First day of school feels tingly,” said Kurt as he, Wayne, and Luc watched the herd of special-occasion-dressed kids play on the schoolyard.
“Sixth grade!” said Wayne. “We’re on top.”
Kurt nodded to the next block where the brown-brick high school rose beside the gray-castle junior high. “Not over there.”
“There’s always some over there,” said Marin as he walked up.
“Hey,” said Wayne. “Hey,” said Kurt. Luc nodded Hey. Marin made them official when he said, “Hey.”
Here we are, thought Luc. Our gang. Ready to go. Their crew joined the other kids surging up the school steps like cattle into boxcars.
Wayne said: “We’re all going out for the football ‘experiment,’ right?”
Luc and Marin shrugged of course.
“Nah,” said Kurt.
And like that, Luc saw Kurt… standing on the other side of a border.
Inside the crowded hallways of their school, the four boys jostled their way to read the sixth grade class assignments taped on the hall wall.
“Yes!” said Kurt. “I’m in 6A with Mr. Dylan and Luc and Wayne and… ah…”
Marin said: “What about me?”
Everyone knew what the look on Kurt’s face meant.
“6B,” said Marin. “Old Mrs. Wilcox with her chin hair.”
“And other great kids!” said Kurt.
But they all knew.
They knew Principal Olsen had sat at his summer desk and judged all the ten-year-olds’ pasts and futures, shuffled still-growing children into two groups.
“Good” students were in 6A. Science freak Fred was in there, plus Bobbi Jean. Kids who could be counted on to be and counted on to do so they would create the honor rolls of tomorrow. Sorted and selected because he said so.
6B was made up of “regular” kids. Plus kids whose history, income, oddities, or independence implied trouble—if not trouble now, certainly trouble to come.
Like Ralph, whose dad had clashed with the school superintendent.
Nick with his twitching arm.
And Anna, who was dangerously pretty and thus obviously couldn’t be as smart as she seemed. She got a desk in 6B’s dictatorial matriculation to protect boys from diversions that would be totally her fault because of her beauty.
Marin and those kids had been shepherded into the care of Mrs. Wilcox, who swung a yardstick and had stayed faithful to the same sit still and shut up lesson plan for the twenty-nine years that tenure had cemented her in Vernon’s schools.
“Don’t worry!” Luc told Marin. “You can switch!”
Marin nodded to the list. “Can’t you see it’s written in ink?”
Then he turned away. Walked down the long telescoping hall. Alone.
Donna’s voice behind Luc: “Think you can handle the blackboard?”
Kurt and Wayne hurried into their new classroom to leave Luc with her.
Luc stared at her with questions he didn’t know how to ask: Were you in the radio repair shop during the parade? Where were you all summer?
She seemed taller, her dusty hair scissored short.
“Um… hi,” said Luc.
“Um, HI!” she repeated and he knew it was a tease. “I’m in the B class.”
“But you got higher grades than me last year!”
“I’m not A class material,” she said. “Like I didn’t already know.” Donna nodded at him with an expression Luc couldn’t understand. Gave him a faint smile. “Your glasses going to be able to read the writing on the wall?”
“I’ll be OK,” said Luc.
“You were born OK. You’ll always have OK.”
She limped away before he could say anything.
Remember to call him Mr. Dylan, not Neal, thought Luc as he entered the classroom where a blank-faced man sat behind the 6A teacher’s desk.
I don’t want any favors, thought Luc. Not from him.
Bobbi Jean popped up right in front of him. “Lucas!”
“Um… Bobbi Jean, please call me—”
“Are you taking piano lessons again? My mom phoned Miss Smith and she said to wait. Aren’t you glad we got Mr. Dylan? He’s supposed to be great so it’ll be cool to have him, ’specially since this is our last year as just kids.”
“I think it’s already been that,” said Luc.
“Not everybody’s like Anna.”
“I wasn’t talking about her.”
