Running Loose (6 page)

Saturday morning I got up early and was in and out of the Buckhorn by seven. That was way too early to run into Dakota. Then I went over and opened up the station. I was in the mood to keep busy, so I cleaned the place from top to bottom, even waxed the pop machine. About ten Carter pulled up around on the side and honked. Norm doesn’t usually like a lot of kids hanging around and giving themselves free wash jobs and working on their cars or whatever because he says it looks “cruddy” and drives customers away. But Carter’s different. He and Norm get along like buddies; Carter could probably pull right up in front of the pumps on the Fourth of July and wash his car, and Norm wouldn’t care.

Anyway, we filled the wash bucket with soap and
water, and I sat against the building where I could see the pumps while Carter washed.

He got right down to it. “You gonna try to get back on the team?”

I said, “Are you kidding?”

He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Hell of a lot of work down the drain.”

Boy, he was right about that. There had been nights during the summer I’d gone down to the field after I closed the station at midnight to run wind sprints by myself and hit the blocking sled in the dark. Times when I’d been so psyched that making the team was all I could think of.

“Yeah, no lie,” I said. “But I couldn’t. I gotta live with myself, man. Besides, can you picture Lednecky letting me back on after yesterday?”

“He might,” Carter said. “If you reached some kind of agreement and if the pressure was right.”

For a second I visualized the agreement we’d come to. I laughed. “I can hear it now. ‘Really, Coach, I lost my head, went completely crazy. Totally off my nut. Thought I heard you say you wanted Washington offed. I hear voices sometimes, you know. Please take me back. I’ll pack Boomer’s gear to away games and write all his English compositions for the rest of the semester
so people will think he’s literate. Okay, for the rest of the
year
.’ No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s up to you,” Carter said. “I just hate to see you throw it all away. It’s just that it kills me to set my sights on something and then not get it.”

I was quiet for a minute. Carter and I were—still are—good friends, and I thought I knew him pretty well. But he hadn’t said word one about what happened, and he didn’t seem all that concerned with it. I was a little afraid to bring it up for fear it would put a rift between us, but damn it, he knew what had happened. So I went ahead.

“Shoot, Cart. I watched that being set up all week. So did you. I mean, how can you play for him? Hell, who knows, we probably would have won that game yesterday anyway, but doing it like that, I don’t know, it’s like losing. I just can’t go along with it.”

He stopped soaping the hood. “I don’t play for Lednecky, Louie. I play for me. And you guys. Lednecky’s small-time. He’s got no class. His whole act stinks. But it’s going to be tough to get a scholarship to play anywhere as it is. If I quit, there’s no chance. I like football, and I want to play in college. I’m not going to throw it away because my coach is a lowlife.”

I hate it. The bastard made sense. He always
makes sense. How come everybody always makes sense but me?

“Yeah,” I said, “but it seems like there’s a ‘point of honor’ in there somewhere, at least for me.”

“Maybe there should be for me, too,” he said, “but it would be pretty futile. I could quit and maybe wreck his winning season and all that, but where would it end? I mean, I hate to say it, but there aren’t too many people in this town who would side with us against an undefeated football coach. Not many people would believe that whole thing was intentional, or care. If they did, they’d blame it on Boomer, not Lednecky.”

He was probably right. I felt my righteous mission crumbling a little.

“And let me tell you something else, buddy,” he said. “You ask around and you’d think there was no prejudice against blacks in this town. You know why that is? It’s because there aren’t any blacks. If we had a lot of different races, we’d get our share just like anyplace else. So I don’t think you could generate a lot of sympathy for Washington.” He looked off across the street for a second. “But God, Louie, he was good.”

He was using the chamois to dry off the car. “Look, buddy, this is it,” he said. “Last year in high school; the end of a whole part of our lives. I don’t even know
whether that’s a big deal or not, but it won’t hurt to make the most of it. I’m going to play ball one way or the other, but I’d like it a hell of a lot more if you were there. Think about it. If you decide to try to get back on, I can help. If not, that’s okay, too.”

The thing I hate about life, so far, is that nothing’s ever clear. Every time you get things all figured out, somebody throws in another kink.

I said I’d think about it. Besides the piles and piles of compost I’d have to eat for Lednecky, there was one other concern. If I walked onto the same practice field with Boomer Cowans, no doctor in his right mind would give me more than twenty-four hours to live.

I told Carter what happened the night before up at the lake.

He shook his head. “I suppose before this year is over, Boomer and I’ll have to tangle,” he said. “It’s been coming for a long time.” He put his head down, then looked up at me. “If he touches you, he won’t touch the ball again all season, whether you come back or not. We can win without him. He’ll be making his living as a blocker.”

