Chapter 22

Goody Two-Shoes (Part II)

The second part of our Snapshot picks up back in time as a persistent little boy convinces his momma to send him to baseball practice with those beloved new cleats while his sister's evil misdeeds land them both up a tree without a shoe, as it were. Well, sort of. You'll see...


"But, Momma, I have'ta go today!" a crestfallen little Jamison Reagan pleaded with puppy eyes evident on full force as he begged his mother to allow him to go to practice to show off his new precious baseball cleats, a reward from his grandparents for a near-perfect third-grade final report card. "I told Richie Roberts that I was getting the ones just like Bobby Bonilla wears for the Mets and he won't believe me if I don't come!"

"Well then, Richie Roberts will just have to wait until next time to see them," Mary chided gently as she continued to hobble slowly around the kitchen in her housecoat courtesy of the broken toe she inflicted on herself in light of her oldest son's own academic woes that had left him at the table studying valiantly to pass a makeup chapter test in history scheduled for Monday... his high school diploma held hostage in the meantime. "I'm sorry, honey, but Daddy got called into work again and Grandpa Henry and Grandma Betty took Joey down to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum on the Hudson today for his special report card treat. You could have gone with them," she reminded.

"Didn't wanna go see a big dumb boat and the space shuttle," the little boy fretted. "I wanna go to baseball practice!"

"Yes, Jamison, you've made that abundantly clear now," his mother sighed at her youngest's persistence, unfortunately as much as she hated to disappoint him there were no other readily apparent options available at this time. Given the things her husband saw on the job every day, Mary Margaret Reagan was not one of those parents that was comfortable just dropping off a young child at a sports complex alone without someone in constant attendance, and this was a new team for the little boy so she didn't have any trusted friends to rely on to take him.

"Can't I walk to the park? Please Momma! I know the way!" he insisted.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart… not today. Your coach has the team way over at the high school so they can use the batting cages there; that's much too far and you know you're not permitted to walk anywhere by yourself, anyway."

"Aw, phooey!" Jamie railed as that news was just the icing on the top of his pity-party cake. "Everyone else gets to play just like the big guys and take real batting practice," he sulked as he sat down at the table with his head down and the big hazel puppy eyes started to swim in tears. "I'm the only one that has to stay home even though I didn't do anything bad! S'not fair!"

"I can take him, Ma," Danny offered with a contrite and hopeful glance… anything at this point to get away from the house and the hours of mind-numbing reading and memorizing he was being compelled to endure in a required effort to get no less than a B+ on this damn missed test or be forced to repeat the whole class over the entire summer. Let's face it, he thought, it had to be bad if sitting at a two-hour long practice watching little kids swing at a ball with little or no contact ever made sounded like a giant step up on the interesting scale. "I can take my books with me, or I can just drive you and Jamie over there and pick you up when he's done," he added when he saw the first idea certainly wasn't going to have a snowball's chance in hell of approval.

"The baseball fields are too far away from the parking lot for me to walk right now," Mary frowned. "And you're not going anywhere, buster, until you know every single detail of each and every battle in the Civil War including all the general's names and where they went to get their laundry done and pick up milk!" she threatened. "Need I remind you that your acceptance into the Academy this fall hinges on this score, and if you fail to achieve a high enough grade on this test, you can kiss your father's idea of you becoming a police officer goodbye! Your other choice is selling aluminum siding in Jersey with your uncle!"

"Yes, ma'am," Danny relented with a frown as he turned back to his books. Failure again was not an option if he intended to eat solid meals on a regular basis as an adult; he would be a terrible salesman and knew it. "Sorry, kid. I tried."

"I know, Danny. S'okay," Jamie huffed before another amazing idea was sparked. "Momma! Erin can take me! She got her paper to drive the car all by herself this week!"

