December

On the first Wednesday of December, Mr. Guareschi announced over the P.A. that in January every junior and senior high school in the state would be taking the New York State Standardized Achievement Tests and that we should plan on taking practice exams at home during the holiday break. The reputation of the school was at stake, he told us, and he was very, very, very confident that we would not let Camillo Junior High down.

I'm not sure, but I think Mrs. Baker may have rolled her eyes.

The rest of the Morning Announcements were as exciting as December drizzles, and maybe Mr. Guareschi knew that, because he said he wanted to conclude by reading a lovely note, from Mrs. Sidman. She wished us all a happy holiday spirit at this very special time of year and hoped that, even in a time of war, we might be able to use these holidays to reflect on the virtues of peace and good will. She hoped all of this very sincerely.

The letter, Mr. Guareschi told us, was written from Connecticut, where Mrs. Sidman was taking "a retreat in seclusion."

Actually, the whole school was in a happy holiday spirit, even before Mrs. Sidman's letter. On one side of the main lobby, Mr. Vendleri had put up a huge fir tree and wound it with silver garlands. Balls as big as grapefruits hung from each branch—plastic ones, because last Christmas Mr. Vendleri had seen what Doug Swieteck's brother did to glass ones. Wherever there wasn't a Christmas ball, tinsel hung down, except when the lobby doors opened and it blew straight out. And then, I guess because Mr. Vendleri believed that no Christmas tree should show any green at all, he had sprayed quick-drying foam snow over the whole thing, as though there really might be snow on Long Island on Christmas Day—which hadn't happened since before there was a Christmas Day.

On the other side of the main lobby was the menorah. It was heavy and old, and had belonged in Mr. Samowitz's family for a whole lot longer than two hundred years. Some of the white wax that clung to the sides of the bronze cups came from candles that had been lit in Russia. We looked at it, standing on its white linen cloth as huge as History, and could almost smell the sweet wax in the darkness of a long time ago.

That first week, the second graders made red-and-green construction paper chains that they hung the length of the elementary and junior high school halls. The fourth graders cut menorahs from cardboard and covered them with glittering aluminum foil. The first graders cut out the flames for each of the nine candles, and together they put a menorah on every classroom door. The fifth graders had Charles, who could not only collect erasers but also write exquisite calligraphy—which made every girl in his grade (and some in the sixth grade) fall in love with him. Just because he could write "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Hanukkah" with loopy swirls. His signs appeared all over the halls, and gushing fifth-grade girls colored in the loops secretly to show their eternal love and devotion to the artist.

Danny Hupfer said it just about made him throw up.

All through Camillo Junior High, there were signs of the season. The windows on the classroom doors became crepe paper—stained glass. Mr. Petrelli put flashing colored lights around his door and a menorah with orange light bulbs on his window shelf. Mr. Ludema, who was from Holland, put wooden shoes on his window shelf and filled them with straw and coal—probably because he was Doug Swieteck's brother's teacher.

Mrs. Baker didn't put anything up. Nothing at all. She took down the aluminum-foil menorah the first graders had put on her door, and she wouldn't let any of Charles's signs into the room. When Mrs. Kabakoff came in carrying a crock of apple cider left over from the second-grade Pilgrim Feast, offering a special holiday drink for lunch, Mrs. Baker smiled one of those smiles that isn't really a smile, then had Danny Hupfer take the crock and shove it back on the high shelf in the Coat Room above the moldering lunches.

Mrs. Baker was not in a happy holiday spirit.

And to be really honest, neither was I—all because of Mr. Goldman and the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza. In which I was going to play Ariel.

Ariel the Fairy.

And nothing I said to Mr. Goldman helped.

"Every boy should be so lucky as you, to play in a Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza, and with such a part!" he said. "I should have been lucky as you at your age."

But let me tell you, wearing yellow tights wasn't making me feel lucky. Not if I wanted to keep living in this town.

So I showed the tights to my mother, who I figured would have some concern for her only son's reputation.

"They're very yellow," she said.

"And they have white feathers all over the—"

"Yes," she said. "But it will be cute. They'll sort of wave in the breeze when you walk. I still can't get over it—my son playing Shakespeare."

"They're yellow tights. I'm playing a fairy. If this gets out, I'll never be able to go back to school."

"No one from Camillo Junior High will be there. And even if they were, everyone will think it's cute."

I tried my father.

I handed him the tights while Walter Cronkite was announcing new bombing in Vietnam. I thought they might catch his eye, even though the CBS Evening News was on.