It’s funny. By the time Carter left I was actually thinking about trying to get back on. So much for principles
and right and wrong and all that. The truth was I really had invested a lot, and the idea of being a jerk in everyone’s eyes wasn’t all that appealing. It’s a shame what can happen to your resolve.

I spent the rest of Saturday being a real pain in the butt to Norm and Brenda and Becky, trying to get them to talk me into getting back on the team. None of them would.

Sunday morning I was down cleaning out the Buckhorn, and Dakota came in. He came right out and asked me what had happened, and I told him. By the time I was finished I was convinced I’d done the right thing again.

“You do what you gotta do,” was about all he said.

Monday I came to school later than usual and got there just in time to slide into my seat in English class as the bell rang. There wasn’t a cross burned on my desk or a strangled cat inside, so I figured Carter had talked to Boomer already.

I’m pretty sure the whole student body didn’t get together and vote me out of existence, but if I hadn’t hunted up Becky or Carter, I could have easily gone through the whole day without having a single conversation.

By lunchtime I was starting to feel invisible. Carter and Becky and I decided to go down to the Chief for a cheeseburger.

“I talked to Lednecky,” Carter said. “Just feelin’ him out. He didn’t make any promises, but I think if you said the right things, you could get back on. He was kind of a bastard, but I got the feeling he’d like to see the whole thing drop. Won’t hurt to see, if you want to.”

I still couldn’t make up my mind. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m up for that kind of abuse.”

“Well, you better decide,” he said. “It may be a one-day offer. Hell, just go see him during study hall. What can it hurt?”

Crap like that is easy for Carter to say and do. I mean, he really isn’t afraid of Lednecky. He’ll walk in and meet him man-to-bastard anytime. But the bastard scares me to death. He gets you on his turf, and you can’t come away feeling any way but bad.

I didn’t have to decide whether or not to look him up. When we got back to school, there was a notice on the hall bulletin board telling me to report to the office during the next period. It was signed by Mr. Jasper. Now there’s a name that fits. Like I said before, he’s the superintendent and principal of the high school.

When I walked into the outer office, the secretary, Mrs. Roundy, told me to go in, that they were waiting for me. I said, “I’ll bet,” and she smiled. I went in.

Jasper was standing behind his desk, with Lednecky sitting to his right. Basically Jasper’s just an older version of Lednecky. In fact, he used to coach, which is, as I understand it, a prerequisite for getting into high school administration. Jasper’s scarier, though. He’s had longer to work on his act, and he’s smarter.

“Have a seat, Louie,” he said.

I sat, facing them both.

“Coach Lednecky and I have been having quite a discussion about you,” he said.

I sort of nodded and cleared my throat.

“The first thing I’d like to do here is get your version of what happened last Friday. That was quite a display you put on. I have to admit I’m pretty appalled at your language.”

I tried to remember what I’d said.

There was silence.

“Well?”

I decided I wanted to play football. “Well, I guess I thought Boomer tried to injure Washington on purpose,” I said.

“Is that all?”

“Well, I guess I thought Coach Lednecky put him up to it.”

“What gave you that idea?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, beginning the sellout statement of the century. “Probably a mistake I made from some of the pregame psyche-up stuff. I don’t know. I guess I get pretty excited sometimes.” I felt a tremendous flood of anxiety that, as I look back on it, was probably a combination of excitement about getting back on the team, self-contempt for what I was saying, and fear. Mostly fear. A little trickle of sweat ran down from both armpits toward my brand-new Jockey shorts.

Lednecky looked me square in the eye. “That’s not the way we play football here at Trout,” he lied. “I may coach rough football, but I coach clean football.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I said quietly.

Jasper interrupted. “I understand you’d like to get back on the team, Louie.”

I nodded again. “Yes, sir. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I think so.”

“You
think
so?”

“I mean—”

Lednecky cut in. “You better
know
so, Banks. Carter came to me this morning and said you two had
talked things out. Believe me, after the stunt you pulled on Friday, I had no reason whatsoever to even consider taking you back. But Carter convinced me to talk with you. I like to give a boy a chance to make amends for his mistakes, but so far I’m not impressed. You should be on your knees.”

I decided I didn’t want to play football.

He went on. “I have a tremendous reservation about letting you back. I won’t have you running around with that attitude, contaminating my football team.” He stood up and walked to the other side of the office. “These are my conditions,” he said. “Take them or leave them. You make a full apology to the team in a meeting before practice today. You write an apology to the school that will be published in the school paper. You run the mile for time before every practice for two weeks, and you start back on the third string and work your way up.”

