the end of today, though. It’s kinda boring to win all the time.”
Triple must have gotten his fierce determination from Garland, because he didn’t budge. And when the keep-your-mouth-shut-before-getting-too-feisty gene was passed out in our family, he got all of that, too. I sure didn’t. I swallowed some hot air and almost spit out a bunch of salty words to tell her what she could buy with that prize money.
And then I stopped, but only because Garland said, “Derby?”
“Okay—” I said, figuring I could explain about the stolen lights and greens.
“Aren’t we lucky,” he said, “getting to be front-row spectators of the greatest upset of all time?”
And we were.
It was a thrill when the shortstop yelled, “GO!” but it hit with a bit of a thunk, since turtle races aren’t the speediest of events. But still, we stood there, Garland and I, cheering for Peter like he was bracing for a collision at home plate. Triple and the Skipper shouted so long and loud that between the two of them, I was sure they’d have half a voice the next day.
Twelve minutes and forty-nine seconds later, Peter tappety-clawed over the finish line, first.
Triple gripped Peter’s belly and held him high up in the air, and Marcus was the first to congratulate them. And then those two boys did the rowdiest Rockskipper high-five that the James Edward Allen Gibbs Stadium had ever seen.
“So?” Triple said when he saw my shock at his newfound skill. “You said to go see Marcus in the bullpen!”
Marcus laughed and shrugged, and my heart was a jumbled-up bunch of awe at seeing the two of them, almost like brothers. Yet when I caught Garland’s eye, I knew we were a strum that didn’t really sound right. I followed him back to the Rambler, turning my head to watch the Skipper lead Triple and Peter on a victory lap.
I swore I heard some thunder.
Garland stepped in first and put on a kettle of water. I stood there, watching him, waiting for the storm.
“Derby,” he said again, like he wanted to fill each syllable, each time, with all the disappointment that could fit. And he was patient, too, sifting through the dishes for the Santa Claus mug. He hummed something that sounded like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” although he matched Miss Houston for mastery of the pitch. The squeal of the teakettle was a welcome note.
I couldn’t find words and I’d forgotten how to wish. Garland set two mugs down on the table, stuck a teabag in each one, and filled them to the brim with hot water. Then he slipped into a seat at the kitchenette table and waited. But not for long, because Garland was the kind of dad who knew how to love, and when he put his arm up on the back of the bench, I snuck in underneath.
“Aren’t we lucky, the three of us?” Garland asked. The water was too hot, so I couldn’t sip the tea to stall the time and that question.
After he cleared his head and his throat, he spoke again. “But it’s come to my attention that some Clark family business has been a smidge out of character.” Garland’s voice dropped an octave from seriousness. “Even downright sneaky. Not at all like the rambler that I know.”
I let the steam smack me in the face. “Garland—” I started, not too sure what I would say next.
“Being a rambler on the road means three things.” And then he paused for dramatic effect, like always. “Food, family, and fun.”
That’s when I knew this wasn’t about taking the lights from the Grill. Garland wanted to let me steep with my thoughts and the tea. But he was as gentle as Triple was sweet, and his words made honest come tumbling out.
“I took some of the tips. I stole from us for June Mattingly,” I said. “And I broke a promise to Triple and I lost Twang and I stole a strand of lights, too.”
Garland lifted his mug with one hand, because the other was still on the arm that was around me. “Well, Derby,” he said, as cool as the tea wasn’t, “sometimes big hearts make bad decisions.”
And there we were, just two ramblers with big and broken hearts. He might have been right about the lucky part, because at least with family, you can share the pieces. Our silence was interrupted only by another low rumble of thunder, one that sounded far off. I wished and hoped and wished again that it would stay there, because a storm wasn’t welcome on this game day.
“I skipped most of the Rally because we fixed something special up for June at her house. But I thought she also deserved a fan or something so she wouldn’t sweat her insides out. I needed money, and that’s what my bad decision was all about,” I explained. “But I don’t even have enough. And I shouldn’t have taken it.”
Garland shifted, and looked up like he was asking the sky for a wish of his own.
“But you,” I said. “Why do you always skip the Rally except for Triple’s part? I know you love Candy Plogger’s Famous Apple.”
Garland set his Santa Claus mug down, and his faraway look drifted a little bit closer. “Did you hear that thunder?” he asked. “The biggest thunderstorm I ever saw in my whole life happened on the afternoon of the very first Rally for the Rockskippers. You should have seen Candy Appleton—flailing around like a hen without a head, and Goose Plogger following her around like some other chicken, pecking at her leftovers. She couldn’t see him, of course, ’cause she was blinded by all the details like getting tarps over the pie tables and tying up the banners. She couldn’t see what really mattered. It was three Rallies later before he got her attention and made her a Plogger.”
Garland paused for a minute and sort of smiled, as if his memory had been bookmarked for this moment and the pages hadn’t yellowed on the edges yet. I’d never thought of Candy Plogger being anyone but Candy Plogger, and I was only beginning to understand all that Ridge Creek kept knotted up in its shared stories.
“As entertaining as the frenzy was in the parking lot over here, I wanted to see the storm from higher ground, and the best I could think of was the stadium.”
“It’s magical,” I whispered, mostly to myself.
“Did you know there used to be some boards loose in right field? Smack dab in the middle of the Sweet Street Mart sign. They might have nailed those up by now, but it’s how we all used to sneak in and play catch under the stars when the team was on the road.”
I thought of the space between FILLING and BELLIES and pictured Garland sneaking in. That secret didn’t only belong to me and Marcus.
“I got as high as I could in the bleachers, even though there wasn’t a dry seat in the place, and waited out the storm. That’s where I met your mama. She was already up there, watching the storm roll in—beat me to the idea by who knows how many raindrops.”
That ringing in your ears that happens between the burst of lightning and a crash of thunder—that was the thing vibrating all through my body. Garland had never told me this story before, and it settled like a bellyache.
June and Franklin had second base.
Garland and my mama had the nosebleeds.
“Before that night nobody had ever seen her, and a storm had to brew up to stick us together. The storm sure was slow to move in, but my love struck quick like the lightning.”
And so we sat under that cloud for a while, Garland remembering and me wondering. That’s where he stopped, so he didn’t get to the part about why she wasn’t a rambler anymore.
Sometimes big hearts make bad decisions.
Garland looked down at me. “Can I get you more tea? It costs seventeen dollars.”
With that, the speck of jolly that had gone dark for a while was back. It was my mama who had some other storm to chase.