Seeing Off the Johns (10 page)

“Alright. While I know very well, from having spoken with your previous teachers, what great students you are, I feel it's important to gauge just how much of your brilliance and skills you've retained over the summer and how much you've lost to hours of Nintendo, MTV, and stealing your parents' beers from the fridge. I'm looking at you, Monsevais,” she said.

Everyone looked at Araceli, still hungry for something tragic or scandalous.

Without missing a comedic beat, Henry spoke up, “Whoa, have you and my dad already had your first parent/teacher conference or what?”

The class laughed, Araceli the loudest and most fully of them all. She looked over at her cousin. “I know he's single, Miss, but you're a happily married woman.”

More laughter. Araceli gave her desk the slightest of slaps. She looked at her classmates, sharing in their laughter. When she looked at Chon, she saw that he wasn't laughing, just staring at her.

Whether or not she would ever tell him she'd noticed, Chon had been caught staring by Araceli many times in the last three years. Sometimes, on rare occasions when either she was alone or Mejia was acting like a particularly distinguished prize asshole, Chon would hold her gaze and try to speak volumes with a few seconds of shared eye contact—letting her know that he was there for her, to love her and to worship her and to never leave her alone for as long as he lived. Most times, he would look away, ashamed of his inaction and insignificance. Whichever was the case, Araceli was always merciful enough not to mention it.

This time, however, he didn't look away. He wasn't ashamed of anything, because he was looking at her in no more lustful a way than he would have looked at Mrs. Salinas. She seemed to feel found out, so Chon just smiled at her and looked at the somewhat rejuvenated teacher in front of the class.

“Henry, Henry, Henry…I've been warned about you by every teacher in the Greenton school district. I'm not really inclined to disbelieve so many wonderful teachers, but I sincerely do not think you are as dumb as you look.” The class howled when she said this.

Unfazed and seemingly amused at the sparring session, Henry said, “Well, appearances are mostly deceiving, but sometimes they're regular George Washingtons. But that doesn't mean anything. For all you know, I'm lying.”

Walking from her desk with a stack of tests, she said, “Yeah, they told me you'd do that too.”

The test took up the rest of the hour and a half class period. Chon had forgotten the meanings of the words ‘resplendent,' ‘ursine,' and ‘onus,' but felt he did mostly all right.

He had meant to follow Araceli to her next class, but got caught up talking to Henry about their plans for Friday night which revolved around the first game of the football season, which also revolved around staring at Araceli leading a bunch of insipid (one of the words on the test) cheers and doing back flips and cartwheels in her sexy cheerleading outfit while Chon tried his figure out what the hell was going on in the game.

There was no time to walk back to the cafeteria to try to see Araceli at practice. Chon had to get to work, and so he would also not be able to attend the unveiling of the framed baseball jerseys that would forever hang on the wall outside of the front office—welcoming any visitors to the school by bringing up a painful uncomfortable memory.

But he wasn't worried. Going to high school, Chon had learned over the last three years, was like living in Greenton—once you know where everyone is going to be at any given time of day, they would be there forever, like animatronic animals at an amusement park standing at the ready for their next performance to a group of children who believe they're actually living, breathing beings with the free will to step off their tracks and quit their dancing bear show to start a new life where no one throws popcorn at them and everyone they meet doesn't expect a performance and is willing to leave them in peace.

The Pachanga was empty when Chon arrived. He was scheduled to work at 2:30, but his last class didn't let out until 2:23. Most days, Chon could get to work during the passing period. On days like today, when he was caught up talking to Henry or to a teacher or following Araceli around school, Chon would have to put up with Rocha yelling curses in undecipherable Spanglish or smartass remarks from Ana.

“Chones, you're late!” she said in a cheery voice. “So what, did you fuck her? Did you take her into a stall in the boys' room and put your dick in her without even locking the latch? Did you make her beg for your little Chon-Chon?” She pinched Chon's cheek and gave it a playful slap.

