Boys in Control

One Stuck Wally Hatford took two baseball cards from his dresser--Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez--and stuck them in a jacket pocket. Jake had given them to him a month before just because he had duplicates, but Wally was going to trade them at school for a magic trick--a box that took a quarter and turned it into a fifty-cent piece. When he got downstairs and hung his jacket over a chair, he found his mother moving about the kitchen and talking to herself in a state of great agitation. "I must have been clear out of my mind!" she said, lifting the teakettle off the stove and plunking it right back down again. "I don't know what in the world possessed me to say yes last year, when I had no idea what I'd be doing a year from then." When Mrs. Hatford talked like this, Wally and his older brothers knew to lie low. Even their father knew that as long as breakfast was on the table, it was better to sit down and butter a biscuit than to ask what she was talking about. But Peter, who was in second grade, hadn't learned that yet. He licked the grape jelly off his fingers and asked, "What did you say yes to?" Everyone else at the table gave him a silent shake of the head. When Mrs. Hatford started talking, it was sometimes hard to get her to stop, and the boys would be lucky to make it to school on time. But it was too late. "The Women's Auxiliary of the Buckman Fire Department's Treats and Treasures yard sale," she said, and immediately sank down in her chair at the end of the table and rested her chin in her hands. "Now, that's a mouthful," Mr. Hatford said, hiding a smile behind his mug as he finished the last of his coffee. "Did you promise to clean out our attic and look for things to give to the sale?" "I promised to run the sale!" Mrs. Hatford moaned. "At the firehouse?" "Right here in our yard! Right out there on the driveway! Right up on our front porch!" Mrs. Hatford cried. Now all the Hatfords were staring. "Well, Ellen, that shouldn't be so hard," said her husband. "I'm sure the boys will help, and I'll do what I can." "No, you won't, because the sale happens to be the last Saturday in May, and you know what that is!" Wally tried to think, and then he remembered. That would be the day of the final game in the district elementary school baseball championships. And Jake, his brother, was on the Buckman Badgers. "If the Badgers make it that far, you know we'll all want to be there rooting for Jake!" Mrs. Hatford said in distress. "I'm certainly going to be taking half days off from work each Saturday in May that he's playing." Now it was a family emergency! Wally saw Jake's eyes open wide. Even Josh, Jake's twin, looked startled that his mother might have to be anywhere else on that fateful day. Jake had wanted to play for the Buckman Badgers ever since he was six years old. This was the year, and May was the month, and the twenty-ninth was the day of the championship game. But it just so happened, Mrs. Hatford continued, that in the window of every store in town there was a poster about the Treats or Treasures yard sale, which would be held from noon till four on May twenty-ninth at the home of Tom and Ellen Hatford on College Avenue, rain or shine. So there was no getting out of it. On that particular day, she would need to take a whole day off from her job at the hardware store, but how could she be in two places at once? There was silence around the kitchen table as sausage gravy congealed on plates and biscuits grew cold. "Well, after all the practice I've put in pitching balls to Jake for the last five years, I've got to be at that game," said Mr. Hatford. "If I have to take four vacation days off for baseball, that's okay wiNaylor, Phyllis Reynolds is the author of 'Boys in Control' with ISBN 9780385327404 and ISBN 0385327404.