Downtown Owl

  “Did anyone drive over to Enderlin last Friday?” Gary asked. Gary had posed this same question on Monday, and Horace had posed it again on Wednesday; they were about to have the same conversation that had already occurred on two previous afternoons. Everyone was comfortable with this. Horace was aware that many (in fact, most) of the conversations in Harley’s were recycled, but that repetition was useful: It was the only way to figure out who was sincere and who was capricious. Edgar Camaro could have the same conversation five times in five days, but his words and opinions might be different every time; as such, Horace did not trust or respect him. Edgar’s views were transitory. He just liked to talk.

  “I didn’t make it down there,” said Marvin, just as he had said on Monday and Wednesday. “I didn’t feel like driving forty-four miles to watch that pervert get his butt beat.” The Owl High nine-man football team had played Enderlin on Friday and lost 16–12. All six men in the café were unsurprised by this outcome. The Owl Lobos had won roughly 70 percent of their football games over the past twenty years, but the men who shook dice over coffee always expected them to lose. This pessimism was exacerbated by their unified hatred of John Laidlaw, whom they all wanted to see fired. This was not as personal as it might seem; there had never been a high school football coach in the history of Owl they had not wanted fired.

  “If it wasn’t for that Sellers kid, we’d have lost by three touchdowns,” said Ollie Pinkerton, although he hadn’t seen the game either. “He’s like a man among boys out there. What did he have, three sacks? Four sacks? Five sacks? It’s like running a Clydesdale next to a herd of Shetland dykes. The kid must be damn near seven foot tall. But you know what? It don’t matter if he’s ten foot tall. It’s never going to matter if they never find themselves an o-fense.”

  “Do you know Laidlaw tried three different quarterbacks in that game?” Gary Mauch asked rhetorically. “He started Chad Becker, then he played Orrin Groff’s kid, then he put Becker back in the game, and then he had Hrlicka play for a possession—which was an unmitigated disaster. And then he finished with Groff, although I have no idea why. The boy only completed two passes the entire game. Those kids must be so confused that they don’t know the price of tea in Korea. Make a decision, Laidlaw! Find your man and stay with him.”

  “He was probably too busy looking at the cheerleaders,” said Edgar Camaro. “He was probably selecting his next victim.”

  “No lie,” continued Gary, slurping the coffee he alone had paid for. “Can you believe it? An Owl team with no quarterback. Would you have ever imagined such a scenario in a hundred years? I mean, what’s next? Cats sleeping with dogs? Wolves flirting with horses?”

  This was one of the many great falsehoods about Owl: It was universally accepted that Owl High School had consistently produced legions of top-shelf quarterbacks, and that the Lobo football tradition was built on a legacy of outstanding field generals, and that there was just something about growing up in Owl that made smart young men especially adept at chucking a leather oval with uncommon velocity. This was not true. There had been only three great quarterbacks in the history of Owl High, and they were all from the same family, and one of them wasn’t even great. In 1971, a pugnacious five-foot-nine workaholic named Jake Druid led the Lobos to a completely unexpected state championship. It was the greatest afternoon in the history of the community; all the bars in town gave away free drinks for the entire night. When Jake Druid graduated the following spring, his taller, more confident brother Bobby inherited the QB reins, and he turned out to be even better: He led the Owls to another state championship in 1972 and a runner-up finish in ’73. Bobby Druid still holds every meaningful passing record in Owl High history, once throwing for four touchdowns during an ice storm while fighting a 101-degree fever. He eventually married the 1977 North Dakota State University homecoming queen, but things didn’t work out. When their youngest brother Vance entered high school the autumn after Bobby left, it was assumed he would be the starting quarterback for at least three seasons. Which he was, although to generally underwhelming results. The Lobos never even won a conference title during that three-year span; Vance never seemed to need football. However, in the final game of his final season, Vance Druid made the greatest, most miraculous play in school (and possibly state) history. And due to an unfathomable collection of coincidences, footage of that play was broadcast on the nationally syndicated TV program The George Michael Sports Machine and (eventually) on the CBS pregame show The NFL Today. Brent Musburger and Irv Cross both agreed that it was the most thrilling, unorthodox play either of them had ever witnessed in their respective broadcast careers. Citizens of Owl still talked about this singular play all the time; somehow, remembering the Sunday morning it aired on national TV was almost better than the two state championships. It made Vance Druid great, even if he wasn’t. But here is the forgotten reality: These three brothers were the totality of the Owl quarterbacking tradition; every other quarterback (before and after) had just been a normal kid with a normal arm and a nonexistent legacy. It was only the three Druids who had been remotely transcendent. But because all three brothers still lived and worked in Owl, and because they continued to be perceived as local royalty, and because everybody would always remember a specific fifteen-second segment on The NFL Today, a myth fossilized into truth. This is why old men in downtown cafés were always shocked whenever a kid who happened to play quarterback for Owl High was mediocre, even though they almost always were (and almost always had been).