My guts churned. I looked to Jasper.

He nodded. “Well, what do you say?”

I gave it up. Just let it go, like Becky said. And I wasn’t scared anymore. “Naw,” I said, “I don’t think so. It’s not worth it. Not even close.”

Lednecky started to walk out.

“Wait a minute, Coach,” Jasper said. He turned
back to me. “I want to get this taken care of once and for all. What do you think would be fair, Louie? I’m interested.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, first, I’m not willing to start back on third string. And I can’t see starting every practice with a timed mile. Maybe for track, but not football. Then I think Coach Lednecky should submit a written apology to Washington to the
Daily Statesman
down in Boise. And maybe during the meeting he scheduled for me today, he could apologize to the team for teaching us dirty football. And we could start the whole thing off by having him apologize to you right now for not telling the truth about what happened.”

I may be a wussy most of the time, but I have my moments.

“That’s enough!” Jasper yelled. He caught himself. “Are you calling Coach Lednecky a liar?”

“I’m not calling Coach Lednecky anything,” I said. “I’m saying that what he’s telling you about the game on Friday isn’t true.”

Jasper, smart as he is, couldn’t make the distinction. He pointed a finger at me. “Louie, you’re about to get yourself in a lot of trouble.”

“Then maybe I should go back to class,” I said.

We stared at each other.

“Louie,” he said, “you’re suspended until further notice. I will not have this kind of insolence going on in my school.”

I stood up. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll get my stuff.”

When I told Becky later about the conversation in Jasper’s office, she said she was proud of me. And to tell you the truth, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I came out of the office seeing things completely differently from the way I had going in. And I didn’t have to worry about the math test I was supposed to take that afternoon, having been given the old boot.

Anyway, the bell rang just as I was coming out, and Becky met me at the lockers, where I was clearing out some of my stuff. I didn’t take it all because I knew I’d be back.

“Suspended? They suspended you?” she said. “I don’t believe it!”

“Go ask,” I said.

“I believe
you
,” she said, “I just don’t believe
it
.”
She was ready to go in and unload on them. Right then. To tell you the truth, if she had, I don’t think they’d have stood a chance, but I told her to hold off and we’d talk about it later.

Then Carter came up. “How’d it go?” he asked.

I said not quite as planned. “Gave me the boot. Good luck on the math test. Try to remember the answers. I’ll be back.”

He said we’d work something out, that he’d talk to me after practice.

I really wasn’t too worried about whether or not I’d get back in school. I mean, I don’t think they can expel you forever when there’s no place else to go, especially if you’re not armed and dangerous. Besides, Norm’s the chairman of the school board, and though he doesn’t usually exercise much muscle about daily goings-on in school, I figured Jasper wouldn’t be comfortable letting too many board meetings go by with me out. And he’d have to meet with Norm and Brenda as parents. That’s the rule when someone gets suspended. Since I’d been pretty cool in the office and hadn’t done some dumb-butt thing that Norm couldn’t defend, and since Norm’s a lot smarter than Jasper, I figured my days as an outcast were numbered.

When I talked to Becky that night, she said if I
thought it would do any good, she’d quit cheerleading and raise a stink, that this whole thing was getting too crazy. Like she’d said before, she just did it for exercise anyway. I said that didn’t seem necessary; it
was
good exercise, and I kind of liked going out with a cheerleader. We have girls’ sports at Trout, now that there’s a law, but they aren’t taken very seriously because Jasper and Lednecky, who are the powers around here, think that a girls’ sports program is nonsense. In fact, back in the days when Jasper and I were still talking to each other and I was doing an article on girls’ sports for the school paper, he said he couldn’t get behind an athletic program for girls because girls weren’t emotionally equipped for competitive athletics. That was just a fact of life. Too many tears. I heard Lednecky say one time that Trout was shooting for minimum compliance with the law: Let some teacher make a few extra bucks coaching the girls, give them gym time when it didn’t interfere with the boys, and let them have their fun. Girls’ athletics has come a little ways here since then mostly because of some girls’ parents pointing out the finer points of that law, but all in all, it’s a pretty sad program, not one Becky would have ever been interested in getting into.

If it wasn’t being done well—whatever it was—
Becky wouldn’t do it.

Jasper and Lednecky are pretty cute talking about people’s emotional equipment. Last year at the district basketball tournament we lost the championship game to Modoc, and Boomer tore out a whole section of lockers. Ripped ’em right off the wall. Then he went back up to the gym and threatened their high scorer. That’s not what I’d call emotionally equipped; that’s emotionally armed. When the dust had cleared, Trout paid for the lockers and Boomer was on “probation,” even though basketball season was over and there was nothing to be on probation about. Jasper and Lednecky both said that though they thought Boomer took it too far, they were glad to see he had such a competitive spirit. Christ, Justice isn’t only blind; she’s deaf and dumb.

