Shame (17 page)

“There's someone out there today who's unhappy. Who feels the weight of the world on his shoulders. Who needs to just surrender himself and his problems and let God take over. Who needs to come forward this morning and publicly confess Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, or rededicate his life to his Lord.” And for a moment I was tempted to step out from my pew and come forward, really I was, although I didn't think I was lost.

I just didn't feel found.

But I didn't leave the pew. Tommy's call was not for me. My life was living proof that everything was not as it was meant to be. I could never believe what he wanted me to believe. Maybe I lacked faith, maybe I lacked understanding, but ultimately, one thing was even more important: I lacked peace.

And no matter how ardently I had asked for it and no matter who I had asked for it, I had never gotten it. I'd also asked for strength, and I was just about out of that. I was at the end of my frayed rope, and God, whoever and wherever He was, wasn't going to magically change my life and make me happy just for taking a stroll down the aisle on Sunday morning. He wasn't going to heal my broken spirit just because I walked into His office and asked for it. I was starting to wonder, in fact, if I had any use for a Physician who prescribed nothing but twenty years of “Hang in there.” But what else was I going to do? Take up Buddhism? Worship flying saucers?

I was in Oklahoma, after all.

He had me good, and He knew it, and I knew He knew it.

So I stayed right where I was, and after church, I ate roast beef at my in-laws' house and listened to them praise that very same sermon, and after lunch, I went outside and walked and walked in circles around the block.

The only place I could go after that was home, and that is where I went, no wiser, and even less peaceful.

November 19, 1994

Miss Candace Tilden
1425 E. Fifth
Albuquerque, NM 87106

Dear Candy,

Have you ever heard that old Chinese greeting/curse, “May you live in interesting times”? I am living in times that have become way too interesting for my liking. What would you do if you had the opportunity to do something you've always wondered if you should have done in the first place? What if you knew that your chance at happiness would be tempered by the unhappiness you would create by such a decision?

I am still wrestling with the problems I mentioned obliquely last time. I remember what you wrote once when I was asking these questions (because, let's face it, these are just about the only questions I ever ask). You said that what could have been is the greatest enemy of what is. Wise words. I hope I can live up to them, to you, to everyone.

I dreamed about Trent the other night. I wish you'd known him, because I'm not sure I'll ever be able to talk about him in a way that will be valuable to you. I idolized him, you see, and that's a lot of freight for anyone to carry, alive or dead. I know I probably wouldn't have done that if he were still around, because we disagreed on a lot of things. But that's one of the advantages of being dead, I guess—it freezes you beyond disapproval and disagreement. He was my brother, and I loved him, and he died, and that's all that will ever matter, I guess.

Do take good care of yourself. I want the privilege of continuing to disagree with you, especially about bringing Arturo home to the folks. I still think Christmas would be a good time. Come out here. I'll protect you both. I am still spry enough to wrestle a shotgun out of Dad's hands, you know.

And please, if it doesn't sound too Southern Baptist of me, say a prayer for me. I'm a mess. I want to do what is right. I've wanted that all my life, but I am so tired of doing what is right for everyone else and wondering if it will ever be right for me.

I am too tired and too emotional. Don't worry about me. All will be fine once basketball starts and I become too busy to think.

But do come for Christmas. I miss you and covet your presence, Baby Sis.

Love,
John

P.S. You are going to be a great-aunt. Really! More about this as it happens.

November 19, 1994

Mr. and Mrs. John Tilden
7743 Sunny Acres
Scottsboro, AZ 85372

Dear Mom and Dad,

It will hardly seem like Thanksgiving without you, although we are looking forward to your presence at Christmas, our celebration of Christ's nativity and Bill Cobb's generosity. In his mind, there may be no difference, although there should actually be other things on his mind these days. I hear that Sam and Bill have separated, and she's taken the girls and moved to Fort Worth. I never thought that would happen, not in a million years. I hope everything will work out for everyone.

Basketball begins next week. We will do all right this year, although I only just now got one of my starters back from our rotten football team. They might just as well have let me have him all fall. Now I have to ease him into the rotation, and he's about as cold as you would expect someone to be who hasn't been at practice for months. He can just about hit the backboard from directly underneath it.

Phillip One Horse has been helping me out around the place. Yes (he says, hearing their jaws drop from across a continent), Phillip. The boy on my team who went to prison. I had a little accident that's kind of made it hard for me to get around, and he's been a huge help. You'd like him now, Dad. He takes his work seriously, and he doesn't talk much. I've gotten to know him again because of this stupid benefit game, and I guess that's one positive result. He's got a good soul, as Candy would say, despite all the knocks he's gotten—and given.

