Deadline

  “You might just get to college on a scholarship of your own, little big bro,” Cody says to me back in the shower. “Dang!”

  I’m standing under the hot shower stream, my eyes closed, imagining the shower is in Dallas’s house. It was a great game, but now I’m going to homecoming. With Dallas Suzuki. “You’re ruining my concentration.”

  “Concentrate any harder and I’ll have to cover you with a towel. Besides, you used all your concentration on that pass,” he says.

  “Didn’t have to concentrate,” I say back. “I’d have had to ball up my fists to miss that one. Boise State scouts got an eyeful today.”

  “Still only eight-man,” he says.

  “You could have thrown that pass to me alone in the desert,” I say, “and they’d have signed you on the spot. Whoa!”

  “I did put something sweet on it.” He smiles.

  “You boys played a marvelous game.” My mother is standing in the kitchen fixing dinner and drinking whiskey and Coke out of a glass hidden in the food cupboard and mopping the floor and cleaning the corners of the small windowpanes looking out onto the front lawn. She is in full bloom. “I think you’re both going to get football scholarships, I really do. And I think you should look at Notre Dame. Boise State? Boise State? My God, they’d have to give you full rides for yourselves and your children to justify your going there. You have to reconsider. They called, you know. They’ve already been on the phone to me. I told them we’d have to think about it. I said we’d just have to think about it. They should have been here with their offers at the beginning of the season. The price has gone up. The price has gone up. What a throw! What a catch! My God…”

  Cody steps into the living room where Dad is reading the paper. “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, Cody.”

  “Tell me you got to the phone before she hung it up.”

  “Close, but no cigar,” Dad says. “But I did call them back. You’re covered.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Only here to serve,” Dad says. Mom rants on from the kitchen. She thinks she’s talking to me, but I’m in the doorway listening to Dad and Cody, wishing I could stop what’s about to happen.

  “She about to crash?” Cody asks.

  Dad nods toward the kitchen. “A crash follows this like thunder follows lightning,” Dad says back. “I give it a day, maybe less. Hey, you guys looked real good out there today. Ben, that was a very nice catch.”

  I say thanks, but keep my eye toward the kitchen on Mom, who’s turned it up a notch to Southern Cal or Michigan.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Dad says. “You guys get ready for the dance. I’ll take care of this.”

  Sometimes I don’t know whether I want to have my dad canonized or kill him. He weathers these storms like Anderson Cooper on CNN. Just tethers himself to the chair and lets the wind blow. It’s like he doesn’t care about her, or like he cares too much. You want him to join in or leave. He used to call the doctor at about this point, but Doc would only urge her to take her meds, at which time she would chastise him like a redheaded stepchild. Nothing to do but wait. I’m the only one who still tries to step in, and I only do it when no one else is around.

  Cody sees me looking and puts his hand in the middle of my back. “Go get tuxed out,” he says. “The fair Miss Suzuki awaits.”

  He’s right. This is not the night to try to repair my mother.

  Nine

  Here’s a good reason for parents and teachers and other concerned adults to encourage teenagers to read: to get the musings of wise dead guys like, say, the poet Robert Burns, who tells us “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley,” which we usually translate into “The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry,” which I translate into, “The best laid schemes of horny dying short guys oft land in the shitter.” The thing I love/hate about life is how an event so sweet it sets a new standard for a good day or even a week can be stuck on the back burner so fast you almost forget it happened.

  I pick up Dallas in my newly scrubbed 1941 Chevy pickup, swearing silently to make Coach proud. There is the hope of something soft and warm and torrid as I approach the house. No car is parked outside, and Dallas closes the door too quickly behind her for me to see if her mother and brother are there to spoil any late-night shenanigans.

  And she looks good in a deep scarlet dress held up by, and only by, two of the three targets of my fantasies since that glorious night in her room, which we haven’t talked about since. I am breathless. I’ve said before she’s not beautiful in any classical way, but the entire work of art is, what can I say, a work of art.

  We enter the gym to spontaneous applause. It isn’t easy to get a good dance crowd in a school of fewer than a hundred kids, so our special dances are open to the entire town; plus, this is homecoming, so there are studs and semistuds from years past and in a couple of instances, decades past. In no one’s memory had a homecoming game ever ended the way this one did.

  If I could make this night last forever, or at least until I’m outta here, I’d do it, though by cultural homecoming standards it has to appear a little bizarre. The band, if you can call it that, was selected by the juniors, who sponsor the dance to make money for their senior trip next year. To entice the townsfolk they’ve gone retro, and it’s pretty clear their time machine jammed in reverse. The band calls itself “Purple Floyd” and goes back even farther than its pink brother. These guys know Beach Boys songs. And when they break into something faster than “Moonlight Sonata” (only joking; they don’t play “Moonlight Sonata”), you look onto the floor and see the entire history of white people dancing (beneath twisted purple and gold crepe paper streamers and tin-foil stars), which in my view is not the part of our history most of us point to with pride.