After I took Becky home, Carter called to get the hot poop. I told him what happened in the office, and he said he didn’t blame me and that maybe he’d misread Lednecky. He asked if there was anything he could do and I told him not to forget the answers to that math test, that I’d be back in a week or so.

I spent some long mornings down at the Buckhorn for the next week. I’d clean up and Dakota would come down and we’d shoot a few games of pool and talk. I
probably learned more in that one week than I’d learned in four years of school. And he showed me a thing or two about pool.

I remember one morning after he’d beaten me three games in a row—and remember, one of his hands is a
hook
—he put his cue back up in the rack and asked me what I was going to do with my life.

I said I was going to wait for them to let me back in school, then just keep my mouth shut and graduate and get out of here.

He hoisted himself up on the bar like he does and said, “You know, it’s a funny thing. You get holed up in a little pissant town like this and you don’t get away much and you start to think the way things are here is the way things are. It ain’t necessarily so.”

I said I didn’t know what he meant.

“Well,” he said, “take this whole football deal and you gettin’ kicked out of school an’ all.”

“What about it?”

“Up to a few days ago they had you thinkin’ the most important damn thing in the world was playin’ football. Told me so yourself. Now they got you thinkin’ the most important thing in the world is goin’ back to school—on their terms—an’ graduatin’. All that’s goin’ on there is them tellin’ you what’s important.
Sounds to me like they don’t know their butt from what’s important.”

I started to interrupt.

“Hold on a minute,” he said. “From what you’ve told me, Lednecky gave that colored kid a raw deal an’ you took a righteous stand. Now to my way of thinkin’ it’s a damn shame to back off a righteous stand, which you almost did the other day in the office, or you wouldn’t have been there. A man has to plant his feet somewhere an’ say, ‘This is as far as I go an’ anyone tries to push me any farther’s gonna have his hands full.’”

I just looked at him. Not too much to argue with there. Finally I said, “Yeah, well, what now?”

“Hell,” he said, “I don’t know.” He raised his hook. “I’m just a dern fool pirate never got outta the third grade. What’s next is up to you. But damn it, there’s other places you can go to school. Clear Lake’s only a half hour up the road. Or you could go down to the big city and graduate outta Boise or Borah. Hell, I’d grubstake that, an’ so would your ol’ man, I bet. I’m sayin’ you don’t have to go up there on your knees to get back in school.”

I promised I wouldn’t get on my knees to get back in. The idea of driving to Clear Lake wasn’t a bad one.
It might be tougher in the winter, but certainly possible. I didn’t want to go to Boise or Borah, though, because that would mean I’d have to live down there and I didn’t want to leave Becky.

While I was racking up the balls and thinking about that, there was a knock at the back door, so I went to open it. It was Mrs. Esau in her black skirt and her black blouse and her black hat and her Bible, which was also black.

She said, “Why, Louie Banks, why in heaven’s name aren’t you in school?” but didn’t stop for an answer. She brushed right past me to the bar, where Dakota was sitting.

“I don’t suppose you have time to talk with me today either, Dakota,” she said.

Dakota let out kind of a long sigh, like he’d been trapped, and said, “Sure, Marionette. Got all the time in the world.”

Mrs. Esau’s a widow, and she spends about eight hours a day going around to people’s houses and businesses to see if they’ve been saved. Norm says she’s on a pension and doesn’t have anything better to do with her time. The best way to get rid of her is to say yes, you have been saved and Lord praise her for her good work; but most people don’t think of that, and they try all
kinds of things to shake her. Trying to shake her is the best way to keep her around.

“You know I don’t take to churchgoin’, Marionette,” Dakota said, “so don’t start with me. As to whether I’ve been saved or not, well, I’m not sure I’m drownin’.”

“Well, you are, son,” she said. “Drowning in a sea of your own sins.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I reckon there’s plenty of them, but first off I’m three years older than you, so don’t go callin’ me son. An’ second, I got a couple a questions.”

She smiled. “I’ll answer them if I can.”

“Okay. Now you say God perty much knows everything. He knows what you done an’ what you’re gonna do.”

“That’s correct.”

“An’ He’s runnin’ things, right? I mean if He wants to, He can make things go His way.”

“Things do go His way.”

You could see he was setting her up, but she couldn’t.

