ON A Tuesday the team ran one mile. During drills he kicked with the dirty looking kid.
I’d like a cigarette, the dirty kid said.
Terry kicked the ball flat and straight.
I’d like a cigarette please.
The dirty kid spoke to the air. He let the ball get past, turned on his left heel and took a step, and then he brought it in and kicked it back. He turned his face and looked at some of the others. The coach yelled at them while they kicked. Terry saw a scar on his forehead, a skinny, jagged white line moving from his left eyebrow to the opposite temple, glossed in the light. Terry figured with all the weeks gone by the kid had seen his hands.
You can’t smoke here, the dirty kid said. You can smoke everywhere in Russia, hospitals, even. That’s the thing.
Why don’t you go on and move then? Terry said.
All I need is the money.
The ball passed between them. By then Terry forgot anything he liked about the game. He had played a year some time back, quit, and none since, but on the sideline, during the second scrimmage in two days, he thought it was watching he liked, sitting crossleg on the sideline; calm grace in the ball’s movement over field, through air and light.
Where did you come from, anyway? the dirty kid said.
Issaqueena.
That’s upstate?
I was born in Atlanta, near the baseball field, I think.
I’ve never been there.
There’s a building with a gold roof. The capitol, so they say
Both were quiet a few moments, and then the dirty kid pointed at a tall gangly one who kicked a ways off, near the treeline. He bent down and set a ball carefully in place on the grass. He backed up a few feet, dropped his head, stepped quick and put his foot hard against the white and black checked rubber. The ball ran fast over the ground, popped at the ruts. The other one, ten feet off, gathered it in and held the ball still at his arches. The tall gangly kid bent down and picked something from the field. A ream of smoke came from his head. The other kid then sent the ball hopping back, came over and bent to the ground, same spot as the tall gangly one. After a few moments smoke came from his head, too. Both of them, Terry and the dirty kid, stared that way.
Are they smoking? Terry said.
Looks like it.
You just said you couldn’t.
It’s not cigarettes, fool.
Oh.
The ball passed him, and went toward another set of kids kicking, the whole swath of them on the field. Someone behind said, wake up.
Terry didn’t play during scrimmage, and was glad of it. The sun had gone cold, and everyone on the sidelines wore new navy sweatshirts. He threw his in a brown metal dumpster in back of the vocational building. The dirty looking kid was on the ground beside him watching the game, and the tall gangly kid sat next to him. There were some others who never played slouched on both sides. The coach stood a few feet away. He turned back from the field and looked down at them.
Are you watching this?
They all nodded.
Pay attention, hippies.
He turned back to the game. The dirty kid put his middle finger on his forehead and looked at the coach’s back.
I got your hippie. Damn pirate.
The tall gangly kid laughed, and Terry did, too. He quickly put a hand at his mouth. The laugh surprised him; he’d felt nothing like that in his throat for a long while. The dirty kid stared at the coach’s rounded back.
Sonofabitch can’t tell me that.
A cigarette the coach dropped was still burning. The dirty kid checked to see if he was still turned to the game. He leaned back and picked it up and took a drag. He thumped it down and exhaled. The wind took the smoke away from them, back toward the school.
There wasn’t any avoiding the fact of them; after scrimmage they stood beside his window. Terry rolled it down halfway. Noah had a cigarette in his mouth already; Francis held a pack close to the jamb. Terry got out, followed them across the lot to a white two-door and got inside.
They sped past dead soy and cotton, the machine works, the red tin volunteer fire station. Terry rode in the back.
Noah’s car had a low spoiler on the trunk. The trunk antenna was rusted, broken a point halfway up.
Francis sat in the passenger seat. His hair was long, and matted, the color of dried leaves, looked sealed with spit or petroleum jelly. He twisted pieces with an index finger, pulled them to his mouth and chewed the ends.
They parked at an unfinished drive at the back of the neighborhood, dead end on woods, and two framed houses each side, wooden bone and pink cotton, and red and black wire.
