Reality Check Page 4

  “What are you saying?”

  “They look for good players. Take Williams, for example. It’s out in the country, really beautiful, and they play in a D-3 league. You could be the big star, easy.”

  45

  Cody had never heard of Williams; and playing D-3? What was even the point? “I don’t understand,” he said. Clea’s foot moved under the table, found his, pressed against it once more. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “These two years,” she said. “Junior and senior—they’re just going to fly by.”

  “And then?”

  “Then? We could go to college together, you and me, get an apartment off campus, just really . . . live.”

  “Are you nuts? You think I could get into Harvard?”

  “Maybe not Harvard. Some of the others on the list are easier to get into—I’ve done some checking. And they look for football players, I told you. As long as you do half decent in school, football gets you in.”

  “And who’s going to pay?”

  “These colleges are all loaded. They give out grants. You wouldn’t have to pay a dime. And till then we have the summers, and all the holidays, and—and maybe you could even come and visit me once or twice.”

  “In Vermont?”

  She nodded.

  Did it all sound impossible? Not to Cody, not then.

  “Still mad at me?” she said.

  46

  “No,” Cody said. “And I wasn’t mad.”

  She smiled. “Then let’s go somewhere. I have to get back at four.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s when they’re coming for Bud.”

  “You’re selling him?”

  “Sell Bud?” Clea said. “He’s going, too.”

  “Going where?”

  “To Dover. They’ve got an equestrian team. The coach thinks I’ll be on varsity right away.”

  Although it made no sense, that was the moment—hearing the news about Bud—when Cody felt a first little twinge of impossibility.

  After he dropped Clea off—the horse trailer was already in the driveway at Cottonwood—Cody stopped at the cable office and paid three months in advance, the least they’d allow, for a DSL

  hookup. One way or another, college was coming; he had to be ready. He had everything installed and working right, was watching a YouTube video of the Willams College team—they didn’t look particularly big or fast; in fact, he was sure he’d played against at least some better players already—when his father came in, carrying a case of twenty-four.

  “Cody, Cody, Cody,” his father said. “What’s up?” He was 47

  in one of those good moods; they just seemed to happen sometimes.

  “Not much.”

  “Want a bevo?” Bevo was a word his father used for beer, but only at good-mood times. Offering one to Cody? Maybe once or twice before. Cody said what he’d said on those occasions.

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” His father snapped one open, came over to the computer. “What’s this?” he said, maybe not even noticing how fast the computer was running now; his father didn’t seem to have any interest in online things.

  “College football.”

  “Yeah?” His father leaned over Cody’s shoulder. “Don’t recognize the teams.”

  “Williams versus Amherst,” Cody said. “Williams is in purple.”

  “Never heard of neither of them,” his father said. He watched for a minute or so. “Can’t play for shit,” he said.

  “What’s so interesting?”

  Cody had no intention of giving anything like a real answer, but at that moment something happened that hadn’t happened in a long, long time. His father touched Cody’s shoulder. A light touch, almost shy, if that made any sense, and then gone.

  48

  “I want to go to college,” Cody said.

  “Yeah? That’s a long way off. Don’t want to get ahead of yourself—see how this season goes first. Junior year’s the biggie.” His father watched a little more of the YouTube highlight. “And you wouldn’t want to end up playin’ with a bunch of plumbers like them guys.”

  “I don’t know,” Cody said. “There’s more to college than football.”

  “Maybe for some,” said his father.

  For me, Dad. For me. But Cody didn’t say that. Instead, to his own surprise and embarrassment, out came: “Clea’s leaving.”

  “Huh?”

  Cody went silent. His father knew he and Clea were going out, had made an astonished kind of face on first learning the news, and Cody had divulged just about nothing since.

  “What do you mean—she’s leaving?”

  Cody shrugged.

  “Leaving for where? The Westons are moving?”

  Cody shook his head, took a deep breath, blew it out. “Just her. They’re sending her to boarding school in Vermont.”

  “So you broke up?”

