Deadline

  Game Day

  Boise has a full-size stadium that they pack with every college game, and though our two small towns don’t fill it to capacity, they don’t lack for excitement. The atmosphere is electric. The bands take turns on the blue turf with their pregame performances; cheerleaders cartwheel and dance to the music and challenge one another to create hearing loss. I don’t know that I’ve felt anything like this.

  In a shot at a psychological boost, Coach makes his first tactical error of the year. He sends Sooner out with my brother to meet the captains of Timberline: the brothers Brown, whose silky black hair falls to their shoulder pads. My brother reaches across and shakes their hands but Sooner raises one hand as if he’s being sworn in in a courtroom, and my brother backhands him hard in the chest. The brothers nod and walk away. When Cody gets close to the huddle, I ask what Sooner did.

  “Fucker said, ‘How, Chief.’”

  Coach was busy giving the rest of us instructions so he missed it; he pulls us in tight. “This is it, guys. Everybody expects both teams to have the jitters for the first few plays, but don’t let that happen. I don’t want to try to come from behind on these guys. Do what you’ve done all year. The field’s a hundred yards long and the crossbar on the goalpost is ten feet high. The only difference is Smurf Turf and more people in the stands; those things are equal for both teams. Play smart and play hard. We’ve busted our butts to get here, now let’s get one more.” We line up to kick off.

  I have a feeling it’s a bad idea to introduce yourself to either of the Brown brothers like a movie star cowboy, because Shoat takes the opening kickoff eighty-seven yards across our goal line and he is untouched. Then he jogs over to our sideline and hands Sooner the ball and jogs back to midfield to get ready for their kickoff. Cody comes over and slaps Sooner on the ass and says, “Way to go, big guy,” and is back onto the field before Sooner can tell him to fuck himself.

  Cody doesn’t find his rhythm and we’re three downs and out. Timberline scores another touchdown before we can solve our Native American problem, then Cody catches fire. Through the rest of the half he fires one score to me and one to Dolven on a guard eligible, but Timberline answers each time and we’re playing two touchdowns behind. Our crowd never gives up and theirs is off the charts, and the bands battle each other almost as hard as we’re battling on the field. Though Cody has a brilliant game at quarterback with over three hundred yards passing and running and I get my share of catches and tackles, we never get within one touchdown. Nobody gives up and the crowd gets to see a hell of a football game, but the rocket ride Timberline gets from Sooner’s slight is too big to make up and our season is over.

  Sitting on the bench in my soaked T-shirt and jock in the Boise State locker room, I want to blame Sooner. He’s walking around slapping guys on the back, telling them they played great but maybe we needed him out there. I’m thinking we had him out there too much, and I’m this close to walking over and telling him to shut the fuck up and taking the hit.

  Cody sits beside me. “You were great, little big bro,” he says, watching Sooner make his rounds. He shakes his head. “A thinking man’s sport.” He looks up to see a scout from BSU standing near the door and slaps me on the knee. “Be back.”

  The scout smiles and extends his hand and I know they’re going to offer Cody something, and I relax a little. That’s what I wanted most. But even through my paralyzing fatigue a thought drifts through. Football was my insulation; the thing I had put between me and dying. I wanted to replicate the Horseshoe Bend game today. I wanted that one more catch and I wanted that one more game. For me and for Coach.

  But I had my season. It was more than I could have asked for. Thanks to Sooner’s old man I didn’t take anyone’s spot or cost anyone a chance to be a hero, and I got to see what it felt like. I am hugely appreciative, even if it didn’t turn out exactly like I wanted.

  Sunday afternoon I head down to Trout Auto to make a few bucks washing and waxing some showroom cars, and to catch up with Rudy. The Halls don’t open Sundays, so I won’t have to listen to what all we could have done to win the game. They both played here, too.

  “So,” Rudy says, “season’s over, huh?”

  “Yup,” I say. “Not a bad one.”