They did.

"You're going to wear these?" he said.

"That's what they want."

"Yellow tights with white feathers on the—"

"Yup."

"Whose idea is this?"

"Mr. Goldman's idea."

My father tried looking away from the yellow wasn't easy, since they were the brightest thing in tended to draw the eye.

"Mr. Goldman?" he said.

I think you've heard the rest of this conversation before.

"Yes," I said.

"The Benjamin Goldman who belongs to Goldman's Best Bakery?"

"I guess that's the one," I said.

My father looked at the yellow tights again, sort of shielding his eyes, and considered. "The day might come," he said finally, "when tights—which the room and before. Goldman thinks about expanding his business. And then he'd need to hire an architect."

"Dad."

"Maybe one that he remembers doing him a favor."

"I can't wear these," I said.

He handed the tights back to me. "Wear them. Just hope that no one from your school sees you."

I didn't try my sister, but she came to my room anyway.

"Mom told me about the tights," she said. "Let me see them."

I showed her.

"When this gets around school..."

"It won't get around school," I said.

"Sure it won't," she said. "Keep telling yourself that, and maybe it will come true. But if it ever gets over to the high school, you'd better pray that no one knows I'm your sister." She shut the door.

"That sure doesn't sound like a flower child who doesn't do harm to anyone," I hollered after her. But she didn't answer.

It didn't help that on the night of the first dress rehearsal (I wore my blue jeans over the yellow tights until the last minute), the entire cast of the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza clapped when I came onstage.

Which they did because they had to do something when they saw where the feathers were, and what they really wanted to do was laugh out loud, but they knew what I would do and it was too late to find another kid to play Ariel the Fairy. I mean, who else was going to wander into Goldman's Best Bakery and be $2.80 short on an order of cream puffs?

"Mr. Goldman," I said after the applause, "I can't wear these."

"Of course you can wear these. You are wearing these now."

"I look like a fairy."

"And this isn't the point? You should look like a fairy. You are a fairy."

"Do you know what will happen if someone from school sees me?"

"They will say, 'There is Holling Hoodhood, onstage, playing one of Shakespeare's greatest scenes from one of his greatest plays.' This is what will happen."

"Mr. Goldman, it's been a long time since you were in seventh grade."

"I never went to seventh grade. Where I come from, no boy went to seventh grade. We were all working in fields, digging and hoeing and digging and hoeing. But you—you go to school, then you go home and play. Then you come onstage to be a famous Shakespeare character. There is more that a boy could want?"

Without even trying, it wouldn't be hard to come up with a list of 410 things more that a boy could want. But it's hard to keep complaining after the "When I Was a Boy, Life Was So Hard" card is played on you.

So I did it. I got through the whole dress rehearsal playing Ariel the Fairy while wearing bright yellow tights with white feathers on the ... well, I might as well say it—butt. There. On my butt! White feathers waving on my butt!

Let me tell you, this did not put me in a happy holiday spirit.

The whole of December could have been ruined because of the yellow tights—except for one thing. One glorious, amazing, unbelievable, spectacular thing. The one thing that kept us going in the bare, holiday-less classroom of Mrs. Baker. The one thing that brought back meaning to Hanukkah and Christmas.

Mickey Mantle.

The greatest player to put on Yankee pinstripes since Babe Ruth.

Mickey Mantle.

And it was Mrs. Baker who announced his advent.

"I suppose it will be of some interest to some of you," she said, "that Mickey Mantle is coming to town next week."

The class went as quiet as if Sycorax and Caliban—the rats, not the monsters—had appeared before us, clacking their appalling yellow teeth.

"Some interest!" said Danny Hupfer.

"To some of us!" I said.

"Who's Mickey Mantle?" asked Meryl Lee.

"Who Mickey Mantle?" asked Mai Thi.

"He is a baseball player," said Mrs. Baker.

"He is the baseball player," said Danny Hupfer.

"He had a batting average of .245 this year," said Doug Swieteck.

We all turned to look at him.

"Down from .288 last year," Doug Swieteck said.

Danny Hupfer turned to look at me. "How does he know that?"

"What is a batting average?" asked Meryl Lee.

"My brother-in-law," said Mrs. Baker loudly, "has developed strong ties to the Yankee organization, and he has arranged for Mickey Mantle to come to the Baker Sporting Emporium. I am told that in addition to strutting around swinging baseball bats as if it were a worthy vocation, he will sign baseballs for anyone willing to bring one to him."

