Running Loose

  I left after we ate, and I went home, feeling a lot of responsibility for Norm and Brenda and how they must have felt. When I got in, Brenda was washing the breakfast dishes and Norm was reading the Statesman, getting ready to go to work. I told them I thought I’d pass on school one more day and see if I could sleep. After that, I promised, I’d get it back together and take care of business. Then I apologized to them for what I’d done.

  Brenda dried her hands and came over and hugged me—for a long time. “Let’s just let it ride,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do about it now but forget it.”

  That sounded good to me.

  I was in the bathtub when Norm came into the bathroom to brush his teeth before going to work. He stood looking at me a second and just said, “It’s been a rough weekend.”

  “Yeah. Seems like everything I touch lately turns dark brown.”

  He leaned against the sink and folded his arms. “What you did yesterday might not have been the smartest thing you could have done.” Norm understates things well.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m really sorry—”

  “You didn’t hurt us,” he said. “Only caused a little discomfort. But you said things that people probably didn’t need to hear. You have to remember that even though she was your girlfriend, Becky meant something to other people, too. And their perspectives are just as important to them as yours is to you.”

  I looked down at the water. “I don’t know why I did it, Norm. Every funeral I’ve ever been to, they say the same stuff, and I just didn’t want to see her go down the tube like Grandpa and Ronnie Dicks and Mrs. Lopez.” Tears welled up in my eyes again. Becky was as dead as they were, no matter how loud I screamed in church. “I’m just really sorry for you guys. I know it’s really hard to explain a kid who does stuff like that.”

  Norm smiled. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never known anyone who had to explain a kid who does stuff like that. Besides, I’m not going to explain it. You’re seventeen. You did it. You explain it.”

  I gave him the okay sign. “Right.”

  “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got a contract to haul eight thousand gallons of gas and diesel into Stibnite, and I could use some help. If we use both trucks, we could get a load apiece per day for the next four days. They have to have it by the beginning of next week. What do you say?”

  “Sure, but what about school?”

  “I can get you out to work,” he said. “I doubt there’s anyone up there dying to see you. It probably wouldn’t hurt if you stayed away for a few days. You should be able to make up the work at home, shouldn’t you?”

  I nodded and stood up and asked him to hand me a towel. “Who’s going to run the station?”

  “Del Abbotts. He’s been dying to get a little work somewhere since he retired from the mill. Says he’s about to be the target of some serious spouse abuse if he doesn’t get out of the house.”

  Boy, that Norm is always there. I can just see him figuring a way to get me out of school and away from Trout for a little while. I mean, they couldn’t have needed all eight thousand gallons before the start of the week. What, were they going to use it faster than he could haul it in? He just figured a week away would soften things up a little. And the trip into Stibnite is a good one if you need time to think. It cuts about sixty-five miles on dirt roads into the backcountry following Elk Creek east for forty miles or so and then up the East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon for another twenty-five. You can start at six in the morning and get home at six in the evening and not meet up with five other vehicles the whole time. All there is is water and mountains and animals and the sound of your truck.

  That’s what we did. I started every morning at six and he started at six-thirty, so he wouldn’t have to eat my dust for twelve hours. Twelve hours alone every day for four days is a lot of time to think. That’s what Norm wanted. I thought about Becky every minute of it, but I was getting a little distance. It became clear that I was going to have to go on and do whatever I was going to do.

  Every day I stopped at a different spot for an hour to eat the sack lunch Brenda fixed me and stretch, and I noticed the woods a lot more than I did before I met Becky. There’s a lot of life out there—big and little—and I saw it all, maybe cared about it a little more. I listened to the wind high up in the lodgepoles, watched the birds moving in from down south, and felt some sunlight. The third day I saw a herd of about eight or nine elk grazing in a meadow on the East Fork, where I’d stopped to eat. I watched for a long time before I tried to get a little closer and scared them away. I remember thinking I’ll never be a hunter. You never know when you might gun down some young buck’s girlfriend.

  It’s amazing to me how fast time smooths things over. By Saturday evening, when we’d hauled the last load, I still missed Becky like crazy, and I’ve had plenty of hard times since; but the really vicious, almost unbearable edge was gone. I can’t say how lucky I was to have Dakota and Norm and Mr. Sanders sticking by me—staying with me while I got crazy, pointing out ways to go—and Brenda for somehow making me know that no matter how bad it got, I wouldn’t be alone.

  Somehow I was sort of able to do what Becky said we should both do if we ever broke up: put it in a box and remember it as one of the nice things that happened.

  I backslide from that every once in a while, when I just want to see her so bad I can’t think of anything else, but seeing it gave me a place to start over.

