MICHAEL LIBLING

MOSQUITO LEAGUE

During the summer, your average ballfield attracts its share of insects (not to
mention a few pop flies). But as this story reminds us, the biggest pests don't
usually go away just by swatting at them...

What struck me first about Benny Clay were the dead mosquitoes. The rest of us
would sit in the dugout slapping and scratching while Benny would sit on the
bench, hands on his knees, as relaxed as if he.were home watching Leave It to
Beaver. We'd end up with bites; Benny would end up with dead mosquitoes hanging
all over him. Limp legs. Limp wings. Limp whatever. It was really something to
see.

"I think it's my blood," he explained. "They start to bite me and that's its
they die. Once it happened with a bee, too. Right here," he said, poking himself
in a stain of freckles. "I didn't even know I had a bee in me till Miss Caprice
told me to go wash my face." Miss Caprice had been his grade five teacher in
wherever he lived before he moved to Howell. He had mentioned the town a couple
of times, but it wasn't interesting enough for me to bother remembering. In
fact, I didn't give much thought to any of the towns Benny mentioned. He had
lived in a lot of dull places, some even duller than Howell.

Benny wanted to be a second baseman. Trouble was, he couldn't field or hit worth
a darn. Coach Ragemeyer said he was afraid of the ball. He shut his eyes every
time a grounder shot his way and bailed out at the plate, even if the pitch was
a mile outside. "You're worse than a girl, Clay! Maybe we should start calling
you Jenny?" And that's exactly what a lot of the kids did. Strange thing was, it
didn't seem to bother him any worse than the mosquitoes did. I'd never met
anyone quite like him.

"How come nothing seems to bug you, Benny?" I asked him one day, a couple of
innings after Coach Ragemeyer tore into him for letting another grounder scoot
between his legs.

"Stuff bothers me all right, but there's nothing I can do about it, so I keep my
feelings inside."

"Wish I could do that," I said. 'I usually say something dumb -- and then get
jumped on."

"I know," Benny said. "I couldn't believe it when you stood up to Gilpin. He
really belted you, didn't he?" Gilpin was a big jerk catcher for the Briarwood
Braves. He was about the only kid in the league who wore spikes. He stressed the
fact by leaving his mark every chance he got -usually on somebody's face. I
warned him that if he tried it with me, I'd make him eat his glove. Well, he
did, and I didn't.

I was small for my age, and, I guess, my brain must have matched. If only my
mouth had, too. Next to baseball, getting beaten up seemed to be my favorite
pastime.

I rolled up my right pant leg. "If you look real close, you can still see where
the bugger bit me after he spiked me. And under here," I raised my shirt, "is
where he clawed me. You'd think a kid that big wouldn't have to fight dirty, but
he does."

"Did he do that, too?" Benny asked, pointing to the yellow bruise on my
shoulder, just where my neck gets started.

"Nah! That's from the Skyler game and Evans."

"Figures. Evans has used his elbow on me a few times, too. Don't understand why
he has to play like that."

I spun around and showed Benny my back. "Here's where he kicked me after he
knocked me down."

"You ever win a fight, Brian?"

"Not yet. But I will," I said. "I'll get back at them some day. I hate bullies.
Hate their guts."

"I hate them, too," Benny said. "But I'm not going to mix it up and get hurt
even worse. If Evans wants to elbow me, I don't care, as long as he doesn't do
anything else. When guys like him and Gilpin start up with me, I try to make
myself invisible."

"Does it work?"

"Sometimes, I think."

"How can you tell?"

"When they don't hit me a second time."

"Maybe I should try that," I said.

"It wouldn't hurt." Benny laughed.

I joined him. "Yeah! It wouldn't hurt."

"Still, you're lucky, Brian."

"Lucky? Me?"

"At least, you can play ball. I stink. Coach says you could go right to the top
if you put your mind to it. Says you're the best shortstop he's seen in years."