  But if you don’t pay attention to all that, if you just enjoy the moment, well, there’s a lot to recommend it. Dallas’s smooth muscle beneath skin so soft space aliens would kill her for her hide highlights the true meaning of perspective and relativity because, from my point of view, there is simply nothing like her. I know other kids feel the same about people they’re with, which is what makes life on earth interesting. I want to be here longer. I am aware that this might very well be the crowning glory of my life, as I am aware that I am very old if you count back from my end, rather than up from my birth. I think I am in love, and the idea of losing that love fills me with such deep longing I think I might disappear through the gym floor. Dallas feels none of it, I’m sure. She’s talking to her friends, showing me off, teasing, and I’m smiling and teasing back as if I’m two entities, a young high school kid with his whole life in front of him and an old, old man, staring into the eye of the universe to see who blinks. I feel immortal—that catch today was undoable—and I feel so mortal because there will most certainly be nothing else like it. Dancing the slow ones, my head resting lightly against Dallas’s breasts, brings thoughts of the feel of that catch on my fingertips. Moments of perfection feel the same no matter the venue.

  Paradox runs rampant. I am attached to Dallas as if a chord runs directly through our hearts and I am completely unattached, floating alone through the night, ghostly already. I do not understand because in my mind it is so incongruous, and in my heart completely so. And we have spoken no intimate words.

  My brother walks through the door, alone, and the gym explodes into a standing, cheering, thunderous ovation. The band stops, then cranks up a rock-and-roll version of our fight song. Guys shake his hand and pound his back. I take Dallas’s hand and walk toward him as the crowd parts like the Red Sea. As we walk down the bare seabed my brother opens his arms. Dallas gently drops my hand and I walk into Cody’s embrace. He whispers into my ear, “Don’t let ’em shit you, little bro; this one belongs to you. Wherever I go, you go with.”

  Suddenly I feel Coach behind us, and we’ve got a little group-hug thing going that we might eat a lot of shit for on Monday but that feels just right in this moment. “You guys enjoy this.
It was special out there today. People live their whole lives without feeling this.” He’s quiet a second, then, “Thanks.”

  In the parking lot, Dallas sits in the pickup and I’m about to get in the driver’s side. Something bigger than a football game has taken over; something even bigger than my desire to get naked and sweaty with a girl who, just this moment, owns me. I’m afraid to get into the pickup and drive away, like I’ll break something. Cody slaps my shoulder as he passes toward Dad’s car, and as my hand grips the door handle, Coach hollers my name from his car across the lot. I walk toward him and we meet halfway. “I can’t keep you out as a starter anymore, Ben. You’ve put four years into this one. You’ve earned it. This is a game where, when the stars line up, focus and intention elevate even the most mediocre talent, and somehow you lined yours up and kept them there all year. I’m late getting to this, but it has to happen.”

  “Naw, Coach,” I say. “I—”

  “It isn’t up to you, Ben. It’s done. Everyone thinks that pass today was your brother’s doing, and I have no problem giving him his due; Peyton Manning couldn’t have laid it in there better. But I don’t know two guys in my history as a player or a coach who could have brought that baby home. I know you like to push your brother in front of you, but he doesn’t need that. He stands on his own. Today was your day.”

  Though his voice never breaks, a tear trickles down the inside of Coach’s nose. I reach to shake his hand but he disappears into the dark of the parking lot.

  On the way back to the pickup I see my brother standing next to Dad’s car talking with Sooner. I walk over to say hey, but when Sooner sees me coming he takes off.

  My brother shakes his head. I say, “What’s up?”

  “Fuck,” he says. “Sooner came up but he never went inside. He sat out here in his car.”

  “What?”

  “He had a date with a girl from Council, but she stood him up at the last minute. He got here and couldn’t make himself go in. Said he didn’t deserve it because he wasn’t part of the game.”

  I watch Sooner’s taillights as he leaves the lot. “Jeez. Stuff like that happens, makes it hard to hate him.”

  Cody shakes his head. “The guy’s got nothin’ but football and his old man steals that from him.” He shakes his head again and gets in the car. “Be a good boy,” he says, and starts the engine.

  I pull the pickup in front of Dallas’s house and kill the lights. Her mother’s car is nowhere to be seen and the house is dark, save for the single bulb burning on the ceiling of the covered porch. The dim light from the dash casts Dallas in an almost ethereal glow. She turns in the seat and runs her finger the length of my cheek. “Some day, huh, Little Wolf?”

  “Some day.”

  “Wanna come in?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Mom and the future Unabomber are at my aunt’s; and there’s good news and bad news,” she says. A slight smile crosses her lips.

  “There’s more good news? Give it to me.”

  “I want you to stay with me tonight,” she says.

  What news could be bad in the face of that? I wait.

  “We’re not having sex.”

  Oh. Girl knows how to evaluate the news.

  There are times when what is, is, whether it seems like it should be or not. One look at Dallas tells me there is no arguing this. And there is no going home. I will stay, and we won’t have sex.

  And that’s not so bad at first….

