Running Loose

The year started out pretty smooth. Probably would have ended up that way, too, if Becky had stayed around or if I hadn’t quit the football team and made myself look like the Jerk of the Universe, though I still say quitting was the only thing to do, and I wouldn’t change that.

I mean, Norm let me buy the pickup at the end of last summer, I had two pretty good jobs so the money was rolling in, and I finally got a starting spot on the football team.

And I had Becky.

I wasn’t doing bad in school either. My grades weren’t world-beaters; but two of my senior English compositions were entered in the State Prose and Poetry Fair down in Boise, and the
Daily Statesman
even printed one of them. In fact, some guy from the paper called me long distance to tell me to keep them in mind
if I decided to go to college and major in journalism. Got to thinking I was pretty hot stuff. Seemed like all I had to do was shove ’er in neutral and coast on in to graduation. But when it goes, man, it goes.

We play eight-man football in Trout, mostly because in any given year at least two teams in the league couldn’t field an eleven-man team without using their cheerleaders. In Idaho, if your student body doesn’t have more than 125 people in it, you can play eight-man ball. Any more than that, you have to play eleven. There’s not a school in our league that comes close. This wouldn’t be any kind of big deal except that it’s real hard for anyone from an eight-man team to get a college scholarship. Most colleges don’t even consider it football.

I’m not talking about myself. I couldn’t get a football scholarship to Treasure Valley Community College as a blocking dummy the way I play, if you want to be honest about it. But Carter—he’s our quarterback and my best friend—and Boomer Cowans—he’s our running back and definitely not my best friend—might be good enough. Our team hasn’t lost a game in three years, and those guys are the reason. Carter’s big and strong and fast and smart, and he can throw the ball a
mile. Boomer’s bigger and probably stronger and almost as fast and dumber than a cinder block. But he’s mean, and you can’t hurt him because he doesn’t care, and he has a lot of natural instinct for the game. At least that’s what Coach Lednecky says. Lednecky’s the cinder block that Boomer’s dumber than. Me, I’d just try to get a decent catch once in a while and let those guys do their stuff.

Anyway, Carter and Boomer are probably going to get a shot at some college ball next year because we got a lot of press for winning the State Eight-Man Championship three years running and because Lednecky was able to persuade a couple of scouts from C of I and Ricks College to come take a look. He even sent some game films up to the U.

Sometimes I feel kind of sorry for Boomer. I mean, even with all the crap I got into this year, my future doesn’t look that bad. I don’t think I did anything that can’t be fixed, though you might get some argument there from Lednecky or Jasper, who runs this place. I’ve got a few irons in the fire. But I don’t know about Boomer. If he doesn’t make it playing ball—which doesn’t seem too likely, considering you’d have to add three
points to his grade point average to bring it up to an F—he’s going to be setting chokers and top-loading his old man’s logging truck for the rest of his life or at least until
he
has a kid to do it for
him
. It doesn’t seem like there’s much of what makes the rest of us shine in Boomer. I mean, the only time he laughs is when someone else is getting screwed. And he’s always talking about making it with some girl he’s never touched and adding some weirdball garbage that, if it had really happened, would cheapen her. Like he said he took Adrienne Klinner down to the drive-in in Boise, and when she was out going to the bathroom, he poked a hole in the bottom of the popcorn box and stuck Ol’ Norton up through. (Boomer’s dad doesn’t let him cuss—beats him up when he hears it—so Boomer calls his “thing” Ol’ Norton.) Anyway, then he held the box in his lap, and when she’d eaten down about halfway (three-quarters would be more like it), she got a handful. Said she shrieked at first, but then she started playing with it and went crazy. Crap like that. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know every jerk in the world has told that story. I mean, Adrienne Klinner would have poured her Coke into the box and taken a bus back to Trout.