  “We just have to concentrate on our two-point conversions,” added Bud Haugen, the only man in the restaurant who had never played football as a teen. “If we make one of our two-point conversions and stop Enderlin on one of theirs, it’s a 14–14 game.”

  “Well, that’s classic Laidlaw,” said Horace. “If there’s a right way and a wrong way, he’ll take the wrong way every time. Every damn time.”

  They all despised John Laidlaw, but none more than Horace. He could not understand how a sex criminal could be allowed to work in an institution funded by public tax dollars. What kind of forty-year-old married man would pursue a romantic relationship with a seventeen-year-old girl? Was he a drug addict? Horace could understand why Tina McAndrew’s parents were trying to keep this quiet; their daughter’s life had already been destroyed and there was no reason to humiliate her further. Moving her to Bismarck was common sense. But why did everyone else in town allow this to happen? Why hadn’t Walter Valentine fired Laidlaw three years ago, after he impregnated Darcy Busch? Why was the man even hired, particularly since there were so many rumors about an incident that had occurred when he still worked in Williston? Why didn’t every father in Owl drive to his house at midnight, drag him out of his bed, kick out his teeth, and throw him into the river?

  “I think they should turn Sellers into a fullback,” said Haugen. “I’ve never seen a kid that big move that fast. Can you imagine trying to tackle that eight-foot ogre? Even if they knocked him down at the line of scrimmage, the sumbitch would gain three yards by falling forward.”

  “They say he can barely think,” said Ollie. “They say he can barely remember the snap count. They wanted to turn him into a tight end, but he couldn’t remember any of the pass patterns. He’s a cliché. He’s got rocks in his head.”

  Horace felt terrible for Tina McAndrew, a woman he’d never met. He wondered, What will become of her? She can’t even live in her own hometown. What did she think she was doing, making time with a nefarious letch? She will regret that decision forever. She’ll never be a normal person; she’ll always have a checkered past and a dark secret, not to mention a son or daughter she’ll never know, raised by parents she’ll never encounter. It was a genuine tragedy. When did the world become so sex crazed? It must have been after the Beatles arrived.

  “Kids don’t learn things anymore,” remarked Marvin Windows, the quietest of the six coffee drinkers. Marvin had nearly died thirteen times over the past seventy-five years. He had b
een trampled by cattle twice, which was (arguably) the local record. “They go to school all the time, but they don’t listen to anyone and they don’t read unless you stick a gun to their chest. All they care about is boom-boom music and computer games. And the teachers don’t care. The teachers are just waiting for summer vacation. They’re worse than the kids. I’m told the new history prof was in the bar Friday night, drinking like an Indian, flirting with every fella in the place, cursing left and right. She was with that gigantic Irish floozy who teaches the little ones. This new history teacher is a kid herself! She can’t be more than twenty-four, twenty-five years old.”

  “Twenty-five? Twenty-four?” asked Edgar Camaro, mildly intrigued. “It won’t be long before somebody gets his hooks into that filly.”

