Authors: Marie Etzler
County Line Road
County Line Road
Marie Etzler
Copyright © 2011 Marie Etzler
All rights reserved.
ebook ISBN:
978-0-615-63819-5
To all the kids from the wrong side of the tracks who made good
Jimmy ran down the back stretch of his high school track in his own world. He had the track to himself early in the morning, nothing but the sound of his sneakers and his breathing, his arms, legs and heart all working together, like a good rock band, everybody playing their part, the sound blending together into something new, something that has that hit feeling, that you know is going to work. He loved this feeling. It was freedom, freedom from everything at home, at school, in his brain, all the things he hadn’t done right and wasn’t sure he’d ever get a chance to do at all. All of it was gone, left in the dust like everybody who ever tried to race him. He was state champion last year and he was hell bent on breaking his own record this year. Nothing was going to stop him.
He imagined how he’d look on ESPN as he took the final turn, the orange track beneath him, white lines marking out his territory, flags flying, those Olympic rings waving him on, photographers kneeling down to get the right angle.
But it wasn’t ESPN watching him; a woman in a red sports car was. She licked her lips as she lifted a pair of mini binoculars to her dark eyes and got a fix on Jimmy. She rolled the tip of her finger across the focus dial and held it there, her red nail polish glinting in the sun.
Jimmy crossed the line, clicked his stopwatch, and slowed down. He checked the time and smiled, his signature wicked grin. Happy, he walked around to cool down, flapping his faded Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt in the summer heat, enjoying the moment.
A car horn beeped repeatedly, interrupting his thoughts. Then he saw his stepmother, Linda, get out of her car and approach the chainlink fence. She picked her way through the wet morning grass in her high-heel sandals to wave at him and call him over.
Jimmy ignored her.
“Jimmy!” She yelled, angry.
He strolled over, checking his stopwatch again, the enjoyment fading.
“What,” Jimmy said. It wasn’t a question.
“Your father wants to see you,” she said.
“I’m training,” Jimmy said. “I’ll be home in an hour.”
“No,” she said. “Now.”
Jimmy knew the warning signs of his father’s anger.
Standing in the small, hot living room while waiting for his father to make his big announcement, Jimmy tried to act nonchalant but his radar was intently focused on his father, ready to pick up the slightest change in his posture or his eyes so he could figure out exactly how bad this was going to be. Then Jimmy could tune him out or get ready to run.
“Which one of you stole my signed baseball?” his father, Earl, said.
Jimmy and his older brother, Rich, looked at each other in surprise then back at their father. Neither one of them would ever touch their father’s baseball stuff, especially not his 1997 World Series Marlins baseball.
“It was right here.” Earl pointed to an empty space in his memorabilia case. “Signed by the entire team.” The wood case was the only new piece of furniture in the room.
“You got me up for this?” Rich said. “I’m going back to bed.”
Earl leveled an unrelenting stare at Rich.
Jimmy saw his father inhale, saw his shoulders enlarge like a dragon rising, and it was pissed.
Jimmy opened his mouth, a breath escaping out of him involuntarily, but he stopped when his father’s gaze shifted to him. Jimmy’s attempt to put on a posture of defiance only locked them in a standoff.
When his father turned back to Rich, Jimmy felt the shadow of the noose pass overhead and vanish, for the moment.
Rich rubbed his eyes, bored.
His father leaned almost imperceptibly toward Rich, and Jimmy thought for sure his father was going to hit him. It wouldn’t be an easy task. Rich was 6 foot 2 and about 160 pounds, bigger than Jimmy or Earl by a few inches, although no one ever accused Earl of being small, or kind.
Jimmy clenched his stop watch in his hand tighter, the strap wrapped around his fingers so tight they were white.
Jimmy began to remove himself mentally from the scene to watch it like a movie on mute. The good feeling from the track was gone. He fixed his eyes on his own distant, mental horizon that held his track scholarship at Clemson and escape from this.
Rich turned to leave.
“You stay right there,” Linda, their stepmother, said as she appeared in the kitchen doorway. She lifted her cup of coffee in Rich’s direction.
“Linda,” Earl said without looking at her. “I’ll handle this.” He only tilted his head slightly in her direction, his jaw lining up with the epaulettes on his pilot’s uniform. A man used to being in authority, he spoke with a solidness in his tone that Jimmy knew well. There was no more need to yell. He had everyone’s attention.
Linda relented and leaned against the kitchen door frame. Jimmy heard her click her red polished nails against the black coffee cup. He looked her over with distrust in his eyes. She was dressed for work in her nurse’s uniform that she wore too tight on purpose; Jimmy thought, she’s dressed not to work but to work people over.
