Frecklie frowned at the uncut grass. How much clearer could he have been? Bo-Dan, burly with long dreads, explained the problem, holding out a sad looking lawnmower. Bo-Dan pressed the button and the engine coughed and died. He turned up his palms. Frecklie turned up his.
Fix?
Bo-Dan sadly shook his head. This was his father’s lawn mower that’d broken. He’d have to work off the expense; one less crew grounder, no, ground crew, Frecklie made another note as Bo-Dan waited. Frecklie gestured with both forefingers and Bo-Dan hurried off to find or borrow another machine.
Hopefully no one would hit long drives today. Frecklie smiled, proud of himself. He was learning.
T’Dina met him by home plate. She looked frustrated. He raised his shoulders questioningly. The lanky girl took his hand and led him back inside the stadium to the murmur of breaths beyond the shuttered Gate Six. For a second, Frecklie thought a dragon had decided to attend today’s game.
T’Dina spread her arms so wide her shoulder blades nearly touched.
Frecklie unlocked the gate. As the metal rolled up, thousands of silent eyes stared back. Fans snaked back past River Avenue, under the El and up the 161st Street hill.
T’Dina and the rest of the staff gathered in a semi-circle. How many were out there, Frecklie asked.
T’Dina cleared her throat and held up five fingers, then three fingers, made a zero and a one. Her forefinger slashed the air. I counted, she said proudly.
They’re here to see the museum, Frecklie realized. Where were Sh’anda and Aito? He hurried past the purple roped squares and circles and took the broken escalator two steps at a time. Tucked in a corner were the sleeping Aito and Sh’anda, arms around each other. Frecklie kicked the wall over their heads and they shot up, wiping dust out of their long hair.
They switched on Dale’s system; somber music and grim-faced HGs rose around the roped areas, beginning their lectures about 10/12. Frecklie ran from exhibit to exhibit, making sure everything was working; Dale would kill him if she knew he doubted her brilliance even for a moment.
Frecklie ordered Gates Five and Four opened. Bo-Dan and three burly friends struggled with the rusted locks, considering the piles of rubble on the ground. If no one missed skulls, they wouldn’t miss rocks. Frecklie encouraged them to have fun and they happily bashed the gates open.
T’Dina dashed out and began guiding fans to the different gates. The DVs politely reformed lines; Bo-Dan, Tyrius and Angel handled ticket-taking.
Bo-Dan tapped his watch and raised an eyebrow. Six-thirty. Too early.
We’re not keeping them standing outside, Frecklie snapped.
The fans started filing in. The three concession owners stiffened as if Allahs were right around the corner.
“We’ll need more food,” Frecklie told Mrs. Bilinski.
“I cooked up my whole fridge.” She gestured helplessly at the suddenly meager steaming trays of stuffed cabbage.
“Me, too,” said Sam the Hot Dog Man.
“They’re not sitting here hungry,” Frecklie said as the fans quietly passed, milling about since there was no one to direct them to the right sections. His head nearly exploded until a couple of the sleepy workers stumbled down the steps.
Calm down. You’re acting like your mother.
The grim little girl behind the taco stand raised her hand politely. “I have lots of cousins.”
Frecklie finally got the HG system all set up. He hit the button.
“Mooshie Lopez, Derek Singh and Easy Sun Yen were three of baseball’s greatest players,” said the pert HG, walking around the wide-eyed fans clustered beneath the Three Amigos mural. “Right where you’re standing, treasonous Miners shot at this beautiful mural, which Grandma had personally commissioned from the famous artist Latsha Di. Black Tops gunned them down all over the hall.”
The HG somberly gestured toward the bold purple Grandma lettering: “Remember those who died on October 12, 2065 because the Miners wanted war, not peace, and baseball let that be.”
On the walls, meticulously spaced every ten feet were photographs of victims of 10/12, smiling back sadly. D’Neese Sh’Piro, eleven, died behind home plate. Alex Manci, forty-three, died outside Gate Five.
Surrounding each of the gaping holes were thick purple ropes, twisted like pretzels. Photographs of children at the game dangled over the craters: “Miners set explosives…Miners launched mortars into the left field grandstand…Black Tops protected civilians, but Miners fired into the crowds…”
Siblings murmured wonderingly as the HG pointed out bullet shells along the path to the first of twelve roped areas, where it told them about the more than four hundred children taken hostage by the Miners and used as human shields, plaques at each stop reiterating the message, while the Taco Girl’s cousins unloaded four trucks brimming with Pan Asian-Latino delicacies, joined by another relative, a fat woman with a blue-tressed wig who rolled in a handcart of boiling pastries.
Between the history and the new food, the pavilion was clogged with fans eating quietly, peering at the HG bodies of the victims silently floating overhead, falling to the ground in mute spasms of death and rising up again to form a mass of sad faces outlined against the huge copper plaque above the entrance to the former Amazon Clubhouse, where the names of all the murdered were listed.
HGs trailed with polite somberness throughout the crowd, answering questions:
How many people died on 10/12? —Seven thousand, six hundred and forty-two dead and ten thousand, two hundred and two injured.
How many were children? —Three thousand and three children died and six thousand and forty-two were injured.
Is that the worst terrorist attack in American history? —No, but it is the worst attack ever committed by Americans on Americans.
What happened to the criminals? —All eight hundred and fifteen of the captured Miners were executed by lethal injection.
What about the Allahs attacks? —The Allahs killed two million, five hundred and ten thousand siblings in the Los Angeles nuclear terrorist attack; one million, eight hundred thousand and eleven siblings in the Manhattan poison gas terrorist