  “Not bad for you because you didn’t get killed.”

  “Yeah. Let’s talk about something else.”

  He holds his copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. “You finish it?”

  “I did. It’s like you said, old Malcolm covers a lot of spiritual distance. Ended like I remembered, though. He still gets killed for trying to stop the hate.”

  “He gets killed for threatening a power structure,” Rudy says.

  “And he went to the most dangerous part of the world today to find his peace. It’s like proof you can find meaning anywhere.”

  Rudy just nods. He looks slightly pained.

  “Threatening a power structure. Is that what you did? With the church?”

  “In a way,” Rudy says. “It’s more complicated than that.” He sounds like he wants to talk about that about as much as I wanted to talk about the game.

  This is the place in a classroom discussion where the teacher usually tells me to shut the hell up, but every direction I look, there’s more I don’t know and I have so little time.

  “More complicated how?”

  “Some other time,” Rudy says. “For now, let’s stick to Malcolm. This much will give you all the ammo you need for your civics teacher.”

  I take a deep breath. “Okay. Malcolm.”

  “High school and college for me were the sixties,” Rudy says. “Civil rights was hot. Freedom Riders were driving from north to south to help; most of them without a clue how to do that. A few of ’em got killed. Martin Luther King Jr. was struggling because a new brand of black person was emerging, fed up with eating shit, a brand that believed it had nothing to lose by fighting back.

  “I was unaware of all that. I grew up in a town like this one, only in the Midwest. Mostly white, like this. We didn’t notice our racial issues because we barely had any races. Malcolm came and went, barely blipping my radar. I remember being glad it was black guys who shot him because then they couldn’t blame us. I may have thought he got what he deserved. Came out this direction to Gonzaga for my undergraduate work. Already knew I was headed for the priesthood.”

  “You were eighteen and wanted to be a priest? Did you know what that meant?”

  “You mean no girls? Yeah, I knew what it meant. I had my reasons. At any rate GU wasn’t a lot more diverse than my hometown and nothing in me changed, though the country was going through major turmoil with the war in Vietnam and all the racial unrest. Poor people were doing most of the fighting even though there was a draft; there were a million ways out if you had money…but I wasn’t paying attention to that. I was focused on my own demons. I wanted to be a priest.”

  Whew.

  “And then I was, and it wasn’t what I expected and I started looking for some real truths. I read Malcolm’s book, or Haley’s book on Malcolm, and then I read up on Cesar Chavez and King and Gandhi, and a hundred other men and women on the front lines trying to make the world livable and I realized I was being left behind. But I was scared to leave and I started trying to work from within, and then…”

  Rudy looks almost dreamy, then a pained look comes across his face and he snaps out of it. I fold my polishing rag and sit in the folding chair next to him. He reaches across and squeezes my knee, looks me right in the eye. “Things spun out of control. Ben, never let things spin out of control. It’s too hard to get it back.”

  “You mean…”

  He lets go of my knee and sits back. “Enough for today. That book was simply the one that got me fired up. Any good book can do it.”

  I’m lying facedown on Dallas Suzuki’s couch while she straddles me, massaging my back and shoulders. It feels so good I’m considering paying her the money I earned cleaning cars. Her mom is in her bed
room and we have put Joe Henry to bed. “I might have to do another article on you, little man,” she says. “You had quite a season.”

  “You didn’t have a bad one yourself. I was lucky enough to be with more talented players.”

  She kneads along the sides of my spine.

  “Mmmmmmmmmmmm.” This is deep tissue work; maybe not as good as sex, but it will stand in nicely until sex comes along. “Sooo good,” I say. “A little higher on the shoulders. Oh gawwwd! Will you marry me? We don’t have to live together or anything. I’ll just come over once a week. You don’t even have to talk to me.”

  I can feel her smiling. She massages a few more minutes in silence, then, “Do you think we have a chance?”

  “At what?”