A cheer from the class, as if the happy holidays were already here.

"This is not an occasion to clamber onto your desk, Mr. Hupfer. You should tell your parents that he is coming a week from this Saturday night, and that he will be swinging bats and signing baseballs from eight o'clock until nine thirty. You should all take note that had he been swinging bats and signing baseballs on a school night, I never would have agreed to make this announcement."

Another cheer, wild and extravagant.

"Who's Mickey Mantle?" asked Meryl Lee again.

We all ignored her.

Mickey Mantle!

Now, things would have been fine if Mrs. Baker had just left it there. I mean, Mickey Mantle coming to the Baker Sporting Emporium and all. But she didn't.

"I have a second announcement," said Mrs. Baker.

We all got quiet again.

"Is someone else coming to the Emporium, too?" asked Danny Hupfer.

"Maybe someone I know?" asked Meryl Lee.

"No one else is coming, unless you want to say that someone is 'up and coming.'"

That was a teacher joke. No one laughed, even though we were all supposed to. No one ever laughs at teacher jokes.

"I have been informed by Mr. Goldman, who is the president of the Long Island Shakespeare Company, that one of the students in our class will be performing in the company's Holiday Extravaganza. He will be playing a part from The Tempest."

I knew what was coming next. For a while, I had wondered if Mrs. Baker had stopped hating my guts. Now I figured she hadn't.

"As the corresponding secretary of the company, I invite you all to come see Mr. Holling Hoodhood in his Shakespeare debut. It will be a week from this Saturday—the very same night that the eminent Mr. Mantle will be at the Emporium swinging bats. The performance should be finished thirty minutes before Mr. Mantle makes his exit, so you will all have time for both."

Toads, beetles, bats. The only thing worse would have been if she found a way to bribe them to come. Maybe with cream puffs.

"And for those who attend," said Mrs. Baker, "your ticket stub will bring you extra credit for your next English for You and Me assignment."

It was worse.

Mrs. Baker looked at me and smiled. It was like the smile she had before Doug Swieteck's brother's assassination attempt. And shouldn't someone have told me that Mrs. Baker was the corresponding secretary?

This is the part where, if we lived in a just world, some natural disaster would occur right then, or maybe an atomic bomb attack to obliterate the news of the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza and so save me from my undeserved humiliation.

Still, even though there wasn't a natural disaster or atomic bomb attack, Mickey Mantle was almost enough. After all, with Mickey Mantle coming, no one really cared about my Shakespeare debut. No one except Meryl Lee, who didn't know who Mickey Mantle was, and Mai Thi, who also didn't know who Mickey Mantle was, and Danny Hupfer, who did know who Mickey Mantle was—and they all cornered me after lunch.

"Why so sneaky?" asked Meryl Lee. "Are you playing a girl's part?"

"No, I'm not playing a girl's part. It's a part from The Tempest," I said.

"Gee, so when Mrs. Baker said you were playing a part from The Tempest, she meant that you were really playing a part from The Tempest," said Danny Hupfer. "We know a whole lot more now than we did before."

"Ariel. I'm going to play Ariel."

"That's a girl's name," said Meryl Lee. "Isn't it a girl's name?"

"Suspicion is an unbecoming passion," I said. "Ariel is a warrior."

I know. That sounds like a lie. But Presbyterians know that every so often a lie isn't all that bad, and I figured that this was about the best place it could happen.

"Who does the warrior fight?"

"The rebels who usurped Prospero's kingdom and who want to murder him and his daughter."

"That sounds all right," said Danny Hupfer. "So you get to fight for them, like a knight who's their champion."

"Yes."

"And you get to wear armor and stuff like that," said Danny Hupfer.

"Stuff like that," I said.

"Maybe I'll come then, to see the armor," he said. "But it'd better be over in time for Mickey Mantle."

"It still sounds like a girl's name to me," said Meryl Lee.

We ignored her again and headed back into the classroom.

But just before we got in the door, Mai Thi stopped me with a hand on my chest. She looked at me for a long moment and then whispered, "Not good to be warrior." I looked at her, I guess kind of startled, and she went in to her desk before I could say a thing.

But what did she know?

***

At the next rehearsal, I asked Mr. Goldman if Ariel could wear armor instead of yellow tights.

"Armor? We have no armor," said Mr. Goldman.

"You have no armor? What do you do in a play if you need it?"

"We don't put those plays on. We should buy armor just to do Julius Caesar? No. And why should Ariel wear armor?"