Jimmy’s attempt to mute the scene wasn’t working this time. His senses told him something was different; Linda looked too relaxed. Usually she would try to calm Earl down when he was mad at him, even though Jimmy wished she’d leave him alone. She wasn’t running defense for him now.
Then a terrible thought hit him like a baseball bat – she was going to set him up to take the blame!
“I didn’t do it!” Jimmy shouted in the silent room. He knew instantly that his father wouldn’t believe him. He’d heard his father say it a hundred times: Only the guilty speak up.
Jimmy could feel Rich staring at him.
“Give it up,” Rich said to him.
“I didn’t take it!” Jimmy said. “Maybe you did.” He backed up a step to get away from Rich.
“Bullshit,” Rich said. Rich tried to grab Jimmy.
“All right. Stop. You both shut up,” Earl said. “If that baseball isn’t back by the time I fly in from Phoenix next week, I’ll cancel your trip to Clemson and destroy your motorcycle.” Earl pointed first at Jimmy then Rich.
Jimmy froze. The threat of canceling his trip was like plunging a knife into his lungs.
As Jimmy struggled to breathe again as if he’d just run a race, Earl swept out of the room, taking his rage with him. The tension level dropped like a kite freed from dangerous winds.
Rich went back to his room, and Linda slipped back into the kitchen like a snake withdrawing into a cave, leaving Jimmy alone. He heard his father bang out the side door, knocking his pilot’s case against the door frame as he left the house. Jimmy spread his fingers as if reaching for something to balance himself in the silence. Then he heard Linda’s voice from the kitchen cheerily greet his best friend, Double A.
“Hi, Double A,” Linda said. “Come on in. I’m just making some toast. Want some? I know your mother doesn’t cook much.”
“No, ma’am, she doesn’t,” Double A said. “Her arthritis.”
“I know. Poor thing. Have this. Sit here.”
Jimmy heard a plate being set down on the table and the chair scrape on the floor as it was pulled out. One by one, his senses came back to him as he recovered like a lights flickering on in building after a power outage.
“I’ll tell Jimmy you’re here,” Linda said. “Jimmy!”
Linda leaned out the kitchen door, her chin and chest forward, smiling a smile Jimmy didn’t trust. As she leaned, she lifted one leg back and pointed her toe, almost touching Double A.
“Excuse me,” she said to Double A and took the opportunity to pat him on the shoulder. “Are you boys going to the beach again?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Double A said. He wore a bathing suit and Ron Jon Surf Shop t-shirt.
Jimmy pushed past her, hoping to bump her cup and make her spill her expensive coffee on her expensive boob job.
She lifted her cup above her head as if reading his mind. “Oops!” She said.
She was too happy, angering Jimmy more. Why is she doing this? He couldn’t think straight. He had to get out of there.
“Let’s go,” Jimmy said to Double A.
Double A looked up from his plate, mouth full of food, but his face indicated he recognized the tone in Jimmy’s voice and got up right away.
“Thank you for the toast, Mrs. Bodine,” Double A said.
“Bye, boys,” Linda said. “Oh, Jimmy. Would you be a dear and put the trash cans by the street?”
“No,” he said and continued walking down the driveway to Double A’s car.
“Jimmy,” she said, the syrup gone from her voice. “You wouldn’t want your father to find out you’re being disrespectful, especially after what he just said.”
“You —,” he seethed, but she cut him off.
“Uh-uh,” she said and wagged a finger in his face. “Be on your best behavior and I’ll see if I can help you.”
Jimmy was so angry, he couldn’t speak. He grabbed the trash cans and dragged them down the driveway. He dropped them at the end, half hoping and half fearing they’d fall over. If they did, she’d make him clean it up, and all he really wanted was to get out of there.
They got in Double A’s car, a 1970 Cutlass 442 he was restoring. As Double A started the engine and leaned over the steering wheel to listen to the rumble of the engine, Jimmy slid his sunglasses in place to cover his eyes from the morning sun and block out everything he could.
Linda waved from the door as if they were a normal family.
Jimmy wished the sunglasses concealed his emotions, but they were boiling off him like steam.
“Man, what just happened?” Double A said as he got onto the highway, passing the ramp sign that said ‘East to Ft. Lauderdale Beach’. “I saw your dad tear outta here.”
“He’s an asshole,” Jimmy said.
“You’ve said that before, but what now?” Double A said.
