didn’t see much of Ferdie for a while after the big night, but we’d still hear from his letters. Sometime in July, the marquee said The first year the Rockskippers had given out wallets, Lump told us that some of them came with twenty-dollar bills stuffed inside. Marcus and I had lined up at June’s box office that day, hours before batting practice.
They didn’t.
But since Ferdie had faded back into the letters, Marcus and I still used that space between FILLING and BELLIES, and that was better anyway. Closer to the bullpen, part of the magic.
Triple decided that crawfish were far superior to turtles because one had scuttled by so fast that he couldn’t even scoop it up before it was gone. He let Charlie keep Peter, because even though she said she was abandoning the sport, we didn’t believe it. And it was a good thing he’d moved on to popcorn-bucket drums, because those things were waterproof on the inside and crawfish needed a little bit of the creek with them all the time.
A little bit of their home.
With her sassy new haircut and Heavens to Betsy, that Plogger became second-in-command to her Aunt Candy, plotting and planning the next great event at the Heritage Inn, which was somebody’s retirement party. I knew she still bossed Lollie around some, but since Lollie had become the go-to nail painter for all the Ridge Creek ladies that would attend that retirement party, I didn’t think she minded. Betsy had moved on to painting doors, anyway.
Betsy also became the third-best thing about the grease‑splatters part of the year. Or maybe she tied with June for second. Marcus would always be first.
And he was the one who kept up the traditions of turf management all summer long. On some nights, when the electricity in the air was just right, he’d take a spin with June right past second base. He’d started wearing a Rockskippers jersey too, the one Lump got him, the one that had The Skipper spelled across the back.
I watched the two of them, Marcus and June, from behind the dugout with the girls on the odd days, and from the nosebleeds with Garland and Triple on the evens. We Clarks were rambling souls, planting roots in the James Edward Allen Gibbs Stadium, digging into its dirt and traditions. We’d made a home there, even though we would hit the road again with the last snap of a Rockskipper’s glove. We’d do it together.
And wasn’t I lucky?