“There is nothing so clean…” sings a guy from Wallington lining up his cue for the next shot in our bumper pool match, “…as my burger machine.”
“Stick that in your burger machine!” I mutter, landing a double carom to win it.
Most of the boys from the four New Jersey finals teams were splashing in the Codrington Park pool opened for us on the Friday night before consolation and championship games. Catari's had delivered a dozen pizzas and the Bound Brook Little League supplied chilled cans of Coca Cola and 7Up. After eating, a few of us twelve-year-olds stayed in the field house, normally for thirteen and over, to play ping pong, shuffle board, and billiards.
I hadn’t been in the big pool since a scare in the deep end at age four. A sister had taken me over after I passed swimming lessons in the kiddie pool. I was embarrassed to tell her I was faking it with an occasional surreptitious hand on the bottom, so I jumped when she said jump and sank to the bottom at six-feet. A desperate push into the concrete as my breath ran out propelled me through the surface where I grasped the edge, but that moment of underwater panic kept me away after that.
Players from the three visiting teams were staying with local families, and I was suspicious of sharing a bedroom with one from the team we’d face the next day. Just as strange was a different Wallington kid constantly humming about his burger machine. It was my first encounter with someone more socially anxious than me.
“What’s with that guy always mumbling about a burger machine?” I call over the thrum of a window fan to my roommate after the lights are out.
“Just…the coach’s…son,” he yawns into the darkness. “Good luck tomorrow.”
“If I say good luck back will they cancel out?” I whisper across the room, but a snore tells me he’s already out cold.
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