“Know what he said? That he’d cancel my trip. Yeah, said I stole his baseball.”
“What? No way!”
“And she’s in on it,” Jimmy said. “I know it.”
“Coach Chediak will have a heart attack if you don’t go. It’s the biggest training camp of the summer. All those scouts are gonna’ be there. He’s about to name the track after you,” Double A said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going, that’s what,” Jimmy said. “I’m going to Clemson if I have to run there myself.”
“Call your mom,” Double A said. “She’ll help you.”
“No,” Jimmy said. “I’ll do this. She’s fought enough with him.”
He stared out the window at the houses flying by as they cruised down the highway. He reached for the car radio.
“Turn this up.”
He let the fast beat of the music fuel his thoughts.
“I’ll find out what she did with that ball. He won’t be back for a week. I’ll show them. Just wait.”
As Jimmy leaned on the pizza counter, the only thing taking his mind off being mad at Linda and his father was watching Jeanie, a girl from his school, holding a cup in her hand as her tongue toyed with the straw.
Jeanie laughed with her girlfriends as they watched construction workers on the corner fixing the concrete curb. The men took turns smoothing the newly poured concrete and gazing at the girls.
“Nice job, boys,” Jeanie said. “Do you do everything that well with your hands?”
The other girls gasped and laughed.
“Come over here and find out,” one of the men said. He stepped toward her.
“Hey!” She squealed and slipped away from him to the far side of the counter.
The men laughed and went back to work.
“You are such a tease, Jeanie,” Jimmy said. “Are you all talk?”
“You’ll never find out,” she said.
His eyes traveled from her lips closing on the straw to her breasts barely covered by her bikini. He saw her nipples under the little triangles perfectly centered over her small round breasts, the fabric puckered and cupped underneath the curves. Her skin glistened with suntan oil. His eyes went back to her mouth.
“Lucky straw,” he said. “You gonna’ miss me when I’m away this summer, Jeanie?” Even though his father had threatened to cancel his trip, Jimmy figured he’d act as if he were still going to South Carolina. No one needed to know what had happened that morning at home. Jimmy was embarrassed that Double A caught wind of it, but he’d been in the middle of it before and never told anyone. That’s a friend, he thought as he looked over at Double A who was staring at another girl.
“I won’t even notice you’re gone,” Jeanie said. She looked him up and down, from his old NASCAR® t-shirt to his worn out running shoes. She flipped her long, straight blond hair off her shoulder. “Besides, I don’t slum with high school boys anymore.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I heard. You’re doing it with Jeff now. You don’t think he’s saving himself for you all semester at Auburn, do you?” He thrust his hips and made faces and noises. “He’s going ‘Ooh-ahh’ with every girl there.”
“Kiss my ass, Jimmy,” she said.
“Rather not,” he said. “Might catch something penicillin can’t kill.” Then he got mad again. “Hey, Jeanie. You’re a manipulative bitch. Where would you hide something you stole to make it look like someone else did it?”
“What?” she said. “Don’t be an asshole, Jimmy,” she said and started to walk away.
“He can’t help it,” said Dion Singleton, Jimmy’s only competition on the track team. Dion sauntered up to them, his legs long and lean like Jimmy’s, smiling and wrapping the ear bud wire around his new iPod.
Jeanie turned around and laughed at Jimmy. Dion hugged her and gave her an extra squeeze that he looked like he really enjoyed. She shoved him playfully.
Another girl walked up to the pizza place, twirling the horse pendant of her gold necklace absent mindedly. She stopped when she saw Jimmy.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me?” She fondled the pendant and waited for an answer.
“One drunken kiss at a party don’t mean we’re getting married, Kris,” Jimmy said, taking a bite of his pizza slice. He chewed with his mouth open to disgust her, and it worked.
Kris flipped her hair at him. “I’m buying a Coke,” she said and turned her back on him.
“You could use some coke, to wake you up,” he said.
“You would know,” Dion said. “No matter how many races you win, Bodine, there ain’t no need for country boy white trash like you to go college,” Dion said. “Keep your job at the grocery store. You gonna’ need it. Cuz you can’t cut it — just like your brother.”
“Fuck you, Singleton,” Jimmy said. “His arm blew out.”
“Why? Didn’t he take his steroids that day?” Dion said.
“Hey! He never did that!” Jimmy protested.
Some more girls had joined Jeanie and Dion and were laughing. Jimmy got more angry and started breathing hard as if in another race. This one he was afraid he wouldn’t win.
“How about you? What are you using?” Dion said and got in Jimmy’s face.