  CHAPTER 16

  I showed up to school a little late on Monday—not late enough to have to go for a tardy slip, but late enough so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone before class—and just slipped into my seat behind Carter. He waved to me without turning around and gave me thumbs-up. A few people looked over at me but went quickly back to their books. Mrs. Kjack was in the middle of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which, for the first time in my life, I’d finished ahead of her. I have a feeling the general public in Trout hasn’t read it, or we wouldn’t have. There are some books, like Catcher in the Rye, that have been banned in our school district, but the rule is a teacher is forbidden to use only those books that have been specifically banned. A book has to get some attention before it can get the ax, so Mrs. Kjack usually gets some mileage out of the good ones before they disappear. Cuckoo’s Nest has been around awhile, but somehow it slipped by. Carter once told me we were going to read one about a professional baseball catcher who kept getting caught in bed with the team owner’s wife, called Catcher in the Raw. Who knows?

  Anyway, I opened my copy to the page she was talking about and slid down a ways in my seat, attempting to become part of the natural surroundings. A note landed in front of me. I looked up to see Carter’s smiling mug. “Good to have you back,” he whispered.

  “Mr. Sampson, are you a part of this class?” Mrs. Kjack asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Just exercising a little of that civil disobedience you and that McMurphy guy have been talking about.”

  “Have you finished the book, Mr. Sampson?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then you’ve seen what happens to Mr. McMurphy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He went back to his book.

  I opened the note, visualizing Carter with a lobotomy. It said Coach Madison wanted to see me. I tapped Carter on the shoulder and whispered, “Why?” He shrugged without turning around, though he probably knew.

  I tried to see Madison during my free period, but he had his algebra class then, so I took my sack lunch down to his room at noon. Unless you’re hot for Spanish rice, Brenda makes a lot better lunch than they serve in the lunchroom.

  “Hi, Coach,” I said, sitting on his desk.

  He looked up from some papers. “Oh, hi, Louie, Have a seat.”

  I smiled. “Already got one.”

  “That’s not a seat. You’re sitting on my geometry tests.”

  “Boomer Cowans sent me here to steal away with them,” I said, getting up and moving to the chair bes
ide his desk.

  Madison smiled. “That’s the best chance he’s got to get a grade as high as a zero.”

  I said, “Carter said you wanted to see me.”

  He stared at me for a second. “Yeah. Having some hard times lately, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “It’s working out, though.”

  He looked at my sandwiches. “I’ll trade you a peanut butter and jelly for a salami.” Madison’s a bachelor.

  “Sure.” I handed over a sandwich.

  He shook his head. “Boy, if it weren’t for my superior bartering sense, I’d die of malnutrition.” He doesn’t look to be in danger to me. At about my height, he looks like Boomer stretched out. And is he ever studly looking. That wavy blond hair and those light blue eyes have turned on more than one Cougarette.

  “You keep trading with me,” I said, “and you’ll die of malnutrition anyway. When I fix my own, I have two Hostess fruit pies and a Coke.”

  He winced. “Listen, Louie, the reason I called you in here is to see if you’re interested in turning out for track.”

  “I can’t. I quit football. Jasper and Lednecky said I can’t participate in any more sports.”

  “Is that in writing?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Not unless it’s written down somewhere as a general rule.”

  “It’s not,” he said. “Coach Lednecky said it was, but I checked it out. No such thing.”

  “Well, it may not be in writing, but I doubt either of them will forget it was said.”

  He nodded and was quiet for a moment. “I think you could run,” he said. “Why don’t we give it a shot?”

  “You know, Coach,” I said, “you might not want to mess with those guys. They may not own this place, but you’d never know it from the way they act.”

  He nodded again and walked over to close the door. “Louie, let me tell you why I’m doing this, and this doesn’t leave the room.”

  I said okay.

  “I lost a girlfriend once, when I was a sophomore at Black Hills. Her name was Sharon. We were rock climbing, and she fell. We should have been hooked up, but we weren’t. She didn’t even fall very far, but she landed on the back of her head and snapped her spinal cord. Instant.” He snapped his fingers.

  I started to say I was sorry but didn’t get it out.

  “If I hadn’t had something physical to concentrate on, I’d have gone nuts,” he said. “Absolutely nuts. Certifiable. You’re going to need some of that now, and I’ve got the perfect thing. The two-mile.”

  “Two-mile?” I said. “You mean run a mile and then run one more?”

  “That’s generally how it’s done. It would be perfect for you. No blinding speed, but a lot of guts. I saw that mile you ran at the first football practice.”

  “Two miles?” I said again. “Eight laps? Four and four? Six and two? Seven and one?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I hope Jasper and Lednecky fire you for asking,” I said.

  “Really.”

  “Really, it sounds like something I could get into,” I said. “My free time is killing me.” It was true.

  “I have to tell you there’s one more reason,” he said, “so you’ll know where I’m at.”

  “Shoot.”

  “When Coach Lednecky put the contract out on Washington, I didn’t say much. I knew it was cheap, and I knew Boomer would do it if he got the chance. When he did, I still didn’t say much. I told you before, Louie, I care about sports. They’re important to me. But I let Lednecky take all the pride out.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but what could you do? You’re new. They’d have had you out of here before Thanksgiving.”

  “That’s the excuse I used, but it just wasn’t good enough. I’d rather not do it at all than do it like that.”

  I raised my eyebrows with nothing to say.

