Dairy Queen (11 page)

"You cut that out, Norm!" I shouted. "You do that somewhere else!"

"What's that cow's name?" Brian asked.

"The heifer? Norm Van Brocklin."

"Who's that?"

"The first Vikings coach. Back in the sixties."

"How about that one?"

"Jerry Burns."

"I know him! He was a Viking coach too." Brian seemed pleased he knew that.

"That's what Dad wanted this year. Vikings staff."

"Why'd he use coaches instead of football players?"

I shrugged like I didn't know the answer. "I remember one year I showed a heifer named Lee Roy Jordan."

"You what?"

"You know, the 4-H fair? You must go sometimes for the carnival rides."

"You showed cows?" Brian looked amazed.

"Well, duh, look where we live. Lee Roy Jordan was some University of Alabama tackle from back in the sixties. These old farmers would pass by and see that name and light up. 'Remember the Orange Bowl? Remember that play?' I heard more about that one game..."

And that was how our days went. We painted and worked out and trained, and Rick Leach (Michigan) and Sidney Williams (Wisconsin) both calved, so we had little baby heifers to feed, which is more work but they're so cute it's worth it. Dad named them Max Winter and Bert Rose after the Vikings' first president and general manager from 1961 when Dad as a kid decided that a start-up team like that would need a player like him someday, which is how all us Schwenks ended up not being Packers fans. Brian brought a whole bunch of those little triangular flags from his dad's truck dealership and strung them around the field to keep the heifers off the grass, which made our football field look extra great. But mainly what I remember is talking. Eating brownies, lots of them, but mainly just talking. Being with Brian, it was like I was practicing something I'd never known I needed but I might need again sometime, so getting it down—figuring out how to talk—would probably be a good idea.

I say that's how the week went, and it was pretty great in the beginning. But then things began to get a little intense. For one thing, Dad and the brownies—well, let's just say I never knew baking powder was so important. And then there was the subject of Curtis.

On Wednesday, Dad and Curtis had to go back to the dentist. Curtis had a cavity even though he flosses every night, which I find kind of unusual for a kid who's not all that big on personal hygiene. Dad was disgusted. "It's microscopic, for Pete's sake." He kept popping his teeth out to make the point. Which was something I really wanted Brian to see.

"It's important" was all Curtis would say.

Once they left we went out to work on Brian's arm. Again. As he passed me the football he asked, "How come Curtis never talks?"

"He talks," I said. "He talks to his friends, I think."

"You think?"

"He's not retarded," I said defensively.

"Of course he's not retarded! I didn't say he was retarded."

"They keep testing him at school. But he's not. There's nothing wrong with him."

Brian eyed me. "Why do you think they're testing him, then?"

"Move your feet more," I said for the millionth time. We passed the football for a few minutes, me not saying a word while I thought about all this.

"Never mind," Brian said finally. "Forget I said anything."

"So what do you think is wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing. I don't think it's anything. It's just, my mother..."

"Your mother thinks there's something wrong with Curtis?" I couldn't believe it.

"She's with this group called Talk Back. She goes all over Wisconsin talking to church groups."

"Talk Back? That's really what it's called? You're supposed to walk into some church basement and say, 'I'm here to learn how to Talk Back?'" It was a little mean, I know, but it made me mad, the thought of Brian and his mom sitting around talking about how screwed up Curtis was, and the rest of us too, probably.

"It's a stupid name, I know. It's just to get families communicating and stuff."

"Does it work?"

Brian shrugged. "I don't know. She's so busy helping families that she's never home. It's kind of funny, actually, that part of it." But he didn't look like he thought it was funny at all.

And then there was this long, awkward silence.

"Is that how you know about that passive thing you called me?" I had to ask.

"What, passive-aggressive? Yeah, I guess so."

That made me feel better, knowing there was a reason he knew fancy terms like that. He'd picked them up from his mother. "So is your mom like Oprah Winfrey?" I asked. Because that was the only person I could think of who would do stuff like trying to get families to talk to each other.