Bobbi Jean rolled her eyes. “Since when?”
Last Bell killed anything Luc might have thought to say.
He plopped into a desk.
Silence. Sunshine. Twenty-nine sixth graders. One empty-faced teacher.
Neal Dylan finally said: “Do you know who I am?”
Huh? thought Luc. He met Kurt’s glance. Saw Wayne frown. What?
“Let’s pretend that you do,” droned the teacher behind the big desk. “Let’s pretend that all we have to do is get through sixth grade. We can do that.”
Then he picked up a book. Turned pages. Read them aloud like a robot.
When the noon bell rang and the kids exploded out of the school, Luc passed Jordan—Miss Smith—in the hall. Her eyes watched her moving shoes.
Shuffling home for lunch took Luc past the side street to the city jail.
“Hal’s gone,” Dad had told him the night before. “The sheriff drove him to the state boys’ home.”
“Then when he turns eighteen, he goes to prison,” said Luc.
Dad shrugged. “There’s always a chance.”
“There’s no chance,” mumbled Luc. “It’s the law.”
Laura was eating lunch with Mom and Dad by the time Luc got home. He sat in front of his tuna fish sandwich and glass of milk, said: “6A, Mr. Dylan.”
Laura said: “Thank God you didn’t get Mrs. Wilcox!”
Their parents shared a look that made Luc wonder what credit God deserved.
“And OK, Dad,” said Laura, “you were right. The guidance counselor stopped me in the hall. Since I resigned from Honor Society before they kicked me out, last year’s grades count toward eligibility this year. If I keep B+s… No promises, he said. But. And that means I’d be eligible for the scholarship.”
“That’s the way things are supposed to work,” said Dad. “You’re supposed to make them work out.”
“Just don’t make trouble,” said Mom. “Making trouble makes trouble.”
Luc prayed his dad was right, not his mom.
He swore he’d come right home after football. Pretended that was why he took his bike as he hurried outside, saying: “I gotta go back to school early!”
Few kids were on the playground when Luc wrapped his hand around the brass handle of the school’s front door. Took a deep breath. Stepped inside.
Luc stood alone in the long, quiet hall. Sunlight lit the gray tiles. The green hall telescoped toward the exit he’d used last spring when he thought he could run away from having to see better.
You can’t run away, he told himself. Couldn’t then. Can’t now.
If things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, you make them right.
One step at a time, Luc followed the sunlit hall past classrooms.
Stopped outside the portal labeled OFFICE.
Nobody sat at the secretary’s desk.
Luc knocked on the inner door. Coughed. “Hello?”
From the inner office came Principal Olsen’s bellow: “Get in here!”
Principal Olsen crouched on his office chair like a tiger. File folders stacked like mountains covered his desk. Whiffs of coffee and a vanished chicken sandwich floated in the office’s air with scents of dust, mimeo ink, and paper.
“What’s your problem?” snapped the principal. “It’s ten minutes before you’re supposed to be in the building. Unless you have lunch detention.”
“No, I—”
“Didn’t think so. You’re not one of those kids.”
“That’s what I’m here about. There’s—I think there’s been a mistake.”
Principal Olsen frowned.
“See, Kurt, Wayne, and I, and Marin Larson, he was new last year, but we’re a team for class projects and he’s smart as any of the kids in 6A except Fred and nobody’s as smart as him and so the mistake is that Marin kind of got put in 6B—not that those kids aren’t—but he’s not with us like he’s supposed to be.”
Luc swallowed. “So I came to ask you to please switch him to—”
“You got nerve, Mr. Lucas Ross. But you’re not as smart as you think.”
“I don’t think I’m smart!”
“This bonehead move proves you’re right about that. Seems your buddy Marin is more of a problem than I thought. He put you up to this.”
“No he didn’t! Honest!”
Principal Olsen rolled his eyes.
“I’ll let that fib go because you’ve got a good record and it’s only the first day of school, so thank your lucky stars.”
