He drives through Guthrie and Langston and then Coyle under a thin cold sky sown with fat little lead-bellied puffclouds that shadow the gullies and creeks and cattle wallows with somber, Holstein-looking spots and generally reflect Ben’s wretched state of mind, which is irredeemably hung over. The road snakes alongside and then over and beyond the Cimarron River, the mud-brown shove of the water beneath the bridge bringing back countless lazy summer afternoons spent tending trotlines with Cecil before he was broken, the two of them chawing on bittersweet plugs of Red Man tobacco and doing their damnedest to master the casual craft of spitting into a soup can, an art that must have required more habitual practice than they were putting in because neither brother ever quite got the hang of it.
He finds Cecil flaunting his gaudy game-day boots, corn chips and guacamole spread out on the coffee table, tallboys cooling in the fridge, the Final Four playing on the TV.
“Sutton’s wearing his Cheshire-cat tie,” Cecil announces as Ben wilts into the couch cushions. “Grab a cold one.”
But Ben’s too tired for drinking and says so.
“Oklahoma State has some momentum heading into this match,” Dick Enberg is saying in that paternal television patter of his. “Eddie Sutton’s team is coming off of a seven-game winning streak. But these Bruins are so good at execution. Coach Harrick has assembled a deep bench of players who can handle the ball well and drive for the basket. If the Cowboys aren’t careful, UCLA will bounce them right out of the tournament tonight.”
Tip-off’s any second now. Bryant Reeves and UCLA’s big man George Zidek are both moseying toward center court. A Czech immigrant, Zidek appears to be at least as talented as Reeves. An infographic appears onscreen, BIG COUNTRY vs. FOREIGN COUNTRY, comparing their stats. The Bruins are wearing white, the Pokes in black. Then the referee is tooting on his whistle and their boys are scrambling for the rock and now here it is, the biggest game since just about ever, and Ben has lost all interest in seeing it.
Ben reaches for the remote and mutes the set.
“Hey now!” says Cecil.
“What do you think Dad would have done if he’d known the truth about who was driving?”
“I don’t expect you’d of lived through the night.”
“Remember how sometimes they’d try and curse?”
“Mother and Dad?”
Cecil chuckles.
Ben summons a smile.
“Oh . . . my,” Cecil tries to sing, a splintery smoker’s falsetto.
“Land sakes,” Ben coos, imitating Mother.
“Oh . . . sugar.”
“Shinola.”
“Boy, I’m fixin’ to beat tarnation out of you.”
“Gosh-a-livin’s!”
“Those slow-as-molasses accents.”
“You’re one to talk about accents.”
Making fun of Mother and Dad has always been out of bounds. But once the brothers get started, neither of them wants to stop.
“Blast you son!” Cecil roars.
“By ginger!”
“Ding you, boy!”
“Lawdy me!”
“We’re missing the game, brother,” Cecil says.
“Didn’t you say it’s only the last two minutes that count?”
“Remember when you ran over that milk cow with the tractor?”
Now his shirt is tickling him and no matter which way Ben wiggles it won’t let up.
In an elaborate and theatrical gesture Cecil frames the past with those big hands.
“Let me paint the scene.”
“Please,” Ben tries to say above his giggling, “don’t.”
“The baler’s knocking along behind that tractor like an anchor. That dadgum dairy cow just standing there, stupid-faced, directly in your path. But you don’t see her until it’s too late.”
“You said . . .” Ben cackles, “dadgum.”
“By the time you finally stop the tractor me and Dad are clipping across the field to see what’s what. We only had three milk cows, if you’ll remember. And now this one’s leg is broken. So dad unfolds his buck knife and slits open the animal’s throat and we lift that poor cow into the truck bed and haul it cross-lots for slaughtering. The butcher carves the carcass into what cuts he can salvage.”
“And we eat grass-fed Holstein for a month.”
“The fat on it was green, Ben. All thanks to you.”
“Dad was mad. He never mentioned it to me again. Not once.”
“I remember your kids used to read Green Eggs and Ham when they were staying over. Aloud, Ben. To me. Whenever Sarah started in on that story I’d taste my lunch coming up.”
It goes on like this for hours, the Porter brothers so busy talking, laughing and giggling so eagerly about the past and the accident that changed everything, their hopes and their regrets and their women and whatever cork it was that had bunged up in their Dad’s ass, that when the Cowboys ultimately lose to the Bruins and drop out of the tournament altogether, at first neither of them takes any notice whatsoever.