Little Children (5 page)

“Good thing you’re wearing sneakers,” he said.

As successful and satisfying as it had been, Todd’s high school football career had unfolded on a field so incurably dingy that not even the most nostalgic glow of memory could improve it. The grass of Arthur “Biff” Ryan Stadium was coarse and mottled with permanent bald spots between the thirty yard lines that the long-suffering groundskeeper tried to mask with some kind of vegetable-based spray paint for big games and graduation ceremonies. This organic ground cover held up to the rough-and-tumble of twenty-two pairs of stampeding feet about as well as the white powder they used to mark the field, a highly volatile substance that rarely survived the first quarter, rendering the out-of-bounds and goal lines more or less hypothetical for the players, referees, and spectators. On top of everything else, the soil didn’t drain well; an hour of hard rain could transform the field into an evil swamp capable of sucking a shoe right off your foot as you tried to duck out of the grasp of a blitzing linebacker.

How much better it would have been to scramble around on
this, Todd thought, the moment he and Larry stepped onto the Bellington Bombers’ state-of-the-art field, the taut blue-green skin of the artificial turf glowing with Caribbean purity beneath the dazzling night game lights, the crisp white lines and numbers marching with precision from one yellow end zone to the other. Even with the bleachers empty and only a half dozen men tossing balls and doing warm-ups at midfield, the stadium communicated a powerful sense of occasion and romance that Todd felt immediately in the pit of his stomach.

“Wow,” he said. “This is something.”

“It’s pretty,” Larry agreed. “But it doesn’t have a lot of give. It’s like playing on cement.”

The men at midfield stopped what they were doing and assembled themselves into an impromptu welcoming committee. Like Larry, all of them were wearing gray athletic shorts and T-shirts with
GUARDIANS
written across the front. They stared openly at Todd as he approached, but their collective scrutiny felt less intimate than Larry’s had in the close quarters of the van.

“Who’s he?” grunted a barrel-chested man with a drill-sergeant crew cut and a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once.

Larry draped his arm around Todd’s shoulder. “He’s that quarterback I was telling you about.”

Todd was startled to hear himself referred to in this manner. He had a vague memory of swapping football stories with Larry at the sprinkler park, but he must have made it clear that he hadn’t played the game in a serious way for almost a decade. At this point in his life, he was no more a quarterback than he was a seventh grader.

“You told us he moved,” said a bald-headed black guy who was maybe five-six, but had a build like Mike Tyson’s. He had cut off his shirt so it hung well above his navel, exposing an abdominal six-pack that belonged on the cover of a fitness magazine.

“I just ran into him,” Larry explained. “Outside the library.”

“I hope he’s as good as you said,” said a lanky guy with an orthopedic brace on one knee.

“He played in college,” said Larry. “How bad could he be?”

Todd didn’t think this was the right time to explain that he hadn’t been a starter and that it was a very small college. He already felt like enough of a civilian in his cargo shorts and polo shirt.

“I’m a little behind the curve here,” he said. “Who are you guys?”

“We’re the Guardians,” said the drill sergeant.

“We’re cops,” said the black guy.

“We play in the Tri-County Midnight Touch Football League,” Larry added. “A lot of towns have teams.”

“Our quarterback’s wife made him quit,” said the guy with the knee brace. “He got too many concussions.”

The other Guardians glared at the speaker, as if he’d divulged top secret information.

“Concussions?” said Todd. “I thought you said it was touch.”

“Rough touch,” said Larry. His teammates seemed to find this amusing.

“It’s basically tackle.” The drill sergeant spoke in a comically nasal voice. If Todd hadn’t been looking straight at him, he would have sworn the guy had clamped a clothespin on his nostrils. “We just call it touch for insurance purposes.”

“We really need a quarterback,” said a cherubic-looking behemoth who’d been silent up to that point.

“Why don’t we work on some simple pass patterns?” Larry suggested.