As for the rest of this reunion stuff, Michelle is being run ragged trying to keep track of who is coming, when they will be in town, who we can expect for each event, and so on. The only good thing I can say about the reunion is that in a month or so it will be over.

Oh—maybe the biggest news, although I guess I've put off telling you as long as I can. Michael and his girlfriend are expecting, so you folks are going to be great-grandparents sooner than any of us expected. I talked to Michael briefly the other day. Very briefly. No breakthroughs there, and I don't know what it will take. You might call and give your good wishes to him and Gloria, if you feel comfortable doing that. I don't want to dictate your moral stance or anything, but I remember you as forgiving even in disapproval. You were—and are—good parents, and I am grateful for your example, even though I haven't always been able to live up to it. I hope you will still love me in the event that I fall short.

Hope you are well. I think of you often. B. W. and Lauren are fine and look forward to seeing you soon. As do I.

Your son,
John

November 19, 1994

Ms. Samantha Mathis Cobb
6503 Trail Lake Drive
Fort Worth, TX 76133

Dear Sam,

I'm not sure just what to say in this letter. I'm not sure, in fact, that I should even be writing it, much less sending it. I guess what I wanted to say is that I am sorry for you and the kids, that I hope you are well, and that my thoughts and prayers are with you. If I say much more than that, I start to get myself in trouble, so perhaps I had better stop there. But I can't just stop there. So here goes:

Your separation from Bill was such a surprise that I can't really say yet what I think about it. It was like a kick in the gut from an angry cow, and I haven't had a chance to draw a good breath.

That said, I don't think I can stop without clearing some things up first, or trying to. Some time back, the last time we talked on the phone, you told me we needed to talk about something. Well, we haven't. Was this the something that you wanted to talk about? If so, why did you want to talk to me about it? And what did you expect me to think, to do, to feel about it?

When I see you next, maybe you can give me the answers to these and other questions, because they are bouncing around in my head and interfering with my day-to-day business. That's another thing that I shouldn't tell you, I guess, but it's the simple truth, like the fact that I both dread and cannot wait to see you at Christmas.

It is late, and I really must stop before I say something that will get both of us into trouble. Take care of yourself and the girls. I'll see you soon.

John

Wild Turkey

If you'd asked me which Cobb I'd have preferred to see first, Samantha or Bill, I would have said Sam, no question, even with the not-so-vague unease I was feeling about the roads less traveled. Our whole lives, Bill Cobb and I had never been more than barely civil to each other—or maybe I should say that I had never been more than barely civil to Bill, although he was so dense and good-natured that it never seemed to make any difference in the way we got along. I'm guessing it would be a strain on even the best of friends when both of them have loved the same woman and only one can have her, and Bill and I were never the best of friends.

I would have preferred Samantha, but it was Bill who pulled up at my front door on the Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving. We'd had a couple of days of bad ice storms and were currently in the middle of a morning fog so dense I could barely see the outlines of the barn not twenty yards away. Our phone and electricity had both gone out on Sunday night, and although the electricity had come back on after we'd spent a night curled up in the living room in front of the fireplace, the phone was still defunct.

So when the ghostly form of a white Range Rover, headlights on, appeared almost magically in the driveway as I sat at the table drinking a cup of coffee, the unexpectedness of it gave me a hearty thump in the chest. I didn't recognize the vehicle, although I knew what it was. I can assure you that no one in my immediate acquaintance owned a Range Rover.

That was itself a big clue, though, and as it pulled up close to the house, I was pretty sure that I had solved the mystery. When the driver had to lower his head to get out of the Range Rover, I was sure of it—Big Bill Cobb, as tall as ever, a little wearier, to judge by his sagging shoulders.

I hopped to the front door by the time he knocked.

“Morning, Bill,” I said, and opened the door to him. “What brings you out this way?” I held out my hand, and he shook it once, perfunctorily, the grip clammy. He looked down at my foot, raised off the floor while I balanced, wobbly, on the other. Then without a question, he began.

“Your phone was out, and I'm in town for the week. Thought I'd come up to spend some time with the folks at Thanksgiving. Samantha's got the girls for the holiday. Don't know if she'll be coming up here or not.” He wet his lips, took a deep breath, slid his eyes over to see how I was reacting. “I guess you've heard all about that.”

I hopped back into the kitchen, and after a momentary pause, he followed me. “Only a little,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“It's all for the best, I suppose,” he said, although he did not sound like he believed that. I indicated a chair at the table, but he shook his head. “I can't stay. I just wanted to ask if we might be able to get the guys together before Sunday. And your phone is out.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is.”

We looked across the table at each other. The defunct phone might be our only point of agreement.

Then the back door opened, and Phillip, finished with the morning feeding, stepped into the washroom and shed his boots. “Well,” I said, “here's at least one guy we can ask.”