Brian nodded. "Yeah. In fact, my mom
is
Oprah Winfrey."

"She is not," I said. "Oprah Winfrey doesn't live in Wisconsin."

At that we both cracked up.

"So is your mom ever on her show?" I asked.

"Oh, all the time. They're like best friends."

Which made us laugh even more.

Once that whole Talk Back thing came out, though, I couldn't get it out of my mind. That image of Brian and his truck salesman dad and Oprah Winfrey sitting around the kitchen table, talking through family problems—sheesh. That was hard enough. But it also seemed like Oprah Winfrey was rubbing off on us too, and all our talk.

Friday morning as we were painting Brian said, "So, your brothers are working at a football camp, right?"

I shrugged.

"What's with you?" He waited but I didn't say anything. "Okay. Is this one of your 'I'm waiting for you to say something' silences or one of your 'I'm trying to figure out what to say' silences or one of your 'I don't want to talk about it' silences?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay. I just think you might want to talk about it. In our family we talk all the time."

"About my brothers?" I asked sarcastically.

"About problems. That's what you do in a family—you talk about things."

"And all that talk makes you happy?"

There was a bit of a silence. "Drop dead," he said.

And we didn't say anything else until lunchtime, when things kind of went back to normal.

Jogging that afternoon, Brian asked what I was up to for the weekend and I said, "Nothing," which pretty much summed it up, and then just to be polite I asked what he was doing.

He sighed. "Colleges. We already went out a couple of times, but I'm narrowing it down now, and I want to talk to coaches before the season starts..."

Silence.

"Why aren't you saying anything?"

"What? It's great, your looking at colleges. That's real important."

"Why? Aren't you thinking about that stuff?"

I had to laugh, but it wasn't one of those laughs like it was funny. It was one of the laughs like it wasn't. "A, we can't afford it. B, I'm only going to be a junior, and C..." I didn't want to bring up C.

"What do you mean, you can't afford it? Your brothers are going."

"Yeah, on football scholarships. Which if you haven't noticed I can't get."

"There's basketball. You should be able to get something, at least."

"Yeah, well, they don't like it too much when you miss your sophomore year because your dad won't get a stupid operation. And they also don't like too much those big fat F's on your transcript." It's funny, part of me didn't want Brian to know in a million years about my failing, but the other part felt it was really important to tell him.

"They'd understand about your dad—wait, an F? You flunked a class?" Brian was so surprised he stopped running. I kept walking, at least, because I had to do something.

"Yup. Sophomore English." I kicked a stone out of the road.

"But you're not—come on—"

"You mean I'm not a total idiot?"

"That's not what I meant." Though it kind of was.

"Me and Curtis, a couple of morons. Wouldn't your mother have fun with us."

"Come on, stop it. What happened?"

I kicked another stone. "Nothing. I was supposed to write these papers and I didn't because I was so busy with the farm, and I flunked."

"If you wrote the papers could they change it? The grade?"

"They say they can, but I'm not writing them, so it really doesn't matter, does it?"

"I'll write them if you want," he offered like it was the most casual thing in the world.

I stopped and stared at him.

"What?"

"You don't even know what they're about."

"It doesn't matter. You just sling it the right way. The words, I mean," he added.

"I know..." It just knocked me out, that Brian could just write a paper like that, just "sling it" when the only thing I knew how to sling was cow poop. Maybe I was a moron.

"Hey," Brian offered, "at least you don't have Jimmy Ott telling everyone what a bum you are."

And that cheered me up—it really did. It reminded me of how Jimmy sent Brian over in the first place, and how much Jimmy liked me and all of us Schwenks even though we don't talk much and can't write about Shakespeare.

At that moment what I really wanted was for Brian to put his arm around my shoulders the way they do in TV ads. But that pretty clearly wasn't going to happen, so instead I punched him, right there at the bottom of his deltoid where it felt nice and solid, and then Smut came tearing down the road to see us and Brian left for the day. For his big senior year college trip, while I stayed on the farm doing nothing.