The tiger leaned closer to the boy trembling in front of him.
“I wasn’t sure about that smart-aleck Injun kid. You never know, he’s got a hard-working mom. I’d have respected him if he’d had the guts to march in here himself. But sending you to do his dirty work for him…”
“He—”
“One more word out of you and we have to re-think your situation!” Principal Olsen shook his head. “Didn’t you learn anything this summer? What happened to Hal Hemmer when he didn’t take the chance he got?”
Olsen tapped the stack of file folders.
“Screw up or shape up, it all—everything, and I mean everything you do—it all goes into your Permanent Record.
“And that, young man, means everything, because your Permanent Record decides your whole life. Now stop being a stooge for your friends. Get better ones.”
The stab of the principal’s finger thrust Luc back into the hall.
Left him dazed.
A daze that lasted until the last bell when fourth grade teacher/coach Cox presided over a melee of thirty-one sixth grade boys in the lunchroom where they grabbed football gear as old as their parents.
None of the helmets had a faceguard. Luc’s eggshell-white dome and leather side straps made a tight fit over his glasses. His shoulder pads were too big. So were the football pants. His strap-on hip pads were missing a flap. Like everyone else, he wore his own sneakers.
“What position are you going for?” asked Wayne as they buckled up.
“I can’t throw worth crap. I can’t catch the ball. Everybody is faster than me.” Luc shrugged. “Guess I’ll be a guard. Sounds easier than a ball hiker and cooler than a tackle.”
Coach Cox blew his whistle.
“What are you going out for?” Luc asked Wayne as they ran outside.
Wayne said: “Guess I’ll be a guard, too. I’ll be right side, you be left.”
The difference between right and left occupied much of their first practice on the shale lot across the street from their school by the junior high. Coach Cox barked the sixth graders through jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups, wind sprints where Luc always came in last while Marin always glided in first.
The coach divided the boys into two teams. He had to stage races among the nineteen boys who’d insisted on being halfbacks, fullbacks, or quarterbacks, with the slowest ones suddenly discovering they were to be anonymous linemen instead of ball-carrying stars. Luc and Wayne’s from-the-get-go choice of grunt work over glory meant they landed first string on the maroon jerseys.
Marin became a maroon halfback without having to gasp for breath.
Stinky blue ink memo sheets with plays and defenses waited on a metal folding chair when they trudged back to the gym. As he changed into his street clothes beside Marin, Luc wondered if he should tell him about what he’d done in the principal’s office.
Better not get him in trouble, too, thought Luc. Besides, what if he thinks I shouldn’t poke my nose into his business? Please don’t let him get mad at me!
So it went for three days. Sixth grade taught from textbooks by a robot. Football practice on the shale field. Home for dinner at six.
Until Friday.
Regular school days, the high school team ruled the town’s gridiron while the junior high squad worked out on whichever end of that field the high school’s team let them use.
Game-night Fridays meant only the junior high team practiced at the grass field on the northside, so that afternoon, the “football experiment” elementary school team traded their dirt lot for real grass and goalposts.
“Grab your gear,” Coach Cox told the sixth graders. “Dress-out on the bus!”
A roaring stampede of boys exploded out of the elementary school. The bus door whooshed closed. The yellow machine rumbled away from the school while the boys in it wrestled off blue jeans, struggled into pads.
“Honk the horn!” yelled somebody.
“Let them know we’re coming!” yelled somebody else.
Dave Maynard stuck his butt against the window to moon three Catholic school girls. OK, his underpants were still on, but man, how funny! Luc got his jersey stuck halfway over his shoulder pads. Marin and Wayne wrestled it down.
“Who farted?”
Laughter drowned out accusations and boasts.