  Cody turned to his father. “No,” he said.

  His father’s good mood started slipping away; Cody could see it on his face, like clouds moving in. “Gotta be realistic in 49

  life,” his father said. “Life like ours, verse the Weston types.”

  Versus, not verse: Why did his father, and so many other people Cody knew, always get that wrong? The little detail maddened him almost more than his father’s whole statement.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

  His father didn’t like that tone, got a mean look in his eye, but no hitting would happen now: Those days were over, on account of this fairly recent size difference. Instead, his father backed away, toward the counter where the case of beer sat waiting. “Girl like her,” he said, reaching for a fresh one, “where she’s going you can’t follow. Best to make a clean break, best for the both of you.” His father went into the bedroom and closed the door.

  Cody went online, found the Dover website, looked at pictures of the kind of kid who went there. Tuesday Cody went to work. No reason not to: Fran was taking Clea shopping in Denver and they wouldn’t be back till after supper. Or dinner, as the Westons called it. What was that expression from science? Fault line? Was there a fault line between supper people and dinner people? Fault lines, Cody remembered, were where earthquakes happened.

  “Quiet today,” said Frank Pruitt, as they drove up to a mall under construction in the middle of nowhere, a half ton of two50 by-fours in back. “Somethin’ on your mind?”

  “Just, um, a little tired,” Cody said.

  “Okeydoke,” said Frank.

  It was close to sunset when Clea called. “I’m back,” she said. Cody drove over. Clea was waiting in the driveway. Cody parked and got out of the car.

  “I have to get up at three thirty,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know.” The sky was blazing in the west, a blaze reflected in Cottonwood’s many windows, as though the house were on fire.

  Clea leaned forward, nuzzled her head against his shoulder. “Good-byes suck,” she said. Cody could foresee a whole future of good-byes suck, like some scene shrinking in a series of funhouse mirrors. And there he was in the scene, getting smaller and smaller, but still in Clea’s life, standing between her and opportunity: the true picture—at that moment, he was sure—and it had come from his father, of all people. He backed away, let her go.

  “I think we should break up,” he said.

  Clea’s eyes opened wide, her mouth, too. “What did you say?”

  Cody made himself repeat it.

  “But—but why?” she said.

  51

  “I just think we should.”

  “You don’t mean it.”

  “I do.”

  “Explain.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” Clea said. “Are you saying you don’t love me anymore? Because that’s the only reason there could be for breaking up.”

  Cody shivered, couldn’t help himself. “Yeah. I’m saying it.”

/>   “You don’t love me anymore?”

  “No.”

  “Then—” She started to cry. “Then what was yesterday all about?”

  “I can’t say,” said Cody.

  “You can’t say?” Her tears dried up and anger caught fire.

  “What the fuck? You can’t say what yesterday was all about?”

  The only thought that came to him was this: Screw your courage to the sticking-place. He shook his head.

  “And all the other times? Are you just a liar?”

  A jumble of words got stuck in his throat, almost choked him. He shook his head again.

  “Say something! Talk! Explain!”

  Cody screwed his courage to the sticking-place. “I don’t love you anymore.”

  52

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  That left him nothing but the biggest lie of all. It almost made him sick to say it. “And never did.”

  Clea slapped his face, good and hard. Then she whirled around and ran into her house, stumbling a little on the stairs. Cody kicked his car as strong and viciously as he could, leaving a big dent in the fender. Overhead the sky turned dark purple. 53

  COACH HUFF HAD A SIGN over the locker-room door: RUN FASTER, HIT HARDER, BE SMARTER. Right from the first practice, Cody knew he was running faster—the stopwatch told him that. And when they got the pads on and started hitting one-on-one, he knew he was hitting harder from the way some of the kids didn’t seem to want to go up against him, shuffling to other places in the line. Not Junior Riggins, of course. Junior loved hitting anyone. He even did sound effects, like it was a video game. “Bam! Crunch! Kapow!” Coach Huff loved to watch Junior hit people.