Todd waited for his good sense to kick in. There were lots of excuses available to him.
My wife works nights. I have to study for the big exam. I can’t keep my eyes open at midnight, let alone play football. I don’t like concussions.
But it felt so good to be standing there beneath the bright lights on that vast turquoise carpet, surrounded by men who called themselves the Guardians. Way better than standing in front of the library watching twelve-year-olds ride their skateboards. He had a feeling similar to the one he’d had right before kissing Sarah, like his world had cracked open to reveal a thrilling new possibility.

“Just let me warm up a little,” he told them.

After practice, Larry invited Todd out for a beer to celebrate their new alliance. Todd started to say no—it was already ten o’clock—but then figured, what the hell. It wasn’t like he went out drinking every night of the week.

“Cheers.” Larry lifted his mug. “You looked good out there.”

“You think?” Todd checked his face for signs of insincerity. “Some of the other guys weren’t so sure.”

“Who, Tony Correnti?” Larry waved away Todd’s concern. “He’s a pussycat. Give you the shirt off his back.”

Todd’s altercation with Correnti—he was the drill sergeant with the off-kilter nose—had taken place during a scrimmage at the end of practice. He’d just let go of a pass, a sweet spiral that floated right into the hands of DeWayne Rogers, the short black guy he already thought of as his go-to receiver, when Correnti nailed him with a cheap shot, knocking him flat onto the artificial turf, which, true to Larry’s description, was about as forgiving as freshly paved blacktop.

Except for having the wind knocked out of him, Todd was unhurt. He struggled to his feet and glared at his assailant, arms spread, mouth open, his whole body a tacit
what the fuck?
Correnti stepped up, getting right in Todd’s face like he was spoiling for a fight.

“You got a problem?” he honked.

“That was a late hit.”

“Poor baby.”

“Roughing the passer. Any ref woulda called it.”

“No refs in this league, pretty boy.”

Todd didn’t know what to say to that.

“Well, take it easy, okay? It’s just a friggin’ scrimmage.”

Correnti laughed in his face. “You think the Auditors are gonna take it easy? You think the Supervisors are gonna ask permission before cleaning your clock?”

“You’re supposed to be my teammate.”

“This isn’t Pop Warner, Ace. You either suck it up and play ball, or you get the fuck off the field, okay?”

Larry told Todd not to worry about it. He said Correnti was just testing him, making sure he was a good fit with the team.

“He’s an ex-Marine,” Larry explained. “A jarhead of the old school.”

Todd shook his head, reminding himself to take shallow breaths. Every time he inhaled past a certain point, he felt a sharp stitch in his rib cage.

“No wonder your last quarterback quit.”

“Little Scotty Morris.” Larry spoke the name with contempt. “What a pussy. He wouldn’t have even gotten up after a hit like you took.”

Todd nodded, acknowledging the compliment. Aside from Correnti’s cheap shot, practice had gone pretty well. He threw the ball better than he expected—all those push-ups had paid off—and had been surprised to find his football instincts intact after the long hiatus.

“There aren’t too many guys who can throw on the run,” Larry continued. “You looked like John Elway out there.”

“Thanks.” Todd was flattered. “I always kind of modeled my game on Elway’s.”

“Well, it shows.” Larry signaled the bartender. “Hey, Willie, how about another round for me and my new QB?”

Larry’s mood darkened suddenly, somewhere between the second and third beer, when Todd asked how his boys were doing. He remembered the twins from the sprinkler park, beefy kids with enormous heads, dead ringers for their dad.

“The boys are fine,” Larry said. “But my marriage is in trouble.”

Todd didn’t press for details. He didn’t know Larry that well—had never even laid eyes on his wife—and didn’t think it was any of his business. But Larry felt like talking.

“Joanie thinks I should get a job. She thinks I’m too young and healthy to be hanging around the house all day.”

He looked expectantly at Todd, as if asking for his opinion on the matter. Todd didn’t think he understood the matter well enough to have one.

“Why did you retire? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Larry seemed genuinely surprised by the question.

“You don’t know?”

“You never told me.”

“Huh,” said Larry. “I thought everybody knew.”

Todd shook his head and waited. Larry took a thoughtful slug of beer and inclined his head in Todd’s direction. He kept his voice low, even though there was no one within eavesdropping distance.

“I was the one who shot that kid,” he said. “At the mall.”