“Jesus Christ, Ana. Do you have to be so damn dirty all the time?” he asked, rubbing his face like the hand she slapped him with was dirty. He looked at the counter and saw grayish-black liquid latex shavings, enough to have covered at least a dozen lottery tickets. He pointed to them.

“How many did you scratch off?” he asked her.

“Only a few,” she said, looking away like she always did when Chon asked her questions she didn't really want to answer.

“How deep in are you?”

“Just twenty dollars. You know I only ever do twenty dollars,” she said, and walked back to the fountain area to fill her faded Styrofoam cup before she left.

Chon couldn't see her over the rows of groceries so he shouted into the void, “Twenty dollars on payday, Ana. You said you'd only ever do this on payday.”

“Yeah, well, I got bored.” She was about to say more when she saw someone pull up to Pump #1 outside. She looked at Chon and smiled. Chon tried not to seem too interested in the outcome of the transaction that was about to happen. A man got out of his car, not from in town, and stretched. He opened the cover to his gas tank and pulled the pump off the hook to put it in. Chon thought for sure the guy was going to pay at the pump. When he started walking inside without doing so, Ana gave a loud “Ha!”

“That doesn't mean anything, Ana,” Chon said, not believing what he was saying. For whatever reason, whenever people paid cash for gas, they always got twenty dollars worth.

The man walked in, gave Ana and Chon, both behind the register now, a nod, and slapped a crisp twenty down on the counter.

“Pump #1, please,” he said.

Ana couldn't help but laugh. When the man looked at her, eyebrow raised, she said, “I just won a bet.”

The man shook his head, but left smiling when he got the feeling it wasn't him but the skinny kid behind the register who was being laughed at. Chon looked at Ana, who held her hand out, palm up.

“So, what?” Chon asked. “You're going to try to break every single rule this store has?”

“There's no rules about this,” Ana said. “None at all. Now you better hurry up because that man wants to pump his gas and get the hell out of here.”

She pulled her worn Discover card out of her back pocket.

“Twenty on Pump #1,” she said.

Chon rang up the transaction and swiped Ana's card. He handed her the bill. When she put it in her pocket, Chon pointed to the register and said, “Your tickets?”

Ana hesitated before giving the bill back to Chon, who rang up twenty dollars' worth of lottery tickets and slipped it into the till. He had only once tried scratching off unpaid lottery tickets, and when he did it was because Ana had all but forced him after she told him about what she thought was an innocuous little scam. Sure, there were times when she would win a dollar or five or ten, but she always let it ride and always ended up owing the store money. Her illegal little slot machine for the bored never paid out. Chon couldn't stand the prospect of losing money like that on the tickets. Until that day, Chon only thought she did it twice a month.

“So wait, you're not getting off that easy,” Ana said, seemingly pleased with the
way the shift change was working out. “You've been waiting all summer to see this girl. You've been waiting ever since you sprouted your first little huevo curly to fuck her. Tell me, I'm asking as a friend, did you at least get to sniff her panties?”

“She's just had the worst summer of her life, and you're talking about her like that?” Chon said.

“Oh, so you talked to her about it? She told you everything? Did she lay her head on your lap and tell you about all of her bad dreams while you caressed her head? I bet you didn't say one word to her—not one word,” she said.

Chon opened the register drawer for the third time to see what money he would need to drop from the safe so he had enough change to make the thirteen transactions that constituted the evening ‘rush.' When Ana leaned over to grab her purse from under the counter at his feet, he moved away defensively—like he was afraid she would attack him right there, just jump his bones right in the middle of the day. She smiled and laughed at him, but Chon could tell he'd offended her.

“Just drop it, okay?” he said, checking the cigarette shelves so that he could have a reason to give her his back. He opened a carton of Marlboro reds and put them on their dispenser track.

“So, not one word? Not a hello or a goodbye. Not even, ‘Please have my babies, girl of my dreams'? She really makes you some kind of pussy, doesn't she? What happened to my Chones? What happened to the skinny little beast who used to fuck my brains out and who would grunt when he came? You weren't no little bitch then.”

