A scoreboard that keeps yesterday's score

High on the north wall, above the folded bleachers, the scoreboard holds the same numbers it held when the gymnasium last emptied: home fourteen, visitors eleven, fourth quarter, two minutes remaining that will now remain there indefinitely. For most of its life it is unlit, a rectangle of dark glass and dead bulbs mounted higher than anything else in the room, visible from every seat and consulted by no one. The bulbs themselves are incandescent, an older technology than the rest of the building's fixtures, replaced individually as they burn out so that the digits show faint gaps where a segment has gone dark mid-number, a six reading as a five, an eight reading as nothing anyone would recognize as a number at all. Power to the board runs through a single switch behind a locked panel near the scorer's table, flipped on perhaps twenty times a year and off again within two hours each time. Between those windows it keeps its last score the way a stopped clock keeps a time, accurate twice a day and meaningless the rest. The bulbs behind the digits get replaced one at a time as they burn out, so the frozen numbers degrade on their own schedule, a fourteen shedding a segment here and there until the next game flips the switch and overwrites it.

H. G. Plimsoll