Running Loose (5 page)

Boomer was practicing his kicking over near the
sideline with his back to Salmon River. He wouldn’t look at them. I looked over at Carter and saw him standing with his helmet off, just watching Washington. And he was smiling.

Salmon River won the toss and elected to receive. In the team huddle before the kickoff, Lednecky went down on one knee. “This is it, men. The only thing standing between us and a state championship game at the end of the season is number eighteen. Without him, we could walk away from these guys by three touchdowns. Now here it is. Play him tough. Key on him. Bottle him up on every play. Every time he hits the line, ball or not, tackle him.” He paused. “And if you get a clear shot, you better damn well take it.”

He put his hand out into the middle of the huddle. The hands of every team member joined it. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go win a football game.”

A roar went up from the huddle as we broke and the kickoff team took its place on the field.

Lednecky was right about number 18 hurting us. What he did on the kickoff was run it back for a touchdown. In my four years at Trout nobody’s ever done that to us. He took the ball around the six yard line and started straight upfield. My job on kickoffs is to come down wide on the left side and make sure the ballcarrier doesn’t get outside me. Boomer, who kicks the ball, comes straight down the middle and destroys anyone who might be stupid enough to come that way. Washington came within three yards of him and cut to my side. I thought I had him contained, especially when he started to my outside and I could use the sideline. I lowered my head to tackle him out of bounds and got air. He just opened up and blew by me. Carter had to come clear across the field and couldn’t get there. Washington went in untouched.

Lednecky went nuts. On the sideline he was banging on my helmet, screaming, “You gotta contain! You gotta contain!”

Boomer just glared at me.

Carter slapped me on the butt. “Forget it,” he said. “We’ll just kick away from him next time.”

“He won’t be there next time,” Boomer said, and pulled his helmet back on.

Carter caught Boomer about halfway back to the
field and stopped him. “Listen, Boomer,” he said, “let’s forget about the sniper tactics and play these guys heads-up.”

“You goin’ belly-up on us, Sampson?” Boomer said.

“No, but if we play him to hurt him, that means we think he’s better than us. And I don’t think he’s better than us.”

He slapped Boomer on the side of the helmet and trotted to his position.

Carter took the kickoff and got us pretty good field position. He started with some short passes to the flats—I caught two—and then pitched out to Boomer on their forty for a thirty yard gain. He went in on an option to tie the score. We traded two more touchdowns before the half, but we failed to convert on one, so we went in down 21–20.

On nice days we take halftime in the end zone rather than going back to the lockers, so we were lying on the grass, propped up on our helmets, while Lednecky and Madison went around telling different people what adjustments to make. Then Lednecky signaled for silence.

“Men,” he said, “overall we’re playing some good ball. Other than Banks missing Washington on that first kickoff, there have been no glaring errors, and you’ve
made up for that, Banks. Now we can go on trading touchdowns with these guys, and whoever scores last will win it.
Or
we can do that damn Washington kid in and blow them out! Men, we
have
to win this game.”

I figure someday some writer from
Life
magazine or
Reader’s Digest
is going to come around and look up Boomer’s old teachers and classmates, like they did with Charles Manson and any number of hillside stranglers or turnpike snipers, and ask us if we ever in our wildest dreams imagined that Boomer would turn out to be a mass murderer. I’m going to say yes, in my daily dreams. I’m going to say that the only thing that surprises me is that he didn’t do it sooner. And with his bare hands. Then I’m going to leave the country.

“He won’t make it through the third quarter,” Boomer said, in a tone that was just plain scary.

I looked over at Carter, who was staring off downfield, where Salmon River was warming up for the second half. He wanted to win this clean, so he was getting his mind off this garbage conversation. By now he was pretty sure that no matter how much Boomer and Lednecky carried on, there was no way they could realize their ambition because no one was
going to get a clean shot at Washington anyway. He was too damn quick. It was, to date, Carter’s biggest challenge, and he was up for it. I noticed Coach Madison was out of it, too, off to the perimeter, reinforcing taped ankles and talking to guys about their assignments.

We huddled quickly, broke, then went out to warm up.

