Tumbleweeds (18 page)

John and Trey and Cathy parceled out a few forced evenings where they sat around watching television and rehashing play-off games, Cathy praising the snacks Bert had provided. John found himself preferring the old Bert Caldwell before his star stature had given his father a new community standing.

“That priest better mind his own business,” Bert said. “You’re not going to some namby-pamby Catholic college. You’re going to the University of Miami, and you and Trey Don are going to be the standouts when their quarterback graduates and goes to the pros. You’re going to make yourself somebody.”

Make
you
somebody
, John thought, but did not say it. He ought to be grateful that the man who referred to him as “my son” had cleaned up his act, no matter for what deluded reason or his mistaken notion that his say would have the least influence on the decisions John made for his future.

“Father Richard says he didn’t send the book,” John said.

The next day it disappeared.

In May, the day after their high school graduation, Trey and John accepted Coach Mueller’s invitation to visit the University of Miami campus, deferred from December of the previous year because of the play-offs. A visit had not been required to convince them that Miami was the place they wanted to go. Cathy had to remain behind. Trey’s and John’s expenses were paid for, but Cathy would have had to bear the cost of hers and Emma had refused Mabel’s offer of financial help.

“I’d cramp your style anyway,” Cathy told Trey. “This is supposed to be an all-boys adventure, and I’d be bored to death taking a tour of the athletic facilities. I’ll wait my turn until I register for classes in the fall.”

Two weeks before their departure, Trey submitted to the test Dr. Thomas had recommended he take the year before but which he’d refused. He’d read extensively about the complications that might result from boys’ having mumps at sixteen. “I’m ready to find out, Doc,” he’d told him. “I don’t want to go any longer not knowing.”

“The procedure is fairly simple,” Dr. Thomas said, and handed him a small plastic cup.

Dr. Thomas made his pronouncement the day before the boys were to leave. Mabel was not present. Dr. Thomas had thought of calling her in, but Trey was eighteen, well into the age of consent, and the boy had expressed a desire to come alone. Later, with his permission, Dr. Thomas would share his findings with Trey’s aunt.

“There is semi-bad news and semi-good news, Trey,” he began, showing him a chart of the male genitalia. “Let’s begin with the first.” With his pen, he pointed out the areas of Trey’s testes severely damaged by inflammation from the mumps virus as a result of the delayed treatment of the disease. “You suffered a condition known as orchitis,” he said. “From your biology class, you know that a sperm
cell looks like a tadpole that waves its tail. Nonmotile sperm cells lack flagella and cannot swim.”

“What are you trying to say, Doc?”

“Your semen analysis shows that your sperm cells are abnormally shaped and cannot swim.”

“And that means?”

“It means that you are presently sterile. In other words, your sperm cells cannot move forward from the vagina to the uterus after ejaculation, but your current condition may not be a lifetime sentence. Thirty-six percent of adolescents can still have abnormal sperm up to three years after recovery from the mumps.” Dr. Thomas set the drawings aside and clasped his hands, his look sympathetic. “If you’d come to me at the first symptoms of the mumps…”

Trey had come expecting the worst, but he was Trey Don Hall, charmed boy wonder. He eluded the consequences of his actions. “You sound like I fall in the sixty-four percent range,” he said.

“I won’t lie to you, Trey. Your testicular tissue was severely compromised. You’re two years into this and… improvement appears highly unlikely.”

“What’s the semi-good news?”

“You have no testicular atrophy, but…”—he spread his hands apologetically—“that’s not to say there won’t be down the line.”

“What are the odds of that happening?”

“One-third of the boys who get orchitis caused by mumps after puberty will have a shrinking of one, perhaps two, of the testicles. You’re young and strong. You live a healthy lifestyle. You’ve been well looked after. It could be you’ll at least have escaped that bullet.”