"Her driver's license? Oh, no honey… Erin needs a lot more practice before she will ever be allowed to take the car anywhere by herself, especially with her little brother in there too," Mary tutted while shaking her head adamantly no and sitting down at the table to join them. "Besides, she'll be lucky if your father lets her out of her room for the rest of the summer considering he caught her sneaking back into the house the other night after going to meet up with that awful Tyler Bonshak. She's grounded, and he forbade her from ever seeing him again. That boy is nothing but trouble."

"Trust me, if Dad wanted to punish Erin he would send her to Jamie's practice. There's nothing she hates more than sitting there and watching little kid baseball," Danny offered while shaking his head. "Besides, it's only three blocks down, make a left and twelve blocks straight ahead to get to the high school. We go there practically every single day, Ma. Dad had her drive it like a thousand times for practice. I think she can handle it." Truth be told, the eldest Reagan sibling felt a bit guilty about his little brother's predicament, considering it seemed like he himself had been the root cause of the majority of it. Besides it would tickle him to no end if he could in some way make his sister's punishment even worse than it already was. Danny was devious like that.

"Please, Momma!" Jamie bounced up with excitement once more before going over to snuggle against her and work those puppies as hard as he had ever done before. "I promise to sit still in the car and not say a single thing while she's driving! Pinkie swear!" he vowed as Mary Margaret Reagan knew she would not be in for a moment's peace until she said yes.

###

"I can't believe you got Mom to agree to this, you little goody two-shoes," Erin sighed as she carefully parked the family car in the shady lot near the athletic fields at the local high school. As Danny had stated, she'd already made that trip a hundred times with her father in the passenger seat for practice, and it was so easy a trained monkey could have accomplished the goal. Still it felt good to be out of the house and away from the overlording presence of her strict parents and their complete "disappointment" with her choice of a current boyfriend, even if it meant being a designated babysitter and sitting on the bleachers watching a dozen and a half little boys overrun the bases and pick flowers in the outfield waiting for some sort of excitement to occur.

"M'm not a goody two-shoes," Jamie insisted as he gathered his practice equipment including his precious pair of authentic Bonilla-approved footwear that were carefully tucked in his duffle bag, destined to only touch the sacred ground of the infield and the soft turf on the grass… definitely not to be worn on anything as abrasive as concrete or asphalt. "But I like my new cleats! Bye, Erin!" he offered before climbing out of the back seat and dashing off across the way towards his teammates in the distance.

"Bye, squirt," Erin sighed as she picked up a couple of hastily gathered fashion magazines to help kill the time and minded her mother's orders of not letting her little brother out of her sight at all, or there would be hell to pay on top of what was already being offered by one very unhappy Francis Reagan who had caught his only daughter returning from a late night front seat rendezvous down the block in Tyler Bonshak's souped-up car a few days ago.

Already overcome by boredom, Erin left the car in the parking lot and slowly strolled towards the back batting cages where Jamie's team was gathered when her eyes lit on a pay phone at the corner of the snack stand. Being grounded at home with a mother that was likewise incapacitated and an older brother chained to the kitchen table and his history book meant there had been no opportunities to use the telephone in the house to call Tyler and explain her sudden absence. With a quick look toward Jamie to make sure he was wholly occupied and unable to later snitch, Erin fished around for some meager loose change in her purse and made her way to the phone, her fingers flying to dial out a familiar number combination as she smirked. She wouldn't put it past her detective dad to pull the luds on the Reagan home phone daily just to make sure she hadn't made any forbidden contact with this heathen of a boyfriend, but he'd never find out about this and Tyler only lived a few blocks away from the school plus he was older and already had his own car.

"Hey, Tyler, it's me," she said breathlessly into the receiver after he picked up the line on the fourth ring.

"Who?" came the disinterested reply back.

"Me... Erin, silly," she giggled while twirling a piece of her long hair around a finger and leaning up against the building. He was always playing games with her like that she told herself.

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Forgot. Where you been?" Tyler asked.

"Dad caught me coming back in the house the other night and I got grounded," she revealed. "Sorry, babe. They wouldn't let me call you to explain, but I'm at the high school now for my little brother's baseball practice. Mom let me drive the car here all by myself! Can you come up so we can talk? I don't have enough change to keep putting in the pay phone."

