Knights of the Hill Country (24 page)

“You're a damn Judas,” he said. I never seen him look so mad as right then. “You know that? Judas down to the bone. You might as well do what he done and go hang yourself from one of these trees.” He glanced off for a second towards where I thrown his gun, but that was just a decoy before he whipped back around, his fist flying straight for my mouth. I seen that one coming too, though, and blocked it with my left forearm. With my right hand, I grabbed a fistful of his letter jacket and slung him down on the road. He tried to scramble up, but it was too late. I was on his back, pressing his arms hard against the dirt.

“Get off me,” he hollered. “Get off me, you backstabbing sonofabitch.” He struggled and twisted, but I always was the stronger one.

“Let him up, and I'll take over.” Covey was standing right over us. “I owe him one.”

“You stay back,” I warned him. “You just take Misty and get in your truck and get out of here.”

“Let me up!” Blaine sputtered.

Covey looked down at Blaine and then at me, sizing up what he ought to do.

“Come on,” Misty told him. “Let's go. You don't want to mess with Hampton.”

For a moment longer, he stared down, but he didn't make a move. “I ain't got nothing against you, Hampton. But I don't want to see Keller over here in our town no more. You all got that?”

“Go on and get out of here, right now.” I stared him a hard one straight in the eye. “Get in your truck and move on or you're gonna wish you did.”

Without trying on a comeback, Covey nodded and backed away. He put his arm around Misty's shoulder, and they headed towards the truck.

Blaine tried bucking me off, but I rode him down. “Let me up!” he bellowed out again. “Can't you see I gotta do this? Don't you get it? I ain't getting no scholarships. I'm gonna be stuck around here with this damn night hanging around my neck for the rest of my life if I don't do something.”

I pressed his arms harder into the dirt. “Son, you almost got a lot worse than that hanging around your neck, you know that?”

He didn't answer.

“You know that?” I cranked it up a notch this time.

There was a long pause, and then finally he come out with it, not loud but loud enough.

“Yeah, I know.”

I waited till Covey's truck started down the road before I let go of Blaine's arms and got off him. Real slow, he pulled hisself up to his knees but no further than that. Everything around was real still, except the trickle of the leaves on the dirt road and the cold wind swooping across the lake.

Then his shoulders started to heaving. His whole body shook, but he wouldn't raise his head. He couldn't even let his best friend since fourth grade see his tears. I wanted to tell him to forget about that old game. That wasn't all he was. His whole life wasn't made up of pride over something you really wasn't and records that was bound to be broke and legends that was only half true in the first place.

Forget all that stuff for a while, I wanted to say. Just look out at the way the lake is, the moon on the ripples, the stars rising up and down on the water, the trees on the far bank over there. That's what there is to be a part of. That's something that lasts.

But I knew it wouldn't help. Blaine couldn't see nothing even close to that right now.

The sun rose up over the oaks, just a sliver at first, and then finally it hung fat and orange over the treetops. The sky stretched out a deep blue, and there was a little chill in the air. I brung me a blanket along, though, and me and Sara set on the hillside with it draped around our shoulders.

“I'm glad we came out here,” she said. “I might not get many more chances. My parents are planning on moving back to Oklahoma City next summer.”

“I might not get that many more chances neither,” I said. “If things go right between my mom and Tommy Don, she might end up moving off to Santa Fe. And then I'll be in college next fall.”

“Me too.”

I glanced at her, a real quick one, before turning away. I
still wasn't comfortable with trying to look at her too much all at once, but I figured it wouldn't be long before I would be. And then maybe I could talk to her about what happened with Blaine too. That was something I couldn't tell nobody about yet, but when the time come, it was a sure bet she'd be the first one I'd turn to.

“I don't know if you know it,” I started in after a while. “But they got a real good medical school over at the University of Oklahoma.”

“I know they do,” she said. “That's where I'm going.”

I nodded. “Me too. If they offer me a scholarship. Coach seems to think it's pretty sure they will.”

I checked her out just long enough to catch her smile.

“I hope they do,” she said.

“Football's gonna get me there.” I looked back off at the tree line. “But who knows what direction I'll head in after that. I might just go into wildlife management if I can.”