  “Tha’s the way, campers, tha’s the way.”

  As for being smarter, Cody wasn’t sure about that. But running the Rattlers’ wing-T offense didn’t require much intelligence. They had hardly any plays: counter, draw, dive, sweep, option, plus three passing plays of which two were hardly ever used. The third, blue three, a post to Dickie van Slyke, the wingback, off a play-action fake, was never used, never even practiced, but it was Cody’s favorite because it kind of resembled a real NFL play. Once in a while Cody, Dickie, and Jamal Sayers, the tailback, would linger after practice, fool around a bit by themselves with blue three.

  “What we do, campers,” Coach Huff liked to say, “we run it down their throats.” Sometimes he said, “We run it down their fuckin’ throats.” If a teacher was around, he added, “Pardon my French.” Back in freshman year—Cody and Junior had both made the varsity, Junior even starting most of the time—Junior had asked Cody if fuckin’ really was French. Cody hadn’t known. He’d looked it up, found that the derivation was complicated, uncertain. In fact, the whole history of the word, apparently thought of as a bad one from early times, was kind of interesting: He’d never thought about where words came from.

  “Not French,” he’d reported back to Junior.

  Junior had shaken his head. “Coach Huff don’t know shit,”

  he’d said.

  The week before school started, the two-a-day practices began, so Cody’s last day of work was the Saturday. Sue 55

  Beezon handed him his check. “A job’s waiting for you anytime, Cody.”

  “Hey, thanks. Maybe next summer.”

  “See you then. Good luck on the field.”

  A heat wave moved in, stayed for the whole week, made Coach Huff very happy. “Just what we need,” he said, dripping sweat even though he was doing nothing harder than fanning himself with the playbook: “Toughen you up. Case you haven’t noticed, we ain’t the County Creampuffs. What are we?”

  “Rattlers,” they’d all shouted. Coach Huff had cupped his hand to his ear and they’d shouted it again, this time at the top of their lungs, their faces all red, practice uniforms soaked right through, vomit patches fermenting here and there on the turf. Cody was so whipped at the end of each day that his mind was completely blank, which was fine with him. He hardly thought about Clea at all.

  The last Saturday before school, they took the bus up into the mountains to play Foothills High, their oldest rival and Thanksgiving Day opponent. Even though the starters were all out by the end of the third quarter, they still won 43–6. Hey!

  They were good. No one said it, of course: Saying anything like that meant laps, and lots of them. Cody had scored one touchdown on a ten-yard keeper, pitched to Jamal, a senior and star 56

  of the team—from Texas, but his father had been posted to the base in Little Bend the year before, maybe the happiest day in Coach Huff’s whole life—for three more. College scouts came to watch Jamal play; even at this preseason scrimmage, there were at least three or four. One of them approached Cody at the end of the game, as the players walked off the field.

  “Hey, Cody, Tug Brister”—or some name like that—“from Penn State.”

  “Uh, hi,” said Cody. They shook hands.

  “Like the way you play football, son.”

  “Um,” said Cody. “Uh.”

  “Ever been to Pennsylvania?”

  “Uh-uh,” said Cody. “No. Sir.”

  “Prettiest state in the whole union.”

  Cody hadn’t known that, knew very little about the state of Pennsylvania. But Penn State—that was different. He knew lots about Penn State football.

  “Keep doin’ what you’re doin,” said the scout. “Might be able to arrange a little meet-and-greet in the spring.”

  “Meet-and-greet?”

  “A visit, like,” said the scout. “To State College, all expenses paid.”

  “That would be . . . nice.” Nice? Couldn’t he have done better than that? A trip to State College, meaning he was being 57

  recruited by Penn State, would be awesome, fantastic, incredible. But too late: They were already shaking hands again. That night despite how tired he was, Cody lay awake for hours, thinking about Clea’s college plan.

