Spelldown (16 page)

At the Randalls’ house, several of Billy Ray’s high school friends are playing football in the front yard. Lucinda is twirling her baton and throwing it up real high. She sees us and comes over to say hello.

Spencer, her brother, jogs over and asks Billy Ray to play.

“Hey, what about me?” I say.

Spencer tosses the football from one hand to the other like he’s hot shit. “You forgot your pompoms!”

“Don’t be such a jerk.” Lucinda pushes him. “Let her play. She’s good.”

And the game is on.

I play on Spencer’s side. Billy Ray is the quarterback for the other team. Lucinda referees and blows the whistle anytime she feels like it, acting like the Queen of Sheba. If flirting were a sport, she would win the Olympics.

Flirting runs in the Randall family.

Spencer acts all nice to me, asking me questions, like who taught me to play football and what college I plan to attend. I kind of enjoy the attention, but want him to shut up and
play football. Billy Ray plays with great intensity, as if he’s perturbed because Spencer is flirting with me.

Within an hour Billy Ray has sacked Spencer at least six times and has quarterbacked his team to a 12-0 lead. The snow is really coming down, but I am determined to score. We play for a while, but I cannot get open to save myself.

Finally, I see my opening, and I sprint as fast as I can toward our goal. Spencer sees me and throws a high, arcing pass. I jump into the air and catch it, then make a dash toward the garden hose that marks the goal line. As soon as I cross it, someone grabs me around my calves and pulls me down. Snow fills my nostrils. I look back and see it’s Billy Ray who tackled me, so I flip myself over and rub snow into his face. Then, suddenly, he’s sitting on top of me, staring at me, his eyes blazing like sparklers. I stare back at him, entranced. Our eyes meet. The snow flits and flutters all around us as if we were captured in a glittery snow globe all by ourselves. My body feels electrified, like it could light up the whole world. Billy Ray whispers, “You look amazing.”

Amazing
. He said I looked amazing.

All of a sudden, we’re surrounded and they’re hurling snowballs at us.

“No humping eighth graders in my front yard,” Spencer says.

Billy Ray jumps up, tackles Spencer, and presses his face into the snow. “I’m not humping anybody!”

Billy Ray comes back over, helps me up, and congratulates me on my touchdown. Then he starts apologizing. I tell him
it’s okay, we’re just playing football. I say good-bye to Lucinda and then give Spencer and the rest of the dumb-asses the evil eye. Billy Ray and I walk home in silence. The snow keeps falling. I cock my head back, stick out my tongue, and feel the flakes melt as they land. People talk about falling in love at first sight. That’s never happened to me, but a few minutes ago, I think I fell in love at first touch. I feel like I’m being swirled around in a velvety golden spiral.

When we get to my house, I say, “Want some hot cocoa?”

“I’d love some, but I’m too dirty to go inside,” he says.

“I’ll bring it out here. It won’t take but a minute or two.”

I rush inside and find Mama and the twins watching Joey the Clown on TV. They don’t pay me any attention and I’m thrilled. I turn on the stove, heat the milk in a pan, and then add plenty of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. Then I pour the steaming liquid into two blue mugs, plop a couple of marshmallows into each, and take them outside.

Billy Ray is sitting in the porch swing. He gets up and closes the door, then takes a cup for himself. We sit in the swing with our hot chocolate. His thigh is up against mine. I can hear his breath. I feel steamy inside, and it’s not from the warm drink. After a while I let my head fall onto his shoulder and he puts his arm around the back of the swing. We take tiny sips of the sweet, dark milk and watch the snowflakes float by like tiny white butterflies.

1: nervous exhaustion due to overwrought thoughts and emotions

2: a neurosis accompanied by various aches and pains with no discernible organic cause and characterized by extreme mental and physical fatigue

Jittery as a baby June bug, that’s how I feel as I sit at the kitchen table studying the “Tt” chapter of the dictionary. I feel worn-out, like I’ve been flying too high for too long, with no place to land. I lost miles of sleep worrying about the national spelling bee. It feels good to be the center of attention, but it also makes me feel creepy, like I’m some kind of fake prophet. Mama says my ability to spell is a gift that has to be respected because it comes from the Lord God Almighty. That sounds true enough, but I think I ought to get a little bit of credit for studying my butt off.