  She’ll never be alone, thought Horace. She’ll be engaged before June, this drunken new history teacher. She probably wants to get married, because she doesn’t want to be alone. Everybody assumes it’s so terrible to be alone. It’s not. Horace had been alone for half his life, and it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He knew he could never say that aloud, and (of course) he missed his wife, and (of course) he had loved her, and (of course) the day she died was the worst day he had ever known. But he had grown to love the emptiness of his house even more. He loved that it was just a collection of rooms, and that there were never any questions to answer, and that he could design his own rules for being alive. It was wonderful to be alone: If he wanted to fry up some sizzler sausages at 4:00 a.m., that’s exactly what he did. And while it was (of course) sad and (of course) unfair that his wife had passed at the age of forty-four, it wasn’t like they had never had a chance to be together; they were married for twenty-five years. What else were they going to talk about? They had run out of things to say after the first decade. He probably enjoyed remembering their conversations more than he had ever enjoyed having them. If people only realized that you don’t need someone else to invent your happiness, situations like Tina McAndrew wouldn’t happen. Horace was certain of this.

  SEPTEMBER 9, 1983

  (Mitch)

  There were six of them in the vehicle. Mitch, Zebra, and Weezie (whose real name was Waylon Jefferson) sat in the backseat. Ainge (whose real name was Daniel) was driving, as this was, in fact, his father’s Oldsmobile. Drug Man (who had never seen or taken drugs) was riding shotgun. Curtis-Fritz (whose name was Alexander Trog) sat between Ainge and Drug Man in the middle of the front seat, riding bitch. Oldsmobiles are humpback whales made of metal. All six riders were wearing farm hats, Levi’s 501s, and their powder-blue and fluorescent-maize game jerseys. Mitch was number 7. In two hours and ten minutes, they would be inside the Owl school locker room, strapping on shoulder pads, dressing for the first home game of the season; at the moment, they were driving up and down the same six streets, drinking Rondo Citrus and chewing Skoal. There were multiple conversations happening at the same time; it was like an Altman film, although nobody inside the car had ever seen an Altman film (and four of them never would, mostly by choice).

  “Tina was in love with Laidlaw,” said Curtis-Fritz. He wore number 22, which meant he never, ever played. For the past forty years, no Owl player wearing number 22 had ever been any good; being assigned the number 22 was a humiliating death sentence. Everyone instinctively understood this, except for Curtis-Fritz—he actively requested 22 on the first day of practice. He was that kind of kid. “I mean, she was in fucking love with him. I sat by her in study hall, and she would write his name in bubble letters on her notebooks. She wasn’t secretive about it. I would ask her, ‘Why are you writing the name “John” on all your stuff?’ and she would just say, ‘Oh, I’m kind of seeing someone named John.’ As if I would somehow not deduce who this person was. She was not ashamed of anything. She was so hot.”

  “He would buy her shit,” said Weezie. Weezie wore number 34, which meant he was the starting tailback and the most sexually experienced player on the roster. “He bought her a Black Hills gold bracelet and a Trapper Keeper. I know this for a fact.”

  “Change it over to Y-94,” said Zebra. “All they play on Q-98 is ‘Heat of the Moment.’ I hate that song.” Zebra was number 88, which meant he was supposed to serve as the team’s second-best receiver.

  “Did Rockwell ever tell you about the time he and Disco Ball witnessed one of their erotic liaisons?” asked Drug Man. Rockwell was a local mechanic named Jason Stonerock. Rockwell was ancient; Rockwell was twenty-six years old. Disco Ball was even older and had a very bulbous skull, which is why he was Disco Ball. “Supposedly, Rockwell and Disco got drunk in the middle of the afternoon and decided to follow Laidlaw’s car after track practice. Whenever Rockwell gets drunk, he likes to pretend he’s in the FBI. Now, this was around the time when Tina was the team’s student manager, remember? And Laidlaw always drove her home after practice, right? And—apparently—he was giving her a ride home, but he was actually giving her a ride home, because they drove out to the apple grove and parked out there for, like, three hours.”

  “We are not listening to gay Y-94 music in my car,” Ainge said over his shoulder to Zebra. Ainge wore number 44, which symbolized nothing. “I do not want to hear any gay Flashdance music in this vehicle. Women can’t weld.”

  “Vanna, are you gonna play tonight?” asked Weezie.