Carter received the kickoff but couldn’t get anywhere with it—or get anything going on the first set of downs—and Boomer had to punt. A lot of guys think Boomer got his name from the way he hits the line after a handoff, but actually that’s not true. He got it for the way he punts. On a good day he could kick the ball to Seattle.

He blasted a high, soaring spiral all the way from our thirty to their fifteen. It bounced out of bounds on their nine. Then Washington went to work. He completed a couple of short passes and ran options to midfield. On a third-and-about-five he rolled out to the right—to the short side of the field—looking for the long pass. Boomer blitzed through the other side and zeroed in on him. Washington stretched it out all the way to the sideline in front of their bench and finally unloaded a bomb. Just as he released, Boomer planted
his head in his sternum, lifted him up, and slammed him into the bench. Salmon River players scattered when they saw it coming, and the empty bench caught him just above the kidneys. I heard a low moan and the air leaving his lungs.

Boomer stood up and turned around. “That oughta do it,” he said, and walked back onto the field.

That was the last play of my football career. I threw my helmet off and looked at the ref. No call.

“Did you see that?” I screamed.

The ref was Arney Todd from the hardware store. “Did I see what? What are you talking about?”

The other ref, a guy I didn’t know from Modoc, was bending over Washington along with Salmon River’s coach. Out on the field our players were congratulating Boomer, except for Carter, who came over to see Washington.

I grabbed the other ref. “Did you see that?” I screamed again. “He did that on purpose! He tried to kill him!”

Arney was hollering for Lednecky, who came on the run.

“Better get control of your boy, Coach,” Arney said.

Lednecky grabbed me by the collar of my pads.
“Banks, what the hell are you doing?”

“He tried to kill him!” I screamed. “And you set it up!” I turned back to Arney. “It was part of the game plan!” I yelled.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lednecky said quietly. “That was a good clean hit. Unfortunate, but clean. How is the boy, Arney?”

“Bullshit!” I yelled. “Really, Arney, it was a setup! It was a stupid, ugly, scummy setup!”

“You need to control his language, Coach. I’ll have to call something.”

Lednecky pulled me away. “Banks,” he whispered, “you shut your mouth, or you’ll never play another down of Trout football.”

I got loose long enough to pick up my helmet. “Are you kidding me?” I yelled. “I wouldn’t play another down of Trout football if you were holding my mother hostage! That was a setup, and you know it!”

Lednecky clamped down on my shoulder pads again. “Banks, you don’t have the stomach for this game. Hit the showers.”

I looked up, and Boomer was standing there. “Keep it up, wussy,” he said.

Carter was behind me. “Take it in, Louie. We’ll work it out later.”

I stared at him, and he nodded toward the gym. “Go on, take it in.”

“You said not to take it seriously. You said—”

“Come on, Louie, take it in.” He put his hand on my back and guided me toward the gym. “We’ll work it out later.”

Boomer started to say something else, but Carter said, “Shut up, Cowans. If you ever want to see the ball again, just shut up,” and Boomer shut up.

Lednecky didn’t say anything either, I think because he sensed Carter was on the edge. And Carter was running things.

I headed back toward the gym. When I passed the defensive huddle, someone said, “Screw you, Banks,” but I couldn’t tell who.

When I got to the sideline, I looked back across the field, and Washington was on a stretcher being put into the back of Doc Hamilton’s Ford station wagon. I threw my helmet as far back onto the field as I could and headed in.

In the locker room I showered in about three minutes, left my pads and uniform on the floor, and split. In a move that I’m sure got me nominated for Mr. Congeniality of Evergreen County, 1981–82, I went back out to the field, tore all the crepe paper off my
pickup, kicked the pep club girls out of the back with their popcorn and peanuts, and turned the tub full of pop over on the ground, breaking most of the bottles.

Becky stepped up on the running board and put her hand on my wrist and said, “Do you need me?”

I stopped and put my head down. “I don’t know what I need,” I said. “Better leave me alone for a while. I’ll call you tonight.”

“Okay.”

I roared off.

Trout won the game. I guess we scored a couple of quick ones after they carried Washington off and Salmon River lost their punch. At least that’s what Norm and Dakota said. I didn’t catch it firsthand.