I almost lost my life when I said I didn’t believe that story, which is why most of the time I don’t feel sorry
for Boomer at all, because he scares me to death. I know if I gave him half a reason, he’d tear off my arms and beat me with the bloody stubs. He’s hated me ever since we were in grade school and I asked his dad if he really lost his logging truck down a jelly roll. That might sound strange if you don’t know what a jelly roll is. None of the streets in Trout is paved, except for Main Street, and every spring we get these frost heaves in them—the road sort of buckles up, and there’s this runny mud that comes up just under the surface. Anyway, one of the favorite springtime sports for little kids is to jump up and down on them to soften them up. We were at Boomer’s birthday party and were working on one on the road right out in front of his house. Carter said he heard that old Mrs. Grant’s oldest kid got swallowed up by one back when our parents were in school. Nobody ever talked about it, and Carter didn’t know the guy’s name; but he knew it was a true story. Boomer had to go him one better, so he said a jelly roll had sucked up his dad’s logging truck two years ago. When I went in to ask his dad if it was really true, he stormed out, grabbed Boomer by the arm, jerked him inside, and proceeded to whip the crap out of him. All we heard was: “I told you, no more stupid lies!” over and over. When Boomer came back out, his face was
streaked with tears and his new birthday shirt was torn and he told us we all had to leave. Nobody could believe it. I mean, that’s pretty hard core. Annie Creason told us later that his dad threw away all his presents after we left. Anyway, he’s hated me ever since. I’m sure if I weren’t such good friends with Carter, Boomer’d have laid waste to me years ago.

Getting my part-time job down at the Buckhorn at the beginning of last summer was good. I was already working full time down at Norm’s 66 station, and then Dakota offered me a couple of hours a day sweeping the place out and restocking the coolers with beer and replacing empty kegs with full ones. I started at three bucks an hour, and he’s given me a couple of small raises. I’ve worked for Norm for years, so I’m up to four and a quarter there. Norm said when I had enough for a small down payment plus enough to cover insurance, he’d sell me the pickup. I pulled that off in August. Norm’s my dad, so gas is free. The pickup is a ’52 Chevy that’s been treated like one of the family, except for maybe the paint job. Buying it probably wasn’t what you’d call a financially astute move, since I could use it anytime I wanted anyway, but we got to be such good friends I thought it ought to belong to me.

It’s never betrayed me. Always starts on the first crank no matter what the weather’s like. A couple of times last winter, when it got down around forty or fifty below, it was about the only thing in town moving. I’d walk out to the driveway, knowing damn well its thirty-year-old bones were froze up tight, flip the key, hit the starter, and she’d crank right over. ’Course I keep enough antifreeze in it that if Donkey Caulder could figure out how to drain the radiator, he could stay out of the Buckhorn all winter. Donkey’s the town drunk.

I guess I’m sort of a wussy, to put it in Boomer’s language. A wussy is a cross between a wimp and a word Boomer’s dad almost beat him senseless for using. I hate like hell to admit it, but sometimes it sure seems like it must be true. I spend about half my life worrying about hurting other people’s feelings and wondering if they like me, though for a while there, there wasn’t any wondering to do. I
knew
.

Like one of the reasons I never made it with a girl was I was afraid she’d cry and feel crappy when it was over. I’ve heard that happens sometimes. And I knew that would make me feel crappy. That’s not the kind of information I want spread around, but it’s the truth, really. Not that I’ve had a
lot
of chances—I won’t give
you a Boomer Cowans and tell you they line up around the block to watch me tuck in my shirt—but there were a few times. With nice girls, too.

And one reason I didn’t make it big in football before this year was that I wouldn’t cream the little guys in practice. Lednecky always wanted everybody to go all out against everybody, and that meant if you came up against a 95-pounder in the meat grinder, you took his head off. I’m not a big guy—maybe 160—but it doesn’t take much against some of those poor suckers he talks into turning out. ’Course when I was a 95-pounder in the ninth grade, nobody let up on me. I guess that’s what makes me a wussy. The other reason I didn’t make it big in football before this year, like I said, is that I’ve never been all that good. Not too big, not too fast, and a lot more desire to be a football player than to play football, if you know what I mean. Might as well get that all out in the beginning.

Being a wussy isn’t so bad, though, if you can work it into your act. Carter says the most important thing is to get your act down, and he could have a point. He’s sure got a good act.

CHAPTER 2

In a way Becky was probably out of my league. At least in the way a lot of guys would look at it. It was one of those deals where you’d say, “God, she could have any guy she wants. What’s she doing with him?” Even I said that. Becky was one of those girls you want so bad it aches—the kind that before you get to know her, you make a real jerk of yourself every time you run into her. You go home and practice what you’re going to say and how you’re going to act next time, and then you screw it up again.