I wish Mrs. Harrison would hurry up and get here.

Maybe a smoke will relax me. I pick up the new Dublin-shaped Kaywoodie Mama’s going to send to Daddy at Winding Springs. I admire its dark brown, gleaming wood. It cost two books of Green Stamps, which is the exact same price as the Magnan Aristocrat tennis racket I admired in the
Ideabook of Distinguished Merchandise
for months. If
Mama had bought the tennis racket instead of the pipe, I might be playing tennis over in Catawba Hills with some rich kid instead of sitting at the kitchen table trying to resist the temptation to smoke this shiny pipe.

I rip open the pouch of Prince Albert Cherry Tobacco.
Damn it all to hell
. The tobacco scatters all over the table and some falls onto the floor. I rake the tobacco into a pile and cram some of it into the pipe. Then I strike a match, hold it to the bowl, and suck hard until the tobacco catches on fire. Yukkety-yuk-yuk. The taste doesn’t come close to the heavenly smell of cherries roasting.

Huffing and puffing, I flip through the “Tt” chapter.
Taciturn
means you are fond of silence.
Terrigenous
is a gorgeous-sounding word that means produced by the earth.
Testes
is the plural of
testis
, which is the Latin word for testicles.
Testis
originally meant witness, which makes sense, because a man’s
testes
bear witness to his virility.
Truculent
rhymes with succulent, but means something brutal, harsh, or violent. I also learn that if my friend Jamie Ledbetter follows in his undertaker daddy’s footsteps, he will be a
thanatologist
one day. But my biggest surprise is discovering that Mama’s numero uno belief has a name:
teleology
. The doctrine that all things in nature have a purpose—they are made to fulfill a plan. My own personal interpretation of teleology is that there is a Big Something Out There that is the Cause of Everything.

Maybe it is just the words I happen to notice this morning, but “Tt” words seem a lot more profound than
words beginning with other letters. When the pipe goes out, I empty and clean it real good before putting it away. Then I get rid of any incriminating evidence left on the table and floor. A car horn honks three times. I grab my cowboy hat and rush out the door to Mrs. Harrison’s station wagon parked in the driveway. She opens the passenger door and I slip into the front seat.

“I really like that outfit. You look cute,” she says as she backs the car out of the driveway. There isn’t a trace of sarcasm in the compliment.

“Thank you,” I say. “Mama can barely tolerate it.”

She drives north on Highway 200 toward town.

My new western attire causes a lot of raised eyebrows, but I haven’t told anyone that my sudden change in apparel springs straight from a dream. In the dream, I’m standing behind a fence, watching two white horses dancing in yellow light in a faraway field. They are majestic, like the King and Queen of Horses. They rear up on hind legs and prance in my direction, while I cringe, afraid their hooves will stomp me straight into heaven. But then they arrive, snorting horsefully, and stand there, as if they were waiting for me. Suddenly, I raise my huge head and stand on four strong legs, only to discover that I am not a girl, but a white horse just like them.

After dreaming about the horses for the third time, I decided to get suited up, just in case a noble steed gallops into my life. I purchased Wrangler jeans in the boys’ department at Belk, then ordered a pair of red leather cowboy boots from the Sears catalogue with my babysitting money. The shiny
sheriff’s badge I bought at Harper’s Dime Store for seventy-seven cents, and I borrowed two of Daddy’s old western shirts, whittled them down, and sewed them up to fit me. After Wendell gave me an old cowboy hat his daddy used to wear before he died, the look was complete. Wendell Whetstone Sr. must have been a pinhead, because his hat fits me fine.

“Hey, it’s that crazy song!” Mrs. Harrison turns up the volume on the radio. “MacArthur Park” is the most frustratingly beautiful song I have ever heard. That image of a cake being left out in the rain with all that sweet green icing flowing down breaks my heart. The fact that it’s sung by that sad-eyed actor who plays King Arthur in
Camelot
makes it even more enigmatic.

We sing along with King Arthur about drinking warm wine, about passion flowing like a river through the sky, about things melting in the dark. When we get to the tragedy about losing the cake recipe, we scream the last lines—“Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no, oh, NO!—then laugh our butts off.

“Look, Karlene,” Mrs. Harrison says as we drive past my church. The sign out front has a brand-new message:
ONLY SIX MORE DAYS TO PRAY FOR KARLENE KAYE BRIDGES TO WIN THE NATIONAL SPELLING BEE.

