Page 3 of Eye on the Ball

“Don’t call her Red,” Sapphire said before I could. “And we won’t call you Troglodyte.”

Three blank looks.

I sighed. “Sapphire can toss the coin. She’s a reporter, and news people are objective.”

“She’s a reporter for Dead End,” Ace objected. “She’s got bias.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Sapphire said, digging a coin out of her pocket. “Look at this quarter. Regular quarter. Here’s the head. Here’s the tail. Call it, and I’ll toss it in the air and let it fall on the floor, so everybody can see.”

“I get to call,” Ace said quickly.

“Go for it.” I managed not to roll my eyes again and counted it a win.

Sapphire looked at Ace. He looked back at her.

We all said nothing.

Finally, Brenda spoke up. “Then call it already, so we can get out of here.”

Ace shoved his hands in the pockets of his Carhartt overalls. “Oh. Right. Heads. No, tails. No—wait—heads.”

Sapphire waited a moment. “Heads? You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Heads.” All three Truckmans nodded.

Sapphire tossed the coin in the air, and we all watched it turn over and over in the air and then hit the floor and roll a couple of feet toward Ace. He waited until it stopped rolling and then bent down to peer at the coin lying on my sparkling clean floor next to his work boot. Then he whooped and shot a fist into the air.

“Heads!”

Before he could pick it up, Sapphire nudged him aside and took a picture of the coin. I guess for the paper? Must be a slow news week.

Most weeks in Dead End were slow news weeks, to be fair. The annual grudge-match softball game was actually pretty big news for us. Not “Three-Hundred-Year-Old Man Steps Out of Statue and Lives” or “Chemistry Teacher Starts Gargoyle Stampede” big, but big enough.

“Okay, you won. We have two things to decide, so you can pick which one you want to decide,” Brenda said.

“We get to decide both. We won the toss,” Truckman said … truculently.

Heh.

(Okay, I promise I’ll stop now.)

“Come on, Ace, we do this the same way every year. We each pick one thing. Visiting team bats first, we know that. We each practice on our home fields as much as we want until the two official pre-game practice days,” I said, trying to be patient and reasonable when the man put my hackles up. “Do you want to set the official practice days at our field, or do you want to pick whether we play an afternoon or evening game on Saturday?”

“Practice days,” Ace blurted out. “We want first practice. Wednesday … no. Thursday evening.”

“That’s cutting it close,” Brenda complained. “That means we have no choice but to have last practice on Friday. Wednesday evening is the girls’ team practice. Lots of people have other commitments?—”

“I don’t care,” he snapped. “We’re Thursday, so you’re Friday. Game Saturday.”

“Saturday evening?” I looked at Brenda. “There’s going to be a lot of carnival-type stuff going on during the day.”

Sapphire started laughing. “I heard about the pig racing. My money’s on Hogatha Christie. I’m a big fan of mysteries.”

“What?”

She shook her head, grinning at me. “Never mind. I don’t want to spoil Mayor Ruby’s surprise. Okay, Riverton practices Thursday, Dead End practices Friday. The game will be Saturday evening, with a, what, seven p.m. start?”

“Seven is customary,” Brenda said quietly, looking anywhere but at Ace. “I think we’re done here.”

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