  “I think everyone probably gets only a few chances in his life to make a stand for something he cares about, and I’ve blown one chance already. Now I don’t want to do this just to go to war, so if you don’t want to run, say so. But if you do, I’ll go to the wall with it.”

  “Then let’s do it,” I said.

  “Okay. Now remember, the goal is to get you running, not to take on the dragon. Got it?”

  “Lead on, oh Lancelot,” I said. “You know, Becky may have been right about you.”

  “How?”

  “She said maybe you weren’t just another dumb good-looking jock.”

  He stood up and punched my shoulder. “Look, we’ve got about twenty-five minutes left of lunch period. I asked if I could talk with them both at twelve-thirty. Let’s go hit them with it together. They should be in Jasper’s office now. We’ll take ’em by surprise. If we pull it off, you can start running today.”

  Lednecky and Jasper were seated at Jasper’s desk, finishing lunches sent up on trays by the school cooks. I remember thinking maybe they did own the place. It was pretty obvious they were surprised to see me with Madison.

  “What’s on your mind, Coach?” Lednecky asked, nodding in my direction.

  Jasper just smiled.

  We sat down. “I think I’ve got Louie talked into turning out for track,” Madison said.

  Lednecky sat forward and said, “Well you can just talk him out of it. You know the rule. What are you trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to get Louie out for track. I thought I knew the rule, but when I went to check on it for sure, it didn’t exist.”

  Lednecky’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak.

  Jasper leaned back in his chair. “It’s nothing we ever had to write down,” he said. “In fact, it’s been pretty much of a judgment call on the part of the principal and the athletic director in the past.” Athletic director. That was a laugh. There’s no athletic director here. I didn’t laugh.

  “Well then,” Madison said, “I guess I need to question the judgment on this one. I need a distance man. Bad. When Louie ran the mile at the beginning of football season, the only guys to take him were Sampson and Cowans. You know what kind of chance I have of getting either of those guys to run the mile, much less the two.” He paused and looked Jasper straight in the eye. “I think Louie can do the team some good.”

  Jasper looked at me. “Louie, could you step outside for a few minutes? I’d like to talk this over with Coach Lednecky and Coach Madison.”

  I stood up.

  “Wait,” Madison said. “This concerns him. I think he should be allowed to sit through it.”

  I raised my eyebrows to Jasper.

  He shrugged. “Okay, sit down, Banks.”

  I sat.

  Lednecky leaned forward again, and I got that feeling you get sometimes when you think you’ve been where you are before. “Let me get this clear in the beginning,” he said. “Banks, you openly defied me on the football field last fall. As far as I’m concerned, you used up all your chances right there. You’re not fit to be an athlete representing this school. And that’s to say nothing of your desecration of young Miss Sanders’s funeral—”

  “Easy, Coach,” Jasper said.

  Lednecky sat back, his face beet red. The veins beside his eyes and in his neck bulged. Scary.

  Madison spoke quietly, like he was trying to keep things from getting crazy. “My point is this. Louie showed up for football in top shape. He worked out harder than anyone on the team until the incident with the Washington kid. He doesn’t drink or smoke that I know of, and he always met the curfew. I think he can cover a mile or two miles faster than anyone else I can get to run those distances. I don’t care what he thinks of funerals or blacks or football or Trout High School or me, as long as he can produce. Now I’m the coach and I’m willing to work with him and I think he can produce.”

  Lednecky had regained most of his composure. “You seem to have missed the point, Coach,” he said. “We’re not just producing athletes here; we’re building young men. Young men we can turn out into the community or send on to college an
d be proud of. Somewhere along the way we obviously failed in this case, and I don’t want it to spread. One person with an attitude like Banks’s can destroy a whole team.” The Domino Theory of Rotten Apples.

  Madison held his ground. “I have to disagree with you there, Coach,” he said. “It might destroy your football team, but it won’t bother my track team in the least. I’m not building young men; I’m building athletes. What they do with that is their own business. Let the Marine Corps build young men. I’m giving these kids a chance to do something to the best of their ability, and that’s all.” He looked straight at Lednecky and said, “We can show them ways to live their lives, but we can’t tell them.”

  Jasper folded his hands on his desk. “I have to agree with Coach Lednecky,” he said coldly. Surprise of surprises. I have a feeling he was just itching to get Madison alone. “No athlete operates independently of his teammates. Not even in an individual sport like track. I think we’d be setting a poor precedent by letting Louie compete, and I think it would come back to haunt us.” His eyes narrowed. “If you don’t agree, maybe we should get someone to take over the track team.”

  Madison grimaced. I thought he was finished, but he’d come to get a job done. “Sir, we’re talking about covering a certain amount of ground in a certain amount of time. Nothing more. Give us a shot, please.”

  Jasper shook his head. “I’m sorry, Coach. I’ve said all I have to say.”

  I looked at Madison and raised my eyebrows.

  “That’s the kind of smartass crap we won’t tolerate, Banks!” Lednecky snapped.

  “What?” I said in genuine surprise.

  He pointed at me threateningly. “You know what I’m talking about!”

  I looked back at my knees and made an effort to keep my smartass eyebrows still.