Noah took a joint from the glove box. He put a match on the end and pulled, held his breath when he spoke.
That’s a nickname?
What? Francis said.
Not you, man. I know about your name already Terry
It’s not from that saint, Francis said. I’m not one for animals so much. That saint, he liked animals.
Francis turned at the backseat and looked at Terry
It’s some actress my mom liked actually, he said. But she made it for a man, changed the last letters and all.
He turned back and pointed at Noah.
He’s named for that guy in the bible. The one with that boat. There was a flood, right, a rainbow or something, and he was like nine hundred and fifty years old.
It was my grandfather’s name, man.
Well he was named after that bible guy, then, with the white beard and all those animals. I think they wore robes. Probably he had a staff, and like forty children or a hundred.
People don’t live nine hundred and fifty years.
They did then.
No they didn’t, man. They just kept age different.
Years were worth more?
No.
Well?
Maybe a year was a month, or twenty days, or something like that.
I don’t believe that.
Like I said, it was my grandfather’s name, and he, I’m telling you, never set foot inside a damn church.
My grandfather called Jesus the Hypostatic Union.
Francis leaned over his knees at the floorboard. Noah looked at Terry in the rearview. He shook his head. Francis came up from the floor and kept his face at his lap. He worked on something at his kneecaps.
He was a doctor, my grandfather.
They passed the joint. The car filled with smoke. Noah put the joint out on the dash and kept the roach. They lit cigarettes; Noah’s face rued at the trees in front.
Tasos died, he said.
Francis looked up quick, then back at his lap, pulled on three small tin hoops, key rings laced together, and tried to get them apart.
That weightlifter? he said.
Corman said he jumped out the back of a truck.
Bit to the right side of his mouth, the ash on Noah’s cigarette crawled back some, then stayed, and then it burned back some more.
He tried to choke me once, Francis said.
Somebody else said he just fell over the side and got up under the tires. It like, took his legs off.
He was a damn pimp.
What kind of name is Tasos? Terry said.
Spanish, Francis said.
He’s fucking Mexican, Noah said.
I just said that.
Noah pushed his cigarette at the ashtray beneath the radio. He got out another and mouthed the end to the popped car lighter, wire face hot orange from the battery. Francis threw the tin rings on the floor of the car; broken twigs and driveway flagstone caught in deep cigarette burns on the green floor mat.
Dammit, Francis said. I can’t ever get those things apart.
It was a toy, a puzzle.
That goddamn Warren can do it, Francis said.
He put his face on the window. They kept smoking and then were quiet.
You ever seen a ninja ball? Francis said.
Noah looked at him.
I’ve heard of ninja stars.
Francis turned around to the backseat. He looked cold and sure.
You? he said.
Terry shook his chin, put his left hand to the door latch and lifted it some, and then he let it go, brought the hand down to his lap and raised the other one and pulled on his cigarette.
Nah, he said. I’ve never heard of those. Only ninja swords. And those sticks connected by chains they swing around.
Francis turned back to Noah.
Stars aren’t even close to the same thing, he said.
Alright, Noah said.
You can only throw those at people, he said. They’re like little knives. Haven’t you ever seen any movies? Sometimes I think you’re a foreigner. Ninjas throw balls down, smoke comes out and so forth. I got some from the flea market. We could use them to escape from something.
Terry started to twitch a strange way. He couldn’t figure his movements, white fast and random, like tiny clouds exploding, or cotton heads chewed by a grasshopper swarm.
Are you from Bogota or something?
What?
The capital of Colombia, man. Don’t you pay attention in map class?
I hate it.
Well, I do. I pay attention all right.
In the rearview Noah scratched his head, eyes the color burnt red rock, streetlamp behind them a match burnt out.
I’m not out to hurt anyone is all, Francis said. We all keep hurting each other really bad, and we should stop.
Terry was having a hard time blinking his eyes.