Knights of the Hill Country (17 page)

But soon as the words dropped out of my mouth, every ounce of wary done evaporated right out of Sara's eyes, and that good old sad-soulful look filled them up again. She even admired the idea that I wanted to watch out for my mom like that. Too many kids got up into junior high and high school and quit caring about what their folks done, she said. They thought they lived in two different universes or something, but when you got right down to it, there wasn't but one universe for everyone.

I was still mulling this over while she led the way through them canyons of bookshelves to the very back of the library where the dusty volumes of Kennisaw High annuals was lined up one after another. I wasn't exactly sure how old Tommy Don Coleridge was, so we took us down several books and hauled them over to a table and started in searching.

It was a funny feeling, looking back at the faces of them students from way back when, about the same as how I felt traipsing through the dark halls of Malcolm Hickey Elementary that night I went in for Misty Koonce's trophy. Here they was, the high schoolers of Kennisaw down through the years with their different hairstyles and clothes, all the bright eyes and smiles. Kids who was grown up by now, gray in their hair and lines on their faces, kids of their own grinning in
other yearbooks somewheres up on the shelf. It was a good feeling and a sad feeling both at the same time. Everything and everyone changed, and that was what always stayed the same.

“It looks like these were some pretty good times back then,” Sara said.

I had to agree with that. “Yep, life looked like it was a whole lot simpler in them days.”

She turned the page. “I suppose our lives would seem pretty simple too—if you just went by the pictures.”

I thought of some pictures I had taken with Blaine and some of me and my mother. “I guess you're right about that.”

I was enjoying setting there with Sara so much, I about forgot what we was doing, but then I spotted him. Tommy Don Coleridge in his junior year. That photo of his nearly jumped off the page. For one thing, he was probably the only boy in the whole book with long hair, but more than that, he just had a spark about him none of the others had. A real confident look in his eyes and a smile that made him seem like he was plotting up some mischief to do as soon as the camera got done clicking.

“Boy,” Sara said. “He's handsome.”

“You think so?”

“Kind of. If you like the type.”

I wasn't much on judging handsome, but I had to admit Tommy Don probably never hurt much for dates on Saturday nights. “Maybe there's a picture of him on the football team in the back.”

Sure enough, there he was in the team picture, long hair and all. And right next to him stood T. Roy Strong.

“Wait a minute here.” I grabbed the yearbook and looked
at the date on the front. It was true. He never mentioned it once when he was over at our house, but he sure was. All them years back, he was right there on the greatest of the great Knights teams, a wide receiver, catching passes from T. Roy Strong hisself. There was even a separate picture of them together, along with a running back I hadn't never heard of. The caption at the bottom read “The Big Three— T. Roy Strong, Bo Early, and Tommy Don Coleridge— Kennisaw's triple threat.”

“I can't believe it,” I said.

“I guess he must've been pretty good.”

“He must've been
real
good.”

“You can't always tell a lot by that, though.” Sara turned to the back of the book and started thumbing through the index to see what other high school accomplishments he had. There was a lot. Newspaper editor, Latin club president, student council, National Honor Society, art club, basketball, baseball. They even had a picture of him wearing these raggedy overalls for a comical skit in a school hootenanny, a big giant cowboy hat cocked up on his head and a corncob pipe stuck in his teeth.

“Wow,” Sara said. “Unless he's changed since then, it looks like your mom might've found herself a real good guy.”

“I guess.” It did seem that way, all right, but something didn't add up. Why would Blaine's dad and the Rusty Nail boys have such low opinions of a guy like we was looking at here?

“She's lucky.” Sara stared down at the hootenanny picture. “It looks like she's got two real good guys in her life.”

“No,” I said. “Just one. She ain't seeing that car-lot guy no more.”

She laughed. “I was talking about
you
. You're the other good guy in her life. I mean, going to this much trouble to watch out for her and all.”

“Oh.” I looked down and rubbed my hand across the short bristles on top of my head.

“It's just kind of hard to figure. I mean, the way you are now and the way you are in class and that night we went over to the café to study, and then how you were at the park. One second we were just talking away, and then the next second, you're in the middle of a fight with boys you didn't even know.”