  Foothills High was their oldest rival, but Bridger was the biggest school in the conference and had fielded the best teams for the past four or five seasons, even going to the state championship the year before. They had huge linemen, an all-state quarterback who could really throw, and a tailback and linebacker named Martinelli, bigger than Jamal and just as fast, who ranked number seventy-one on ESPN’s list of the top one hundred high school players in the country.

  The game was at Bridger, big crowd, first Friday night of the season, lights on but overwhelmed at the start by a wild western sunset, the sky all red and gold. The Rattlers, in their white road jerseys and blue pants, gathered around Coach Huff. “Team,” he said. “Play as a team and you’ll win.” He held up his hand. The Rattlers all reached for it, coming together.

  “Run it down their fuckin’ throats,” said Coach Huff. The Rattlers roared. Bridger won the toss and the Rattlers kicked off. Bridger marched right down the field, running Martinelli on sweeps, sometimes passing to number 80, a tall tight end, right over 58

  the middle. Cody played safety on defense, meaning right over the middle was his responsibility. Number 80 would slant in, taking three big strides, then turn and the ball would be there. All Cody could do was hit him right on the numbers as hard as he could, hoping to jar the ball loose. But the ball never came loose; number 80 didn’t fight for extra yardage, was content to go down, both arms wrapped around the ball, reeling off six or seven yards a pop. The opening drive took half the first quarter: Bridger 7, Rattlers 0. Dickie ran the kickoff back to midfield, and Jamal ran a sweep left, smothered by Martinelli for no gain; followed by an option right with a pitch to Jamal that went for three yards; and then an option right where Cody kept the ball, made what he thought was a nice move, and then got flattened by Martinelli, who’d somehow come all the way over from the other side, all his breath knocked clean out of him. No one had ever hit Cody harder, except for maybe Junior in practice. Cody fumbled the ball—was aware of it bouncing out of bounds, thank God—and then went a bit foggy. He tried to rise,
failed, and was trying again when Junior reached down and helped him up. Cody staggered the slightest bit—surely not noticeable—and lined up for the punt, playing deep blocker. Jamal punted the ball away.

  Cody remained foggy for most of the rest of the game, little 59

  of which stayed in his memory. On the next Bridger series, something happened in a pileup that pissed Junior off, pissed him off big-time. He went a bit crazy and there was no stopping him after that. Bridger double-teamed and triple-teamed him but none of it did any good. Junior mauled them all, doing his video-game sound effects at the same time: “Bam! Crunch! Kapow!” He put their center out of the game, and then the tight end, number 80, too, taking away that problem. Bridger’s offense ground to a halt.

  But Bridger’s defense held. When they saw that the Rattlers weren’t going to pass, they put everyone in the box and managed to stack up most of Jamal’s runs despite Junior’s blocking. At halftime, Cody, puking quietly in the toilet, heard Coach Huff from the locker room on the other side of the wall:

  “Got ’em right where we want ’em.” But they were still down seven–zip. On the way back out to the field, Cody said something—he wasn’t quite sure what—about maybe trying a pass. Coach Huff’s face went all red. “Dint you get the message yet? We’re gonna run it down their fuckin’ throats.”

  The Rattlers went back out, resumed trying to run it down Bridger’s fuckin’ throats. They started moving the ball a bit better, getting some first downs. Junior put another kid on the sidelines. Jamal almost broke off a long run on a dive up the middle, Martinelli making a shoestring tackle. But every drive ended up stalling outside field goal territory, which in 60

  the Rattlers’ case was about the twenty, although Dickie, their kicker, could easily miss from closer than that. And the whole time, through the third quarter and into the fourth, the fog in Cody’s mind just wouldn’t lift.

  With less than a minute to go in the game, score still seven–zip, Rattlers’ ball on their own thirty-two, and no time-outs remaining, Coach Huff called yet another option left. Cody took off, saw that Martinelli was shading toward Jamal, and cut inside, taking off for a fifteen-yard run that ended with another huge hit. Cody didn’t have to look to see who it was; by now he knew Martinelli just by feel. But then a funny thing happened: His head cleared, just like that, as though Martinelli had descrambled what he’d originally scrambled.