"You're babysitting the little dweeb? Won't he tattle? I don't need your dad coming after me, 'Rin. Maybe we should just can it," he added with a disinterested yawn. "I got other interests and they don't come with a family of cops attached, if you catch my drift."

"Oh, no! Please, Tyler! Just come to the parking lot by the fields! We can sit in the car! I can sort of watch Jamie's practice from there, but he'll never see us! Please! It's our only chance to be together until my dad cools down, and I miss you so much, babe!" Erin begged as she sensed the current love of her life was getting ready to break up with her and it was all her parent's fault for being so ridiculously picky about the type she was allowed to date. Tyler's bad-boy image had been off-putting to them from the start and probably why Erin found him so fascinating.

"Alright, alright. Keep your pants on… or not," Tyler sighed in boredom, wondering if it was worth the effort. Still this Reagan girl was a looker and there was something about putting one over on her top detective daddy and those brothers of hers this way that sparked his attention. "I'll be there in a few."

"Okay, but you have to leave before practice ends at noon so Jamie doesn't see you!"

"Whatever," he said as he hung up and left her eagerly watching the road into the high school for any sign of his car although his intention was to just go round a few bases himself for old time's sake and then kick this cop's chickee to the curb for good.

###

"You had a really good practice today, Jamie. You'll probably be my lead off batter and starting shortstop in next week's game. Just keep working on not swinging at those pitches that are low and outside and you'll do fine."

"Thank you Coach Parker!" Jamie beamed as he was changing his shoes in the dugout and slipping back into his regular sneakers as he vowed to ask Joey to help him work on his hitting every day between now and then. The new cleats had been awesome and made him feel like he had wings on his feet. No balls were gonna get by him in the infield either. He was going to play just like superstar Bobby Bonilla from now on, even if his idol usually roamed right field and there was talk of the slugger being traded to a new team and away from their beloved Mets soon.

"I don't see your mother waiting for you," the coach asked as he searched the area. He had been ordered pointedly by both Frank and Mary at the start of the season to always make sure that Jamie left in the company of a family member, knowing what they did about the state of child predators and the fact that Leo Gate's cold case file from when he had disappeared after walking to school a few years ago still sat in Frank's desk drawer where he could see it every day.

"Oh, Momma couldn't drive me 'cause she hurt her toe," Jamie revealed as he looked around at the emptying stands while his teammates left with their rides. "My big sister Erin brought me…" he trailed off as he scanned the area for her, feeling suddenly sad and a little scared as she was nowhere to be found. "She's probably just waiting at the car, it's right over there," Jamie pointed across the next field which was currently occupied by an older boys team. "I can walk by myself; I'm big," he declared.

"Alright," the coach replied nervously as his next team was already arriving for their scheduled practice while he recalled Frank's intimidating size and occupation. "But I'll watch from here. Turn around and wave and let me know that she's there, okay? And if she's not, you come right back and we'll call your mom from the office."

"Okey dokey," Jamie agreed at that compromise, positive that's where Erin would be waiting since the car was right where she had parked it. "Thank you, Coach Parker," he added before scrambling off on his mission, skirting the big kid's field where they were lined up throwing hard long balls back and forth to each other. Surprisingly the vehicle was still locked and empty when he arrived, and he was just about to turn around and go back to his coach when he saw Erin jump out of the passenger seat of a car parked in a corner spot off to the side and nearly hidden behind a few of the enormous pine trees on the property.

"SHE'S HERE!" Jamie called and waved back to his coach who acknowledged and returned the gesture before moving off to focus on his next set of players. "Erin! You were supposed to come get me like Momma always does…" he chided before trailing off as he noticed his sister was crying and then exactly who had been occupying the other front seat in that car. "Tyler!" he gasped. "But Daddy told you that you weren't allowed to see him anymore! He's gonna be so mad! You'll have to stay in your room all summer!"