Phillip stopped stock still in the doorway of the kitchen when he saw Bill. He hadn't had the benefit—if that's what it was—of the Range Rover appearing out of the mist, and I doubt he had seen Bill face-to-face since Bill went off to college.

“Phillip.” Bill nodded. “Good to see you.” This sentiment did not travel from his mouth to the rest of his face. We were certainly a superficial group; I wondered for a moment what we might be able to say to each other with complete sincerity.

“Hello, Bill,” Phillip said. “Welcome home.”

That wasn't it, exactly, although Phillip's heart was in the right place. Bill gave him another of those nonsmiles. “I was hoping maybe we could get together for an extra practice this week. Would you be up for something like that?”

“I'd have to check with my social secretary,” Phillip said. “But I'll bet we could arrange something.”

“What about after varsity practice today?” I asked. “I'd rather do that than tomorrow afternoon.”

“Call the other guys—” Bill began, before remembering my defunct phone. “Okay, I'll get in touch with Oz and Bobby Ray and see what they think. I'd just like to get out on the court, run a little. I've been shooting some. At home.” He broke off abruptly and turned away.

“I'm sorry,” Phillip said. “I hope all that will work out.”

“Thanks,” Bill said gruffly. He was, if anything, even less happy about accepting sympathy from Phillip than he was from me. “I'll see you guys in town. I've picked up some uniforms and some warm-ups. Let's plan on this afternoon and hope everyone can be there.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for driving out.” I ushered him to the front door. We did not speak again as the door closed.

Only when the taillights disappeared into the fog did Phillip turn to me and say, “That was weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I think he had something more on his mind than basketball.”

“Lots of things besides basketball,” I said. “Whatever, I'm glad he's gone. It spooked me.” And it had, his somber appearance out of the fog like an apparition in a bad dream.

Phillip looked down at the carpet. “When I saw who it was, I thought he might be one of those unbalanced ex-husbands come out to do you harm.”

“Hey,” I said, holding up my hands. “I haven't had any special influence in that household for twenty years.”

“Right.” His eyes flicked to mine and away again. “So what are you thinking he was thinking?”

I hopped back into the kitchen. “About what?”

Phillip sat down with me at the table, and this time he turned and looked me full in the eye. “About you and Samantha,” he said.

“Has the whole world totally lost its mind? What do I have to do with them splitting up?”

“I can't speak for the whole world,” he said. “All I can speak for is me. I remember how things used to be. And I wondered how you feel about her now.” He spoke with sincerity, and my face burned, and I turned away from him. “Maybe I shouldn't ask. I don't mean to put my foot in where it doesn't belong. But you've been good to me. I don't want to see anything bad happen to you.”

I tried to lighten the mood. “What is your grandmother saying?”

He laughed. “My grandmother? She says the spirits are telling her something big is in the wind. It could be you. It could be a winning night at bingo.” He stood up, got ready to go, but before he did, he let his hand drop for a moment to my shoulder, a strong, solid presence. “You don't need my advice. But you've got a good family here. Take care of them.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm trying. I'm doing the best I can.”

“Okay,” he said. “Nobody can ask for more than that.” He paused at the door. “You want to run with me out to the house?”

“Why, that gasket come in?”

“Yeah, for all the good it'll do. But I thought I'd humor you and help you put it on.”

I pushed myself upright and gathered my crutches from their leaning place in the corner. “You're a good man, Phillip,” I said.

“Oh, I don't know about that,” he said, helping me pull on my jacket and gloves.

Maybe he didn't know.

But I did.

We didn't have much success with the truck that afternoon. My mind was on other things, including the icy wind that whistled across the plains, made a brief detour around Phillip's trailer, and then flowed directly down the back of my neck. When it came time to go to practice, I was more than ready.

“It'll be done when it's done,” Phillip said when I apologized for our slow progress.

“It's just that we're not going to get much done on it the rest of the week,” I explained as I hoisted myself into the passenger seat. “Thanksgiving, then the basketball tournament Friday and Saturday. And I was hoping to see this thing fired to life along about now.”

He laughed. “I don't want to rule it out completely,” he said. “But that thing has been out of commission almost as long as I have.”

He dropped me off and headed out to the house to do chores early so he could come back and shoot with the other guys after practice, which I was running on my own. Carla had volunteered to stay on and help, but I had started to feel unnecessary, never a good feeling at the best of times.

I ran a hard practice, maybe to compensate for not being able to do anything physical myself: fast-break drills, rim to rim, the rebounder kicking the ball out to midcourt; full-court presses; half-court traps. I had them hustling and puffing, and their pace for their final laps was noticeably slower than usual, their arms dangling uselessly, feet dragging. It was a good practice, though, and maybe would help compensate some for the turkey, gravy, and pie they would consume over the next few days.