Chon should have expected it. He probably could have even approximated the words she would say to him if he wasn't so busy wishing she wouldn't say them. This was Ana's modus operandi. If Chon, or anyone, ever said anything to hurt or offend her,
she would attack with all of the venom she could muster. He figured that this came from a lifetime of living like she did—with abusive parents and husbands—and looking like she did—with legs that could never grow to match the rest of her forever-big body. He understood that it was a defense mechanism honed over years of feeling ugly, because he'd been working on his own for most of his life. But that never made the things she said hurt him any less or made him feel any better about having pushed her to hurt him in the first place.

Chon couldn't defend himself. He had no words. Ana seemed content with her shot having hit its mark and with the fact that she had regained power in the world of Ana and Chon. So she spoke up.

“You know, you have to have the absolute worst name in all of the Spanish language. I mean, I've met people named Abejundio and Venceslao and Pantaleón, but Concepcion has to be the absolute worst name for anyone to ever get—boy or girl.” She looked at Chon and waited for him to acknowledge her.

When he noticed this, he said, “Yeah, I know.”

“Well, yeah, you probably do. It's your shitty name. But it just hit me. I mean, to begin with, your name means fucking,” she said.

“It comes from the immaculate conception,” Chon said.

“Shut the fuck up.” She waved his interruption away like it was a bunch of flies buzzing in front of her. “There's nothing immaculate about your name. It means fucking. Or at least getting and being fucked. Why do you think people call sex chon-chon. Can you believe I never thought of that?” The thing was, Chon hadn't either.

“And underwear? Why do you think they call them chones? And for women, you call them Concha, right? Well that means cunt.” Howling with laughter, Ana started for the door. When she got there, she stopped before leaving.

“No wonder you can't talk to this little bitch. You're fucked.” She walked out. As the door swung shut behind her, she shouted, “See you tomorrow, Chones!”

Chon wanted to hate Ana or even to be angry with her, but he couldn't. He was left feeling, like he always was, that what had just happened between them was all his fault. Not because he jumped back from her being in close proximity to his crotch, but because of his ever having let her blow him in the store and ever having gone to her messy, lonely house to have sex with her in a way that explored sex for the sake of anything other than to be with her, for her. He was certain he would never stop feeling bad about having been with her.

He was, however, about to rationalize by telling himself he was just a kid and she was a grown woman looking for fun too when the bell above the door rang and stole his attention—leaving him not remembering what he had been thinking about before the transaction and feeling bad for the rest of the night.

High school football is a religion in Texas, some people say—a way of life, a source of meaning in an otherwise vacuous wasteland of twenty-gallon hats and Colt revolvers. In a town whose football team actually wins more than half of their games and is in contention for post-season play, this might be the case. In Greenton, though, football was just something to do on Friday nights. If high school football really were a religion in Texas, most Greentonites would have considered themselves lapsed in their practice, if not in their very faith—why dedicate yourself to a team that would lose every Friday when there were the Cowboys to live and die for on Sunday?

But in their time as Fightin' Bitin' Greyhounds, the Johns served as the second coming of high school football in Greenton. For each of those four years, the Greyhounds made it a game or two into the playoffs—though never going beyond area play. That didn't matter, however, as it was the Johns and the thrill of their obvious supernatural abilities and shared connection on the field that the people of town were coming to see. Everyone expected the Johns to take Greenton to a state football title, but no one blamed them for not being able to. There's only so much two boys can be expected to do with nine very pedestrian, very terrestrial boys on their team and a baseball coach given a whistle and a clipboard by default.

For those four years, Greenton football was exciting. The previous collective attitude
conveyed in down-turned glances that said, “Let's see how badly our boys do tonight,” became, during the reign of the Johns, “Hey, these boys ain't so bad,” and eventually turned to, “I think they can really do it this year!” So much can be said with a nod and a wave between neighbors when each party knows that they've lived 87% of the same life as the other.