"Shut up, dweeb," Tyler drawled as he got out of the car, intent on intimidating this little pipsqueak Reagan so he didn't rat him out. He and Erin had been so caught up arguing with each other they'd lost track of time and he was going to make damn sure not to expect a visit from the NYPD Chief of D's over this. "I was never here, got it? And I ain't gonna see your sister again so you can just forget about it, or I'll come back here and find YOU," he growled as he stepped near Jamie and gave him a hard shove backwards onto the pavement to make his point, spilling some of the contents of his open duffle bag as it fell in the process.

"Huh?" Jamie puzzled and swallowed tightly at the big intimidating now-graduated senior looming over him, while still failing to follow the implied threat logic. Of course Tyler was here, he was standing right in front of him… a fact that no one else apparently noticed as the team of bigger boys had moved off towards the batting cages and there were no other people roaming around this side of the complex.

"HEY! LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Erin snapped in shock over what had just happened. Reagans might be able to talk smack about each other all day long and get in some real sibling knock down drag outs, but no one dared lay a hand on her little brother like that without catching some of her heavy Irish temper and she was quick to step up and give her ex an equally hard push back against his precious tricked out Chevy Impala SS Supercharged car.

"DID YOU JUST PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME?!" Tyler snarled back and reached forward to grab her wrist roughly and drag her a step or two. "NO ONE DOES THAT AND GETS AWAY WITH IT!"

"LET HER GO!" Jamie yelled as he started to scrambled up from the ground and likewise shared the same temperamental overprotective family genes… no one was gonna treat his sister that way either, not if he had anything to say about it, but he was no match for Tyler physically so he improvised on the fly without thinking and grabbed the closest weapon he had available… one of his most precious new Bobby Bonilla-authentic cleats that had fallen out of his bag, and he whipped it with surprising speed and accuracy right at Tyler's nose.

"OW!" the bully roared after the heavy, hard plastic on the bottom of the shoe collided with his face and he let go of Erin's arm, further incensed when a small trickle of blood became evident from the left flaring nostril. "I'M GONNA EFFING KILL YOU!" he raged as he reached down and picked up the cleat before heaving it with all his D1 State Champion shot put throwing full-ride scholarship might right to the top of the nearest fifty-foot Douglas fir where the laces became entangled in the thin, prickly branches and it came to a rest nearly hidden and unreachable against the trunk.

"MY SHOE!" Jamie wailed as he stared up at it from below, appalled at the events that had just taken place and completely oblivious to the fact that he was about to suffer a similar fate before Erin stepped in once more with a threat that had the larger boy backing off, at least for the moment.

"YOU LAY ONE MORE FINGER ON HIM, TYLER BONSHAK, and I will run up to the office right now and call my DADDY to come get you and take you to jail for assault and battery! He'll bring the whole SWAT armored division from Manhattan South with him!" she yelled, not having a clue as to what she was talking about but figuring she needed to make it sound good to buy a little time to get the both of them out of there before Tyler realized that. "DON'T YOU EVER COME NEAR EITHER OF US AGAIN!" she added for good measure. "C'mon, Jamie, get in the car," she ordered as she stopped to scoop up his remaining things off the ground and grab her little brother who stayed frozen to the ground staring up at the tree.

"BUT MY SHOE!" he cried again even as she managed physically to pull him over to the car and push him into the backseat once she unlocked the door. "ERIN, I WANT MY SHOE!"

"We'll come back and get it later, I promise," she lied as she ran around and started the car while knowing there was no way short of bringing a cherry-picker or a helicopter with them to get it down from the unclimbable tree at that height, but she was desperate for them both to be away from her bad-tempered now ex-boyfriend before he did anything else. That thought and the adrenaline rush from the whole incident had left her shaken, and she hit the gas a bit harder than intended in reverse and wound up bumping Tyler with the back fender as she brought the car around… just enough to knock him backwards a step once more.

"YOU BITCH!" he screamed as he picked his foot up with its steel-toed black work boot and planted a heavy kick on the rear quarter panel, leaving a good-sized ding before she put the car in forward and tore out of there. "I'll get you for that!"