"Because he's Prospero's champion. He's fighting, like a jousting knight."

Mr. Goldman shook his head. "Like a jousting knight? Holling, you are a fairy. Go put on your tights. We have a dress rehearsal."

I didn't get to wear any armor.

The next Wednesday, as soon as everyone left for Temple Beth-El and Saint Adelbert's, Mrs. Baker took out her copy of Shakespeare from the lower drawer in her desk. "Mr. Goldman says that you are doing very well, though you need some practice on interpretation."

"He said that?"

"He did. Open your book to the fourth act. I'll be Prospero. We'll start with 'What would my potent master' and continue through to the end. Begin."

"He really said I was doing very well?"

"And that you need some practice. Begin."

"What would my potent master?" I said.

"No, no, Mr. Hoodhood. You are an enslaved magical creature about to be given your freedom if you perform well these last few moments. You, however, sound as if you're waiting for the crosstown bus. You're almost free, but not quite."

"What would my potent master?" I said.

Mrs. Baker crossed her arms. "There is supposed to be a passion in your face that works you strongly. You're on a knife's edge."

"What would my potent master?" I said.

"Indeed, there you are," said Mrs. Baker. "Stay on the knife's edge. And now Prospero..."

I stayed on the knife's edge, because I couldn't help it. When Mrs. Baker read Prospero's part, it was like Prospero himself had come into the classroom, with his flowing cloak and magical hands. She was Prospero and I was Ariel, and when she gave me my last command and said, "Be free, and fare thou well!" I suddenly knew what Ariel felt. The whole world had just opened out in front of me, and I could go wherever I wished, and be whatever I wanted. Absolutely free.

I could decide my own happy ending for myself.

"That," said Mrs. Baker, "should please Mr. Goldman."

And it did. When we finished rehearsal that night, I could almost imagine myself leaping out into the airy elements and dropping the insubstantial pageant of life behind me.

At least, that's what it felt like on the stage.

It didn't feel like that in Camillo Junior High, where Mrs. Baker reminded the class to purchase tickets in advance, and where I dropped hints almost every day that the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza was going to run really, really long, and that there was no chance in creation that anyone could go see the Extravaganza and make it to Mickey Mantle, too.

I know. Another lie. But just a Presbyterian lie.

So the days passed, and the Hanukkah and Christmas decorations in Camillo Junior High started to look a little shabby, and the dress rehearsals were over, and Saturday night came, and I put on my bright yellow tights with the white feathers on the butt, and I put on my jeans over them, and I found the newest baseball I had, and my father dropped me off at the Festival Theater—"Don't mess it up"—and the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza began.

And while Mr. Goldman played Falstaff from Henry IV, I looked out through the peephole in the wings, and I could see almost every face—and there weren't many, since anyone with any sense was over at the Sporting Emporium. I found Mrs. Baker right away. She was in the center of the third row, sitting next to Mrs. Bigio and wearing that teacher look that makes it seem as if she is about to start slashing at something with her red felt pen. (I suppose teachers just get that way. They can't help it.)

Behind Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Bigio were Danny Hupfer's parents.

Really.

I guess Danny must have told them about the Extravaganza, and they had come to see me play the part of Ariel the Warrior. I guess it didn't matter to them that the Bing Crosby Christmas special was on television tonight, the way it mattered to my parents, who would never, ever miss it. I guess the Hupfers thought that a Shakespeare debut was a whole lot more important than hearing "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" one more time—even though Mr. Hupfer was loosening his tie and holding his hand over a yawn.

And I guess you can't look out stage peepholes very long, because your eyes start to water, and the stuff in your nose gets drippy, and you have to wipe at them both, and there goes all your makeup.

There wasn't anyone else from Camillo Junior High that I could see. No one. And except for the very front row I could see every seat in the theater.

Let me tell you, when it was my turn to go on, not seeing anyone from Camillo Junior High made leaping out onto the stage hollering "What would my potent master?" and wearing yellow tights with white feathers waving on my butt a whole lot easier.

I stayed on the knife's edge, and when Mr. Goldman, who was really Prospero, sent me to fetch the traitors, or terrorize Caliban, or grieve the king, I did it as though all, all was at stake. When I reminded him that he had promised me my freedom on the sixth hour, I wanted it as badly as Mickey Mantle's signature on a baseball. And when I drew the boatmen into the island, I thrilled at Prospero's line: "Thou shalt be free." And when at last it was done and Prospero stepped to the edge of the stage to beg the audience to send its gentle breath to fill the sails of our freedom, I could hardly keep myself from trembling.