  “Being together.”

  I’m quiet a second, my mind racing. If she means now. “Sure.”

  “You’re not just in it for…”

  “The sex? What sex?”

  She slaps my back. “The future sex.”

  “Dallas, I gotta tell you…I really like you. I mean, I really like you.”

  “Can you prove that in a court of law?”

  “I can prove it anywhere.”

  “Is your love for me unconditional?” she says.

  “Unconditional.”

  “What if I got in a horrible car wreck and my face was disfigured….”

  “I’m your guy,” I say.

  “And lost my arms and legs…”

  I wince, which she can’t see. None of this is likely; I won’t have to prove it. “Still your guy.”

  “Would you love me if I were a man?”

  “No!”

  “You said it was unconditional.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  She slaps my back. “How am I ever going to trust you?”

  “Would you love me if I were a twelve-foot python?” I say.

  “Twice as much,” she says back.

  “With oozing reptilian sores?”

  “Four times as much.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I think women are just superior beings,” she says. “Maybe I’ll have to make do.”

  We’re quiet and she starts rubbing my back again. “How about this?” she says after a few seconds. “Would you love me if Joe Henry were my little boy instead of my brother?”

  Different tone. “What?”

  “He’s my son,” she says.

  Her hands rest on my shoulders.

  I do the math in my head.

  “Thirteen,” she says. “Barely.”

  “Wow. Your uncle?”

  “Right. So how fast do you want to run for your pickup?”

  “I’m not running for my pickup.” I have no idea what this means.

  So she tells me. “As soon as we graduate I’m coming out with it.” Her voice quivers ever so slightly. “It’s been awful. When I first told my mother about Uncle Roy she slapped my face, and then I got pregnant and she couldn’t deny it. She is big-time Catholic so there was no getting rid of it, which I wanted to do and am really glad I didn’t. Since then it’s just been this monstrous secret. That’s why you don’t see her around much; she thinks you already know. Anyway, once we went through all the sleight of hand—Mom told everyone she was pregnant and we were going to live with the father, then came back after Joe Henry was born and said the dad abandoned us—I couldn’t make myself tell the truth. But I’m going to because it’s been like carrying a hot coal right here in my chest,” and I hear her knuckle knock against her breastbone, “and Mom can just figure out what she’s going to say. I mean, Joe Henry and I are off to college, so I won’t have to stay around and listen to it, but Mom’s on her own because I’m full up, and you’re the only person in the world that knows this and I need to know if you’re going to stay or run.”

  Wow.

  She sits up, and so do I, wrapping my arm around her shoulder.

  I say, “Stay.”

  “I hate secrets,” she says, and though her voice is strong, tears stream down her cheeks. “They’ll kill you. They’re worse than my uncle.” She turns to me. “I don’t want you to make any commitment or marry me or any of that. We don’t even have to go to the same college. I just need to know nothing changes now that you know.”

  And the stakes go up. Because I would be around. Joe Henry is the coolest little shit in the universe and I already like helping to train him to grow up to be hard to deal with. But I ain’t gonna be around nothin’ for long, and I’m a coward and I miss my chance. “I’ll be around,” I say, “unless I get hit by a truck or something.”

  “If you were going to die, you’d have been killed playing football,” she says, wiping her eyes.

  Shit.

  Thanksgiving

  Fourteen

  On Thanksgiving, Dad and Cody and I sit on the couch around the coffee table eating holiday nuts and watching the Dallas Cowboys get their heads handed to them. The bad news is the nuts are probably dinner. Mom’s locked in her room and Dad has the cooking skills of a dirt clod. The good news is Christmas will be better; her down time seldom lasts a full month. Shortly after halftime I answer the doorbell to find Coach on the porch.

  “Hey, Coach. What’s up?”

  “What’s up?” he says. “Dinner’s up. You guys invited me, right?”

  I’m thinking Dad or Cody screwed up in a big way, ’cause Coach isn’t even toting a bottle of wine for him and Dad.

