The Banks of Certain Rivers (15 page)

“Hey Coach,” he says.

“Hey?”

The guy laughs and strokes his chin. “It’s Kevin Hammil.
Shaved the beard.”

“Kevin! Jeez, you look…you’re like a different
person.” Walt Binger stops by, Port Manitou High’s
special education teacher, nordic ski team coach and general
comedian, and he gives me a raised-eyebrow look as he points at
Kevin’s face.

“Didn’t recognize the dude, did you?”

“I didn’t.”

Walt has a weird hyena laugh, and he lets it loose right now. “Bet
you were tired of being called ‘the mammal,’
heh heh
heh
!”

“Naw, listen, I’ll tell you why I did it. You ready?
Saturday night I asked my girl if she wanted to get married.”
Walt breaks in with a “Hey!” and slaps Kevin on the back.
Our young colleague smiles sheepishly. “Yeah, yeah, we’ve
been dating almost three years, I got here, got the job, figured it
was about time. She said sure, but the beard would have to go if she
was going to say yes. And I really like her, so—”

“Congratulations,” I say, shaking his hand. “Wait,
she said yes, right?”

“Oh, yeah, I shaved, didn’t I?” Kevin strokes his
chin, grinning. “I did okay, had the ring ready, got down on my
knee and the whole bit.”

Walt pats him on the shoulder. “You did it the right way,
there, Kev. Way to go. Remind her of the proposal whenever she’s
pissed at you. That always works with my wife.” Beth Coolidge
comes in, and I turn subtly away from her in fear she’s going
to say something to me about her homecoming float. She doesn’t
have a chance, though, because Walt is on a roll.

“Hey, Cougar-lidge!”

“Goddammit, Walter, you know I hate it when you call me that—”

“Yeah, anyway, Cougar-lidge, did you hear Kevin asked his
girlfriend to marry him? And she said yes? You didn’t even have
a chance to ask him out!” Since her divorce a few years ago,
Beth has gained a reputation for pursuing our single (and sometimes
not-so-single) male colleagues, especially the new ones.

Beth’s eyes narrow. “Go fuck yourself, Walt.” She
storms off and Walt follows her, continuing to egg her on. Kevin
looks horrified by the exchange, but I just laugh.

“The kids can’t, uh, hear us back here, can they?”
Kevin asks.

“No, no, they soundproofed it years ago.” The look on
Kevin Hammil’s face suggests he completely believes me. “I’m
kidding,” I say. “I doubt they can hear anything. Even
Beth Coolidge screaming.”

“Hey, Coach, I have a question for you, sometime….”
Kevin turns the barest shade of red, especially apparent with his
newly shaven face. “You’re a good guy, I’ve liked
hanging out with you and everything. You’re married and all
that, your son’s a great kid, so like…how exactly do you
do that? I mean, how do you stay married all those years, keep it
going, and raise such a great kid? You really seem like you have your
act together, is what I’m saying.”

I waver for a moment over whether or not I should tell Kevin the
whole story, or, in the spirit of Walt Binger, string him along with
a tale of fidelity and marital bliss. Walt himself solves this
dilemma for me by hollering from the office:

“Hey, Kev, come here, you gotta check this video out.”

“I’ll talk to you about it this afternoon,” I say,
and Kevin leaves to another burst of hyena laughter.

Peggy Mackie breezes by, probably on her way to some disciplinary
meeting, seemingly her greatest function in the district.

“Good time on Tabby?” she asks, barely slowing as she
passes.

“Great time, thanks. Fuel’s topped off.”

“Call me whenever you want her,” she says, leaving with a
wave. She halts, remembering something, and turns back. “Actually,
do you have a second, Neil? Come with me.”

I follow Peggy to her office. She’s narrow-shouldered and tall,
taller than me, with curly graying hair, and she walks with a
purposeful stride. “Shut the door,” she says. She takes a
seat at her desk, and flips a paper face down before I can see it. “I
think I asked you a week ago if you knew Denise Masterson.” I
nod. “You had her—”

“Last year,” I say. “Sophomore. Good kid. Is
something up?”

“Sexting.”