  “I doubt it,” said Mitch. In last week’s game against Enderlin, Mitch went in at quarterback in the third quarter. The score was 16–6. On his first play he fumbled the snap. On his second play he fumbled the snap again, but was able to pick it up and desperately pitch it to Weezie, who was tackled for a six-yard loss. On the third play he dropped back to pass, and it was unadulterated chaos: The pocket was immediately collapsing, people were yelling, everything was happening at the same time, and it felt like he was trying to defuse a pipe bomb while learning to speak Cantonese. He ended up blindly heaving the ball toward an undisclosed location where he thought a receiver might be, which was actually fifteen yards from anyone on either team. On the play after that, the Owls punted. Mitch did not reenter the game. “I doubt it,” he said again.

  “You know what would be cool?” Zebra asked rhetorically. “It would be cool if we could somehow plant cameras all over the school, or maybe even inside random houses. Then we could use the photographs to sexually blackmail people.”

  “I heard,” said Curtis-Fritz, “that when Laidlaw’s wife left town for three days to take care of her dying mother, Tina McAndrew stayed at his house for the entire time. She would get up in the morning and make him pancakes.”

  “That did not happen,” said Mitch. “There is no way that could have happened. He’s got three kids. Don’t you think the kids would notice that there’s a different woman in the house, having sex with their dad and feeding them pancakes?”

  “I don’t know,” said Curtis-Fritz. “Maybe she stayed in the basement.”

  “I think you should get to play more,” Weezie said to Mitch. “I don’t care what Laidlaw thinks. You’re way smarter than Becker or Groff, even if you don’t always throw so good. And if you do play tonight, and if we run Flood Right 64, throw it to me in the flat. I’m always open on that play. Always. Every time. But they never throw it to me.”

  The opening riff from “Band on the Run” came over the stereo.

  “You see what I fucking mean?” said Zebra. “Q-98 is terrible. Wings? Who are these queers? I don’t like old songs.”

  It was at this specific juncture that Ainge’s Oldsmobile passed a 1974 Plymouth Barracuda. The ’Cuda was clean and the ’Cuda was yellow. Its driver looked straight ahead, oblivious to the six people staring into his vehicle’s interior.

  This was the point where five conversations became one conversation.

  “Don’t even start with that shit,” Drug Man said to Curtis-Fritz. “We are not having this argument again. I’m only warning you once.”

  “We don’t have to have it,” said Curtis-Fritz. “We don’t need to have an argument, be
cause you know I’m right.”

  “No, it’s not because you’re right. It’s because you’re a fucking cum receptacle.”

  The man in the Plymouth Barracuda was Cubby Candy. He was a senior. He did not play football. He was not involved in any extracurricular activities, unless you counted dove hunting and water-tower vandalism. He was the most disturbed individual anyone who knew him had ever met.

  “Curtis, we all know Candy is nuts,” said Drug Man. “He’s a maniac. If he doesn’t go to prison when he turns eighteen, he’s going to be dead before he’s twenty-one. No one is disputing these facts. But have you ever looked at Grendel? Have you ever watched him lift weights? Do you know what he can bench-press? Three hundred and forty pounds. He can lift three hundred and forty pounds, just with his arms. Three hundred and forty. That is probably two hundred more pounds than whatever Candy weighs!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Curtis-Fritz. “It is not the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog. My grandfather says that all the time.”

  Drug Man said, “Your grandfather is talking out of his ass. He hasn’t watched enough dog fights.”

  Cubby Candy was five foot seven and 133 pounds. He had a very suspect mustache and a horrifying scar from a botched appendectomy. He drank Lord Calvert in his car before school and used to get beaten by his alcoholic father four times a week. Everybody knew this. He had also been sexually abused by his grandfather at the age of eight, and his mother spent most afternoons crying in front of the television, babbling about how she wanted to kill herself. Nobody knew this except Cubby. More critically, the prefrontal cortex of his brain was 14 percent smaller than that of a normal human, and that particular section of the mind is responsible for developing a person’s sense of moral conscience; this means Cubby should have been medically diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder generally classified as sociopathy. Absolutely nobody knew this, and nobody ever would.