Suppose they wouldn't fill the sails?

"Our revels now are ended," Prospero had said. But when I walked onstage with the rest of the company for curtain calls, the revels felt like they had not ended; they were still ringing in the hands of the audience—who were all standing.

Still ringing in the hands of Mrs. Baker—who was smiling at me. Really.

Still ringing in the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Hupfer—who were waving at me.

Still ringing in the hands of Danny Hupfer and Meryl Lee and Mai Thi—who were standing in the very front row!

Danny Hupfer and Meryl Lee and Mai Thi!

I looked down at them looking up at the bright yellow tights with white feathers on the butt.

But they weren't looking at the yellow tights. Because they were all three crying. They stood in the light from the foot lamps, and their cheeks glistened with tears.

Shakespeare can do that to you.

They clapped and clapped, and clapped and clapped, and Meryl Lee wiped at her eyes, and then suddenly in Danny Hupfer's eyes came this startled look, and there was a passion in his face that seemed to work him strongly—and it was Mickey Mantle.

He pointed to his watch.

"Nine fifteen," he mouthed, and he turned and waved desperately to his parents.

And when the curtain came down and I could be free, I didn't wait for the audience's breath to fill my sails after all. I careened back behind the stage and around to the men's dressing room.

And found that it was locked.

Locked!

I pounded on the door. No one answered.

I heard my name for another curtain call.

I pounded on the dressing room door again. No one answered.

I ran back into the wings, desperate. Mr. Goldman was still onstage, bowing. It looked like he would be bowing for a while.

But he had left Prospero's blue floral cape behind in the stage wings.

I grabbed it, flung it around my shoulders, and made for the elements, where my father would be waiting for what I hoped would be an illegally fast drive to the Baker Sporting Emporium. I ran out the back stage door—and let me tell you, it had gotten a whole lot colder, and a cape when you're just wearing yellow tights doesn't help much—and sprinted around to the front of the Festival Theater.

My father wasn't there.

I guess the Bing Crosby Christmas special wasn't over yet.

Standing on the street in front of the Festival Theater in bright yellow tights and a blue floral cape covering white feathers on his butt—this was not an Ariel in a happy holiday spirit.

I looked up and down the street.

Not a single car was moving—except one speeding away: Danny Hupfer's parents. I decided I would wait for my father for five minutes. So I counted three hundred Mississippis.

No car.

People started to come out of the theater and point at me.

And then, the scent of diesel fumes came in on the breeze—which was cutting right through my floral cape—and the crosstown bus lumbered around the corner, gritty and grimy and the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. It even had plastic Christmas balls hanging from its rearview mirror.

I sprinted across the street—which probably looked pretty impressive with the blue cape flowing behind me—and stood at the Festival Theater bus stop.

But I wasn't sure the bus was going to stop when the driver saw me. He went two or three bus lengths beyond the sign, and even after he stopped and I ran up, he didn't open the doors at first. The plastic Christmas balls rocked back and forth while he looked at me like I had escaped from someplace I shouldn't have escaped from.

I counted another fifteen Mississippis before he opened the doors.

"Who are you supposed to be, kid?"

"John Wayne."

"John Wayne never wore tights his whole life."

"I need to get to the Baker Sporting Emporium."

"Well, John Wayne, do you have thirty cents?"

I reached into my pocket, which wasn't there.

"I didn't think so," said the bus driver.

"Please," I said. "I need to get to the Baker Sporting Emporium."

"Since Mickey Mantle is signing baseballs, right?"

"Yes."

"He looked at his watch. "You might make it. If you had thirty cents."

"The quality of mercy is not strained," I said.

He looked at me like I had just spoken a foreign language.

"Please," I said.

The driver shook his head. "Okay, John Wayne. But this is the kind of stuff that gets bus drivers fired, giving free rides. And if it wasn't so cold out there, I'd close the door on you. Did you know that when that cape is blowing out, people can see that you have white feathers on your—"

"Yes," I said, and took a seat.

It was mercy alone that there was no one else on the bus.

We drove through the cold night, well under the speed limit. The driver slowed down properly at every light—even if it was still green. He looked both ways twice at every stop sign.

"Do you think—" I began.

"Look, I'm missing the Bing Crosby Christmas special, and I'm putting my job on the line for you, kid. It's not a great night. So do you want to be quiet, or do you want to get out?"

