Muckers (20 page)

We reach the Cottonville twenty. There can’t be more than a minute left.

“Gotta get a touchdown,” I tell them. A field goal would tie the game, but that wouldn’t help us get the Northern Crown.

“End-around,” I say. We haven’t called a bootleg yet this season.

I drop back to pass and feel the pressure from the Cottonville linemen, the burly Swensens hungry to defeat me. But I deke and turn, flipping the ball to Cruz. He circles past me and is hit hard, taking a shot to the face. He pivots and yanks at the lineman’s helmet, throwing him to the ground. And then he’s gone, racing away like a lightning bolt.

Cruz eludes another tackler and dives over the line, hitting pay dirt. We all rush on top of him. We’re back in the
lead. He wipes his fist under the nose guard and it comes away covered with blood.

“I’ll never be a Wolf.” Alonzo grins. “Rather move.”

Three plays and they get nowhere. Tony and Alonzo make sure of it. The final gun goes off and the game is over. We won it, 17–13.

Cruz jumps in the air and points at Coach Studdard, who’s throwing a fit on the sideline. But I didn’t anticipate what comes next. The Swensens start attacking Cruz, knocking him flat, and we all come running, barreling over their burly bodies. Me, Tony, Alonzo, Managlia, and the rest of the team. Then the Hatley folk tumble onto the field, adding to the mound, and it’s hard to know who’s who. Someone’s on top of me punching my shoulder. I cover my face with my hands until Coach Hansen hauls me up. He’s yelling at us to get home before it’s too late and to stay out of it. That we’re already bloodied up enough.

The referees try to break things up but Cruz keeps slugging at the Swensens. Then the siren goes on in the sheriff’s car. Sheriff Doddy drives onto the field, yelling, “Go home or face arrest!” into his bullhorn. Then he shoots his gun at the sky. Mrs. Hollingworth screams, covering her mouth with a bloodied lace glove, and the Cottonville people flee, clambering down the hill in a hail of pummeling stones. The Swensens are close behind, getting hauled away on the bed of their father’s pickup.

Leroy Piggett refuses to leave until he’s collected all his rocks.

“The ambulances are full, Cruz,” Hap, the driver, tells him, “but you’ll need to get that stitched.”

Cruz’s face is scraped up pretty good. It’s so bloody he can barely keep his eyes open.

“That’s okay. I’ll walk up.” Then he comes over, feeling one of the cuts above his eye. “Did you see the look on their coach’s face when I gave him the finger?” Cruz says, beaming, the blood dripping off his nose.

“You’re an idiot,” I tell him. “You almost cost us the game.”

I WOKE UP EARLY AND
waited in bed for the sun like I usually do, so the day wouldn’t get ahead of me and I could savor the win. I know you can’t stop time, but when it’s this early in the dawn, it seems that I can. Sometimes I spin it backward and Maw isn’t sick anymore; she’s singing her warbly notes in church, holding my hand, and me covered in lilacs from her Sunday perfume.

Or I’ll keep unraveling it until I’m not alone in this room. Bobby’s here, too, in the twin bed across from mine sleeping on his stomach, the pillow curled up in a ball under his throwing arm with him facing me, breathing life into the dark. I tell him about the games we’ve been winning, especially how we beat Cottonville and that we’re still undefeated, no thanks to Cruz.

But today I decided to spin time forward since I was thinking about Angie.

I closed my eyes and there she was, lying next to me real
quiet and me telling her about the dawn—how I can make it my own—and her understanding.

I didn’t want to do anything with time right then except let it float. But then Pop came home—it was well after four—and was he in a mood. He hasn’t stopped drinking since news of the raise. And time got hold of me again, throttling up to full speed, with Pop chopping away at the chilly air with his drunken snores until the dawn climbed out my window and Angie along with it.

I slide down the banister bare-toed and sneak onto the back porch, trying not to wake up Pop. Whitey, the neighborhood burro, is on the hickory settee having breakfast. I can see his silhouette in the twilight, pale and hairy against the navy sky, his hooves curled up like a pile of bones bleached by the desert sun.

“Brought me a banana, huh?” I whisper, grabbing one from the rotting bunch hanging out of his mouth. My pinky finger starts throbbing as he wrestles me for it with his brown teeth until the banana rips off and he sees he’ll have to move to get it back.

“Shite!” Pop wails, slicing the day open with his angry spit of a cry. He’s hit his head on the iron bedpost again, rushing to work the early shift.

Whitey stops chewing and I dash into the kitchen, knowing there’s just enough time to grab my shoes so I won’t have to make Pop something out of nothing and get accused of eating what’s not even there. But my shoes aren’t on the step stool where I’d left them. Pop hobbles down the stairs and I’m caught.

“Make me an egg,” he grumbles, standing there buck naked and holding my shoes in his hands. He hurls the left one at me but I duck just in time. “Then you’ll get the other
one,” he says, sitting on top of it—in Maw’s chair—with those bare-ass cheeks.

There’s no use arguing. It won’t get me the other shoe. I need to come up with an egg. I take my helmet and head into the raw morning down the streets along the Hogback.

