Redemption Mountain (39 page)

The ball scooted across the sideline, rolling directly toward Hank, who reached down, too late to stop it. One of the little kids patrolling the sidelines ran after it. “Hey there, you in the chair,” the ref called out. “Gotta be quicker going after those balls.” Hank laughed and waved at Charlie.
And look at the joy he's brought into that old man's life, just by being his friend. Hank, who'd been wallowing in loneliness since Alva Paine died, sitting there now at a kids' soccer game, enjoying the low sun and the smell of wood smoke in the fall air.

Then Natty noticed Pie moving up and down the sideline, following the action. But it wasn't the ball he was watching. It was Charlie, a proud happy face revealing his excitement at having his adult buddy on display for everyone to see.
How much Pie had changed in the few months he'd known Charlie! The little boy she so desperately loved was finally developing some self-esteem and confidence that he could do things, be something, and that he wasn't so different from the other kids. All he needed was an adult male to treat him like a regular kid—and show him some love.

Natty thrust her hands into the pockets of her jeans, straining to see Charlie through the swirl of players. She swallowed hard, fighting the empty feeling that rose inside as she thought, for the first time, about Charlie disappearing from their lives for good.
Why couldn't she accept the fact that Charlie Burden was the man she'd been daydreaming about for most of her life?

A roar from the opposite sideline brought Natty's attention back to the game. She looked up to see the blue team high-fiving one another as they headed back toward the middle of the field. A disgusted Brenda Giles flung the ball angrily out of the Bones' goal. Natty was embarrassed. Her team had given up a goal and she hadn't even seen it. She clapped her hands together hard. “C'mon, Bones. We'll get it back.” It was the first time they had been behind all season.

After a few minutes of even play in the midfield, Zack gained control of the ball with some room to move upfield. He raced it over the centerline and sent a perfect feed through to Emma. But just before Emma reached the ball, from her blind right side, Rudy hurtled himself into her, sending her crashing into another Welch player. Her mouth smashed into the second player's knee. It was as vicious a tackle as Charlie had seen in kids' soccer, and he blew his whistle loudly as he raced over toward Emma, who lay on the field, blood flowing from her lower lip. Then he heard the Welch coach from the sideline.

“Atta boy, Rudy. Way to watch her. Good clean tackle.”

Charlie felt his jaw muscles tighten. A rough play on the field was one thing, but an irresponsible comment from a coach was another. He watched Natty help Emma to her feet. She was still dazed, and a small towel pressed to her mouth was red with blood. He headed for the Welch coach. “That's a yellow card for that kid,” said Charlie. “And a yellow card for you, too.”

The coach smirked at Charlie incredulously. “Don't get carried away, buddy. You're just a sub here,” he said loudly. He pointed out toward the field. “And if that
little girl
out there can't take it, maybe she shouldn't be playing in a boy's game.”

“One more irresponsible comment out of you and you're gone,” said Charlie. “Now, start acting like a coach. These are kids out here.”

The coach crossed his arms. “Screw you, asshole. C'mon, get out there and get the game going, or we'll find someone else to ref.”

Charlie strained to control himself. “You've been warned, coach.” It was then that Charlie noticed two men staring at him from the sideline. One was the insurance man who'd given Natty a hard time at the game in Red Bone. But it was the other man who got Charlie's attention. He was tall and heavy, with a pencil-thin mustache and a toothpick between his puffy lips. Charlie was certain he'd seen him before.

Without Emma to watch, the Welch team became more aggressive, moving up the field to press the attack. A minute before halftime, they scored again. Angered by the incident with Emma, Zack had been trying to do too much by himself and lost the ball to a good tackle in front of his own goal. The Bones trailed 2–0.

At the half, Charlie walked over and sat down next to Hank.

“Rough game,” said Hank.

“That's my fault,” admitted Charlie, pulling his sweater on. The sun had dropped behind the nearby hills and the air had become cooler. The field lights had come on automatically.

Natty walked over and tossed Charlie a plastic water bottle.

“How's Emma?” Charlie asked, unscrewing the cap of the bottle.