I was quiet. I wrapped the blue floral cape around me.

By the time we reached the bus stop a block away from the Baker Sporting Emporium, I was about as frantic as a fairy warrior being very quiet can ever get. The bus driver looked at his watch. "Nine thirty-seven," he said. "You'd better giddyup, John Wayne."

He opened the door, and I started down the steps.

"You do have a baseball somewhere under that cape, right?" the bus driver asked.

I stopped. Dead. My baseball was back at the Festival Theater, in the locked men's dressing room.

I almost cried. Almost. But I didn't, because if you're in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.

The bus driver shook his head. "John Wayne is always prepared for whatever happens," he said. "Me, too." He reached under the dashboard and pulled out a cardboard box filled with stuff. "You can't believe what people leave behind on their bus seats," he said. He reached into the box and pulled out—I am not making this up—a perfect new white baseball. Every seam tight and clean, like it had never even been thrown before.

"You got no clothes that any decent person would wear," he said. "No bus fare. And no baseball. How're you going to make it in this world, kid?"

At that moment, I truly did not care. I stared at the baseball. Its perfect whiteness filled my whole vision.

The bus driver shook his head. "You'd better meet a whole lot of people who are really kind to you, kid." Then he handed the baseball to me. The perfect new white baseball.

"Merry Christmas," he said.

Again I almost cried.

I sprinted to the Baker Sporting Emporium, the blue cape straight out behind me, the baseball in hand. Who knows what the white feathers were doing.

And I made it. I really did. I slammed through the door, and there he was—Mickey Mantle.

He was sitting at a table, dressed in his street clothes. Behind him, Mr. Mercutio Baker, who owned the Emporium, had put up a bulletin board full of Yankee photographs, most of Mickey Mantle swinging away. Above them was a jersey with Number 7. Mickey Mantle had signed his name below it.

He was bigger than he looked on television. He had hands as large as shovels, and the forearms that came from his sleeves were strong as stone. His legs stuck out from beneath the table, and they looked like they could run down a train on the Long Island Rail Road. He yawned a couple of times, big yawns that he didn't even try to hide. He must have had a long day.

In front of me, standing at the table all by themselves with Mickey Mantle, were Danny Hupfer and his father. Mickey Mantle was just handing a baseball back, and Danny was just taking it into his hands. It was sort of a holy moment, and the light that shone around them seemed to glow softly, like something you'd see in one of the stained glass windows at Saint Andrew's.

"Thanks," said Danny. He said it in awe and worship.

"Yeah, kid," said Mickey Mantle.

Then I came up.

I held out the new perfect white baseball and whispered, "Can I please have your autograph?" And he took the ball from my hand and held his pen over it. And then Mickey Mantle looked at me. Mickey Mantle, he looked at me!

And he spoke.

"What are you supposed to be?" he said.

I froze. What was I supposed to say?

"You look like a fairy," he said.

I coughed once. "I'm Ariel," I said.

"Who?"

"Ariel."

"Sounds like a girl's name."

"He's a warrior," I said.

Mickey Mantle looked me up and down. "Sure he is. Listen, I don't sign baseballs for kids in yellow tights." Mickey Mantle looked at his watch and turned to Mr. Baker. "It's past nine thirty. I'm done." He tossed my new perfect white baseball onto the floor. It rolled past my feet and into the folds of my blue cape.

The world should split in two. The world should split in two, and I should fall into the crack and never be heard from again.

Holling Hoodhood. Me. The boy in yellow tights with white feathers on the butt and a blue floral cape.

The boy Mickey Mantle wouldn't sign a baseball for.

And Danny Hupfer had seen it all. The yellow tights. The cape. The ball. Everything.

Danny Hupfer, who stepped to the table and slowly placed his baseball—his baseball signed by Mickey Mantle—back in front of the greatest player to put on Yankee pinstripes since Babe Ruth. "I guess I don't need this after all," Danny said. He lifted his hand from it, and I could tell it wasn't easy.

"What's the matter, kid?" said Mickey Mantle.

"You are a pied ninny," said Danny Hupfer. "C'mon, Holling."

I picked up the bus driver's baseball and handed it to Danny. We turned, and left Mickey Mantle behind us.

We didn't say anything.

***

When gods die, they die hard. It's not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you're not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you'd ever want another god to fill their place. You don't want fire to go out inside you twice.

The Hupfers drove me back to the Festival Theater. I went in to see if the men's dressing room was unlocked. It was, and Mr. Goldman was holding forth.