There it was. I knew it was bound to come up, but all I could think to say was, “I can't figure it neither. I ain't usually like that. It just started happening so fast.”

“I like you this way a lot better.” She looked at me through a couple loose strands of hair, and it seemed like maybe she was trying to figure whuther I was glad she felt like that or not.

“Well,” I said before I could think too much and throw myself off. “You know, if you wanted to go do something sometime, I could pretty much guarantee you I wouldn't get in a fight this time.”

She gave it a little bitty smile then. “I'd like that.”

“You know what I was thinking?” I charged right on ahead. “I was thinking about how you said you'd like to take a walk out in the country like we was talking about over there at Sweet's that time, and so I figured maybe we could do that this Saturday.”

“Saturday?” Them little fingers of hers traced a nervous squiggly line on the tabletop. “I thought you'd be celebrating winning your last big game on Saturday.”

“Naw,” I said. “I'd ruther do this. We could get up early to watch the sun come up and bring us along a picnic and everything if it's not too cold. I'll show you my favorite spot.”

“I think it's supposed to be real nice this weekend, good and warm.”

“So, you want to go? I'll borrow my mom's car.”

“I'd love to,” she said.

I couldn't believe it was so easy. Here we was setting side by side, talking about going out together as natural as grass growing. Nothing awkward about it. Course, the first instinct I had was to run out of there before something went wrong, but at the same time I could've gone on setting with her till winter come. Or at least till the janitor showed up and run us out.

“You know what?” I said. “Maybe we oughta look at his senior yearbook too.”

“That's a good idea.” She had her a big smile like she was thinking she wasn't in no hurry to get done neither.

The senior yearbook was the next one on the stack, and this time I turned straight back to the football pictures. Same as before, Tommy Don and T. Roy stood there shoulder to shoulder, but this time Tommy Don didn't show up in one single other picture in that whole football section, and they had them a
lot
of football pictures in there too. That didn't necessarily mean nothing, and I sure ain't no detective, but what I found next seemed pretty strange.

“Look at this here,” I said, pointing to a photo that took up nearly half a page. “It's a picture of the team the night they won state. They got the trophy setting out in front, and everyone's there, except Tommy Don Coleridge. Where's he? Why wouldn't he be in that picture?”

“I don't know.”

“I think I do. I think he got kicked off the team for something. Something they don't put in yearbooks.” I went on and explained what all I'd heard off Blaine and the Rusty Nail gang, but she didn't think that proved nothing.

“Sounds to me like you need to talk to Tommy Don about it,” she said. “Hear his side.”

“You mean just go over there and ask him straight out?”

“Why not? It'd sure be a lot better than going on what Blaine Keller said.”

There it went. The mood in the room changed about as fast as if someone flipped a switch on it. “Why's that?” I said, leaning away from her so's I could get a better view of what she was fixing to say. “It's not like Blaine's got any reason to make things up on Tommy Don.”

“Well, I just don't know if Blaine's the best one to listen to.” She had a look in her eyes that reminded me of how a teacher will look at you when they're fixing to explain why the answer you just gave didn't have an ounce of right to it— front, back, or center. “After all, he's the one that got you in that fight.”

“Hey,” I said. “Blaine would back me up if I got in a fight. That's what buddies do.”

“But I witnessed the whole thing.” Now she sounded like a teacher too. “Blaine just walked right up and punched that boy without so much as saying hello, and then it was like he went insane. What are you going to do, get in a brawl every time Blaine Keller feels like hitting someone for no reason?”

Boy howdy. I wouldn't have thought I could get mad at Sara, but this was hard to take. With all the deep ideas she had, it was hard to figure how she could be so dense about
this. “Look,” I said, staring down at the stack of yearbooks. “You wouldn't understand how it is with good buddies like me and Blaine.”

“Understand what? That you let Blaine do all your thinking for you?”

I took me a deep breath on that one, trying to stay calm. “I'm talking about loyalty,” I said. “Sticking by the folks who's on your side. You don't go around asking questions about that. You just do it before it's too late.”

