About the B'nai Bagels Read Online Free Page B

Hersch’s eye and lifted my eyebrows. He didn’t pay attention. I nudged him under the table and did the eyebrow bit again. And all he did was to look at me and look away and say something to Mr. Jacobs about Liberia. The whole meal was pretty uncomfortable, with them trying to get my opinions and me trying to draw conclusions about Africa from having seen four recent Tarzan shows. All of which, I found out later, were filmed in Mexico.
    Mrs. Jacob’s cooking was like her pronunciation—very tidy. The portions were tiny.
    Mrs. Jacobs drove me home. It was a quiet ride; I could bet that I would get zero for stimulation.
    I called Hersch when I got home. “Vat kint of bizness iss zat? Iz alvays dizcussions from Africa at zee zupper table?”
    Hersch said, “Sometimes they discuss the space program. One time the topic was the Common Market.”
    “Vell vat kint of bizness iss zat?” I asked again.
    “Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs are very intelligent, you know,” he answered. “She used to be a schoolteacher. They always have a dinner topic. I find it
stimulating
.”
    That’s when I knew that I had lost Hersch.

    The next night at our supper at home I said, “What do you think will happen if the Russians get to the moon first?” My fork fell onto the floor.
    Dad answered, “Please pass the herring.”
    I started to pass the dish when it slipped. Only two pieces slid to the floor, and I put them in the garbage and immediately wiped the spot with a sponge as I had always been taught to do.
    “Well,” I repeated, “what do you think will happen if the Russians get to the moon first?”
    Mother said, “Save some of the potatoes for Spencer; he said that he’d be late home.”
    I helped myself to potatoes; they were buttered and parsleyed and only one slipped off the dish. I put it on my plate after I picked it up. I reached for a roll and knocked over my milk. “Now about the moon,” I persisted as I was cupping my hands to catch the dripping and as Mother was running for some paper towels.
    Dad looked up and said, “Mark, why don’t you try eating on the floor and see if you can drop things up to the table?”
    I had to laugh, and so did Mother. There went the space program, Africa, and the Common Market. Inever tried to stimulate my family after that. Or Mrs. Jacobs either. Of course, the night that they made the posters for the tryouts was the first time I had seen her since that Friday night supper—
dinner
.

I mmediately after the nine- and ten-year-old tryouts, Spencer and Mother had a long kitchen conference. I did my homework in the el so that I could hear. It seems that our town, Point Baldwin, used the auction system. Every guy who isn’t a holdover from last year is given a price. Not in money, but in credits. Mother’s team, the B’nai B’rith, would have 12,200 credits, which sounded like a million. Except that since Mother had only seven holdovers and except that the B’nai B’rith had finished at the bottom of the league last year and except that she would need a lot of talent. Eight real talented guys to be exact. Good players go for thousands and thousands.
    As soon as a manager runs out of credits, he has to stop bidding on players and wait for the other managersto run out of credits, too. Then everyone finishes filling out his roster from the leftovers. Leftovers play on the team just like anybody else. Nobody is supposed to know whether he was bought or whether he was a leftover. Some guys never know. Some guys can play a whole season and figure that they were paid for just like anybody else. If my mother had not been made manager, I never would have known that I had been one. My mother would not have known it either. Finding out that I was a leftover was the first fringe benefit I got; that is, it was about as much of a one as the night of the tomato soup had been.
    I think that we could have lived happily the rest of our lives and not known that I had been bought for free my first year.