The Buckhorn was closed for the game, but I have a key, so I let myself in the back way. Donkey Caulder was sitting propped up against the back of the building, drinking something out of a paper bag, shaking his head, and saying, “Bullshit.” I couldn’t have agreed more.

I got a couple of quarters out of the till, used one to punch up a little Emmy Lou on the jukebox and the other to rack up the balls on the pool table. The shades were pulled, and it was pretty dark, so I turned on the light over the table and hit the switch that activates the
beer signs, lighting up the Land of Sky Blue Waters and setting artesian water pouring over the falls. Dakota has these inserts you can put into the pockets to stop the balls from dropping all the way down, so he can shoot pool with his friends for free. Most times I don’t need them, to tell you the truth, because I can’t get the damn balls in the pockets anyway, but I put them in. Dakota says the best value for your dollar in these days of inflation and exaggerated prices is to play pool with Louie Banks. Takes forever. I guess I have missed a few easy shots in my time. Anyway, while Emmy Lou was having “sweet dreams” about me, I hacked around the table. I thought about pouring myself a shot of Jack Daniel’s that Dakota keeps under the bar for private use but decided that might be taking it a little far.

It’s funny what goes through your head when major things happen in your life, or at least things that you think are major. Like I was thinking how hard it would be to go buy something at Arney’s hardware store and how I’d avoid that if I could. And wondering if one of the second-stringers would get my uniform. I decided they’d probably retire it. I was thinking about regular things, too, like whether I’d made such a jerk out of myself that the whole town would stop talking to me. And how it would affect Norm and Brenda. And what
Dakota would say. And whether Boomer Cowans would look me up. One thing I was sure about was Becky. The other thing I was sure about was that Lednecky was a turdhead, and nothing could make me go back or say I was sorry. It was too bad Trout was so small and there wasn’t another school I could go to so I’d never have to lay eyes on that scumbag again.

I wondered how Carter could rationalize staying on the team and what Coach Madison was thinking. He never seemed to go for any cheap crap, though he was pretty quiet about it.

I didn’t want to talk to anybody, so when I heard the band off in the distance strike up “Under the Double Eagle,” like they do after every win, I locked her up and headed up across the spillway, past Crown Point and out to the meadow where Becky and I had gone. I had a conversation with the tree, where I told it how things were going to be from now on, by God, then hiked up the side of the hill and sat on an old dead log and felt sorry for myself.

I got home late for dinner. Trace met me at the door and said she’d do the dishes for free. I told her that wouldn’t be necessary, that I wasn’t a football hero anymore, but she said she wanted to anyway. That was the
first sign that there’d been a powwow. They were going to let me talk about it when I was ready.

I went and washed my hands and sat down at the table while Brenda put my dinner on. Norm was finished and was sitting there with the paper, but I could tell he wasn’t reading it.

“Becky called,” Brenda said. “She asked to have you call tonight.”

I nodded. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll call her right after dinner.”

Norm put down the paper.

I shrugged. “I couldn’t help it,” I said. “It was a setup all the way. I couldn’t believe Arney didn’t make a call.”

“Maybe he didn’t see it that way,” Norm said. “It doesn’t seem to me like Arney’s the problem here.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but they probably shouldn’t let you ref in your hometown.”

“Probably not.” He passed me some meat. “So, what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to school, tell anybody who asks me that I think Lednecky’s a hunk of slime, break every training rule he ever thought of, and stay the hell away from Boomer Cowans.”

Norm smiled. “Sounds like you have a full life planned.”

“From now on, I’m a lover,” I said.

He nodded and said that didn’t sound like a bad alternative and pulled out his pipe. He loaded it with this special cherry-smelling tobacco he only uses after dinner and set the pipe down by his plate. He never smokes while somebody is eating.

“Do what you have to do,” he said after a while. “You know your mom and I are behind you, even when we don’t agree with you. In this particular case, I do, if that means anything.”

It did.

I finished eating and called Becky. She asked how I was doing and if I wanted to drive over to Clear Lake and go bowling or see the movie or something. I sure as hell did.

Before I left, Carter called, just to check in, I guess, and make sure I hadn’t slit my wrists or loaded the back of the pickup with fish guts and driven it over the spillway. He didn’t push it but asked if he could bring his car over to Norm’s station Saturday afternoon to wash it. We could talk then. I said sure.

