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THE OFF SEASON
Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children
Fiction
ISBN-10: 0618686959
ISBN-13: 9780618686957
288 pages
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• Author Talk -- June 2007
Every labor day, the Jorgensens --- they own
Jorgensens' Ice Cream --- set up a little ice cream
stand right in their yard, which means you can
spend the entire Labor Day picnic making yourself
ice cream sundaes if that's what you want to do,
and for years when I wasn't playing softball or
chasing the Jorgensen kids or trying to keep up
with my brothers, I'd sit myself at that little booth
making one sundae after another until it was time
to head home for evening milking, and then a
couple miles into the drive I'd bring that whole
sundae experience back up, right there on the
side of whatever road we happened to make it to.
Lately, though, I have a little more self-control.
Now I only eat three or four, without
marshmallows because I finally figured out that
they shouldn't really be part of the whole sundae
thing, while I'm hanging out at the pig roast
watching guys poke at the fire because
apparently it's a law that if you're a guy you have
to spend a bunch of time doing that. Then maybe
I'll grab one more between innings when I'm not
pitching.
That's the other great thing about the picnic: the
softball game. Randy Jorgensen has a huge
backyard he mows all year for this, and he
borrows bases from Little League so it's official
and all. He even got an umpire's getup at a garage
sale somewhere, and a friend of his who owns a
pig farm works every year as umpire after he's got
the pig going in the pit.
My mom used to pitch the game. She pitched all
through college, and her team was pretty good
from what she's told me. Then one year she threw
her back out, which isn't that hard to believe
considering she doesn't get much exercise these
days and, well, she weighs a whole lot more than
she used to. She threw out her back so much that
she couldn't walk or anything, Dad had to drive
her home in the back of the pickup as she lay
there like a piece of plywood if plywood could
holler to slow down, and she had to spend three
weeks on the living room floor until she healed.
Which isn't such a swell thing to be doing when
you're supposed to be teaching sixth grade and
it's the first three weeks of school.
So she's not allowed to pitch anymore. But at
least she started exercising again --- not for
softball but just to lose some weight --- which
means puffing around the farm fields, swinging
her arms in this way that makes me glad she's
not walking where anyone can see her. I guess
she figures that an elementary school principal,
which she is now since she moved up from
teaching sixth grade, shouldn't be quite so heavy.
The softball game is always kids against the
grownups, from little tiny kids still in diapers to old
farmers who get their grandkids to run because
they don't have any knees left. There's always
lots of arguing about where the teenagers should
go. This year Randy Jorgensen made a big plea
for Curtis, trying to get him on the grownup side
on the grounds that he's one of the tallest people
there, which is true, but seeing as he's only going
into eighth grade he really does belong on the
kids' team.
After Mom hurt her back, Randy tried pitching but
he took it way too seriously, and the next year
Mom suggested me, and now I guess it's just
tradition. Which is nice because I don't play
school softball seeing as I run track, and this fall
of course I was playing football, which is another
whole story in and of itself, so this is how I get
my softball fix. Plus I'm not too biased. Mom
says I'm Switzerland, which I think she means as
a compliment.
Besides, it's not like competitive softball. You
mostly just try to get the ball across the plate
slow enough for whoever's trying to hit it, and
keep it dry from the guys who hit with a beer in
their other hand. Some little kids hold the bat out
like they've never held a bat before, which some
of them haven't, and I'll toss the ball as gently as
I can against the bat, which in this game counts
as a hit, and the kid will be so surprised they'll
just stand there while everyone starts hollering,
and their mom will have to take them by the hand
to run around the bases, and in the meantime the
catcher, who's usually Randy's wife, Cindy, will
toss to first but just happen to overthrow, and so
the kid will continue on to second just totally
amazed, and the second baseman will fumble
eight or nine times with a bunch of moaning, and
the kid will make it to third, and sometimes if
there are enough errors the kid will score a home
run and walk around on a cloud for the rest of the
afternoon.
With other folks, of course, I'm not so nice. Mom
always takes a couple turns at bat even though
she shouldn't because of her back. All the
younger kids in the outfield think this is hilarious,
their principal standing there in her big floral
shorts and her big pink T-shirt, looking a lot more
like a beach ball than a batter. But the older kids
know enough to back up. One year she hit the ball
so hard it took twenty minutes to find it. I guess
she needs to get her softball fix in too, and also
needs to teach those kids a lesson or two about
mouthing off.
Then there's Curtis, who's always a huge part of
the game, and I'm not just talking about his
playing. My little brother might not talk to
grownups much, or to me, but with little kids he's
just amazing. I don't know if it's because they can
tell, the way dogs can sometimes, that he's safe
and he'll be really nice to them, which he will. Or
maybe he's just a lot more comfortable with kids
than older folks, and they pick up on that. But
wherever he goes where there are little kids, like
this picnic, they just flock to him. As soon as
Curtis and this girl he was hanging out with sat
down on the edge of the softball field, a half-
dozen little kids started climbing on him and
giggling and asking him questions, and he settled
into it like being a human playground was his
calling in life. Whenever the littlest kids went up to
bat, he'd run the bases with them if they wanted,
and in the outfield he'd make sure they got to tag
out their dads and uncles, who often tripped really
dramatically right before the base so it'd be easier
for the kids to get them.
And then when it was Curtis's turn to hit, the kids
got so excited they were just exploding. Curtis
after all was a state MVP in Little League, which
everyone in town knows including the dead
people, and when he walked up to home plate, the
kids started zipping like bugs around a porch
light, and all the folks in the outfield went way
back, knowing what was coming, and I switched
from nice-girl-tossing-the-ball-against-the-bat to
big-sister-you-can-eat-this-one mode.
I pitched a fast one and Curtis swished a strike,
and the little kids went bonkers like this was the
World Series or something, and then he smashed
right through my second pitch and it was clear
that all those folks in the outfield hadn't gone
back nearly far enough, and he ambled off toward
first base because that ball was a couple hours
from being found.
A bunch of little kids, though, took that ambling
personally. They ran up and started tugging on his
arms, and his legs even, shrieking at him to run,
and then another bunch of kids, his defenders,
decided that this first group shouldn't be so bossy
and so they started pulling Curtis the other way
because I guess they decided that walking would
make him happier. Until finally you couldn't even
really see Curtis, just a dozen little kids hollering
and waving their arms and giggling hysterically,
pulling him in every direction.
You know the expression "fall down laughing"? I
actually did. I was laughing so hard, standing
there on my little pitcher's mound, that after a
while my knees didn't work and I had to lie down
and try to breathe as I watched Curtis getting
dragged around the bases. It was, hands down,
the funniest thing I've ever seen.
Anyway, that's a very long story that doesn't have
much to do with anything. But even now that
memory makes me grin, Curtis and all those little
kids wriggling together . . . It's hard to believe,
sitting here in the hospital writing this down, that I
ever felt so happy. That once, not so long ago, my
life actually seemed okay.
Excerpted from THE OFF SEASON © Copyright 2008 by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. Reprinted with permission by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Inc. All rights reserved
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