September sunlight stretched a golden glow across a perfect blue sky arcing above the town’s emerald field. The yellow school bus rolled through the chain-link fence’s gate, tires crunching as it followed the gray cinder oval track around the field, past the white goalpost where junior high giants hurled themselves at canvas blocking dummies. The bus rumbled to the other goalpost. Luc and his buddies charged out of the bus. Stampeded past the high school football coach as he striped white hash marks on the green grass.
“One back, one lineman!” yelled their coach. “Marin! Lucas! Lead ’em!”
Oh. My. God.
Suddenly there Luc was: standing beside Marin in front of their classmates, the team who wore faded jerseys, floppy pads, helmets, and grins.
“Jumping jacks!” bellowed Marin. “Ready!”
Every muscle in Luc tensed. His legs coiled with burning springs.
“One!” yelled Marin as his arms flew up and his legs scissored out.
And I’m with him! knew Luc. In time together! Everybody following us!
“Two! Three! Four! One! Two! Three! Four!”
Luc felt himself soaring against the sky for the world to see he wasn’t a four-eyed teacher’s pet, Momma’s boy, bookworm, no-muscled, uncut, uncool, girls-laugh-at geek. That’s not me. I’m here. With my friends. In this glorious moment.
Fifteen minutes of leading exercises changed to a half hour of being just another jersey running drills to Coach’s yells. Of not falling over in the three-point stance—right knuckles digging into the grass, helmet-heavy head craned up to look at the horizon beyond the distant goalpost, butt stuck high on spread and bent legs. Coach set two squads on a scrimmage line. Luc’s squad practiced offensive plays while the second squad dug in on defense.
“Look,” Marin told his teammates as they pulled each other up from the dogpile following a quarterback sneak that only gained a yard.
Coming through the distant chain-link fence gate. Tires rolling over the cinder track to stop at the parked yellow bus. A brown sedan.
“Principal Olsen!” said Wayne. “What’s he doing here?”
Coach yelled: “Offense! Huddle up!”
Principal Olsen climbed out of his car.
Yelled: “Coach Cox! I need to see you!”
The coach nodded, leaned into the huddle, whispered: “Run Give-33.”
Coach Cox walked toward his boss as quarterback Jesse whispered: “On two. Give-33 on two. Break!”
Give-33: The number 3 man running through the number 3 hole. Left guard Luc had to block a defensive lineman out of the way of the charging halfback. Who was Marin.
The huddle broke. Luc and his squad trotted toward the ball waiting on the grass where eleven kids on the other squad tensed to stop the coming play.
Luc glanced to the sideline.
Principal Olsen held Coach Cox by the arm as if to steady the teacher.
Quarterback Jesse loomed behind the center.
Luc sank into ready stance: knees bent, head up, forearms on his thighs.
“Ready!” yelled Jesse. “Down!”
Luc and Wayne and the other offensive linemen dropped into their three-point stance. The center cocked the football pressed into the ground.
“Set!” yelled Jesse. “Hut one! Hut two!”
Boom!
Luc rammed his shoulder pad into the kid across from him. Shouts. Grunts. Thuds. A blur of jerseys and waving arms. Luc staggered…
… saw Marin stiff-arm a linebacker. Throw a hip fake at two defensive backs who collided with each other. Dash past them toward the open swath of green grass stretching toward the distant goalpost and practicing junior high team. Jog back toward his teammates.
The brown sedan drove away with Coach Cox.
Principal Olsen stood in front of the team. Twirled the coach’s whistle.
“Listen up!” yelled the principal. “Coach’s wife broke her arm. She’ll be OK. But no need for you guys to waste your chance here.
“Now,” he said to the sixth graders, “what the hell do you call that?”
Jesse cleared his throat. “Um… We ran Give-33. Just like Coach said.”
Olsen glared at the kids playing defense. Squinted at the kids on offense.
“Marin: you carried the ball on that play? And nobody stopped you?” Olsen shook his head. Told the whole team: “You can’t make it in life with bad defense!
“Run that play again!” he called over to Jesse.