“I’m using you,” Jimmy said, getting even closer to Dion, forcing him to step back. Jimmy felt the tension shift and knew he’d won. “You wish I was on something. Then you’d have an excuse why you lose. I’m faster than you — always have been, always will be.”
“Want to prove it?” Dion said. “Right here. Let’s go. Up the beach and back.”
“If you want to lose,” Jimmy said casually. “Again.” He tossed the last of his pizza crust in a nearby trash can, and headed for the sand. Inside he was on the verge of explosive anger. He channeled it into a laser point focus on the race, thinking to himself, I’ll beat him. I’ll show them. I’ll show them all.
Jeanie squealed as she said, “Let’s make the finish line by the life guard stand!” She and all her friends rushed to the stand. They shuffled their feet in the sand, forming a conga line from the sidewalk to the life guard stand while two life guards watched, amused.
“Down to the band shell, up on the sidewalk and back here,” Dion said.
“Hey, Double A!” Jimmy called. Double A was still at the pizza counter staring at the same girl out of the corner of his eye. “Go down there past the band shell and mark the turnaround,” Jimmy said.
“Did he call you ‘Double A’?” the girl he was eyeing said. He stood stunned for a minute and looked around to see if she was talking to him. She stood, waiting for him to answer, her long black hair shining in the sun.
“Oh, yeah, that’s what people call me. It’s my initials. My real name’s Anthony.”
“What’s your last name?” she asked.
“Anderson.”
She laughed. “I have the same initials.” Her smile created deep dimples in her cheeks.
He stared at her, mesmerized by her beauty and his luck to be here talking to her and it was happening in front of everyone.
“Wow,” was all he could think of to say. Then he started talking fast. “I know your name – Anna Alvarez. I mean, not that I’ve been stalking you or anything.”
“You don’t look like the stalker type,” Anna said. “But then again, you never know these days.”
“You’re perfectly safe,” Double A said. “All I do is study. I’m really boring.”
She laughed at him.
He realized how he sounded and looked around to see if anyone heard.
“Let’s see if we can have some fun then,” she said. “I’ll help you mark the race.”
“Okay.” He stood there, smiling. He was the kind of kid with a studious look, but when he smiled, it transformed his whole face, revealing a bright, good-natured person.
He snapped out of it, and they jogged down the sidewalk together.
Jimmy watched Double A and the girl. He smiled because he knew Double A had been wanting to talk to that girl for about a year. Sometimes it takes the girl to get things started, he thought. He also felt a pang of emptiness. He had a strange sensation that someone was standing next to him. The feeling was almost electric. It ran down his arm and gave him a chill. But no one was there. He rubbed his arm, feeling like a hallucinating idiot. He turned his attention back to the challenge at hand.
Jeanie put the finishing touches on the finish line with the toes of her jingling sandals and said, “Are you ready?”
The two boys stretched a little, and Dion took off his sneakers.
“Don’t want sand in my new Nike’s,” he said. “But yours – who cares!”
Jimmy looked down at his old running shoes. They might be a disadvantage in the sand but not on the sidewalk.
Dion put his game face on. Jimmy knew Dion talked big, but he’d seen Dion crack and Jimmy was about to do it to him again.
Jimmy’s fingertips touched the line in the sand as his body was poised in the race stance, ready.
“Ready to lose, Country Boy?” Dion said, trying to sound cool. “There ain’t gonna’ be no scholarships for you when I beat all the records next season. I got a secret plan.”
He turned his head to Dion and gave him a smile, wicked as an executioner licking the axe blade, just to mess with Dion’s head a little bit.
Jimmy’s trademark grin — that girls loved and parents distrusted — conveyed more than anything Jimmy could say. Dion stopped joking when he saw Jimmy’s face; he went back to focusing. But it didn’t matter to Jimmy; he knew he was faster and so did everyone else. He was going to win this one and every other race — it was his ticket out of his father’s house for good.
“Ready, Set, Go!” Jeanie called. She clapped her hands on “Go” and the race was on.
To Jimmy, the clap was like the sound of the starting gun at the track, and he took off running. He always had good form coming out of the starting blocks. Every coach told him that. And he was intense, they said, ran each race like it was the finals at the state championships.
And it was for Jimmy. Every race was a race for his life. The faster he ran, the faster he got away from everything. Almost.
They both struggled with the sand, their feet digging in and the sand holding on like glue. Dion was half a stride ahead as they approached the band shell. Double A waved them left like he was signaling a jet landing on an aircraft carrier. The girl with him did the same thing.