"Erin, we left my shoe there!" Jamie cried as he climbed up to look forlornly back out of the rear window at the scene after his sister drove away.

"Jamie, just please sit down and put your seatbelt on," Erin begged as she continued to shake and paused the car at the end of the parking lot until she heard the unmistakable muffler noise of the Impala's engine coming to life behind and she feared Tyler was mad enough to follow them. "WE HAVE TO GO HOME, NOW! I promise I'll fix this, okay? We'll get your shoe back," she swore as he complied with a big quivering frowny face and spilling tears while she drove carefully back towards the safety of the family home while her mind was going a thousand miles an hour trying to figure out exactly how to do just that while still saving her own hide from an avenging six-four father and his infamous war clubs.

###

"So that's it?" Eddie sighed in great disappointment as she sat back in her chair at the Reagan family dinner table with a frown as Danny came to a natural pause in his tale while noticing that everyone else with the exception of Erin and Jamie had already finished their plates. Those two continued to glare at him with contempt as their long-ago misdeeds were revealed to a whole new generation. "Erin got grounded some more and the Eagle Scout wannabe defended his sister's honor at the age of eight by standing up to Goliath and sacrificing his precious shoe to a tree? That's where it ends? I don't buy it!"

"Oh no, we're just getting to the good part," Danny assured as he took the final swig of his wine while enjoying his storytelling role immensely, particularly because he wasn't cast as the lead bad guy for a change. "I thought we'd break for dessert because I didn't want my wife's homemade apple pie to burn in the kitchen," he admitted as the inviting smell was wafting into the dining room. "Bet that would taste great warm out of the oven with some of that good vanilla bean ice cream that Dad keeps stashed in the back of the freezer," he hinted.

"The pie!" Linda exclaimed as she hurried off to spare her baked diner contribution from ruin. "Don't say one more word until I get back!" she urged as she had found herself equally intrigued with this account from the past.

"I'll take some of that," Henry commented as he pushed his empty plate back. "A nice piece too. I'm working up quite an appetite listening to this and we'll have to get the shovels out soon. It's gonna get deep."

"I'll help!" Nicki shouted back as she rushed to get the plates to cut down on any further delay. "But first, Mom... what ever happened to Tyler Bonshak? Did you ever go out with him again?"

"Oh, good Lord… figures that's what you would worry about," Erin sighed.

"There goes all my favorite ice cream," Frank lamented with a glower.

"Why Grandpa making a frowny face now?" Kaylin piped up. "I like ice cream!"

"I wish you would stop calling me a little dweeb," Jamie growled at his older brother. "He never said that! You're just making it up as you go and know that you will pay for this. Trust me; you'll never see it coming," he vowed.

"Uncle Jamie, did you get your shoe back?" Sean wondered.

"What did Grandpa do when he found the dent in the car?" Jack demanded.

"All to be revealed," Danny smiled with a Cheshire grin as he found himself quickly served with a generous slice of scrumptious dessert with a side of silky ice cream and a cup of hot coffee just the way he liked it. A little more of this and he could have had them fanning him with palm fronds and popping fresh fruit in his mouth, all except for his two siblings who looked like they would rather shove something else down his throat. "You see by the time Erin got them and the car home more or less in one piece, she already had a plan formulated and our poor virtuous Jamison suddenly had a whole lot more to worry about than his missing shoe..."


Part III continues next time as we find out exactly how Erin planned to get them out of this mess without revealing the true extent of what happened which of course would have seen her serving a life sentence in her bedroom with the key thrown away, but she fails to account for the extent of the guilt pangs that are inflicted on little mister goody two- well, now one-shoe as he mourns his lost footwear while fearing the wrath of his all-knowing and expert perp-sweating father. What will cause Jamie finally to crack under the pressure? We all know he did!

Also, thanks for the positive reviews (to my guests, I would love to be able to reply in person!) and for the PM's wishing mr. werks well. He's doing fine... just sore, bored and banned from driving for a bit more which is a deadly hubby combination!