Then Principal Olsen blew the whistle. Clearly liked that sound.
The center yelled: “Huddle up!”
Ten boys on the offensive team circled quarterback Jesse.
“The other guys know what we’re going to do!” whispered Pete Nasset.
Wayne said: “Marin’ll get creamed!”
“Listen up,” said Jesse. “Give-33 like we got to, but… Pettigrew, you’re fullback. Blast off and go through the hole first. Knock guys down. Marin, hang back, take the handoff late. But make it look like it did before, OK? On two.”
Break the huddle. Clap. Ready, down, set, hut one, hut two—
BAM!
The defensive lineman tore into Luc’s block. Would have pushed him over but Pettigrew slammed into them and blew a gap in the line of battling boys. Marin charged behind him. Spun around the tumbling bodies and grabbing hands and surged three steps down the open field before the blast of a coach’s whistle.
“What the hell!” yelled Principal Olsen.
“Marin!” Olsen’s bellow froze him. His teammates prayed for invisibility. “You think you’re pretty good, getting away with that. You got lucky. Luck and other guys carrying your weight won’t get you by on this field. Or anywhere else.”
Olsen whirled to the boys playing defense. “And you guys! What would Coach Cox think, you slacking off. Guess we need some educational assistance.”
He whirled, marched up the middle of the grassy field.
Walked past the high school coach striping the fifty-yard line.
“Where is he going?” said Luc.
Principal Olsen walked to where the junior high team was practicing in helmets with face masks and pads that fit. Talked to the junior high coach.
The crowd of junior high players split into two groups.
Group One resumed attacking canvas dummies.
Group Two marched down the field with Principal Olsen.
“Uh-oh,” whispered Jesse.
Eleven junior high knights crossed the fifty-yard line, armored adolescents clapping their hands, slapping each other’s pads. Those seventh and eighth graders were bigger than any of Luc’s team except center Bill Woon.
“Sixth grade defense!” yelled Olsen. “On the sidelines. Watch and learn.”
“Yeah!” yelled a junior high giant. His teammates positioned themselves as defenders on the chalk line.
“Run it again!” Olsen yelled. “What you call it, Give-33.”
He whirled to the junior high squad. “Show my boys how to stop a run.”
Quarterback Jesse chewed his lip as his team circled around him.
“They’ll murderate us!” whispered Wayne.
Pettigrew said: “And they know what—”
“But they don’t know when.” Jesse looked at his halfback. “Sorry, Marin. We gotta surprise ’em,” Jesse told the team. “Quick snap. I’ll go ‘Ready, down’—then on ‘Set,’ we blast off. They think we won’t go until at least one. Marin, Luc: there’s no time to send Pettigrew through to help. Sorry.”
They clapped.
Broke the huddle.
Moved toward a football waiting on a chalk line.
The high school coach walked closer to watch.
Luc sank into Ready’s crouch. Turned his helmet up to see…
A giant crouched across the white line from him: Clayton Schenck, eighth grader. Luc knew if they stood up, Luc’s helmet would only reach Clayton’s eyes—eyes that now stabbed steel spears at Luc. Luc swallowed.
“Ready… Down… Set!”
BAM! Luc sprang forward, elbows out and fists pressed to his chest as he crashed into Clayton, moved the surprised bigger boy back a whole two inches.
King Kong rammed Luc. Rocketed him backward, stumbling—
A blur of football gear shot between blasted-backward Luc as his teammate Bill Woon whirled to slam into Clayton.
Luc’s back crashed onto the emerald field.
Blue sky filled the lenses of his glasses.
Flicking past his vision came Marin’s sneakers.
Marin leapt over the jam of grabbing hands and shoulder pads, helmets, and backs. Landed on his feet, the football wrapped in his arms as he sprang forward.
He gained five more yards before the linebacker and two safeties tackled him. Marin crashed, buried under a pile of adolescent knights.
Junior high giants climbed off the pile.