We probably wouldn’t have ended up together anyway. I have this theory about guys and girls and love affairs and that kind of stuff. You want, and maybe need, different things at different times in your life, and you go around looking for somebody
that fits. Most times a person that fits in one time of your life won’t fit in another time, or like I think it would’ve been in our case, you won’t fit for them. Pretty soon you find yourself with somebody who doesn’t do it for you anymore and who needs you like an old fish head. That’s probably a good time to wrap it up, but hardly anyone does. I’ve seen it a lot around town here. People who have been together since high school—or at least since their early twenties. They got nothin’ for each other anymore, but they have kids and bills and some crazy idea that the only way to judge a marriage is by how long it lasts. Longevity is what it’s called. They’re sitting around waiting for each other to croak so the one that’s left can call it a success. They’re not all like that, but enough to make you not want to run right out and get hitched.

Anyway, like I said, even if Becky had stayed around, we probably wouldn’t have gotten married and had kids and a life or anything, but I like to think if it was good while it lasted, it was good. And it was good. Dakota says if we always judged things by how they ended up, life would more than likely seem like one turd sandwich after another, given the way things have a tendency to end up. He’s a good man to listen to, if you
don’t mind a little rough language, which I don’t. I’ll tell you about Becky sometime.

But first there’s football. I told Dakota I’d be a little late to clean up on the Thursday before the first Monday practice. Actually he didn’t care what time of morning I came in as long as the place was ready to open by noon, so Carter and I went up to the school to check out our gear first. Seniors get to pick out their stuff a day ahead of everyone else—that is, if they’ve played all three years before—and Lednecky had talked the school board into a few thousand dollars of new equipment on the basis that we’d been state champs two years in a row. Carter and I were the first ones there and got primo gear.

Then Carter came down to the Buckhorn with me afterward so we could get done quick and go over to the field and run some pass patterns before I had to go to work over at the station. I do the two-till-midnight shift there in the summers.

Carter and I had been working out twice a day all summer so we’d have a jump on everyone from the first day of practice on, for different reasons, though. Before this year, even though I lettered, I never started a game, and I
really
wanted to make it. To hear me tell it now,
most times, you’d think it was no big deal. But don’t let me fool you. I wanted it bad. Carter always works out like a madman because everybody thinks he’s Superman and he doesn’t want them thinking any different. Always wants it to look easy. He figures if the team really believes he’s a magician, then he is.

The Buckhorn looked a little worse than usual for a weekday. Several glasses were tipped over on the bar, and a couple were broken on the floor behind it. There were chairs turned over and a long crack in the glass on the front of the jukebox where an empty pitcher had obviously hit it. And there was a pool of dried blood on the bar.

Carter started stacking chairs on tables while I got out the broom and mops. “Animals,” he said. “These guys should be put in cages.” He tossed me a glass that I caught and set on the bar.

“I’ve seen it worse,” I said. “You oughta come in here sometime on the fifth of July. It looks like the remains of the Sheep-eater Massacre. They don’t take prisoners.”

He smiled and finished stacking the chairs, then got a hand truck to move in new kegs behind the bar. I swept and filled the mop bucket.

“How much do you think that is?” he said, pointing to the dried blood on the bar. “You think it’s a pint?”

I went over and looked. There were nail holes under the blood and to one side. “It’s however much blood is in Bill Abbott’s right hand,” I said. I’d seen it plenty of times before. Bill had this trick he does sometimes, where he gets drunk on his butt and takes bets he can drive a sixteen-penny nail into the bar with his hand. He wraps his fist around it so the nail is sticking out between the second and third knuckles and the head rests against the callous on the upper part of his palm. When he thinks he has a good grip, he slugs the bar. He’s good for about two out of three. I’ve seen him do it, and when he misses, it’s like his hand explodes. He sits there cussing while somebody gets a car to run him to the hospital for stitches. There’s so much going on that the other guy usually doesn’t ever get paid. Donkey Caulder sits there shaking his head and saying, “Bullshit.”

Dakota came in just as we were finishing up. He lives above the tavern in a nice little place he built himself up there, and he always comes down to shoot the breeze about the time I’m through. He’s a rugged-looking old fart with a face that looks like a dried-up road and a hook for a left hand. Not one of those hooks
that’s attached to your nerves and works like a pair of chopsticks; just a hook. Like a pirate. He never finished the fourth grade, but he’s real decent and smart as hell.

“Football heroes!” he said. “Coulda used you guys in here last night. Christ. Winnie had to cold-cock ol’ Benny Harper to get his grizzly old paws off her, Bill Abbott thought he was ridin’ a streak with his carpenter’s trick, and things just generally got out of hand. Coulda used ya.”

I was making my last swipe over the bar, and Carter was into the beer sausage.