I kind of figured that once he left my brain would go back to the I-am-a-cow business, and sure enough it did. It started right away at dinner, when I noticed how tired Mom looked. Now that I thought about it, she was a cow too. Just as much as me or the checkout ladies at the supermarket. She didn't want that extra job, but when they asked her to do it she took it without even thinking she could say no. She walked right into that milking stall of a principal's office.

That made me really depressed, as depressed as the thought of me as a cow, I guess because it didn't give me much to look forward to. It's one thing thinking that you're a cow when you're a teenager or a farmer, or a checkout lady. But Mom had a real job, with a real office—at least until they hired the permanent principal—and a real classroom she taught in, and her life sounded even worse than mine. She'd had all that time to find something to do with her life, and this is what she ended up with?

So you can see how cheery I was.

Then in bed I started thinking about Win and Bill and
their
lives, what I knew about them, anyway. It sounds stupid at first, but when you think about it, football players don't have it much better. They do what you tell them to do, they stand where you tell them to stand, and the whole point of it is to produce something for other people. No one plays football just because they love the game. I mean, they do love it, but anyone could do that, even guys who stink. Football players play so people can watch them and get excited and buy tickets and clothing and stuff. So people will have something to talk about on Monday mornings. And it's not like football players get treated any better than cows do. Sure, they get doctors just like cows get vets. But when they're old and hurt like my dad is, there's not some big old wallet of money from people saying, Thank you for feeding us all that excitement and tickets and stuff to watch on TV Last year Bill was friends with a tackle who tore up his knee, and they kicked him right out of college. He couldn't feed them anything anymore. If that's not the same as leading a cow into a cattle dealer's truck, I don't know what is.

Then I started thinking that maybe everyone in the whole world was just like a cow, and we all go along doing what we're supposed to without complaining or even really noticing, until we die. Stocking groceries and selling cars and teaching school and cashing checks and raising kids, all these jobs that people just one day start doing without even really thinking about it, walking right into their milking stall the way that heifers do after they've had their first calf and start getting milked for the first time. Until we die. And maybe that's all there is to life.

And that's what I thought about all night long. All this stuff you never hear on Oprah Winfrey, which you can understand because if I got on the show and started talking, everyone in the audience would probably kill themselves.

As you might imagine, the weekend went downhill from there.

The next morning when I came in from milking, Mom and Dad were rushing around like the house was on fire as Curtis sat there in his baseball uniform eating breakfast. I guess I should have mentioned before now that his big state Little League quarterfinals were today. And that this was a big deal, and someone had sent over a bunch of good luck balloons, and that my folks were planning to drive to Green Bay in a caravan with other families and fans. The whole thing. But you know what? This isn't Curtis's story, it's mine. And by this point I was pretty sick of Little League. Because if it weren't for baseball he and I would be managing the farm just fine, and then Jimmy Ott never would have sent Brian over to help us out and so I wouldn't know that my life and everyone's life was just like a cow's, and I wouldn't have to think about Brian's Oprah Winfrey mother and whatever it is she says about Curtis never talking, and all in all my life would be a whole lot simpler.

"Aren't you going to wish Curtis good luck?" Mom asked. Dad gave me a look.

So I said, "Hope you win," just wanting them gone so much.

But when they left I felt like I was on a deserted island or something, I was so alone. I couldn't even nap. I kept thinking about Brian on his fancy college tour, and eventually just to torture myself I went over to my desk and read through the letters I'd gotten.

It's not a desk, really, it's my Grandma Joyce's sewing table, but we took out the sewing machine to make room for my legs. I'd kept all my letters from college basketball coaches. Most were just computer-printout letters they'd sent a thousand girls. But I got a few just to me from coaches who'd come to my games, asking me to keep them posted about how I was doing and my upcoming year and everything. And then one letter, the worst one, was from a coach who I guess had called the school later, and she wrote saying that she was sorry but because I'd quit she couldn't look at me anymore because there were so many other good players out there who could at least finish a season. That was her point, anyway.