Left a sixth grader lying on the grass as they walked away.
Get up! pleaded Luc. Please Oh God Marin don’t be—Get up!
He did. Slowly. Standing. Walking. Coming back to his team.
Principal Olsen stood with his hands on his hips. The whistle dangled on his chest. Something like a smile lined his face.
“So, Marin,” he said. “You learn anything yet?”
Marin gingerly bent over to put the football on the white chalk line where it started. Walked ever so carefully back to where his team should huddle.
Olsen whirled to the junior high squad.
“And what is it with you girls? You call that tough? You call that football? You knew he was coming and he still damn near got a first down!”
“Come on!” yelled an eighth grade linebacker. “Hold ’em! Kill ’em!”
Principal Olsen yelled: “Last chance!”
The junior high giants dug into position on the white line.
“Marin!” yelled Olsen. “You’re running it again. Huddle ’em up, Jesse!”
A cool September wind waved through the white-striped grass as Luc huddled with his ten teammates who smelled like smeared earth, like sweat. Luc knew he bled where his glasses had gouged his cheekbone. Wayne’s jersey was torn. Marin’s left jaw was scraped, his left eye puffy. His nose trickled blood.
“I’m sorry!” blurted Luc. “I’m sorry!”
“Hey,” Marin kindly lied, “you made a good block. No sorry.”
Not about that! Luc wanted to scream. This isn’t about that! This is about…
Tried to tell himself this wasn’t about what he’d done going to the office.
Jesse leaned into the huddle.
He was the quarterback. He was in sixth grade. Just like the ten boys facing him in this huddle, all of them sentenced to Blackhawk Elementary School in Vernon, Montana, September 1959, where the buzz-cut, husky man standing on the sidelines wore something like a smile and a coach’s whistle.
“OK,” said Jesse. “He said ‘last chance.’ Let’s do it. But do it our way.”
Jesse looked at Bill Woon. Bill shrugged his shoulder pads. Wayne made a smile. Luc caught Jesse’s glance, nodded yes. One by one, the other boys voted with nods, with grimaces, with their beating hearts. Marin nodded yes.
“Forget Give-33,” said Jesse. “That pitchout sweep? They think we’re coming up the left middle. We’ll go outside right. Pettigrew, you lead and, Maynard, you’re the other halfback, you cover our butts. Marin, run like hell. Pitchout, Sweep Right. On one. Ready… Break!”
Eleven sets of hands clapped.
Eleven soldiers moved toward the line of battle.
“You’re all dead dead dead!” yelled a junior high knight.
Jesse yelled: “Ready!”
The giant eighth grader Clayton snarled as he settled into his defense stance to crush the grade school dweeb named Luc across from him.
“Set!”
Luc felt himself float through this clock-stopped moment. Speared his right knuckles into the grass. Craned his neck up to see Clayton through his glasses.
“Hut one!”
Fury crashed Luc into Clayton. The world went white light. He spun in a sea of shouts and thuds. Slammed down to the emerald hard earth.
“Go!” bellowed some boy. “Go!”
Luc realized he was on his feet, standing with a crowd of junior high and sixth grade players whose parts were over, done, all of them turned to watch.
To see the race of a lifetime streaking down that afternoon football field.
Two defensive backs chased Marin, certain they’d catch him.
“Go!” yelled Wayne and Bill Woon.
Luc pushed his way through the crowd: “Run!”
Marin crossed the fifty-yard line dead even with the two eighth grade pursuers. They angled their charge. Their outstretched hands grabbed air.
“They’ll catch him!” said a junior high giant beside Luc. “Has to happen!”
At the twenty-yard line, one eighth grader drove through the air, crashed face first and empty-handed onto the grass.
Junior high coach Littlejohn turned from explaining pass blocking to his boys to see a sixth grader streak across the goal line and circle the white goal post while a wheezing star from Littlejohn’s team stumbled at the boy’s heels.