“You guys coming up to the dance tonight?” he asked.

“Un-freaking-likely,” I said. “Unless I decide to end it all.”

We talked about the rest of the game a little and hung up. The whole incident didn’t seem to bother him that much, and that bugged me. I wanted the whole world to be outraged, but especially Carter.

Becky didn’t have much to say about the game. I jabbered a lot about injustice most of the way to Clear Lake, where we went bowling, but she spent most of the time teasing and flirting with me and generally making me feel good and taking my mind off it. It was nice to know that just because I wasn’t a football star anymore, I didn’t have to go back to being a dork. And as long as Becky was still with me, there was no way people would write me off completely. At least they’d have to wonder.

We bowled three or four games—I quit after she beat me—and went over to the local drive-in for a milk shake and some Tater Tots. We ran into a couple of guys from Clear Lake whose names I didn’t know but who I recognized from football last year. They heard we’d won but didn’t know any of the details.

“How’s that black kid?” one of them asked.

“Good,” I said, “and fast.”

“He better than Cowans?”

I smiled. “He’s so much better than Cowans it’s indescribable. Boomer wouldn’t be allowed to carry his
wornout sweaty jock from the locker room to the garbage can.”

They looked at each other and back at me. “How about Sampson?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Might be close.”

They wanted to know more about him, like if he was mean or dirty or whatever. I told them his real name was Jackie Robinson, but they didn’t get it. It sounded like maybe Lednecky coached at Clear Lake, too. I didn’t tell them that Washington was probably on a slab in the morgue by then. I figured they ought to have to worry about him another day or so.

I started in again on the way home. I should have just shut up. It wasn’t as big a thing when I was with Becky anyway because she never really cared that much about football and couldn’t have cared less if I played. She was more concerned that I didn’t get eaten up with it and become a terminal pain in the neck.

“You know about confrontation?” she said, scooting over close and laying her hand on my knee.

“Some, I suppose. What do you mean?”

“Well,” she said, “when I lived back East, I used to go to a shrink.”

“You mean a psychiatrist?” I interrupted. “You went to a psychiatrist?”

She nodded. “Actually he was just a psychologist. But I had to. It was the only way I could live with Mom. Talk about confrontations; we had confrontations like most people have lunch. Every day it was something. Every night I’d go to bed crying and swearing I’d never speak to her again, and the next day she’d bait me about something: grades, dates, not wearing makeup, wearing makeup, you name it. And finally she’d say the right thing, and away we’d go. I thought I was nuts. I mean, really crazy. None of it made sense, but I couldn’t get out of it. I just couldn’t understand why it worked the way it did.”

“So what happened?”

“So I got an ax and chopped her up into little pieces and fed them to the neighbors’ cat.”

“Right,” I said. “What happened?”

“Well,” she said, “after I’d been going to Greg—he was my shrink—for about four months, he decided Mom was a certifiable loon, and he started working on me to let it go.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just let it go,” she said. “We sat there one day, and he had me identify all the warning signals, like ‘You didn’t wear that skirt with that blouse, did you?’ or ‘You know Jimmy won’t respect you if you go to bed
with him yet’ or whatever. Then we decided when I saw one coming—and there were a million—I’d let it go. Not invest. Agree with her, space out, change the subject, pour myself a bowl of cornflakes, whatever. None of the confrontations were about things that were important to me anyway.”

“So how’d it work?” I was sucked in.

“It drove her nuttier than she already was, but it let me off the hook. She and Daddy split up shortly after that, and I came with him, and that ended it.”

“So what’s this got to do with me and Lednecky?” I said. Nobody ever said I wasn’t thick.

“Well, if you’re anything like me, you’re going to want to defend your point with the rest of the kids at school when it comes up, which it will. You’ll get all hot and end up going over and over it with your mom and dad and Carter and me and anyone who’ll listen, at which point you will become a pain in the butt.”

I had to admit that a few conversations had run through my mind already.

“But the truth is, the war’s over. You did what you did and you were right and all the people who care about you are with you and you don’t have to regurgitate this until June. It can be over if you want it to be.”