“So I guess He’s pretty hot stuff. Nobody gets over on Him. ‘Shapes the destinies of nations,’ I think is how you put it last time.”

“Yes, I did say that.” She seemed pleased. “What’s
your question, Dakota?”

“Well,” Dakota said, “He knows everything, He goes where He wants, probably eats out at the finest restaurants, rubs shoulders with presidents and kings. Why do ya s’pose He needs a crippled ol’ duff like me kissin’ His butt? I’m here doin’ my best; why does He keep siccin’ you on me? I like to think He has a little more class than that.”

The conversation went on from there, but I was about to crack up, so I excused myself and headed for the station.

The next day I was cleaning up the bar—Dakota was still upstairs in bed—when I heard another knock at the back door. I thought about not answering it because I didn’t want to be stuck in the bar with Mrs. Esau and no Dakota to protect me, but then I heard a man’s voice calling through it to me, so I opened it. It was Coach Madison.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he said as he closed the door behind him.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

He walked over and racked up the balls. “It’s my prep period,” he said. “I told ’em I had to go to the bank.”

I nodded. No way I could figure why he was there.

“You play?” he said, nodding at the table.

“There’s a running debate about it,” I said.

“Break.”

I broke, and nothing went in. Coach started picking off the solids while he talked. “Louie, I can’t say this publicly—I don’t have that much clout around here—but I have to say I support what you did last Friday and I respect you for doing it. I’ll do whatever I can to help you get back in school.”

I have to admit I was pretty shocked. I mean, I always thought Madison was a pretty square guy, but he was a coach.

“Really,” I said. “Geez, thanks. I mean, that’s really nice to know.” I think I was a little embarrassed. So was he.

“Coach and I have had some conversations about it,” he said, “some of them pretty hot. The bottom line is, if I raise hell, I’m out just like you are. That’s not real good on a rookie coach’s record.”

I started to say that’s okay, but he kept going. “I won’t coach under him again; I’ll leave if I have to. Football’s a good sport. There really are some good things to learn from it, but not that way.”

I got a couple of turns before he sank all the solids
and went after the eight ball, which he dropped on the first shot. He laid the cue on the table. “Gotta get back. You hang in there.”

“Listen,” I said, “it’s enough just knowing there’s someone up there besides Becky and Carter who doesn’t want my butt nailed to the goalposts. Thanks.”

He left out the back way.

I’m such a rotten pool player.

Actually the meeting with Jasper and Norm and Brenda was pretty uneventful, but it was interesting. It was Friday afternoon, and the team was playing at Bear Creek. Unless you can get a ride to the game with somebody responsible, you have to stay in school for away games and have regular classes if you’re not a player or a cheerleader. Bear Creek’s quite a ways, and they’re not very good, so not many people went. We walked into school just as the bell rang between sixth and seventh periods, so I ran into a lot of kids. Nobody said much.

Norm and Brenda and I had decided they should do the talking. We’d talked the whole thing right into the ground and were solid in our position. Norm thought Jasper could hear it better from them. That was fine with me; I’d said all I had to say.

We walked in and everyone shook hands and it was
all kind of formal and uncomfortable. Jasper looked as uncomfortable as anyone, and that made me feel good.

Norm got right down to it. “Well, Tony,” he said, “what has to be done here?”

“I’m not sure, Norm. Louie’s gotten himself into some pretty hot water.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well,” Jasper said, “you saw him at the game Friday. And he was pretty insolent with Coach Lednecky and me earlier this week. We both agreed we can’t have Louie running loose in our school with that kind of attitude.”

Norm nodded and scratched his chin. “Tell you what, Tony. I’ve listened to Louie’s story, and whether or not he was right in what he did, he thought he was. Now we could argue all afternoon about what was said, and perspectives and all that, but it wouldn’t do any good, so here’s my proposal. If you’re prepared to take him back, Brenda and I have his assurance that his intent is to follow the rules and graduate. Louie’s never been a problem, and we feel we can trust his word.”

Boy, my dad’s an articulate bastard when he wants to be.

“If you’re not prepared to take him back,” he went on, “then Brenda and I will have to act on that. I’m not
sure what that means. We’ll cross that one if we come to it.”

I wasn’t sure, but I thought it sounded a little like a threat.

Jasper leaned back in his chair. “Norm, don’t you think an apology is in order here?”

“An apology for what?”

“For his behavior out there on the field last week,” Jasper said, “and for his little display here in the office.”

Norm was quiet again. He looked at Brenda, then at me. Finally he said, “Quite honestly, no, I don’t.”

Jasper looked a little shocked, but you had to be quick to catch it. “Would you mind telling me why you feel that way?” he said.