The sixth grader nodded to Littlejohn. Loped back the way he’d come.
His eighth grade pursuer shrugged at his coach. Jogged to follow the kid to the other end of the field.
The junior high player who’d missed his desperation tackle stood waiting for Marin. The older boy slapped ‘good job’ on Marin’s back. Marin kept going.
Going all the way to the other goal post where the whole sixth grade team jumped up and down, clapped and whistled and cheered. Where Principal Olsen stood on the sidelines a few feet from the applauding bus driver. Where the high school coach stood, his eyes squinting in light from the sun near the horizon.
Marin flicked the football toward the adults.
And the high school coach intercepted it.
“Whoa, guy!” said that man who everyone knew as the emperor of this field and a prince of the town. “You’ve got some speed on you. What’s your name?”
“Marin Larson.”
“Marin, when you get to high school, we got some good times ahead of us.”
The high school coach pressed the football into Principal Olsen’s chest.
“Looks like you’ve got yourself a winner,” said the emperor of this field. “Give the horse a rest. He burns out, that’s no good for anybody.”
Principal Olsen watched the high school coach walk away.
The junior high coach came close, loudly told his fellow tenured educator:
“Your guys should take a break. I’ll walk my squad through a few things to give them pointers. You know, on how this game is supposed to be played.”
The whistle dangling around Principal Olsen’s neck tethered him to the grass where was. He said nothing. Did nothing more than stand there.
Luc edged through his teammates to Marin. “That was so great!”
Marin let Luc fill his hardened eyes.
Said: “Take care of my gear.”
Walked away.
They all watched him go.
Luc.
His teammates and the junior high squad.
The high school coach who was putting the striper back into its shed.
Principal Olsen and his whistle standing rooted in the grass he’d claimed.
Wayne shuffled to Luc’s side, whispered: “What’s he doing?”
Marin walked past the bus driver who’d cheered him on.
Climbed the stairs into the bus.
Call it five minutes.
Then out of the bus stepped Marin. He wore his street clothes.
Without a glance toward Luc and the others, he marched toward the far gate in the field’s chain-link fence. Out the gate. Walked the street back into town.
Gone.
Ten minutes later, the bus carried Blackhawk Elementary’s football team back to their school where the next day, the “experiment” of sixth graders playing football was declared over by Superintendent of Schools Makhem, officially because their coach had to take care of his broken-armed wife.
Silence rode that bus.
When they got back to the school, Luc, Jesse, and Bill Woon carried Marin’s football gear into the gym. Put it on the pile. They put their own gear in assigned places against the wall. Walked through the haunted halls of their school and out to their sinking-sun hometown.
Luc didn’t look at his watch as he swung onto his bike and pedaled furiously away from the school. He knew when it was: Last chance.
The sky bled as he pumped his bike pedals. Gasped as bone-sore legs pushed his race up Knob Hill. Past the street that would have taken him home. Past houses as lights inside got switched on for dinner. The breeze that fought his ride rustled through town trees to pluck off the most brittle of a million gold and russet autumn leaves and sail them down on him like drunken angels.
On his right: the brown house of Jordan Smith.
No, he told himself. Not her. She’s not from here. She won’t know how.
Go! he told himself. Gotta go. Gotta get there. Gotta fix what I did.
Make it right filled him. The certainty that he was the last guy who could make it right. Who wouldn’t let what was happening to Marin… Would stop it.
Not Mom, he told himself. Not Dad. They won’t make trouble. But I can make him see. He owes me. Owes it. He’s from here. This is his place. In his blood like it’s in mine. And he’s part of it, so he can do it, he has to do it. Has to.
Luc braked his bike outside the house that didn’t blow up back when.
Heard his sixth grade teacher’s voice through the half-open door: “Please!”
Rita’s voice threw her answer outside to Luc, the slur of her words not softening their jagged edge: “All you can do is stand there ’n’ say please?”
“What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?”