I could feel her studying me over for a moment. “You're not saying that because of how the game turned out last night, are you?”

“Naw. It's something I been thinking about for a while now.”

“Because even if you all didn't win that game, you were pretty amazing. They couldn't counter your blitz worth anything.”

I had to laugh at that. “Since when do you know about countering blitzes?”

She wrapped her arms around her knees and smiled again. “I've been reading up.”

“Really?”

“A little.”

I don't know which I appreciated more—that she'd been studying up on football or that she never said a thing about what Blaine pulled at the end of the game.

When the sun had climbed a good ways up, I took her on that old path that led through the woods and higher up to one of my favorite places, the rock cliffs that looked out on Lake Hawkshaw. All around the hills was just crackling with yellows and reds and oranges. Ironwood and Spanish oak, dwarf chestnut, Chickasaw plum and mulberry and a bunch of other stuff I'd learned the names of.

“Look over here,” I said when we got up top. “You can see where T. Roy Strong and a lot of the other Knights carved their names in the cliff.”

T. Roy's name was carved bigger than anyone else's, and further on up the face of the rock, a girl named Wendy had carved her out a mathematical equation that added her name to his and equaled out to love 4-ever. Fact was, more than one girl put her name up with T. Roy's, but I didn't point that out right then.

Lower down on that same rock, me and Blaine had chiseled our names in with our trusty barlow knives. Even though Blaine's name was a good bit smaller than T. Roy's, it was the deepest one on the whole cliff. Next to it, he carved in his rushing record too, but Anton Mack of Sawyer done broke it already this season by twenty-three yards.

“It's funny,” Sara pointed out. “You can tell the older names because they're not as deep as the newer ones. I guess the wind smooths them out a little each year.”

“I guess so.” I never noticed it before, but she was right as rain.

The best view out of the whole place was at the top of the
largest rock, so I took her hand and helped her climb up with me. Over in one direction, you could see Lake Hawkshaw stretching out between a frame of oaks and cottonwoods and rangy old sycamores. The other way, down in the valley, bits and pieces of Kennisaw stuck up through the trees—the courthouse, the bank, the Methodist church, and the lights of the football stadium.

Looking off at that, I had me one of my time-stopping moments. It just come on without me even trying. I seen myself in the future coming back to town, not as a big hero returning to give a speech at Leonard Biggins Park or nothing, but just for old times' sake. There I was, driving down Main Street, Sara riding with me, leaning into my shoulder. The football banners, like always, stretching from light pole to light pole, the store windows colored up with painted-on cheers, and the old men roaming the sidewalks. Only now they was slapping the backs of a new crop of football boys.

And it was funny, but I could picture myself stopped at the light where Main hits Konawah, looking out the side window at a high school kid in his black and gold letter jacket, the new starting tailback. But you know what? It wasn't an old man talking to that boy there. It was Blaine. Blaine wearing him a beat-up fishing cap and a flannel shirt, one hand clapped on the boy's shoulder, the other one stretched out in the air like he was pointing to something real big and far away.

I couldn't see the next part clear, though. The part about whuther I'd pull over and talk to Blaine or whuther me and Sara would just drive off the other direction. I didn't know if there'd be anything left to say.

“You know.” Sara's voice brought me back to the hilltop.

“I've heard that when you come home after being away at college, your hometown is supposed to look smaller. Do you think that's true?”

I nodded. “It already does.”

I turned back to look at the lake again. It stretched out wide and green, and on the other side, more hills rose up, rolling away one after the other till they disappeared in a gold-brown haze.

“So,” Sara said. “You ready to head down and try some of those sandwiches I made?”

“Just a minute,” I said. “I want to freeze this picture for just a second more.”

The wind was picking up, making choppy little waves in the lake and rattling the leaves in the blackjack trees. That Oklahoma wind blowing like always, year after year, sanding down them rocky cliffs bit by bit. One day, they'd wear smooth and slick as the sixth day of creation, and no one would even be able to tell where the old Knights of the hill country carved their names. And that'd be all right. It was carving them that mattered, not how many people come along to read them.

“Okay,” I said. “I'm ready. But how about we take the long way back?”