Greenton's short-lived football excitement died before the Johns did, though. It happened halfway through the fourth quarter of the regional playoff game against the Cowboys of Premont High School when, the Greyhounds only down ten points, John Mejia was left with no open receivers (Premont's defensive coordinator dropped eight defenders into pass coverage when Robison lined up as a slot receiver) so he made a run for it on a fourth and long situation. He was met by a gang of tacklers who stopped him short of his mark, signaling a turnover on downs and the end of the Greyhounds' season and the Johns' football careers.

“Oh well,” the Greentonites' shared gazes said to one another, “there's always baseball.”

Football didn't just serve to distract Greentonites from their collective longing for baseball season. It was also a marker of time and progress. Football season signaled that another year had passed, forcing people to ask if it could really have been that long since they played or watched or cheered for the Greyhounds. It was also one of Greenton's only town-wide rites of passage. The first day of football season was like a new birthday, each year carrying with it a specific significance and a new set of freedoms and self-definitions.

This year the boy starts pee-wee, and the girl gets her first pair of pom-poms. This year he plays for the junior high, learning the game beyond running in a pack toward the ball from one end of the field to another. She learns choreographed dances and
the joy of wearing her uniform to school on game days. Then when a kid reaches high school, there's the assumption of a role that extends beyond the football field. Boys either can't hack or don't care about football. They choose band or the break-through club or, horror of horrors, the cheer squad. And girls are either not athletic or pretty or popular or—more often the case in a small town—confident enough to join the cheer squad or drill team. There is a silent acquiescence inherent in taking on one of these other roles. The kid tells his or herself that they are not what they thought they would be, that high school isn't what they had hoped it would be, that this is how it is.

Townspeople didn't take time off from work to watch the Greyhounds practice. The retirees in town didn't bother showing up either. What would people say if they showed just how much time they had to waste? Even when the Johns were helming the ship, Greentonites kept the boys on the practice field at arm's length. That realm was for them. It was something pure, not to be sullied or besmirched by the remembering-when of adults. It was a first kiss or lay. It was sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night for stupid, somewhat dangerous, mostly harmless fun. It was youth and it was missed, and it wasn't going to be spoiled by those who had the benefit of hindsight. Besides, who could really afford to take time off of work to watch boys try to perfect the intricacies of the
Power I?

For most Greentonites, football season started on the evening of the first game of the season, when they dusted off the old green and silver shirts, hats, and jackets to wear to the field, which they swore had a different smell on this night, but which really smelled the same.

Win, lose, or draw—on this night all bled green and silver. Despite everything, the whole town harbored fantasies of state championships and of a player separating himself from the pack, showing himself to be a man among boys and becoming
something larger than his role on the field, becoming larger than the whole of Greenton.

This year that fantasy was fed by the memory of the town's fallen heroes. It was almost too much to bear. It almost made people want to give up on football and on Greyhound sports completely. Almost. But nothing could stop the siren draw of Greentonites to GHS stadium—to the sights, sounds and smell of the new school year's spectacle, to a football game and to the only thing to do in a one-stoplight town.

More than an hour before kickoff, almost every working car in Greenton was parked outside the stadium. A larger percentage of the people in Greenton were parked inside the stadium. The Dodge-nasty was among the cars, and, in the stands, Chon was happier than he ever thought he could be in the GHS stadium, creating, for once, the kinds of memories that his mind would be drawn back to in his own old age when he would return and be transported by the phenomenon that is Friday nights in a small Texas town during football season.

As kickoff approached, people in the stands got antsy. Freer's football team was on the field doing pre-game stretches and warm-ups. They even ran plays on one end of the field and practiced field goals and punting on the other.

When the stadium clock ran down to 5:00, two light booms sounded—someone tapping the mic to get everyone's attention—then Principal Adame's voice came over the stadium speakers.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the start of the 1998 football season.” The crowd roared. “We convene here today a town, a community, affected by tragedy. The events that unfolded this past spring shook many of us to our core, causing us to take stock of our lives and thank God that we still have them. Though we all still hurt and will carry that hurt with us forever, we are trying our
best to heal. And we are healing. With the help of our friends and neighbors, we are getting better.”

And, barely without a pause, he went on. “So, without further ado, I give you my friends and my neighbors, Arn and Angie Robison.”

