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stared, at my arm. I don’t think he was all that accustomed to this kind of contact. But he didn’t do anything about it.
    “Right,” Butchie grunted. “Well, he better get used to everything. Quick.” He turned to go back upstairs. He signaled Arthur Brown to follow, even though Butchie would not ordinarily be walking with Arthur. It was just one of those moments you’re not supposed to walk away from alone.
    “That boy has got a problem, Richard,” Napoleon Charlie Ellis said.
    “Butchie’s just kind of... tense.”
    “He’s not tense with you. He is tense with me.”
    “And you’re tense with everybody. Maybe the two of you are too much alike, what do you think of that?”
    He removed my arm from his shoulders like he was removing a putrefied fish.
    “You couldn’t really believe that,” he said, opening his locker again to get out his lunch.
    “Well, you are kind of a hard guy yourself, Napoleon. It could just be that you make people be worse than they are, because of the way you are. Maybe it’s you.”
    He closed the locker, stood with his own perfectly creased brown bag. It smelled incredible to me, all mixed and spiced, like Chinese food, only I couldn’t imagine anybody bringing Chinese food for lunch, and anyway, it was a whole different spice smell.
    “I am certain you do not believe such nonsense, Richard.”
    We headed over to my locker.
    “Can we trade?” I asked. “Half of your lunch for half of mine? I never smelled a lunch like that in my life. I don’t even want to know what it is. Can we trade?”
    He sighed. “Possibly.”
    I opened my locker. It smelled like it usually does. like Spam.
    “No,” he said immediately.
    But as we walked up the stairs, he reached into his bag and handed me a small, breaded, spiced knot of some meat thing. I was almost afraid to eat it because that meant I wouldn’t be able to smell it anymore.
    “A gift,” Napoleon Charlie Ellis said. “Now, please tell me you don’t honestly believe...”
    “Where was I?” I interrupted. “Oh yes, Jim Rice is going to be in left field, with Fred Lynn in center. They are talking about putting them number three and four in the lineup, with Rice batting cleanup. ...”
    “I am asking you to talk about something serious, Richard.”
    “Baseball is as serious as it gets,” I said.
    Napoleon shook his head, took a polite bite out of his food.
    “Well it’s as serious as I get anyway,” I said, also taking a bite of his food.

STING
    “SO YOU’VE NEVER PLAYED baseball,” I said to Napoleon Charlie Ellis as we stood on a smooth slick coating of snow.
    “I play cricket. As I said. Will I teach you?”
    “Will you t—?” I practically choked on the thought. Somebody in North America teaching me what to do with a bat and ball. “Ah, ho-ho. Napoleon Charlie Ellis, we’re gonna have big fun now.”
    “Now? No, not now. It is winter. In the spring and summer, then we will—”
    I stood there shaking my head at him, and smiling. He shook his head in response, without smiling. I think I was making him a little nervous. “I don’t believe in seasons,” I said.
    Napoleon Charlie Ellis looked past me, over my beloved and lovely field, still beloved and lovely with the snow continuing to come down over it. No matter. I knew what was under there, and it was beautiful.
    “I don’t know, Richard Riley Moncreif. If I lived here, I think I would believe in seasons.”
    I reached out and clapped him hard on the shoulder. It was a firm, square shoulder. “Excuse me? You do live here.”
    The shoulder sagged slightly, involuntarily. His face showed that his mind was off someplace else. A sudden small shock of sadness ran through me, like I had absorbed it by contact with Napoleon.
    “Pretty warm in Dominica right now, I imagine.”
    He nodded.
    “Stick with me,” I said. “I know what you need. This situation,” I waved my arm in a wide, sweeping circle over my hard-bit kingdom, where icicles climbed the