"Ragemeyer's an asshole. Only reason he coaches is so he can sell life insurance
to our parents. Anyhow, that's what Billy says." Billy was the coach's son.

It was then we struck the deal. I'd teach Benny how to play ball and he'd teach
me how to be invisible.

First thing I taught him was to stop wearing shirts with red and white stripes
running across. "Fat kids shouldn't wear them, Benny. Makes you look like that
tub in the Dubble Bubble comics."

No wonder Benny wore Huskies. His father was a candy salesman, supplying almost
every confectionery up and down the coast. The first time Benny showed me his
cellar, I felt like Hansel and Gretel must have when they stumbled into the
witch's house. The floor was cluttered with teetering cases of 12s, 24s, 36s and
48s, plastered with names like Hershey's and Topps and Mars and Tootsie, while
huge jars of goodies strutted across the walls and tabletops. Jelly beans.
Jujubes. Blackballs. Wax lips. Honeymoons. Marshmallow bunnies. Licorice pipes.
Candy cigarettes.

Benny would check in with his parents a few times a day and I'd tag along. It
paid off. When his father was in town, he'd stuff our pockets with jawbreakers,
sunflower seeds, peanuts -- you name it. All for free, too.

His mother would pour us fresh lemonade, pink for Benny, white for me. It was
something I never understood. At my house, if I was having pink lemonade, my
friends would get it, too. Usually, though, my mother would just open a bottle
of Hires.

Anyhow, most of the time, the kitchen visits went like this:

"Being Benny's friend pays dividends, doesn't it?" His mother would smile, lips
tight, as if she were holding in her front teeth.

I would nod. I wasn't sure what dividends were, but I sensed she knew what she
was talking about.

"But you must not be Benny's friend just for the treats, you know? That would
make you a false friend. The Bible says that false friends go straight to Hell.
And you would not want that to happen, would you? You are going to watch out for
Benny, aren't you?"

Watch out for him? Jesus! He was twice my size. What did she expect me to do? I
would shake my head. It was plain to me that more than a few of Benny's
ex-friends were on their way to Hell at that very moment.

"Watch out for Benny," she would say, "and I promise he will watch out for you.
Now, would you like another nice glass of lemonade, Brian?"

"Could I please have the pink this time, like Benny, Mrs. Clay?"

"No, you cannot," she would say.

Once, I asked Benny why his mother would never let me have the pink lemonade.
"Some day, she might," he answered.

I preferred Benny's father. He didn't talk so much. And he didn't hold back on
any candies.

Although-the fringe benefits of Benny's friendship were nice, the in-betweens
were no piece of cake -- or, for that matter, handful of jujubes. Teaching Benny
was only slightly easier than, maybe, calling up a girl. Or convincing Miss
Cooke that Snapper really did pee on my homework.

Ragemeyer was right. Benny was afraid of the ball. Pain terrified him.

"Believe me, Benny, the fear of pain is worse than the pain itself." I'd heard
the line in a movie.

"That's what the guys who dish out the pain always say," Benny replied.

"We'll start with a punch for a punch," I said.

"Huh?"

"I'll punch you in the arm and then you'll punch me. We keep going until one of
us shouts 'uncle.'"

"Uncle," Benny shouted.

"We haven't started yet," I said. "You first. You hit me first."

Something brushed my arm.

"Was that it?" I asked.

"Uh-huh."

"Jesus, Benny, you got to punch harder than that. I barely felt it."

"I don't like to punch. It hurts my hand."

"Have it your way. But now it's my turn."

He shut his eyes and scrunched up his mouth till his lips twisted into a
pretzel. I gave him a quick jab on the shoulder. It was hard, but no way near my
best shot.

"Uncle!" Benny shouted. "Uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle," he yelped,
hopping about like a toad on a heated trash can cover. (I know, because we'd
heated up a trash can cover and tossed a toad on just the summer before. I never
forgot what it looked like.)

As for Benny's part, he probably didn't find teaching me all that easy either.