The crowd stood up, even those on the visitors' side, and gave a huge ovation to the two people who came arm in arm out of the tunnel under the home stands. They were an odd couple. It wasn't just that she was so beautiful and he so plain. She seemed lost under the lights, startled at the sound of the crowd's applause as if she had expected to walk out into an empty stadium, while he looked determined, like a bad actor rushing to his place on stage. Arn appeared to be pulling Angie with him to the poorly painted greyhound at the center of the fifty-yard line. When they turned to face the home crowd, however, they were indiscernible as individuals. They were a single unit, two equal parts of a machine bigger and more important than them, made so by more than thirty years of living with and for no one but each other and the boy they lost.

Angie handed Arn the microphone she'd carried out with her. He took it and regarded it like a piece of foreign technology, raising his eyeglasses over his brow and squinting at it. He flipped the switch at the side of the plastic baton and began speaking. It was a short speech that he gave, most likely a predictable one giving thanks for the support and kindness of his neighbors. It probably would have moved the entire stadium—nearly two whole towns worth of people—if the words he was speaking were being transmitted from the center of the field to the stadium speakers, to be amplified and sent into the air, broadcast on the school's AM band and out into space to be heard, millennia from now, by races of alien people tuning in to see what would become of Greenton's loss and the Robisons' pain. But the microphone was off.

Everyone sat silently, waiting for someone to do something. When it became
obvious that it was too late for that, that Arn had already started and couldn't be stopped, people kept quiet from embarrassment: a man full of grief had bared his soul to an entire stadium of people who couldn't hear him.

He spoke for less than a minute, enough time for him to give a few conversational nods and a sweep of his arm to signify that he was talking about “this field” or “this town” or “this whole unfair existence where I give and give my whole life only to get one boy I put all of my hopes into and when I finally do almost a full job of raising him, I have him taken from me just when it was about to start getting really good” or something like that. His final words, “thank you,” were obvious, because he gave a slight bow when he said them and he and Angie raised a couple of waves to the crowd and began to walk off.

What else was there to do but cheer?

The Robisons were met at the sideline by Coach Gallegos, who gave them hugs and exchanged a few words with them. Then the Greyhounds took the field in brand new jerseys—shiny green and silver with a thirty-four and an eight above each corner of the chest, paid for with John-star money after new uniforms were bought for the baseball team and the stars continued to sell. The crowd cheered. Rapt as they were in trying to see the new jerseys, no one in the stands paid attention to the Robisons, who exited the field and left the stadium as the teams warmed up. Almost the whole town was at the game, so no one saw them as they drove home and put their packed bags in their car and left town never to return.

With John dead, the only ties that remained between the Robisons and Greenton were painful ones. All of Arn's family was gone. When Angie's parents died, so too did all of the blood family that she had in the world worth claiming and who would claim her back.

So Arn and Angie left. It was not a romantic departure. They did not stop to share a hug and a kiss after reminiscing good times gone by in the house they designed and had built with every intention of growing old together there. They just grabbed their essentials and shut the door. It wouldn't be until the next morning—when, driving by, people would see the movers loading a van—that anyone noticed the Robisons had gone for good.

The news spread quicker than you would think, even in a town like Greenton. People felt slightly betrayed but mostly embarrassed for having let the old man talk into the turned-off microphone, for having let him and his wife live and grieve in much the same manner—with them watching and doing nothing except worrying about the propriety of their response and their emotions and themselves. When they heard about the Robison's silent exit from Greenton, a new dimension would be added to the tragedy that everyone in town was remembering and experiencing. They would begin evaluating their distance from and involvement in the Johns' deaths. It would be a sobering experience for some who would realize they had just joined in the mourning because it was something to do.

Others would realize, though, how much it really did still hurt. They had lost the Johns and now the Robisons. These were the sort of awful things that happened to other people in other towns. People couldn't believe it had happened to them.

All of this would occur because an older couple decided to pick up and leave town. But it would happen tomorrow. Tonight there was cheering to be done and memories to be made. Tonight there was a football game to be lost.