“No.” My stomach drops. “You’re kidding me.”
I’ve known Denise since she was a baby; her mother Jo was one
of Wendy’s closest friends. She’s a dedicated student, a
nice, polite, and quiet girl. Her dream is to attend the Coast Guard
Academy after graduation, and last fall she shyly asked me for a
letter of recommendation for her application to join the JROTC. So
much for that, I’m thinking. This news is a shock, and I know
her parents won’t take it very well at all.

“Not one hundred percent sure yet. A couple boys got pictures
from her ex. Typical breakup revenge thing. No face, but the police
computer people downstate are taking a look. I guess there’s a
chance it’s not her, but for now I’m assuming that it is.
We’ll confront the boyfriend when we know either way. Next day
or two. I know you know the girl’s family, so will you help if
and when we need to talk to them?”

“Of course I will. I know them well. Do I know the boyfriend?”

“Did you ever have Cody Tate in any of your classes?”

This name does not ring a bell. “Nope. Does anyone on staff
know yet?”

“Only a couple. It doesn’t seem to be out in the student
population yet either. The boys who got the photos have kept
themselves quiet. It will probably get around like wildfire
eventually, but keep it to yourself for now.”

“I can’t believe Denise Masterson would do that. Her
parents are going to be—”

“No one ever believes a kid would do that, Neil. But they do.
Please don’t say anything to her family until I ask you to.”
Peggy slides the face-down paper to the edge of her desk. “Anyway,
you and Chris had a good day on the boat?”

“Perfect day. I’m supposed to ask you again if Chris can
do an overnight.”

Peggy laughs. “He already cornered me about it this morning in
study hall. Someday, Neil. Not yet.”

“I’m in no rush,” I say. “How’s Lisa
doing?”

“She’s in Sedona for two more weeks,” Peggy says,
rolling her eyes. “Some new age healing thing. I believe
crystals are involved. I’m scared she’s going to want us
to buy a house there if she stays any longer. But she wants you and
Chris to come over for dinner when she’s back.”

“I’d like that too,” I say.

“I’ll let you know.” She glances up at the clock
above her whiteboard. “And I’ll keep you posted about the
Masterson kid.”

I say goodbye, and head back toward my room. In the science wing
hallway, a few minutes before the bell ending second period, I see
Steve Dinks at his locker. We normally don’t interact so much,
but he looks at me—stares at me, really—with an
expression so puzzled I can’t help but say something.

“What’s up, Steve? You okay?”

“What? Oh, yeah, how’s it going, Mr. K?”

“Not too bad. Thought I’d see you in AP Physics this
year.”

“I had to choose between that and calculus. Sorry.”

“Come on, no big deal. Sounds like you had a pretty good game
in Grayling?”

“I tried, Mr. K. It was a crappy night.”

The bell rings and the hall floods with kids, and I don’t even
have a chance to say goodbye to Steve before he’s washed away
in the crowd. He’s popular, smart like his dad, really smart,
and most likely going to Northwestern next fall. I’m sincerely
glad he’s having a good last year before college. It’s
hard to hold a grudge against a kid for too long.

Steve Dinks and Christopher
went to the same preschool together, a Montessori run by an aging
hippy out of an old house inland from Port Manitou. That’s how
I first met Leland; we both dropped off our kids on the same days of
the week. It was a hectic time; Wendy and I were living with her
parents while we were building our own house in the field next door,
and during that summer vacation I’d drop Chris off so I could
return to the orchard, put on tool bags, and work on the house with
Dick.

I say sometimes now that I built the place myself, but really it was
my father-in-law who knew what he was doing. I just did what I was
told.

Wendy made friends with Leland’s wife, Sherry, too. Leland and
Sherry kept suggesting we all get together for dinner sometime, they
had just moved up from Chicago and didn’t really know anyone
yet, the boys got along well and why not? It’s funny to
remember that we found excuses to not see them for a while. Not
because we disliked the two, but because we were too embarrassed to
admit we were living in Wendy’s parents’ basement.

We got over it, though. Soon we were hanging out with them pretty
regularly, promising we’d have a housewarming fete as soon as
our place was done. Leland and Sherry even helped us paint before we
moved in, joking that they wanted to get the job over with so we
could have our party sooner than later.