“Don’t give a damn what you say. But what you do, I damn well get to decide that. You think you’re so smart and I’m such a dummy. Well, Mister College, guy I know finished law school. He done it and’ll do it to you. You an’ your Miss Perfect.”
“This isn’t about her.”
“Like hell.”
“It’s us. It’s you. It’s—”
“You don’t give a shit about ‘us’ and you sure ’s shit give it all to her. Least you give her all that you can get away with. That shit better stop, too. ’Cause the one stone-cold certain thing you do give a shit about is your precious Ra’shel.”
“Don’t do this to her!”
“I’m doing what law says I get to. I’m the mother, an’ the law says that counts for everything. ’Specially when it comes to kids whose poppa’s steppin’ out and wantin’ to take her away and Daddy her with some bitch. But the law won’ let that happen. Bet you knew that even ’fore I talked to my suit and tie gunslinger on Main Street. He smiles at me just fine. Likes what my position is. Maybe he likes a little more ’n that, I ain’t decided. But I own your adulterous ass in this town. And I got her, I got Rachel, your precious court of law’ll see to that. You’d die for her, die without her. So that means I got you, now don’t it, Mister Please.”
“You can have it all. The car. The money in our bank account. You can have the clothes off my back.”
“Yeah, you figure on doin’ a lot of no-clothes stuff, don’t you?”
“Look, she’s your daughter, and I don’t want to change that, but… you don’t want to raise her. Be a mom to her like—”
“Like who? Like all the other biddies in this town? Like some teacher bitch from back east? Like somebody who’s good enough for you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You ain’t man enough to say that. Well, don’t you worry about man stuff. Not with Rachel. I’ll take care of that. I’ll teach her real well. Raise her up so she knows all about men. Unless, of course, you’re livin’ right here like a husband and a daddy supposed to and take care of that. Not livin’ ’cross town with a new fancy wife. You do that, the two of you all happy-ever-after, I’ll drive Rachel by your house. Point out where the son-of-a-bitch who’s her daddy and his whore live.”
“You’ll be too drunk to drive!”
“When has that ever stopped me?”
“Why are you doing this? You don’t want me, Rachel—What do you want?”
Leaves skittered down the gutter near where Luc stood.
“I’m no loser! No got-nothing loser. I’m never gonna look in a bar mirror and see loser sitting on my stool. No loser going t’ my high school reunion. I put it out on the line for you. I won you. You promised. So till death do us part. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about that.”
Like a bullet through his heart, Luc knew that was true.
Not a damn thing Neal could do.
And not me either, thought Luc.
He got on his bike. Slowly pedaled away.
Houses he knew floated past him. Gravel crunched under his tires. Trees waved in the evening wind. His eyes fell on his watch: four minutes after six o’clock. Dad and Laura and Mom would be sitting at the dinner table in the yellow kitchen. Dad would say something like: “Practice must have run long.” Laura’d eye her plate, knowing better than to say anything. Mom’s eyes would be nailed to the kitchen clock, to the constant sweep of the red second hand around that circle, each sweep screaming that this was not how things were supposed to be, that now it was time for everyone to be eating the dinner she cooked, that now the universe had been broken and Luc would know that was his fault.
He blinked back to where he was. Squinted in fading daylight. This wasn’t the block he was supposed to be on. Not the way home. This was…
The block where Hal lived—used to live.
What Luc saw there and then hit him harder than King Kong.
Hit him so hard the bike skidded out from under him. He staggered over the potholed road as streetlights winked on in the evening glow.
Hal’s house. Hal’s ordinary American home.
But not anymore. Not ever again, thought Luc.
He saw twinkles from a brown bottle shattered on the porch floor.
Saw red paint scarring the house’s white wall. Scarlet words as tall as him on the white house now painted in the Permanent Record. And no matter how much he wanted them not to be, Luc feared they were true:
TheRe IS NO JusticE in Vernon!