Natty looked over at her team. “She's got some bruises, and her lip is swollen, but she's okay.” Natty waited while Charlie took a long drink from the bottle. “Hey, Charlie, I'm sorry about the coach. Wouldn't have asked you to ref, if I'd known.”

“It's okay.” Charlie smiled at her. “I can handle him.”

Natty frowned and exchanged a look with Hank, then she started out toward her team. Charlie looked at Hank.

“He's a tough customer,” said Hank. “Used to be a cop but got a little too rough, one time too many.” Hank turned and spit his tobacco juice in the dirt next to his chair. “Drives a truck now for the teamsters.”

The second half started much like the first, with the Welch team lofting the ball down toward the Bones' end of the field every chance they got. On defense, Rudy stuck close to Emma wherever she went. Her lower lip was swollen, and she still had some dried blood on the front of her new red jersey and a smear of blood on her right leg just above the knee. She also appeared to be limping slightly.

From the beginning of the half, Rudy took every opportunity to bump Emma and to cut her off roughly when she attempted to get into the play. Charlie called several fouls on him, but most of Rudy's rough play occurred when they were away from the ball and Charlie wasn't watching. Rudy became more emboldened by the Bones' frustration and began to taunt Emma, quietly at first and then, as his confidence grew, more loudly, to entertain his teammates.

“Hey, whatcha got on your leg there, Emma? That blood from your period? Emma's having her period! Watch out, she'll get some on you.” Rudy was enjoying himself. “How long you been havin' your period, Emma? Think you'd have bigger tits by now. That is, if you're really a girl.”

Emma tried her best to ignore Rudy and move away from him, but he shadowed her relentlessly and kept up a nonstop patter of taunts. Several times Emma looked to the sideline, and Natty could see her trying to fight back the tears. Natty tried to smile some encouragement to her, but she knew that Emma's shyness was paralyzing her on the field.

Rudy soon found a new sensitive spot. “Hey, Emma, nice lip you got there. You got big lips, anyway, Emma. How come your mama don't have them big lips?”

Charlie could hear snatches of what was being said, and he could see the smiles on the faces of some of the blue defenders, but he was too busy to tell who was saying what to whom. As he blew the whistle for a blue throw-in directly in front of the Welch bench, Charlie was surprised to hear someone on the field call out, “Ref, hey, ref. Time-out. Time-out.”

Charlie looked up to see Gabe, the blond Welch midfielder, making a T with his hands as he walked up the middle of the field. Uncertain about the rules, Charlie nudged Matt Hatfield, standing next to him. “You get time-outs?” he asked softly.

“One each half.”

Charlie blew the whistle loudly. “Time-out, blue,” he called out, pointing to the bench.

“What the
fuck
?” The bewildered Welch coach walked out onto the field to find out what was going on. Gabe ignored his coach and continued walking up the field. He looked angry and was headed directly at the still-smirking Rudy. The stocky fullback was taken by surprise when Gabe fired two hands into his chest, knocking him off his feet.

“You cut the shit right now, Rudy. You play soccer, and you shut the fuck up! You hear me?” Rudy bounced up quickly, but it was evident that he wanted no part of a fight with the stronger Gabe, who pushed him backward again, a finger in his face. “And you leave her alone. You stop talking to her, you stop talking shit, and you stop fouling her! You got that, Rudy? Just play soccer!”

The Welch coach got to the boys ahead of Charlie and grabbed Gabe's elbow, dragging him off the field. “How about you mind your own
damn
business, kid. I'm the coach of this team, not you. And you can rest your mouth on the bench for the rest of this game.”

Gabe picked up his sweatshirt and kept on walking as the coach sent a sub onto the field.

When the blue team called time-out, Natty had started onto the field to console Emma. As the Welch team's best player gave himself up for Emma, Natty backed quietly off the field. This was a situation she would let Emma deal with on her own.

“C'mon, ref! Let's get this game going!” the Welch coach bellowed from the sideline. With a 2–0 lead, he was eager to get the clock started for the last ten minutes of the game. But Emma now played with a renewed determination, motivated by the gallantry of Gabe, a boy she knew only from the soccer games in which they'd competed over the years—both of them too shy to ever say anything to each other—and by her anger at Rudy.

