Charles Brown stared silently at the framed piece of lined schoolpaper protected from yellowing beneath the dusty glass surface; with the words written in careful cursive by a number 2 pencil. Although he hadn't forgotten the inspiration for the poem, its existence had faded as much as the tattered blue 'first place' ribbon that had been taped onto the side by unknown hands.
An angel-soft hand squeezed his shoulder. "That's very good, Charlie. When did you write that?"
He felt his face begin to burn and a familiar, unwelcome hollowness start gnawing at his heart. "Way too long ago. All the way back when I was a 'manager'. Ha. Me - of all the people in the world. A manager. I was a laughingstock more often than not, but somehow I managed to usually get my team to listen just long enough to get them in order even while they made smart remarks."
The definition of being 'in order' was stretched so far with that bunch that Charles felt a vague pang of guilt akin to having told a lie. "I really don't know why anyone ever did what I told them to. Not even when it was a perfectly sane suggestion. 'Blockhead' was one of the nicer things they called me...but somehow...I still managed to manage that gang into something that could vaguely pass for a baseball team. Even with a dog for a shortstop who somehow did better at catching balls than our loudmouth of a right fielder and a second baseman who had to wear his blanket as a jacket when the referees finally quit letting him use it to catch balls instead of his glove."
Revived memories of incredibly awkward discussion were enough to make Charles start running one hand through his thin, sandy hair in frustration. "Which didn't keep Linus from using his blanket as a sling for throwing balls with - until they made a rule against that, too! 'A baseball is not a slingstone', they said. Good grief."
A stifled string of giggles made his cheeks turn pink as rose petals. "But you still HAD a team, Charles. And you even started winning! I think they let you manage them because they saw something in you. Something that made you worth being their leader even if they didn't have a lot of sports talent or if you weren't the perfect manager."
Charles opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it. As the good book said - there was a time for everything. Including a time to speak and a time to silently accept the compliment freely given.
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"My mother was the one who put it on display at the county fair. Either she or dad must have seen it left on top of my desk. But the thing is - I didn't want to enter this in the fair. I never meant to publish something to the public that I used as a spontaneous way to express myself. I appreciate how much she thought it was good but I never could forgive them for putting my most private thoughts out for every Tom, Dick and Harry to gawk at."
He folded the ribbon's frayed satin tails across the glass pane and placed the whole thing, face-down, in a small white box marked 'keep' without another word.
The young lady accompanying him observed as Charles rifled through the vast cedar trunk with an unreadable expression on his face. One after another trinkets, baubles, papers, keepsakes, and odd souvenirs were hastily examined; their usual fate being tossed into the plastic bin. Only a few were stacked atop the county fair award with nary a word - save for an invitation to a retirement party that suddenly made Charles elicit a sound between a choke and a sob.
"Your old teacher?"
The breath left Charles' lungs for an instant as he began to blink rapidly. "Mrs. Donovan...went to travel in Europe and send all her old students pictures. Couldn't use a computer to save her soul so she just mailed packages of photos back home. I know that she made it as far as some town in France whose name I can't pronounce. But six months after that with no new pictures, after people tried international calls to every hotel in 100 miles, we see that her sister finally put out a notice that Mrs. Donovan passed away in her sleep. I didn't even get to write letters to her, nobody did. She kept going to different hotels every couple weeks so sending mail wasn't really an option."
"Oh! I'm so sorry..."
"That was my farewell to Mrs. Donovan - the person who taught me to read from the time I could just barely hold a Dr. Seuss book right-side-up or a pencil for more than five minutes. I still remember the time I counted higher than all my fingers and toes in her class in kindergarten; how amazing it felt to think about 'big' numbers. But when she went off on the big 50 year retirement trip she was saving the party for after she got back." With a weary huff Charles chucked the fancy envelope into the white box to land crookedly on edge. "I never got to say goodbye. Here or over there." He then gave one more glance at the few objects within the trunk to unceremoniously dump them all in the trash except for a single autographed baseball.
Suddenly launching himself up from the floor like a rocket, Charles slammed the the lid on 20 years. Heather silently offered to carry the small box as he speed-walked out the door and made sure to not call attention to the tears gathering at the edges of his eyes. Heather would later receive an extra-big bundle of roses moments before the dam finally burst in a more private setting.