“Well, that's dumb. If you don't ask questions you could end up doing all sorts of things. How do you think the Nazis kept going?”

Nazis. You got to hate it when someone brings the Nazis in on you.

The overhead lights glared down on that picture of the championship team without Tommy Don Coleridge.
Damn,
I thought.
This is what you get when two people go to trying to open up to each other. You end up seeing sides of them you didn't never want to see.

“You know what?” I said just barely loud enough for her to hear me. “Maybe we oughta forget about Saturday.”

“What?”

“If you think I'm so dumb, maybe you oughta see if you can't get someone else to take you on a picnic.”

“That's not what I meant.” She put her hand on my arm, but I pulled away and shut the yearbook.

“Look,” I said. “There's Benjamin Deal up there at the checkout desk.” Benjamin Deal was a sophomore, probably no more than five foot tall, with a big head. He was the only kid I knew that carried a handkerchief. “I'll bet old Benjamin would take you out any day of the week.”

“Benjamin Deal? What are you talking about? I don't want to go anywhere with Benjamin Deal.”

“Why not? He's a brain. You two'd be perfect together. You stick with your kind, and I'll stick with my kind.”

“My
kind
?” She set back in her seat and eyed me over like she was fixing to sentence me down to detention hall. “Now you do sound dumb.”

“That's okay. Maybe that's just who I am.” I stood up from the table. “Thanks for the help.”

She stood up too. “Wait a minute, Hampton. Let's talk about this.”

“That's all right,” I said, turning away. “We talked too much already.”

At home after football practice, my gut was still burning over that argument with Sara. She didn't know Blaine like I did. She didn't know what all we went through together, how Blaine and his dad treated me like family when I didn't feel like I had much of one. The way I figured it, girls just didn't understand loyalty, plain and simple. And I wasn't the only one that had to learn it the hard way. Blaine just found it out hisself too. Big-time.

He gave me the story on the whole shooting match in blow-by-blow detail. What happened was, after we left the Rusty Nail last Saturday, he bought him a six-pack on top of what he already drunk at the Nail. Around six or so, he picked up Rachel, and they hadn't no more started cruising the drag when they broke into a fight. It might not have been World War III right then, but it was building up to it.
First he got on her about spending too much time around Don Manly up at the furniture store, and then she come back at him for drinking too much, but the last straw dropped when they run across the Pawtuska boys.

They was in the middle of Main when Rachel jammed her hands up against the dashboard and hollered, “Watch out! You almost hit that guy's bumper in front of us!”

So what did Blaine do? He just pumped the brake and let out a nasty laugh and said, “So what? Why's this truck in our town anyways? Probably some fool from Okalah coming in here to spy on us for the game Friday.”

Rachel told him she knew for a fact them boys up there wasn't from Okalah, they was from Pawtuska, and that didn't set too well with Blaine neither.

“How do you know that?” he said. “You hanging around with Pawtuska boys now?”

“I'm not hanging around with 'em,” she told him. “I just know who the one driving is. Misty dated him a couple of times.”

So that got Blaine disgusted with Misty. “I don't know why you hang out with that girl,” he said. “If her dad didn't have money, she'd just be a plain tramp.”

Now Citronella edged up almost within grinding distance of the Pawtuska boys' bumper before Blaine backed off at the last second. Then at the stoplight, he pulled up next to them, squeezing into this real narrow space between the truck and curb. There was three of them up there in the cab, and the one on the passenger side rolled down his window and said, “Hey, dumbass, what's the idea of tailgating us?”

Blaine eyed him over and said, “ 'Cause I don't like fools from Okalah on our drag, that's what.”

The one in the middle hollered, “We ain't from Okalah. We're from Pawtuska.”

“Told you,” Rachel said, but Blaine didn't pay no attention to her.

“Well, I wouldn't sound so proud of it if I was you,” he said.

The one on the passenger side looked Citronella up and down. “Well, if I was you, I wouldn't be talking, driving around in a piece of crap like that.”