Leland was getting started out in real estate then. He worked for a
brokerage at first, just an agent, and though he only obliquely
talked about it, it was clear sometimes that people reacted
negatively to the color of his skin. Someone asked for a different
broker to list his property, he’d tell me, or a different
person to show him around. They needed a
local
agent, they’d
say. A coded request. That was as much as he’d discuss it, he’d
act like it was no big deal, but obviously it troubled him. Sometimes
I’d say sorry, without even knowing exactly what I was
apologizing for, or why. He’d just wave his hand and say: “Ah,
forget about it, Neil.” I always wanted to ask him more about
it, but I guess back then I didn’t really know how.

Here’s what Leland was: he was smart, and funny, and
personable, and most of all shrewd in business. By the time the boys
were in the fifth grade he was running his own brokerage, as well as
owning a Laundromat, a car wash, and part of Port Manitou’s
touristy seafood restaurant in Old Town. We didn’t see him and
Sherry as much as before, but Steve and Chris stayed best friends.
The boys played together, and they did sports together. They did
every
sport together, it seemed: Pop Warner football, Little
League baseball, basketball camp, indoor soccer, the whole deal. They
were rough together too, the way boys are, tumbling and scratching
like a pair of lion cubs, fighting one moment before bounding off
together to try something new the next.

In seventh grade the boys joined ski club. We used to have a little
ski hill nearby; it’s out of business now but it was less than
twenty minutes from my house. There were a few rickety old chairlifts
and a rope tow, and the school would send a bus full of kids on
Thursday nights to exhaust themselves under the stark night-skiing
lights. Leland and I would chaperone sometimes, and the kids—all
the kids—would howl with laughter at our knock-kneed attempts
at the sport.

The winter of eighth grade for Chris, not so long after Wendy’s
accident, his therapist suggested we try ski club again. Routine was
good, she told us; we were just shooting for something close to
normal then. Christopher
seemed
normal, most of the time, but
every so often in those first months he would explode with rage.
Lamps were knocked over, holes were punched in walls. This, I was
assured, was normal too. We’d work through it. Chris could find
a release for his anger, and I, on extended administrative leave,
would continue numbing myself to the mess of it all with gin, tonic
and Xanax.

The ski club did help. One night that year some other school district
from downstate had bussed up a big group, and the ski area called and
asked for parent volunteers as it was going to be a very busy, and
possibly unruly, evening. I wasn’t ready to try something like
that, wallowing in my new normal, and didn’t even consider
going.

By that point the boys were pretty good skiers, and they liked to
show off by bombing down under the chairlift, showing off to their
friends or attempting to impress girls. Chris had a problem with his
ski binding that night, and on one run, a couple turns from the top,
he and Steve stopped so Chris could try to clear snow from his boot.
Up above, on the lift, one of the blue jeans-clad downstate boys saw
them.

“Look at that!” the boy called with a sneer. “Check
it out, a nigger on skis! You ever seen that before? It’s a
nigger on skis!”

Maybe they talked like that all the time. Maybe they didn’t,
and thought they’d get lost in the crowd. Steve took a deep
breath, shrugged and shook his head. He said nothing. Chris, however,
looked up, made a note of the chair number (it was, he told me later,
number twenty-four), and actually
ran uphill
in his cumbersome
ski boots to beat the chair to the top. As it approached the crest,
the two boys on board watched Chris with expressions of awe and
terror as he pointed at each of them, asking:

“Was it you? Or was it you?”

Chris walked up to the chair as the two boys tried to get off. They
were older, but he was bigger, and he grabbed both of them and pushed
them, tripping over their skis, to the ground like a pair of
dominoes. He punched the one to his left in the mouth and the boy
cried: “It wasn’t me, it was him!” So Chris turned
and punched the other boy’s face again and again until the snow
around him was flecked red with blood.

Chris stood up from the guy and backed away, maybe realizing the
state he’d slipped into. The lift operator had run over along
while other people had started to gather around, and Chris stepped
back as the kid picked himself up off the snow.

“It’s cool,” the kid said through his bloodied
lips. “Everything’s cool.”

Chris staggered away, through the crowd that had gathered to watch
and down the hill to his skis. Steve Dinks had left; he’d skied
down quietly, called his dad and got a ride home. I got a call too,
from the manager of the ski area telling me that my son was not
welcome to return, ever, and I’d better come and pick him up
immediately.