His philosophy was simple. "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but keeping
my mouth shut will never hurt me."

"I've never heard that version before," I said.

"It's the right version," he assured. "Keeping your mouth shut works two ways.
First, the bullies aren't likely to notice you. And second, if they do start
roughing you up, and you keep your mouth shut, they'll just get bored and go
away. Usually, before they do too much damage."

"So if I start getting punched out, I shouldn't say a word? Just let them do it
to me?"

"Uh-huh. They'll finish with you a lot quicker."

"Gee, I don't know if I could do that. If somebody's hitting me, I've got to hit
back."

"The trick is not to get hit in the first place. That's why keeping your mouth
shut right from the start is so important. It makes you invisible."

In the next game against Briarwood, Gilpin hit a double off the tip of Benny's
glove. It was the closest Benny had come to stopping a ball all season.
Nonetheless, I could hear Ragemeyer cursing, raging like a circus geek on the
top step of the dugout.

Rounding first, Gilpin spied Benny lumbering over to cover second. "Out of my
way, lardboy," he taunted, driving his shoulder into Benny's gut as he pulled up
at the base.

Both benches roared hilarious approval. Both benches! (I guess that shouldn't
have surprised me. Fostering team spirit had never been one of Ragemeyer's
strengths.) "Laaaaaa-rrrrrrd boy," they laughed. "Laaaaaa-rrrrrrd boy."
Encouraged, Gilpin body-checked Benny out toward center field. Benny tripped
over his own heels and landed flat on his butt. He didn't say a word. But he
sure wasn't invisible. Not to me, anyhow.

Gilpin shrugged. Then turned to me at short.

"Well, if it isn't the wise ass -- the short short! Seems to me I got some
unfinished business with you," he said, pounding right fist into left palm.

I began to swallow my lower lip and a good part of my chin.

"Better stay out of my way, you little shrimp, or I'm going to bury you under
third."

I stared at the ground, waiting for the invisibility to kick in. I knew Benny
was watching.

"What's the matter, loser, too chicken to face me man to man?"

My glove missed him by a good two yards. His first punch caught me in the gut,
so hard I think his fist bounced off the front of my backbone. I don't remember
where his second landed.

"And you were doing so well," said Benny.

By the first week of June, Benny no longer closed his eyes when the ball came
his way. By the third week, he was able to stop most grounders, usually with his
body if not with his glove. Suddenly, Benny understood that a braise could be a
badge of honor. By the end of the month, he was handling almost everything
except line drives and real high infield pops. He didn't have much speed or
range, couldn't turn the double play for beans, but he was still playing an
acceptable second base. Coach Ragemeyer began to call him Benny, again. In fact,
Jennies were few and far between.

As for me, I'd managed to stay out of fights for over a month. We faced the
Braves and Gilpin two times in that period, and the Skyler Sox, with Evans,
three times, but I didn't let them bait me. I kept working on making myself
invisible, keeping my mouth shut. Of course, Coach Ragemeyer benched me for a
lot of those innings. "I hate to waste my best shortstop, but you're too damn
scrappy, Brian," he said. "I can't take a chance on one of those boys maiming
you. At least," he grinned, "until your folks take a policy out on you."

When it came to July, however, Ragemeyer couldn't afford to leave me out of the
lineup. Two more games, and we needed them both to claim a playoff spot. And
wouldn't you know it, the two were against Briarwood and Skyler -- Gilpin and
Evans.

Surprise. Surprise. Five days before the Briarwood game, Mrs. Clay poured me a
glass of pink lemonade.

I couldn't believe it.

"You have earned this," she said. "You have been a true friend to Benny."

"Yeah, I have," I said, just to make sure she wouldn't forget the fact.

"Drink up. There is a lot more where this came from," she promised.