The Bones controlled the action with a tempo that the blue team couldn't match without Gabe in the midfield. After keeping the ball in the Welch end of the field for several minutes, Sammy sent a blistering cross into the center of the field, where Emma knifed through several Welch defenders and, leaping high in the air, took the ball on her chest. The ball went softly into the air, but Emma never let it hit the ground. She left her feet for a vicious sidewinder kick, rocketing the ball past the startled goalie.

The Welch coach was incensed. As his team walked back upfield for the restart of play, he screamed at Rudy, “She's your responsibility! Don't let her run free like that, boy. Stop playing like a pussy, or you'll be on the bench, too!”

Charlie glared at the coach as he screamed at his players and was an instant away from blowing the whistle and tossing him out of the game, but there had already been enough anger on the field without another confrontation. He hoped that the rest of the game would play out without incident.

“Two minutes!” called out the gray-haired woman keeping time on the home side of the field. Charlie turned to her and nodded with a quick smile as he trotted toward the Welch end of the field.

The Bones quickly gained possession after the restart, and Paul brought the ball over the centerline. He waited as long as he could before lofting it high toward the right corner in front of Emma. As she approached the bouncing ball, calculating her angle to the goal, she could sense an ominous movement at her blind side. Flashing back to earlier in the game, she turned just in time to see Rudy coming straight at her, full speed. Emma refused the natural instinct to slow down and lose the race to the ball, choosing instead to fire her right arm out in a rigid stiff-arm, the hard base of her palm smashing into the bridge of Rudy's nose, knocking the unsuspecting boy cleanly off his feet as she hurtled past him to the ball.

The blue sweeper was positioned between Emma and the goal, his feet dancing nervously, a look of abject fear on his face as the league's best player bore down on him. Emma danced quickly around him, juking left, then right, and back to the left again, as the sweeper's feet went out from under him.

Welch players were sliding through the grass, trying to poke the ball away, while the goalie moved out to cut down the angle, but Emma could do whatever she wanted with a ball on her foot fifteen yards from the goal. At the left post, Sammy was wide open and waiting for the pass that Emma normally would have made. But this time she drove the ball home with a blistering shot, tauntingly placed inches over the goalie's left shoulder. She ran into the goal and grabbed the ball to get the game restarted quickly.

The Welch coach was out on the field, running down Charlie. “That was a foul. A foul,
goddammit
! What are you looking at, buddy?” he screamed, a few feet away. “That's no goal. She hit my guy in the face!”

Charlie pointed to the center of the field as he turned toward the incensed coach. “Tie game,” he called out loudly. Then, softly, he added, “That was a good clean stiff-arm.”

“One minute,” called out the timekeeper.

“Emma, you
fucking whore
! I'm going to get you for that,” yelled Rudy, as he trudged upfield like a bull, oblivious to the blood that flowed freely from his nose.

Players were still trotting back into position when Charlie blew the whistle for the restart. He wanted to give the Bones one more chance to score and win the game. The ball caromed around in midfield for a few seconds before Zack came across the centerline like a freight train. He dribbled through a pair of defenders and raced toward the goal. With time running out, Zack fired a powerful low shot that the Welch sweeper dove for, heading the ball across the end line.

“Corner,” Charlie called out quickly, running across the field.

“There's no time left, you asshole!” the Welch coach screamed. Charlie looked over at the timekeeper. She put her palms up, not knowing what to do.

“Ten seconds left,” Charlie yelled. “Corner kick.”

“Paul,” Natty called out. Paul raced to the corner and readied himself for the kick. Just before he took his long stride to the ball, he looked up to find Emma.

The instant they made eye contact, Emma nodded, made a quick feint, and sprinted toward the mass of players in front of the goal. Paul stepped into the ball and sent it high and hard toward the box. Emma sprang into the air, her head three feet over the scrum, and pounded the ball with her forehead past the flailing goalie and into the net.