"My dainty Ariel!" he called, and threw his arms out wide, and the company—the men, that is, for the record—all clapped. "Where have you been? You, the star of the Extravaganza? Something should be wrong?"

I shook my head. How could you tell Mr. Goldman that the gods had died, when they lived so strongly in him? "Was 't well done?" I asked.

"Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free."

And I was. I changed, and left the yellow tights with the feathers on the butt in a locker. Mr. Goldman told me I should stop by the bakery for some cream puffs "which will cost you not a thing," and I left. That was it. Outside, it was the first really cold night of winter, and the only fire in sight was the stars high above us and far away, glittering like ice.

The Hupfers were waiting, and drove me home.

We still didn't talk. Not the whole way.

When I got back, my parents were in the den watching television. It was so cold, the furnace was on high. The hot air tinkled the silver bells that decorated the white artificial Christmas tree that never dropped a single pine needle in the Perfect House.

"You're done earlier than I thought," my father said. "Bing Crosby is just about to start 'White Christmas,' as soon as this commercial is over."

"How did it go, Holling?" said my mother.

"Fine."

"I hope Mr. Goldman was happy with what you did," said my father.

"He said it was just swell."

"Good."

I went upstairs. The crooning notes of Bing Crosby's treetops glistening and children listening and sleigh bells in the snow followed me.

Just swell.

Happy holidays.

When we got back to school on Monday, there were only three more days before the holiday break. They were supposed to be a relaxed three days. Most teachers coasted through them, figuring that no one was going to learn all that much just before vacation. And they had to leave time for holiday parties on the last day, and making presents for each other, and for looking out the window, hoping for the miracle of snow on Long Island.

Even the lunches were supposed to have something special to them, like some kind of cake with thick white frosting, or pizza that actually had some cheese on it, or hamburgers that hadn't been cooked as thin as a record. Maybe something chocolate on the side.

But Mrs. Bigio wasn't interested in chocolate these days. It could have been the last holidays the planet was ever going to celebrate, and you wouldn't have known it from what Mrs. Bigio cooked for Camillo Junior High's lunch. It was Something Surprise every day, except that after the first day it wasn't Something Surprise anymore, because we knew what was coming. It was just Something.

But I didn't complain. I remembered the Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Bigio had come into Mrs. Baker's classroom and the sound of her sadness, and I knew what burned guts felt like.

Everyone else didn't complain because they were afraid to. You don't complain when Mrs. Bigio stares at you as you're going through the lunch line, with her hands on her hips and her hairnet pulled tight. You don't complain.

Not even when she spreads around her own happy holiday greetings.

"Take it and eat it," she said to Danny Hupfer when his hand hesitated over the Something.

"You're not supposed to examine it," she said to Meryl Lee, who was trying to figure out the Surprise part.

"You waiting for another cream puff?" she said to me. "Don't count on it this millennium."

And, on the last day before the holiday break, to Mai Thi: "Pick it up and be glad you're getting it. You shouldn't even be here, sitting like a queen in a refugee home while American boys are sitting in swamps on Christmas Day. They're the ones who should be here. Not you."

Mai Thi took her Something. She looked down, and kept going.

She probably didn't see that Mrs. Bigio was pulling her hairnet down lower over her face, because she was almost crying.

And probably Mrs. Bigio didn't see that Mai Thi was almost crying, too.

But I did. I saw them. And I wondered how many gods were dying in both of them right then, and whether any of them could be saved.

You'd think that Mrs. Baker would try to make up for the holiday disappointments of the Camillo Junior High kitchen over those three days. But she didn't. We went back to diagramming sentences, focusing on the imperfect tenses. She convinced Mr. Samowitz to start some pre-algebra equations in Mathematics for You and Me that Albert Einstein couldn't have figured out. She even bullied Mr. Petrelli into buckling down and making us present our "Mississippi River and You" projects out loud to the class.

Mr. Petrelli had us finish in a day and a half, but Mrs. Baker didn't let up all three days, and we were the only class in Camillo Junior High who sweated behind a closed decoration-less door, in a hot decoration-less classroom. And did we complain? No, because at the first hint of a complaint, Mrs. Baker folded her arms across her chest and stood still, staring at whoever had started to rebel until all rebellion died. That's how it was as we came up to the happy holidays—all the way until that last Wednesday afternoon.