The cobblestones are sharp and slippery cold against my bare soles, and I have to clamp down on my lower lip so I won’t react and get found out. There’s a skunk crossing the street after a night of scavenging, and it ducks under the Rakoviches’. I’m headed a few streets over, down to Second and a little brown house. Not a house, really (it’s not much bigger than the ovens). More like a lean-to sprouting up from the dust, and the color of a shaggy old juniper trunk in the waning darkness. I hurry over to it and huddle down.

They’re clucking inside, those broody hens, while the sky changes. A band of orange skims the rim of the Black Mountains, swirling and churning under smoky clouds. Then the sun pushes through and rises red and the desert isn’t dark anymore. Its color reaches clear across the henhouse, where the door’s half open.

Mrs. Palermo left the latch undone and my stomach tightens. I wonder if she’s been out collecting already and there won’t be any left, or if she’s about to and I’m bound to get caught. I’m not proud of what I’m going to do, or coming up with the idea in the first place. But I can’t see another way. She’s given me enough eggs already, and I just can’t bring myself to ask—no one needs to know about Pop and the things he does. I guess I’d rather steal.

A rooster finds me and I teeter a bit, then kneel still. He juts his angry neck at me, then lifts his legs high and walks away. The wooden door creaks as I open it more, but then the rooster crows, covering up the sound. A few hens screech
and flail their wings, losing some feathers as I slip in, scanning the rows lined with hay. I pick a hen that looks the quietest: a little russet one near the window with her eyes closed, bathed in the orange glow. Not sleeping, but looking serene, like she was praying. I reach under her and she blinks, scratching my wrist with her claws. I put the warm egg in my helmet and crawl behind the house until the chickens settle. Then I take the long way back so Mrs. Palermo won’t see me.

The chicken got me pretty good, but I deserve it. I lick the scratches to try and stop the blood and walk up Main Street. Town Hall’s shiny as a copper pot—that whole side of the street is—and I can’t help but stare. It’s the only time the town looks pretty and not bandaged up; taking on the light of the orange sky with the moon higher up and Venus right near it, hopeful and brighter than any of it.

The egg wobbles in my helmet as I dip down to First Street. I clutch it, thinking,
Why didn’t I get two? Mrs. Hollingworth’s pie is long gone
. That’s what my stomach’s making me think:
Stealing is stealing; what’s one more?
with the rest of me glad that I didn’t, whispering,
You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place
.

Pop’s still sitting there in Maw’s chair, sleeping. He blinks when he hears me and comes into the kitchen, then leans over the sink and splashes the water jug over his head. “Not too runny,” he murmurs, scrubbing his ruddy face with his hands. I get out the frying pan and he climbs the stairs to get dressed.

This day was supposed to be mine. I woke up early enough to stake a claim on it and left plenty of room for slaps on the back from the people in town. “Good goin’, Red,” they’d tell me. “I knew you’d win.” And all those smiles from the
mothers mixed in, too. But Pop’s got a way of spoiling things you thought would matter a whole lot.

I crack the egg on the iron rim and wait, taking the fork with me to the living room. It’s lying there on Maw’s chair—the right shoe—splayed out and flattened like a tire ran over it. I can get it and leave, but what would it matter? I can’t take the egg back to Mrs. Palermo’s henhouse and put it under that bird. And I don’t feel like going into town much anyway. I’m no hero. I’m a thief. A hungry thief who swipes eggs from his friend’s mother. What would Rabbit think about that? Me preaching to him about what’s right and not going to war, while I’m stealing eggs right from under his mother’s nose.

“How’s that egg?” Pop hollers.

I bet Rabbit’s probably shooting targets on a mountain somewhere in Japan, getting yelled at, too.

“Done,” I say. I scrape the egg onto a plate, then go get the shoe. Whitey’s still on the settee. He doesn’t even look as I go by. Maybe I deserve getting yelled at. And I don’t even have a job anymore now that Ernie’s garage is gone, so how am I going to get that money for Bobby’s pew? If somebody tries to be nice to me today, I think I just might puke.

* * *

WEEKEND EDITION

Muckers Swamp Kingman, Will Play for Northern Title

Quarterback Red O’Sullivan was the man of the hour, passing for three touchdowns and rushing for another, as the undefeated Hatley Muckers mauled Kingman, 33–6, Friday night.

In the scrappy game that saw plenty of smash-up plays and cut-up players, O’Sullivan completed lightning-precision scoring passes in the second quarter to Peter Torres and Cruz Villanueva. In the third, O’Sullivan connected with a battle-scarred Villanueva again on a 77-yard scoring play, then ran for a razzle-dazzle 13-yard tally of his own.

Defensive tackle Tony Casillas closed out the scoring when he scooped up a Kingman fumble and rambled 26 yards for a touchdown.

“Our whole team got in on the scoring,” said O’Sullivan as he boarded the bus for the long ride back to Hatley. “This win proves that we’re ready for anybody.”

The win raises the stakes on Hatley’s final regular-season game—a visit to Flagstaff in two weeks. Flagstaff, the big, bruising team in the North, gave notice last night by trouncing Winslow that they’ll be gunning for the Northern title and continuing their undefeated record. Whoever wins in this much-anticipated tilt will draw home field to play against the Southern champs—whoever they may be—for the state title and the Yavapai Cup.

MacArthur to North Korea: “SURRENDER OR DIE,” p.2
.