Oz and Bobby Ray were the first to get dressed and join me on the court after the boys were finished. I was standing with a ball at the free throw line, my crutches planted in my armpits.

“How's our star player?” Bobby Ray asked, clapping me on the shoulder so hard I had to pinwheel my arms to keep from falling flat on my face.

“I haven't seen him yet,” I said, surrendering the ball to someone who could do something useful with it and making my way to the sideline.

“Bill said he came out and talked to you. How does he look?” Oz asked quietly as Bobby Ray banked in a set shot from about eighteen feet.

“Mentally? Physically? Emotionally?”

“Is there a difference?”

“No,” I said. “He looked pretty bad.” The crutches and I winced our way over to the bleachers, and I sat down with a sigh of pleasure on the hard wood.

“It's understandable,” Oz said. “In his place I'd feel the same.” He picked up a ball from the cart next to me and dribbled out to join Bobby Ray and Phillip, who had wandered in and was now being greeted by Bobby Ray and Oz with varied degrees of enthusiasm.

B. W., in street clothes and tennis shoes, his hair freshly shampooed and toweled, emerged from the locker room and took a seat next to me in the stands. “I'll hang around to drive you home,” he said, leaning back on his elbows on the bench behind him. “We haven't had much time to talk lately.”

“No kidding,” I said. “But Phillip said he'd be glad to bring me out. You don't have to hang around and watch these old guys just for my sake.”

“It's okay,” he said. “Hey, I can stand in for you again if it'd help.”

“It would,” I said. “That would give me a better sense of where these guys are.”

Bill was the last one to arrive, dressed in new Nike Air Jordans and a satiny warm-up suit, his arms full of boxes, which he set down on the bleachers in front of me.

“Gather 'round, gather 'round,” he called out in a hearty Santa Claus voice. “Got warm-ups and game uniforms for everyone.” Then he proceeded to call out names and pass out correspondingly labeled boxes.

“Thanks,” Oz said when he opened his box and ran his finger across the sheen of his warm-up.

“These are beautiful,” Bobby Ray said, and his face lit up. As he held up his jersey to his chest, I saw that it was an exact replica of the home jerseys we had worn in the state championships in 1975.

“Had them custom-made from a photo,” Bill said. “Naturally, they don't make them like this anymore. Jerseys are different and everybody is wearing those big baggy shorts.”

“Those big baggy shorts would look a lot better on me nowadays than the ones we used to wear,” I said, but I was clearly outdone, outvoted, outuniformed. I don't know what I'd thought we would wear for our big game; I don't know why it didn't occur to me that Bill would have thought about it. “Thanks,” I finally said. The jersey seemed like it would fit all right when I held it up to my chest, so at least Bill hadn't been so carried away by his nostalgia kick that he'd ordered the same sizes we'd worn in high school.

To his credit, when he skinned off his warm-ups, Bill wasn't dressed in some sort of designer basketball ensemble. He was wearing a pair of old drawstring shorts and a T-shirt proclaiming “Bush for Governor.”

He looked good, especially compared to the rest of us. He had been lifting weights, judging from his bulky shoulders and upper arms, although like most guys who lift, he had concentrated on his upper body to the detriment of his legs, which were fit but skinny. I suppose I shouldn't have been so critical—the man was in a whole lot better shape than I was. It was just a symptom, I guess, of how much I had allowed myself to dislike him over the years.

It's almost impossible to play basketball with someone you don't like. Maybe some people can separate the person and the player, but I never could. Coach always used to get on me about feeding Bobby Ray when Bill was open under the basket, but I'll be honest: Then, and now, I didn't want him to have the ball, didn't want him to score, didn't want him to look good. He already looked good enough.

I was glad B. W. was out there now instead of me; at least he could pass off to Bill without feeling a twinge of anything.

Mostly they shot around, rebounded each other's misses. Bill worked down in the low post, shooting turnaround jump shots and hook shots, and he shot well enough, although he seemed a little stiff.

Why did I still feel an inner warmth when he muffed a hook shot or misjudged a rebound? Sam had left him, which might have made me happy, even if I couldn't have her. But if anything, I should have commiserated with him; more than anyone, I knew what it felt like to love her and then lose her.

“Instruct us, Coach,” Bobby Ray called over after they'd shot for twenty minutes or so. I called out an offense, and B. W. pointed out positions—and in a few words reminded Bill what his role was. The kid was not just a better player than I was, he was also a better coach, and for a brief moment, I was seized by a burning resentment that smoldered in my gut before turning into something like pride. So talented, so smart—