As everyone got ready to leave for Temple Beth-El or Saint Adelbert's, I figured I'd probably be diagramming sentences for the next hour and a half, since we hadn't started another Shakespeare play yet.

Just swell.

But I was wrong.

"Mr. Hupfer and Mr. Swieteck," said Mrs. Baker, "I've arranged with your parents for you to stay in school this afternoon."

Danny and Doug looked at me, then at each other, then back at Mrs. Baker. "Okay by me," Danny said.

"I'm so pleased to have your approval," said Mrs. Baker. "Now, the rest of you...," and there was the usual hubbub of leaving, while Danny and Doug sat back at their desks.

"What's it about?" Danny asked.

I shrugged. "Erasers or sentence diagramming. Maybe Shakespeare," I said.

We looked over at Doug Swieteck. "You didn't do Number 166?" I said.

He shook his head.

"You're sure?" said Danny.

"Don't you think I'd know?" said Doug Swieteck.

We weren't so sure. But actually, he hadn't.

After everyone left, Mrs. Baker went to her desk and opened her lower desk drawer. She took out three—no, not books of Shakespeare, like you might think—three brand-new baseballs, their covers as white as snow, their threads tight and ready for fingers to grip into a curve. And then she reached in again and took out three mitts. Their leathery smell filled the room. She handed them to us. The leather was soft and supple. We slipped our hands in and pushed the new baseballs into their deep pockets.

"My brother-in-law, whom I believe Mr. Hupfer and Mr. Hoodhood both saw the other night following the Extravaganza, has asked me to give you these as holiday gifts, compliments of the Baker Sporting Emporium," said Mrs. Baker. "And after telling me what happened during your time there, he and I made some arrangements for you to break the mitts in. So take them down to the gymnasium—and don't throw balls in the hall. And dropping one's jaw in surprise happens only in cartoons and bad plays, gentlemen."

Danny grinned as we went out. "The gym is empty last period. She's giving us the afternoon off."

But he was wrong, too.

The gym wasn't empty.

Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke were waiting for us in the bleachers. In their Yankee uniforms. Number 25 and Number 20. The two greatest players to put on Yankee pinstripes since Babe Ruth.

Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke.

Can you believe it?

"Which one of you is Holling?" said Horace Clarke.

I pointed to my chest.

"And Doug?"

Doug Swieteck slowly raised his hand.

"So you're Danny," said Joe Pepitone.

Danny nodded.

Horace Clarke held up his mitt. "Let's see your arm, Holling," he said.

I threw with Horace Clarke, and Danny and Doug threw with Joe Pepitone. Then we switched, and Danny threw with Horace Clarke, and Doug and I threw with Joe Pepitone. Then we went outside, and under a warm sun and on a diamond that hadn't been used since October, Horace Clarke crouched behind the plate and I threw fastballs to him, and even, once, a knuckleball. Really. And then Danny got up and Horace Clarke pitched and Joe Pepitone and I shagged balls in the outfield. And then Joe Pepitone got up and Doug and I shagged balls in the outfield. And then we took some infield practice from Horace Clarke. And then we stood around the diamond—Joe Pepitone at home, Danny at first, Horace Clarke at second, Doug at deep shortstop, me at third—and we whipped the ball to each other around and around and around, as fast as we could, while Horace Clarke chanted, "Out of there, out of there, out of there," and the balls struck soft and deep in the pockets of the gloves, and the smack of them, and the smell of the gloves, filled the bright yellow air, while a breeze drew across us the whole time, as soft as feathers.

Afterward, they signed our baseballs and signed our mitts. They gave us each two tickets for Opening Day next April. And they gave Doug and Danny their caps.

And for me? Joe Pepitone gave me his jacket.

Can you believe it?

His jacket.

When they drove off, it felt like a place inside me had filled again. Our revels were not ended.

Danny and Doug and I ran up to the third floor to find Mrs. Baker. Mr. Vendleri was already taking down the Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. The halls were ghostly dark, and the classroom doors shut with the lights out behind them.

Mrs. Baker was gone, but she had left a note on the door.

"Mr. Hoodhood," it said, "read The Tragedy of Macbeth for the first Wednesday of January."

"Too bad," said Danny.

But Doug went on in, and he came back out carrying the cardboard box for Number 166 from the Coat Room. He looked at us, shrugged, and hauled it away down the hall, staggering under its clumsy weight.

We never saw it again.

***

The next day, President Johnson declared a Christmas ceasefire in Vietnam, and the bombs stopped dropping.

And so the happy holidays finally began.