  “Uh…”

  He whacks the side of my head. “I’m messing with you, Wolfman,” and turns for his car. “Come on. Give me a hand.”

  I stare into the back of his SUV, which smells like a four-star restaurant—like I’d know what a four-star restaurant smells like. Coach has prepared an entire Thanksgiving dinner: cranberry sauce, marshmallow-covered yams, and all. He must have turned into Emeril. “Let’s get ’er in there while she’s still hot,” he says and picks up the turkey roaster. Within minutes we’re sitting around the table like a regular family with two dads. Dad and Coach are cordial, but you sense them avoiding the gorilla in the kitchen, my mother’s closed door. I think my dad is embarrassed for someone on the outside to see this part of our family secret, but he knows Coach has seen it before and it’s safe with him. I don’t know that they’ve ever discussed it. Coach is respectful of Dad’s embarrassment and also of Dad’s inability to change it. The most intimate thing said during the entire time is, “How ’bout them Cowboys.”

  Early December

  “So Thanksgiving is behind us, the football season has drawn to a merciful close, and we’re all equal again,” Lambeer says to start class. Mr. Lambeer believes athletes, particularly male athletes, and more particularly football players, get a free ride around here, which we do, but not for any fault of the coaches. Coach Banks has seniority and most coaches follow his philosophy of jocks being simply guys who play games and who shouldn’t get special privileges. It’s just that when you’re winning, Mac Sebring and Luke Bryson, who run Trout’s two restaurants, tend to give you two burgers for the price of one and Rich Graham, who runs Trout Sports and Small Engine, is likely to give you a stunningly low price on T-shirts that sport his logo. Those guys are throwbacks, so female athletes aren’t held in the same high regard.

  “That final game was a good one, guys. Very enjoyable even though the result wasn’t exactly what we might have hoped for.” It’s hard to tell if he’s totally serious or if sarcasm is creeping in, but it doesn’t matter; the season is over and the hoopsters start tonight and soon it will be all about putting the round ball through the round hole, which Cody and Dallas excel at and I don’t. They’re both closer to the hole. So they will stay in the limelight and I’ll figure out what to do with the rest of the year or the rest of my life, whichever comes first.

  I’ve been freaked out since my conversation with Dallas the other night. I watch her from two rows over this morning and she looks as normal as anything. She and the other lady hoopsters were in the cafeteria this morning talking up th
e season, and as I stood in the entrance watching it almost seemed as if our conversation never happened. But it did and I sat right there and lied to her. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t a lie really, as in technically, but if you think about it, any time you want someone to think something different than what is true, it’s a lie.

  Little things keep popping up in my head, like does Joe Henry know? I’ve never heard him call her Momma or Mommy. In fact he calls her Dallas Suzuki. Little screwball uses her whole name. And who played the mom role back when he was a baby and she was thirteen? And what was it like to be dragged off by your mom to have that baby when Uncle Roy was still on the loose? What did they tell the doctors? I know if a doctor hears that, he or she has to report it. Even if they went several states away, somebody would have showed up to pluck Uncle Roy out of his house and the truth would have leaked out. And God, she had to have it. Thirteen. It’s supposed to hurt like crazy to have a baby. I didn’t ask any of those questions Friday night. I just said I’d stay.

  “Ben?” Lambeer says. “You with us?”

  “Right here,” I say.

  “Well?”

  “I’m right here now, but I just got here. What was the question?”

  “We talked last week about your changing your project. Have you rethought that, given the time you have?”

  “Yes I’ve rethought it, and no I decided not to change it,” I say. “I’m bringing Malcolm X into current events. I’m starting a grassroots campaign to have a street here in Trout named after him.”

  I hear that I have tickled my classmates.

  Sooner says low, from the seat behind me, “Shit, Wolf, what’s the matter with you? We’re not namin’ no street after a—”