One out of three.
Every morning for the rest of his life, he’d be checking his balls. The cold shock of reality hit him, numbing him. He’d never have a son… a daughter. He’d never be a father. Catherine Ann would never be a mother—not by him. She was the kind of girl—of orphan—who would want children. She’d want to have a family.

“How many people need to know about this?” Trey asked.

“Nobody, unless you give permission. It’s a matter of doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Good. I want no one else to know.” Trey rose on numb legs, reading the question in Dr. Thomas’s regretful gaze if that included Cathy.

They had new clothes for the trip. Mabel had insisted on buying Trey a linen sport coat and trousers to wear on the plane, and Bert had surprised John with an expensive Hickey-Freeman navy-blue blazer and slacks to “let those Florida folks know my boy is no hick.” Looking at them in the airport—so tall and strapping and handsome in their fine new clothes—Cathy marveled at how nature had favored them. No blessing had passed them by. Yet a strange apprehension played beneath the surface of her excitement for them. Something had come over Trey in the last twenty-four hours, beyond the moods that could sometimes strike him. He’d begged off seeing her last night, saying he had packing to do. Mabel usually did his packing. Noticing the admiring looks they drew from other passengers, she caught herself thinking—the thought like an ice-cold bullet to her brain—
Come back to me, Trey
.

They drew aside for a private parting before he and John boarded. She waited expectantly for Trey to recite their usual farewell, but he did not. “I’ll miss you,” he said instead, and kissed her between the eyes—a first when they were parting.

It was she who said, “Don’t forget me while you’re gone.”

“How could I?” he said, and added, “I leave you my heart.”

That spring, the season had hardly sprung before it succumbed to the hottest temperatures on record. The wildflowers died before they bloomed, and the tender green of the prairie grasses bleached in the dry, hot winds that parched the ground. The heat, like the below-freezing days of winter, drove the adults inside. It was an interim in which only the young could find pleasure.

“Do you feel something different in the quality of the atmosphere this spring, Emma?” Mabel asked.

“Yes, Mabel. Triple-digit temperatures.”

“No, it’s more than the unprecedented heat. There’s something else.”

“Sadness. Our children will be leaving us.”

“Yes, there’s that… but there’s something else, too….”

Mabel was having one of her fey moments, but Emma shared her sense that something, not yet seen, had entered their universe. Perhaps it was loneliness that perched like a big black bird waiting to swoop upon them when Cathy and Trey and John were gone. Even Rufus felt it. He whimpered without cause and followed closely at Cathy’s heels wherever she went. He’d prop his head on first Trey’s knee, then John’s, when they dropped by, his expressive eyes sad as if some instinct had warned him of their ultimate departure.

Trey and John were gone five days. Mabel had surprised them with the money to rent a car and see something of Miami when their two-day introduction to the campus was over. They planned to book a motel room and play tourist. They ended their stay by having seen little of the city. There was too much to see and do on the university campus.

At the Miami airport, waiting for their flight to be called for the return home, Trey sat slumped forward with his head between his hands like a man who’s just heard the worst news of his life. John sat beside him, coldly unsympathetic to his pain. Trey spoke between the clamp of his hands.

“I know what you’re thinking, Tiger.”

“How could you do it, TD?”

“I guess I’m just a sorry piece of shit.”

John’s silence confirmed his opinion.

“There are things you don’t know,” Trey said.

John combed his fingers through his hair. “Then tell me, Trey.
What in hell got into you? You get off the reservation and you go wild. Did you ever once think of Cathy back home?”

Trey unclasped his head and turned to him, his eyes rived with anguish. “Of course I did! Otherwise, I wouldn’t be so miserable. I’m… I’m ashamed of myself, but I… didn’t know what else to do—”

“What do you mean you didn’t know what else to do?”

“John, these last few days have got me to thinking….”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“That… that maybe Cathy and I ought to cool it for a while—until I’m sure enough about myself to know I can stay faithful to her. Distance makes the heart grow fonder… isn’t that what they say? I’ve got to give myself
time
—
space
—to understand how I could… go off the reservation, as you say, after only five days of being away from her.”