Todd understood immediately. It had happened a few years ago, around the time Aaron was born. A local cop had been dispatched to the Bellington Mall to investigate a report of a black teenager carrying a gun. The cop had entered the mall with his own gun drawn, just in time to see the suspect heading up the escalator to the food court. The cop gave chase, cornering the suspect in front of the Taco Bell kiosk. The kid reached for his gun, and that was that. It was only after firing the fatal shots that the officer discovered that the kid was packing a toy, a cheap plastic six-shooter purchased at the Dollar Store.

There were some protests from civil rights groups, who insisted that the kid—he turned out to be only thirteen, though already over six feet tall—never would have been shot if he’d been white, but a departmental investigation determined that the cop had acted in accordance with legal guidelines for the use of deadly force. After that the story pretty much faded from the local news.

“Jesus,” said Todd. “That’s terrible.”

“I still have nightmares about it,” Larry confessed. “Antoine Harris was his name. Turns out he was a good kid. Real skinny, class clown. Thought it was a big joke, waving around his cowboy gun.”

“You didn’t know. It could have been real.”

“I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome,” said Larry. “By three different psychiatrists. That’s why I retired. I couldn’t do the job anymore.”

“Not after that.”

“For a year or two, Joanie was okay with me hanging around the house. But now she thinks I’m getting lazy.”

“Maybe you could do something else,” Todd suggested.

“Like what?” Larry snapped. “Drive a forklift at Costco?”

“Maybe go back to school.”

“You sound like Joanie.” Larry looked like he was trying to control himself. “I loved my job. I don’t want to do anything else.”

Todd had given clear directions to his house, but Larry must have misheard them. He turned off Pleasant a mile too soon, onto a network of curving streets near the Rayburn School.

“This isn’t it,” Todd told him. “I’m farther down toward the park.”

Larry ignored him. They were moving at a crawl through a sleepy enclave of Cape Cods and garrison colonials, a modest family neighborhood a lot like Todd’s own—tricycles abandoned on lawns, hockey nets tipped over in driveways, soccer ball flags flying proudly over front doors.

“Can you believe they let the bastard live in a place like this?”

“Oh shit,” said Todd. “This is Blueberry Court.”

Larry released a bitter chuckle.

“Why not give the pervert his own day-care center, too?”

Larry pulled to a stop in front of a small white house, Number 44. An old-fashioned lamppost cast its light over a well-kept square of lawn outlined by a border of scalloped bricks. The flower boxes beneath the picture window and the horse-and-buggy cutouts on the shutters gave the place the quaint, frozen-in-time look of an old photograph. Larry pressed three times on his horn, shattering the late-night silence. It was almost like he was summoning the pervert, like he expected McGorvey to come out and join them in the car.

“Why’d you do that?” Todd asked.

“Just to let him know I’m out here.”

Larry reached into the backseat for his binoculars and trained them on the picture window. This seemed like overkill to Todd; the backs of two heads were clearly visible through the glass, silhouetted against the throbbing blue light of the TV.

“I want this scumbag to know I’m keeping an eye on him.”

Time clicked by on the dashboard clock—five, ten, fifteen minutes. Todd just wanted to go home. Kathy would be worried; he had to take a wicked piss. But Larry seemed in no hurry to end his vigil.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “Just sitting there watching Leno like a normal human being.”

Todd could have spoken up, of course. But something held him back, the passenger’s code of conduct. He felt like he’d surrendered his control of the night the moment he’d stepped into the van. For better or worse, the driver called the shots.

“You know that Girl Scout he exposed himself to?” Larry asked. “She was my buddy’s daughter. Still hasn’t gotten over it.”

“He exposed himself to a Girl Scout?”

“Sweet little kid. She was just selling cookies.” Larry lowered the binoculars. “Joanie thinks I’m obsessed with this creep. She thinks if I had a job, I wouldn’t be driving by his house five or six times a day.”

Larry tossed his binoculars into the backseat and grabbed a handful of flyers off the stack that was resting on Todd’s lap.

“But I kinda feel like this
is
my job,” he said. “There’s a roll of tape in the glove compartment. Could you grab it for me?”