“Better load up on that stuff now,” Dakota said. “Soon’s you bomb out as a college football hero and flunk outta school, you’ll be back here haulin’ logs for Caxton, an’ those’ll cost you a quarter apiece.”

Carter reached into the jar and took two more. “When I bomb, I owe you six bits.” He spun the lid down tight and snapped his fingers. “Damn,” he said. “I forgot my cleats at the gym. I’ll run back and get ’em. Meet me over at the field in about a half hour, okay, Louie?”

I nodded and said okay, and Carter trotted out the back door.

Dakota hoisted himself up on the bar while I finished putting the chairs back down. “You guys gonna
pull it off again this year?” he asked. He asked me that a lot, although he really didn’t care one way or the other. It was just a way to get the conversation going.

I shrugged. “Hard to say. No one in the league can beat us, but you never know what’s going to happen in the postseason.” I smiled a little. “To tell you the truth, what I worry about most out there is not screwing up.” It’s easy to be honest with Dakota; I’m not sure why. “If nobody screws up, Carter and Boomer can take care of most of it. Besides, if I don’t screw up, I don’t have Lednecky on my butt.”

He stared at me and shook his head. “Now what kind of damn attitude is that?” he said. “Not screwing up.” He likes me, and it hacks him off when I put Carter and Boomer out of my league or when I put myself down. Says it’s just all the farther I have to pull myself back up.

“That attitude is going to make me a starter,” I said.

“Big deal. A starter on an eight-man football team from Podunk High School. Hell, just showin’ up every day for four years’ll get you that.” He eased himself down and walked around behind the bar. “You know, Louie,” he said, “I kinda got my eye on you. You know that. I don’t even care if you play ball at all, but don’t go into
anything
just tryin’ not to screw up. That’s
cheap, son. Tell you what. Who do you play first?”

“Tamarack Falls,” I said. “Three weeks from tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said. “During warm-ups you get over close to their sideline an’ pick out the best-lookin’ cheerleader they got. Then do somethin’ in the game that’ll make her remember your number.”

I smiled. “I could pick up a fumble and run it into our own end zone,” I said. “Or set a league record for penalties.”

“Cute,” he said. “I’m here wastin’ my valuable time, tryin’ to make a man outta you, an’ what I get is a smart-ass. You do what I said. Don’t go in there scared of makin’ mistakes. You go in there and kick some butt.”

I said I’d think on it. Dakota’s a funny guy. He runs the down markers at all the games—probably hasn’t missed one in twenty years—but he doesn’t see it like everyone else. He doesn’t care a whole lot about winning or losing—I mean, he’s seen a hell of a lot of both in his time—but he cares about how you do if he likes you. I don’t know why he picked me out, though he’s liked me for a long time, but I do know when Dakota’s pulling for you, you don’t want to let him down. At least I don’t.

I met Carter down at the field around noon, and we jogged a mile to warm up. We usually tossed the ball back and forth while we jogged and shot the bull some. Sometimes we’d do practice drills or run backwards and sideways in short spurts to practice defensive maneuvers. The one I liked best was where Carter would jog along behind me and toss the ball over one of my shoulders or over my head. He’d yell, “Right!” or, “Left!” or, “Top!” to tell me where it was coming from, and I’d see if I could catch it without looking back. He’d yell just before the ball came into my vision. It’s a good drill for reflexes, and we did it every day at least once. I was getting pretty good at it. We did it for two laps that day, and I only missed twice.

“Three days till practice starts,” he said. “Gotta be ready. Right!” He tossed the ball over my right shoulder into my outstretched hands. I flipped it back without looking.

“I can see it now,” he went on. “Sampson to Banks on a down-and-out—left!—Sampson to Banks on a post. Sampson to Banks on a hook-and-go. Touchdown! Top!”

“Sampson and Banks to Evergreen County Hospital for major surgery,” I said, “in the second quarter of the
Tamarack game, when Cowans gets tired of Sampson trying to make a hero out of Banks.” I flipped it back.

Carter held the ball and caught up to me. “Boomer’ll be okay,” he said. “You just have to know how to handle him. He ain’t smart, but he ain’t dumb enough to get me down on him. I mean, who gives him the ball?”

“Got a point,” I said. “Me, I know how to handle him. From a distance. Maybe the next county.”

Carter did have a point. He always has a point. He knows exactly what he’s doing all the time. It’s hard for me to figure how he can look so free and easy when I know he calculates every move he makes. I guess it goes along with having a good act.

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