John listened, sickened. But he shouldn’t be surprised at what he was hearing. From the moment they’d stepped on campus, they’d been in the tow of the unbelievably gorgeous Hurricane Honeys, the school’s official hosts to show recruits the school and facilities, sort of like the Bobettes, but skyboxes above them. He’d caught Trey’s wandering eye, heard his admiration of the girls with legs “up to here,” listened to him say that it was nice for a change to be around girls who were interested in football. There were other coeds, too, who’d thrown themselves at him—at both of them—sexy, stylish, sophisticated beauties, dozens of them, like roses ready to pick, worlds different from the pretty but, with the exception of Cathy, yokel girls back home. Assaulted by all that beauty and willingness on the Miami campus, Trey had gamboled about like a stallion released into a field of clover.

“I’ve got to find out if I’m the jerk I think I am, John—for Catherine Ann’s sake. She deserves the best, and what if I’m not it? How do I find out without… freedom to do so? I’m not so much a bastard that I could fool around while I’m still going with Cathy.”

Flabbergasted, John said, “How can you have a change of heart
about the girl you’ve loved since you were eleven years old, the girl you’ve declared was your heart and soul—your whole life—after only five days away from her?”

Trey turned the shade of a Louisiana yam. “It’s been a shock to me, too, Tiger—believe me. But I haven’t had a change of heart. I
love
Cathy. That’s what this is all about. I want to marry her, but is it fair to her when… Well, I’m not like you, John. I yield to temptation.” His struggle for a grin collapsed, and his face fell. “I’m going to tell her I was unfaithful to her.”

John felt as if a concrete block had landed on his chest. Trey’s confession would kill Cathy.

“I’ll… tell her how it is with me, how it’s got to be with me until I’m sure that I can be the person she deserves,” Trey said. “I hope like hell she’ll understand and give me this break. We’ll both be at Miami—apart but together. In sight of each other, but… distant enough to put some ground between us.”

John’s lip twisted. “So that when you feel an itch for her, she’ll be accessible. Is that the idea?”

“No, that is
not
the idea! If you think Cathy would pull off her panties for me just because I came around, you don’t know her. I’m saying that when I
know
I can trust myself, she’ll be reachable. For chrissakes, John. We’re only eighteen. There’s a whole lifetime for the kind of commitment Cathy wants. Look at the high school sweethearts we know who married and are now divorced. They committed themselves too early, before they’d had a chance to look around and see what else was out there.”

“There’s nobody out there more wonderful than Cathy, TD, and you
know
that. When do you plan to tell her?”

“As soon as we get home. It wouldn’t be fair not to let her know right away. You and I will be leaving for fall practice first of August. The summer will give her a few months to get used to the idea that we won’t be seeing each other until we’re… ready.”

Until
you’re
ready, you mean
, John thought, revolted. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with Trey. “Telling her right away wouldn’t have anything to do with those phone numbers in your pocket, would it?” he asked.

Trey flushed again. “Maybe.”

“What if during this
hiatus
you’re proposing, Cathy falls in love with someone else? What if she learns she can live without you?”

For a second, despair—soul deep—glimmered in Trey’s eyes. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

You’re taking no chance at all because you’re confident Cathy will wait for you, you arrogant sonofabitch,
John thought. “You’ll break her heart,” he said.

Trey slumped again. “I know. God forgive me—I know.”

“I hope He does, because Cathy may not. She could have gone to USC, you know.”

“I know.”

They barely spoke on the plane ride home.

C
ATHY THOUGHT FOR A MOMENT
she was mired in a bad dream. This couldn’t be Trey telling her that he thought it would be best if they gave each other “some breathing space” when they got to Miami. The list of logical arguments he’d compiled for their “chilling-out period” could not be coming out of his mouth.