  “Have you thought about the future much?” Dallas says. She’s lying beside me in her way-too-big bed in a long T-shirt that isn’t supposed to be sexy, but it has her in it. The small night-light by the door casts the room in soft blue, and even her posters of Mia Hamm and Karch Kiraly look sexy. When I dressed tonight I thought I’d be clever, wearing my Captain Underpants under pants beneath my fine-looking burgundy tux. I’m regretting that now, because they are no longer under my burgundy tux and it’s possible they make me seem less virile. Truth be told I was hoping by now I wouldn’t be wearing them.

  “I think about it all the time,” I say. “Why?”

  “Do you think about me in it?”

  I need to be careful here. I like Dallas a lot. A lot. But her future and my future are of two different lengths.

  “I’m kind of afraid to,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, it’s complicated, and you’re not exactly easy to read. Do you think about me in the future?”

  “I wonder about you,” she says.

  For the first time it occurs to me that one reason I’ve been so excited about Dallas, besides the obvious one so apparent under that T-shirt, is that in my heart of hearts I thought there was no way she could want anything long-term with me. She’s smart and a good enough volleyball player to play at the next level, so her choice of schools will be dictated by recruitment offers. Since I got the Bad News and then the good news from her in the form of an invite to homecoming, I thought she was safe, as in couldn’t be hurt. Especially after we slept together and she turned me out into the cold. I already eat shit every day thinking about my brother and my parents. There’s nothing I can do about them, though. The universal lottery stuck me with them and vice versa, but time with Dallas is a choice.

  “I wonder about you, too,” I tell her.

  She’s quiet a moment, then, “Did you wonder why I slept with you the other night and then turned you out like a stray cat?”

  “I was just thinking about that.” My head is on her stomach and she’s running her fingernails through my hair. “I didn’t exactly feel like a stray cat, but yeah, it’s usually the guy…. Yeah, I wondered.”

  “Want to know?”

  “Um-hmm.” Goose bumps pop up on my back like measles as the points of her fingernails glide lightly over my scalp.

  She’s quiet again. It’s a good thing I’m here for the night. This isn’t exactly a rapid-fire conversation.

  “I was testing.”

  “Me?”

  “Me.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Dallas takes a long breath. “I wanted to know if I’d been ruined.”

  “Ruined?”

  She’s quiet again, and I’m thinking, I may not have time for this relationship. Literally.

  “My uncle…I’m not who I appear to be.”

  I get goose bumps on top of my goose bumps. I watch enough CNN to know what uncles do. “What about him?”

  “He…he got to me.”

  “You mean…”

  She puts a finger to my lips, and whispers, “Yes.”

  “So you were testing to see…”

  “If I could still…you know.”

  “Could you?”

  “Couldn’t you tell?”

  “I’ve heard girls fake it sometimes. You know, to make us feel all manly and shit.”

  “I like you, Ben. I know about living in secrecy. Secrecy’s okay with the general public, but you’d better not be doing it with people you care about. It ruins everything.”

  Without asking, I assume she’s speaking from experience. I said before I’m the go-to guy in a crisis. My panic button and my rage have a delayed reaction. “You want to talk about it?”

  “I thought I was talking about it. You mean in detail? No, I do not want to talk about it.”

  Actually I’m glad, because I don’t want to hear it. This will come rushing back over me in the next weeks in that awful wave that comes with the unthinkable. It’s threatening right now. I say, “You’re safe now, though, right?”

  A short laugh. “Yeah, I’m safe now. At least from my uncle.”

  We lie a long time, quiet. Dallas’s fingernails are still absently tracing my scalp and I’m listening to her breathe. Man, those fingers are driving me crazy, but even Sooner would know this is not the time for any kind of move.

  It’s like she’s reading my mind. “Don’t worry, little man, we’ll have more chances.”

  “What are you doing her
e?”

  “Did you think I lived at your house?” Hey-Soos says.

  “I guess I did.”

  He reaches over and pats my chest. “I live here,” he says. I can almost feel his touch physically.

  “So,” he says, “you rang?”

  “Did I?”

  “You meant to.”

  “You mean because of what Dallas said?”

  “Duh.”

  “‘Duh?’ That’s not exactly otherworldly.”

  “‘Duh’ is universal. Do you know how many people she’s told?”

  I say I don’t.

  “Well,” he says, “as she might put it, if she tells one more that will be two.”

  “No shit?”

  “Are you sure that’s the way you want to talk to the likes of me?”

  “No kidding?”

  “No shit,” Hey-Soos says. “That’s a big truth she told you. You could have jumped up and run. A lot of guys would, or at least slid out the side.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me. “Really?”

  “Look around the locker room sometime.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “She told you the truth.”

  “You said that.” Hey-Soos looks at me in that way that gives meaning to what they say about the eyes being windows to the soul. I almost can’t return his look when he does that, and I get it.

  “Oh. The truth. You mean, I should—”

  I pop awake. Dallas’s head is tucked in the crook of my elbow, her chin resting on my chest. I feel her breath, quiet and even. She is so…so beautiful, so inviting. Though I don’t even know what he looks like, I can’t help picturing her uncle, and my stomach churns. I hear her word: ruined. What if she really thinks that?