Gold Dust by Chris Lynch

Author:Chris Lynch [Lynch, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-0456-4
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2013-01-16T21:08:00+00:00

NOT CRICKET

MONDAY WAS GORGEOUS. ONE of the great things about being in Boston was that, just as soon as you got the feeling in January or February or March that the weather was brutal and would remain brutal for the rest of your life—a feeling you could get pretty frequently in January or February or March—then bang came a day to make you walk around with wow in your stomach and a mad itch in your feet. To get out there and play a game.

Which we did at lunchtime. Every kid in the school was climbing over every other kid to get through the door, still chewing, still slurping, bits of ham or apple or jelly falling down our shirts as we rushed the exit.

There was no doubt what I was intending to do. Not on a midwinter day when it was nearly sixty degrees and the sun was throwing brightness over everything. My dream, a dream I had over and over again during the previous three hours while the teachers were probably discussing math or god or poetry, involved swinging some sort of stick at some sort of sphere.

“You know what’s been running through my head all morning, Napoleon?” I asked as we scooted across the asphalt toward the back of the Sisters’ four-car garage. That was where the odd old broom handles were stashed, and we all knew what odd old broom handles were good for, so you had to get there early or lose out.

Napoleon snorted. “The whole world knows what has been running through your head all morning. Baseball has been running through your head all morning.”

“Well, ya, of course, but I don’t even have to say that. I mean, along with baseball.”

“Apparently there is a great deal of room up there,” he said, reaching over and tapping the side of my head. Like he expected an echo.

“Because I am in such a good mood,” I said, picking up the first thick, strong broom handle, “I won’t even mind that you did that. And I will tell you that what has been running through my head is the theme to Hawaii Five-O.”

I was very serious, and very excited.

“I’m holding a big stick, Napoleon. You better cut that out.”

He was laughing.

“You mean the theme music. From that television program with the police officer with the metal hairstyle.”

“That’s not the point,” I snapped. “It’s the music, the sound.” I jumped into my batting stance, and began my rendition of the surfy, coppy song—Ba-ba-ba-ba-BAH-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-baaaaa—swinging my bat as hard as I could in either direction every other beat. “It’s the perfect baseball soundtrack, and I was brilliant on the field all morning. In my head.”

I could not stop moving as I talked, and Napoleon could not stop smiling. It was the kind of thing that I knew was contagious, and that I knew all along he would eventually catch from me. And then we would be off into history, the Gold Dust Twins.

In truth, I wasn’t the only one with the fever.

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