It looked like pink lemonade. It smelled like pink lemonade. It tasted like pink
lemonade. But it didn't go down like pink lemonade. It washed over my tongue,
seemed to hesitate, then drifted past my tonsils, dallying, taking its time,
slow and easy, coating as it crept, not a bit eager to reach my belly. It was
cold, and quenching, and delicious (the best I'd ever tasted), but, strangely,
it left my insides warm and fuzzy -- all of my insides, from my belly up and
from my belly down.

"It feels funny," I said.

Benny shrugged.

"Like it goes down extra slow or something," I said, tipping my glass for the
final drops, letting the ice cubes tap against my teeth.

"My mother sweetens it with something like honey."

"Oh?" I nodded.

Mrs. Clay refilled my glass.

I cannot say how many glasses of Mrs. Clay's pink lemonade I drank that week,
but it was a lot. I guess I was making up for lost time.

We had an early two run lead, but Briarwood tied it up in the third on three
hits, followed by an error by Benny. Gilpin led the ragging for the Braves.
Every insult any fat kid ever endured must have been fired Benny's way in that
inning alone. Still, he stood his ground, invisible like always. I had to hand
it to him. He might have been the biggest chicken I ever met, but there was
something brave about him, too.

I'm sure Ragemeyer would have taken Benny out then and there, but the League
rules wouldn't allow it. Every kid had to play a minimum number of innings.
Prior to game time, the Briarwood coach had informed the league commissioner
that the Clay boy -- "that load of blubber who plays second" --was way under the
minimum. Benny would have to play every remaining inning for Howell, including
any playoff games, just to break even. When he heard the ruling, Coach Ragemeyer
bit the button off his cap and almost choked to death. Billy whacked him on the
back with his first base glove and the button shot clear across the infield.

We got the go-ahead run in the fifth, but the Braves came right back with two
more in their half. Benny made another error that inning, but the run had
already scored. Even though the error didn't matter, the abuse flew something
terrible. Fathead. Lardass. Fatso. Pansy. Blimpo. Dickweed. Dickhead. Fairy.
Homo. Fat-ass. Ass-man. Blubber boy. Craphead. And, yet again, Jenny Jenny Jenny
Jenny. Our bench and the other guys in the field joined right in. "Shut up," I
shouted. "He's doing his best." But nobody heard me, except Benny.

What bothered me most was that Benny was actually playing a pretty decent game.
He had made quite a few nice stops and came close on a couple of double plays.
Even caught a pop-up, the kind he usually ran the wrong way from. So when he hit
the first double of his life in the top of the ninth to put the tying run in
scoring position, I couldn't have been happier. So what if it would've been a
triple for most runners? This was pretty darn special. Nobody was calling Benny
names then. In fact, it was the first time I'd ever heard Benny being cheered.
It felt so good, I thought I was going to cry. But I pushed that notion out of
my head quickly enough. Being Benny's friend had hurt my reputation enough.
Crying would've finished me for good.

There were two out when Billy Ragemeyer came to the plate. He swung on the first
pitch and lofted a leaky fly ball to medium right. That should have been the
game, but the Braves messed up. They must have thought it was going to drop
foul; no one made an effort to reel it in. It landed a good foot fair. Everybody
seemed to freeze from the shock, and then Coach Ragemeyer started hollering
"Run, Clay, run."

Benny was plodding round third by the time the right fielder got to the ball.
Even way over in the first base dugout we could hear his breathing. It reminded
me of a wounded wart hog I'd seen in one of those boring nature movies from
Disney -- Wart Hog Wonders of Wallawallaland or something.

He was halfway home before the ball was airborne. That's when Gilpin snapped off
his catcher's mask and whipped it like a flying saucer right into Benny's face.
But Benny rumbled on with barely a misstep. He kept on coming, blood streaming
out of what had been his nose.

"Attaboy, Clay!" Coach Ragemeyer cried.

"Go, Benny," I shouted.

Then Gilpin caught Benny with a spike on the shin and an elbow to the throat,
and my friend went down like a sack of mashed potatoes. Gilpin straddled him,
his face knotted up meaner than I'd ever seen it, as the pitcher ran the ball
the final few feet.

