Tomas Hernandez, the Bison’s pale kicker, took the gun from Luke and socked him on the shoulder. He made a show of wincing. “You’re like hitting a rock.”
“Don’t wear out that arm now,” shouted Coach Parter, ambling down from the house, followed a few steps behind by Garrett Mason and Mitchell Malacek. Bringing up the rear, somehow carrying a large case of Bud Light in both hands while to-go bags from the Egg House dangled on her wrists, was Coach Parter’s wife. Luke struggled to remember her name: Juney? Junelle? Whatever it was, Luke’s father would have pronounced it (and her) to be “low-rent.” Luke thought she was nice.
Mrs. Parter eased the beer onto a spindly little table, unhooked all the food with a wince. “Anything else, dear?” she asked, laying a plump hand on the coach’s shoulder. He dismissed her with a coy squeeze of the thigh.
“Joel Whitley was asking questions at the diner,” Garrett said, and a hush fell over Tomas and the twins. They all took their seats at the table, the metal shedding rust on their fingers like pollen.
Luke accepted a beer from Parter, trying to look as concerned about this news as the other boys. Today was getting stranger and stranger. Luke Evers had few friends on the football team (he had few friends at all, for that matter). Mitchell and Garrett, Tomas and the Turner twins, they had always formed a tight little knot at the heart of the Bison. Luke had often seen them together with Dylan and KT Staler, hanging around after practice in the locker room and laughing with their voices low, disappearing after games, tearing through town at night with their trucks’ mufflers pierced and bellowing. Years ago, the boys had made it very clear to Luke that they had no room for him in their gang.
But now here Luke was, at their invitation, and here they were, kind as country, and Luke was too flattered by their sudden interest in him to acknowledge any misgiving.
Coach Parter took a long pull from his beer. He was a big man, pelted with wiry hair from the chin down but curiously beardless. A faded sailor’s tattoo of an anchor and a cross was sketched over his meaty forearm. He wore a tight watch around which sweat always seemed to pucker.
“We hear we might be needing a new quarterback soon, Mr. Evers,” Parter said.
Luke’s heart stuttered. He sipped the beer and suddenly it was all he could do not to gag. He’d never actually drunk beer before. He’d never had anyone to drink it with.
Luke forced himself to swallow. “Is that right?”
“Did D never tell you?” said Ricky Turner. “You was first pick to be quarterback back in the day.”
“I was what?”
“It’s true.” Mitchell Malacek smiled with those perfect teeth of his. “Dylan only got the spot ’cause the team was desperate for a running back that year and he couldn’t catch for shit. Ain’t that right, Coach?”
Parter nodded. “It is, indeed. I always wondered what would have changed had things gone the other way. If we might not have got us a fatter trophy last year.”
Luke couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Football tryouts in the summer before freshman year had pretty much ended his childhood friendship with Dylan. Luke had wanted to be quarterback more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. Dylan, on the other hand, had never wanted much of anything and somehow always got everything.
And look at them now.
“There’s more to the job than just throwing balls and calling plays, you know,” Tomas said.
“We might need your help with little things here and there sometimes.” Garrett Mason wore no shirt, and in the falling sunlight Luke saw a strange scar on the boy’s pec that he’d never noticed in the locker rooms: a tidy white dash, running just beneath the nipple. “Thetownmight need your help. Do you understand?”
A thick, sudden silence sprang up, broken only by the drone of insects. Luke had no idea what they were talking about.
“Of course,” he replied.
The boys laughed, sounding excited, relieved. Luke laughed as well, though he felt the strangest sensation, like he had just swum into a cold current in a still lake. What exactly had he signed himself up for?
“Very good, Mr. Evers,” Coach said. His lazy smile reappeared. “Now—I believe you boys have work to do.”
JOEL
Parked on the curb of Hollis Avenue at the north edge of town, Joel wolfed down a burger and waited in front of the empty lot where Bentley First Baptist and its inescapable eye of a steeple had once stood. Yet again, he felt a touch of envy at whoever had burned the place down. After the way the congregation there had treated his family—well. His mother was right. He couldn’t help but see these weeds and this charred oak tree and the Evers Realty sign as anything but an improvement.
Ready, wrote BBison50k.
With the church gone there was little left open on Hollis Avenue but the dingy storefront that was Bentley First Baptist’s temporary home; a faded painting of a cross hung in its window. Even through the store’s closed doors, Joel could hear the music of the church’s Wednesday night youth service. He wondered what Wesley Mores would say were Joel to wander inside tonight with a Bible in hand.
Joel steered his convertible around the store to a smaller parking lot behind the building and idled in the shadow of a tree turning inky in the sunset. The clock on his radio read 7:27 p.m. Right on time.Ready, he wrote.
He flipped on the radio. It was tuned to static. He listened for a time, remembering the night he’d arrived and the way he’d been certain—almost certain—that he’d heard a voice slithering out of his speakers the moment he first caught sight of Bentley on the horizon.
imissedyou
Dumb dreams. Bad dreams.
