Mr. Armbruster and his son, Myron, were having dinner in the Good-and-Hot Restaurant at the Stay-A-Day Inn, the fanciest hotel in Buffalo Junction.
Myron was very excited because his father was going to speak in front of the Interplanetary Collectors, the most important collectors group in the town. "Do you have your baseball?" Myron asked.
"Yes," Mr. Armbruster said as he patted his coat pocket. Suddenly his eyes got big, and his skin went pale. "No! I don't have it! I must have left it at home!"
Myron knew how important the baseball was. It was a one-of-a-kind item signed by Slugger Ranse, one of the most famous baseball players in the history of the Buffalo Junction Jackalopes. Without the baseball, his dad's presentation would amount to nothing.
"Look," Mr. Armbruster said, "you're a pretty fast runner. Go home, get the ball, and bring it back here to the hotel. I'll be waiting for you right outside the auditorium."
"Right, Dad," Myron said.
Buffalo Junction was a quiet place at night, the kind of place where big-city people said they "roll up the streets" at sundown. Myron ran past the big excavation at the corner of Kirk Street and McCoy Avenue. It seemed to him that the corner had been dug up for months. Some days he tried talking to the workers, but they acted like zombies, as if they didn't even notice he was there.
He ran to the house where he and his dad lived, hurriedly found the baseball and was off to the hotel again in seconds. He ran, tossing the baseball from hand to hand. As he passed the excavation, he tripped and the ball went flying!
The last Myron saw of it, the ball was falling through a grating in the street!
*
Tuesday: "Little Ball Lost."
* This story will be on The Times' Web site at http://www.latimes.com/kids.