Coach Ragemeyer argued interference, but the umpire would hear none of it. Not
surprising, considering we were the visiting team and the ump probably wanted to
keep his job at the Briarwood tire plant, the outfit that just happened to
sponsor the Braves.

Gilpin held the ball in his hand till Benny came to, and with a big, poison
grin, he leaned down, put the ball to Benny's chin, and hissed, "You're out,
Fatso."

It was this moment that Benny chose not to be invisible. He exploded into
Gilpin, a sputtering, flailing mass of fists and phlegm. But nothing seemed to
land as hard as it should or in any place it could do much damage. For a spell,
it looked like Benny was trying to shove his nose into Gilpin's mouth, but
Gilpin would have none of it. A blow. A feint. A jab. A twist. And Gilpin was
behind him, Benny's head deflating in the crook of Gilpin's arm. "I want to hear
you cry 'uncle,' Fatso. Or I'm going to twist your fat little skull right off
your fat little neck."

I must have leaped out of the dugout, over the field and onto Gilpin's back in a
single stride. I wrapped my arms around his neck and wrenched with every bit of
my weight. Benny hit the ground and rolled to safety, and there I was, riding
Gilpin up onto the pitcher's mound like a broncobuster going for broke. No
matter which way he turned, I turned with him. He tried wracking me off against
the backstop. He tried flipping me over his head. He tried shaking me loose by
roiling across the on-deck circle. He tried prying my fingers apart one by one.
But nothing worked. Nothing was going to work. And then, at home plate, he sank
his teeth into my arm.

A fleshy, bloody and hungry bite.

A bite that dug for bone.

All right, I admit my eyes got teary; I couldn't help it. It hurt so bad.
Finally, I had nothing left. I slid down his back, feet first, onto the plate,
and waited for the worst that was sure to come.

It was one of those moments you read about, the kind that seem to last forever.

I wobbled on my heels, staring up at him, my arm in his mouth, my blood dripping
from his mouth. And he stood, staring at me, swaying just a little, his teeth in
my arm, his lips and chin oozing with my blood. I wanted to back away, but
couldn't. He didn't look like he was planning on moving anywhere. The only sound
was his nostrils, humming hoarsely, sputtering feebly, until there was no sound
at all.

I realized then that Gilpin was hanging from my outstretched arm.

Limp legs.

Limp arms.

Limp mouth.

I shuddered, shook, shook again. My arm fell free, and the Briarwood Braves'
catcher crumpled onto home plate.

I vaguely remember somebody saying, '@'I think he's dead." And Coach Ragemeyer
helping me to the bench with: "You're going to need stitches, and probably some
shots or something. It's a shame your parents didn't listen and buy the accident
coverage I told them to."

Benny sent a basket to the hospital for me. It was packed with all sorts of good
stuff: a Three Musketeers, a Fifth Avenue, six licorice pipes, a couple of
strawberry whips, a wad of suckers, some loose jellybeans, and, poking up
through the center, a big, red thermos of pink lemonade.

Dear Brian,

My mother always says that sooner or later bullies bite off more than they can
chew.

Thanks for being the best friend I ever had.

Your friend always,

Benny Clay

P.S. Don't drink it all at once. It keeps almost forever and a little goes a
long way.

I never did see Benny again. The story was that his father had been transferred
to another town with a name I can't recall.

The police got involved and some medical guy came down from the state capital.
My parents were pretty worried. I heard from more than a few people that I might
have to go to reform school or something, even though I hadn't done anything.
But all that ended when word came out that Gilpin had had a heart attack. It was
quite a relief, and I bought the line along with everyone else. In fact, I
believed it until the following spring when I began to notice the mosquitoes on
my arm. Dead. Just hanging there.

Of course, it upset me for a bit. Then I pulled the thermos closer and checked
the schedule to see when the Skyler team and Evans were coming to town.