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Ponyboy, Skywalker, and Shakes

It's a perfect night for a ballgame, and I've lucked into box seats only five rows behind the Sox dugout. The young couple to my left is discussing his annual night out with the boys, 10 hours' worth, and yet he cannot recall a thing that was done or said. She's more irked than angry when she says what has been said a million times before by wives and girlfriends young and old: "Ten hours and no one said anything?"

He is innocent of any wrongdoing; he was the designated driver and did not drink. His stomach still hurts from last night's laughing, but he cannot recall a word that was said.

Across town, three extraordinary men are attending their 50-year high-school reunion.

When Walter "Skywalker" Johnson was in second grade, he stood at the front of the class and had only to spell the word "banana" correctly to defeat Mary O'Brien and become the first boy to win the second-grade spell-off in the 80-year history of St. Anne's Grade School. Walter was smart, very smart; he could spell "banana" and throw in "apricot" for good measure if he wanted. He spelled it "b-o-o-g-e-r."

"Banana!" said Sister Mary Serene, and she punctuated it with a ruler slapping into her palm.

"B-o-o-g-e-r," Skywalker repeated. "Booger."

It was the funniest thing that had ever happened up to that time in world history, and Jimmy "Ponyboy" Poindexter screamed out a window-shaking laugh and wet his pants. There's nothing unusual in a 7-year-old's laughing so hard that it causes an accident but it was very unusual that a 7-year-old would find pride in it and jump to his feet and say out loud, "Look, look here; wet pants!"

Billy "Shakes" Sorenson fell from his desk, rolled into a ball, rolled out the door, rolled down the hallway, and rolled into Sister Mary Hyacinth's fifth-grade class, where, between uncontrollable laughs, he said, "Booger! Wet pants!" 51 times before two fifth-grade boys were instructed to throw him headfirst into the detention room, where he joined Skywalker and Ponyboy.

From that day on, the three were inseparable; they spent the next 12 years running against the wind and winning more than they lost.

On the day they graduated from high school, they removed the two loose boards from the fence surrounding the abandoned warehouse, went inside, down to the basement, to the secret closet they'd discovered when they were 10. They took the secret jackknife from the secret pouch and renewed the secret "blood brothers" vows they'd made eight years before.

They

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