"Fuck you," Gregg said good-naturedly. That was one thing that Amanda had noticed about Gregg. No matter how hard the other guys rode him or busted his balls, he never let it get to him. She liked him for that. He was easy to get along with, and while there was nothing particularly special about him, he was a good guy to have along.
Day called dibs on the next one. The darkness made her like him better. He was still her least favorite person in the group, though. No matter how much she tried, she couldn't stop thinking of Day as a rat. Even his voice was annoying. He talked as if his mouth was always full of extra spit. He sounded like Donald Duck if you took the cartoon character's voice down a couple of levels of silliness. She didn't know if he had shifty eyes because of his personality, or he had developed the personality over the years in response to the way he looked. She found him to be somewhat whiny, in a way that grated on her nerves. The thing she couldn't figure out was if her reaction to him was a response to his looks or reality. Either way, she didn't care for the guy at all. They had probably spoken a grand total of three times in the months that they had spent together.
The next door went up, and despite what Tejada had said about this not being a game show, she couldn't help but think in her mind, in her best mental approximation of a game show voice, Let's see what's behind door number three!
As Tejada shined a light over the unit, they all let out a collective sigh. This wasn't going so well. They moved into the unit to open the boxes and binders. It was filled with someone's memorabilia collection. Binders full of sports cards sat on the table, along with autographed jerseys in frames, signed hockey sticks, and baseball bats.
"What a bunch of junk," Day said, swiping a few of the binders onto the ground.
Amanda walked over to one of the baseball bats. She grabbed it, and the muscles in her arms strained from giving it a test swing.
"You thinking about playing some baseball?" Rudy asked her.
"Eh, it's better than nothing."
"Can you even swing that thing?"
They stepped into the hallway, and Amanda gave the bat a swing.
Rudy laughed at her. "You look ridiculous."
"What?" Amanda asked, wondering what exactly was so ridiculous about the way she swung a bat.
"You're doing it all wrong. Here, gimme that."
She handed the bat over to him, and he showed her how to hold it. She had been holding the handle too high, which made it more balanced and easier to swing. Rudy went into some lecture about physics, and how if you held the bat lower, your arc would be greater, and this would generate more force when contact was made.
Amanda was somewhat annoyed by his explanation. It fell short of mansplaining, but not far off. She snatched the bat back from him and said, "You could have just said hold the bat lower. I didn't need a damn physics lesson." Rudy shrugged his shoulders.
Amanda practiced her swings with the bat. From in the unit, she heard someone say, "Holy shit, a Mickey Mantle card. Do you know how much this is worth?" By the slobbery sound of the voice, she knew it was Day.
Allen answered Day's question, saying, "It ain't worth shit, Day. Sports is dead. In a hundred years, no one's gonna know who the fuck Mickey Mantle was."
By the light of Tejada's flashlight, she saw Day's face fall. He really was an idiot.
"I'm gonna take it anyway," Day said. "I still remember."
Brown scoffed at Day. "You weren't even alive when he played, numbnuts."
Day didn't care. He pulled a wallet from his back pocket and stuffed the card in it.
That Day still owned a wallet let her know everything she needed to know about him. He was clueless as hell. She remembered the days of lugging around a purse everywhere she went, filled with her cell phone, make-up, money, her bank cards, and her driver's license… all things that were completely useless now.
Her new purse was a hellaciously heavy backpack filled with eating utensils, her canteen, her sleeping bag, and cans of food, everything she needed to survive. She felt like she had been walking stooped over for days instead of mere hours. But that's what the world was now. If you couldn't carry it, you didn't need it, which was why she found Day's wallet to be completely superfluous.
Maybe he had important shit in there, like pictures of his family or his dog. She tried seeing the positive side of Day, but it was hard. She swung the bat a few more times, getting the feel of swinging it the way Rudy had shown her.
Tejada strolled up and said, "Let me see that."
Oh, great, another man telling her how to swing a bat. If they don't leave me alone, they're gonna see how well I can swing this fucker. She handed the bat to Tejada anyway, biting her annoyance between her teeth.
He held it out with one hand, shining his flashlight along the barrel of the wooden bat. The beam of his flashlight traced a scrawl on the end of the bat. "Babe Ruth!" he said, showing more emotion than he generally showed in a week's worth of time. He handed the bat back to her and said, "Boy, you sure know how to pick 'em."
She knew from the way he said it that she was supposed to know who Babe Ruth was, but all she could think of was the candy bar. She shrugged her shoulders, and the soldiers moved on to pop