“Preacher Smoot loves to embarrass me.”

“Oh, come on. It’s sweet.”

“That’s because they’re not praying for Amanda Mathilda Harrison,” I say.

“You got a point there.” She’s got that glad-to-be-alive look on her face.

When we pass the cab stand, I yell hey at Kelly, who’s sitting on a stool carving a wolf out of a big cedar log. He waves at me. Mrs. Harrison parks the car in front of the Red Clover Drug Store. When we walk into the store, Mr. Higgins, the squatty gray-haired pharmacist, is standing in the back filling prescriptions while Mrs. Higgins makes a milk shake for a young man sitting at the lunch counter. We walk to the back of the store to the café and sit in the booth Mama and I always share.

“Excited about going to Washington?” Mrs. Harrison asks, raising her perfectly arched eyebrows.

“Scared is more like it.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to know, all the Avon Ladies in North Carolina are praying for you. At the statewide meeting last week, my mother asked them to.”

“I appreciate it,” I say.

Mrs. Higgins shuffles up to the table with her green apron wrapped around her tiny body and takes our order. Mrs. Harrison orders a ham salad sandwich. I feel a little queasy, but order a grilled pimento cheese anyway. We both order Cokes.

“You ready to do the interview for your final home ec project?” Mrs. Harrison says.

“Yes ma’am.” I pull out my little spiral notepad and pencil.

Mrs. Higgins brings a tray holding two small bottles of Coke with straws sticking out of each them.

“What’s your topic?” Mrs. Harrison says.

“I decided to do my essay on the psychological and spiritual aspects of homemaking.”

She whistles through her front teeth. “Ooh-wee. That’s quite a topic for a fourteen-year-old. Fire away,” she says, amused to pieces.

“What is the key to your success as a wife and mother as well as your being a wonderful teacher?”

“Hmm. Well, the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is thank God I woke up. Then I try to set my mind on enjoying the things I have to do that day—even the things I don’t want to do. Being cheerful goes a long way in this world.”

The sandwich platters arrive, each with a fat dill pickle and two handfuls of potato chips on the side. I trade my potato chips for Mrs. Harrison’s pickle. She takes a bite of her sandwich and I bite into a pickle.

“Mr. Harrison is always whistling and acting cheerful. Why is that?”

“Off the record?” she asks.

“Of course.”

“It’s because I give him all the sex the Good Lord will allow.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, nibbling on the pen. I’ve never heard
sex
and
the Good Lord
in the same sentence.

“The summer before I left for college, my mother and I had some serious discussions. She told me I had been given a powerful tool and that I must learn to use it with every single ounce of my intelligence, including my brain and my heart.
She said sex was a privilege that God gave us not only for our pleasure, but for his, and that—”

“Whoa, stop right there. I need to catch up.” I look at the words I’ve written so far:
Sex, powerful tool, intelligence, brain, heart, privilege, for God’s pleasure
. “Is this part of being an Episcopalian—to have sex for God’s sake?”

“No. Episcopalians aren’t half as liberal as my mother.” Mrs. Harrison takes another bite of her sandwich and eats a few chips.

I take a tiny bite of the pimento cheese, then eat the other half of the giant pickle. “Well, go on—what else did she say?”

“She said that as far as body parts were concerned, eyes are the most important. And that before I ever let a fellow unzip his pants in my presence for any reason, I should stare deep down into his eyes until I saw the truth in them. And that if I was staring into his eyes, he was probably staring into mine, and all the looking at each other was bound to create a lot more mystery, which would slow the whole shebang down.”

I scribble
whole shebang
. “You mother sounds wise as hell.”

“Yep, she is. My advice for you is to wait as long as you can before you let yourself fall in love. Because once you do, it’s nearly impossible to remain a
virgo intacto.”

“Virgo intacto
sounds like a disease to me.” I laugh.

“I’m serious, Karlene. Ten years ago, Jack Harrison stormed into my life, and I haven’t been the same since. It’s
been a blessing, mostly. I have two wonderful kids, a fancy house, a jazzy teaching job, and a husband who thrills me to the bone. But sometimes, being Mrs. Jack Harrison feels like a
sacrificium intellectus.”