Dion cut left first and reached the sidewalk. Jimmy turned and felt the solid pavement under his shoes. He started gaining on Dion. They dodged tourists and roller bladers as they made their way back to the life guard stand where the girls were cheering.
Jimmy thought for sure Dion would step on a piece of glass or something, but he didn’t need Dion to make any mistakes. Jimmy was gaining on him surely as he always did. He could feel his competitors get tired, and it made him faster.
Side by side they got closer to the finish, and Jimmy could feel victory was his. He knew this feeling well; he’d had it many times before. Victory doesn’t care who takes it across the finish line, he always thought. It just went with whoever was fastest, like a beautiful girl who only wanted to be on the arm of the best looking and richest man in a fancy restaurant. Victory was his until he felt her hesitate, as if to speak, and part her lips just enough to say, Oh no.
A kid on a skateboard came out of nowhere and was suddenly right in front of them. Dion pivoted to the side, but Jimmy saw it half a second before him. The kid, wide-eyed, ducked and Jimmy hurdled over him and kept going all in one motion.
Jimmy heard gasps as everyone stopped and stared. Men and women at café tables sat stunned, forks suspended in mid air between plate and open mouths.
Jimmy glanced back and thought, They’d show that on ESPN.
The girls cheered and jumped up and down as Jimmy came across the finish line first.
Dion came up out of breath and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Who you calling a loser now?” Jimmy said to him.
“Cool out, man. I can’t believe you beat me, especially in them old shoes,” Dion said as he pointed at Jimmy’s sneakers, half laughing between gasps. “Next time.”
Girls grouped around them, some consoling Dion who soaked it up, and the rest admiring Jimmy.
Double A ran over, breathless. “Did you see that!” He was lit up with excitement like a kid who just hit his first home run or caught his first fish. Double A rubbed his short, curly brown hair that never combed the way he wanted it to. “I thought you were going to cream that kid. Holy shit! Oh, sorry,” he said to Anna.
“That’s okay,” she said.
“Anna! Come here!” Jeanie called to the girl and waved her over.
Anna said, “Bye,” to Double A and joined the girls.
Jimmy circled around Double A, flapping his t-shirt to cool off.
“That was a great race,” Double A said, still staring at Anna. “I’m going to tell everyone at Jeff’s party. I wonder if Anna is going?”
“Did you ask her?”
“No,” Double A said. “I didn’t even think of it. I was standing down there, trying to think of something to say. All I could think of was that Mars was going to be rising in the Eastern sky after sunset.”
“Mars? She’s going to think you’re from Mars,” Jimmy said. “Come on.”
“Where are you going?” Double A said nervously.
“To give you a chance to ask her.”
“What? No!” Double A tried to whisper, but it sounded like a hiss.
Jimmy walked over to the group of girls, Double A trailing behind. They stopped in front of Jeanie who was putting on lip gloss. “You playing hostess at Jeff’s party tonight?”
“I tried to get you uninvited, but for some reason he likes you,” Jeanie said.
“You’re going?” Kris asked Jimmy with disgust. “You won’t get me off in a spare bedroom again.”
“Been there, done that,” Jimmy said. He turned to Anna. She was sitting on a beach towel, looking like a picture from a catalog.
Double A was hiding behind Jimmy.
Jimmy turned to her and said, “You going? My friend here is.” He pointed his thumb at Double A.
Anna shielded her face from the sun with her hand and looked up at them. She smiled and said, “Maybe.”
“Does any girl ever give a straight answer?” Jimmy said. “I can’t wait to get out of here next month.” Then he said directly to Jeanie, “Go meet some college girls. Let’s go, Double A.” He smacked Double A in the stomach and ran for the water.
Jimmy dove in the surf like a linebacker tackling a quarterback.
Double A waded into the surf slowly and stood with the water up to his pale chest. He lifted himself up on his toes to see the girls, but Anna had lain down and he couldn’t see her anymore.
“I wonder if she’ll go to the party,” he said more to himself than Jimmy.
“Forget about her,” Jimmy said. He raised his head from where he was floating on his back. “There will be plenty of girls there, and at MIT or Cornell, or where ever you go.”
“I’d rather go U.M. and stay down here,” Double A said.
“Not me,” Jimmy said. “The further away, the better.”
The bright afternoon sun lit up the waves, glinting off the wave tips like reflected glass. After a while, Jimmy and Double A trudged out of the surf and back to their towels to dry off and pack up to go. Ahead of them, out west, dark clouds formed over their neighborhood, the usual summer rain that arrived every afternoon.