I stared at the bright white lines shooting under the
pickup and nodded slowly. It was worth thinking about. I sure needed some kind of plan for Monday. I wasn’t looking forward to that at all.

“And another thing is,” she said, “I don’t want to waste my time with you on this. If you want, I’ll quit cheerleading to show support. I just do it for exercise anyway. But I don’t want us getting weighed down.”

We decided there was no reason for her to quit cheerleading. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to get out of school for away games.

She sure did seem grown-up.

When I dropped Becky off at her place, I felt pretty good. I hadn’t absorbed all she said—I’m a pretty slow study—but I knew she was with me, and that’s what it was really all about for me. I drove up to the reservoir, where the old highway that used to run to Modoc disappears into the water. It makes a natural loading and unloading ramp for water skiers and fishermen, and the city has widened it out and bordered it with small logs to make it accessible. I pulled into it and shut off the lights. The moon was more than three-quarters and lying low on the horizon, and I could see Ramsey’s Peak silhouetted against the sky. The water was pretty calm, and the reflection of the moon bobbed and weaved
lightly in the ripples.

I sat there contemplating Life After Football when the pickup cab lighted up, and I checked my rearview mirror to see a car pulling in behind me. I couldn’t think of anyone I felt like talking to, so I cranked her up and turned around. It looked like the car was deliberately blocking me—kind of stuck there broadside between the logs that form the exit—and when I started to drive behind it, it backed up. I backed off and sat there, rolling down the window and straining to see who was inside. It looked like Mr. Williams’s car, which meant Nancy Williams would be driving. She’s a cheerleader, and she goes out with Boomer sometimes. I don’t have to tell you that was a bad sign.

Sure enough, it was Nancy. She got out of the car and walked toward me with a beer in each hand. The drumbeat of my heart hammered out a clear message. It said: “This can’t be good.”

She held out one of the bottles. “Want a beer?” she asked.

“Hi, Nancy,” I said. “Sure, why not?”

“Missed you at the dance.”

I shrugged. Hell, she never danced with me anyway. Boomer would kill us both. Besides, she didn’t like me.

“Can I get in?” she asked.

“What for?”

“Talk. I just want to talk with you for a while.”

She was a little drunk, but not bad. I couldn’t imagine what she might want to talk to me about.

“Who else is in the car?” I asked.

“Cindy and Carmen and Martha Shrivers.”

“You just gonna let them sit there?”

“Unh-unh,” she said. “They can take the car. You can take me home.”

The faint odor of skunk.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I ain’t had a great day, and I think I’m just gonna go home and go to bed. I have to work tomorrow.”

She turned and looked back toward her car and shrugged. The door opened, and who do you think stepped out but everyone’s favorite fullback, Boomer Cowans.

I said, “Thanks, Nancy.”

“Anytime.”

Boomer had an open beer in his hand, and he staggered just a little. If he was really drunk, I had a chance to see sunrise.

He stopped at my window. “Well, well, well,” he said, “if it ain’t Trout’s own silver rights worker sittin’ right here, hustlin’ my woman.”

I didn’t say anything, just looked straight ahead, trying to figure which end of the car I could get around.

“What’s that crap you pulled today?” he said. “I had a good clean shot at that jungle bunny.”

“Maybe I saw it wrong,” I said.

“Maybe you’re a worthless scumbag nigger lover.”

I nodded. “Maybe that’s it.”

“I’m tired of your smart mouth!” he screamed, and lunged at the door. I heard a loud pop on the side of my head as his fist came through the open window, and I hit the starter as I quickly rolled up the window, trapping his arm between it and the top of the door. I shoved it into first and started toward the rear end of Nancy’s car, figuring if I couldn’t get around it, I’d knock it out of the way. Nancy was screaming at me and trying to get in to move it, and Boomer was still trying to hit me. My right side tires bounced over the log that borders the launch area, but I made it onto the highway okay and drove over close to the ditch. By then Boomer wasn’t trying to hit me anymore; he was holding on for dear life. I lowered the window a little, pulled the door latch, and bashed into the door with my shoulder, sending him flying into the ditch. Then I pulled it shut and drove off. On the way home I remember thinking there must be some safe way to tell that dumb bastard that it isn’t “silver” rights.