by D. K. Wall
After dropping Matt off to keep early party arrivals at bay, Danny drove them to his parents’ store. He pulled his car off the main road, past the gas pumps, and around to the back before parking beside the dark garage bays surrounded by the cars waiting for repairs and the used cars with placards in their windows advertising their sale.
Nathan picked up a wet basketball from the concrete and drilled a shot through the hoop attached to the side of the shop. Grinning, Charlie scrambled for the rebound and drove past Nathan for a layup. A quick game broke out, with pushing and shoving and calling out fouls. Hank and Danny stood under a small roof over the back door, illuminated by a single bulb dangling from a metal fixture, and cheered them on.
When the ball bounced toward Hank, he grabbed it, tucked it under his arm, and charged the other two. They wrapped their arms around him to drag his bulk to the ground, but not before he ripped his arms free and tossed the ball into the air. It banged off the metal rim, skimmed the wall, and rolled through the net.
“Scooore!” Hank shouted as the others laughed.
Danny shook his head, unlocked the door, punched in the alarm code to disarm it, and led his teammates inside. After unlocking the storeroom, he flipped a switch illuminating a string of incandescent bulbs hanging from a wire stretching to the back wall. He waved his arm toward the stacked cases of beer. “Fresh shipment waiting for me to stock the coolers in the morning.”
Hank ran his hands over the boxes and smiled. “This’ll do.”
Danny shook his head. “Nope, we are just taking one case. We don’t need more. We have the keg waiting for us at your house.”
Hank protested, “But we might need extra.”
“One case. And everyone pony up cash so I can get it into the register tomorrow.”
Nathan pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket and removed some bills. He studied the inventory stacked on the shelf. “Can we take chips? I’m starving.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever you want.”
Hank opened his wallet. “I got plenty of cash. Let’s get two cases.”
Danny rolled his eyes as he shook his head again. “Can’t. Dad told me to be careful about taking too much beer because he could lose his license. I have to ring it up tomorrow just like it’s a regular sale in case the ABC guys inspect.”
Charlie handed over his own cash and grinned. “But munchies are no problem, right?”
Danny laughed. “No license needed for those. Take all you want.”
Nathan picked up a package of chewing gum and couple of Mountain Dews. “And don’t forget we have to pass the Ronnie breathalyzer.”
Hank rolled his eyes. “You two might as well live in a prison.”
The boys stacked bags of potato chips, boxes of donuts, and a case of beer on a table. Danny wrote it all down on an envelope and stuffed the collected cash inside. He slid the envelope under the open cash-register drawer, where it would be spotted upon opening Saturday morning.
Supplies in hand, the boys exited the back door. Danny reactivated the alarm and twisted the key in the lock. They walked back toward the car and spotted Abe Morgan spinning the basketball on his finger.
“Not bad, huh?” he said.
“Pretty decent for an old man.” Danny grinned as Abe clasped his hand across his chest, faking pain from a wound.
“You boys headed out?”
“Yes, Dad. Headed to Hank’s for a little after-game celebration.”
“Good. You staying over there tonight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perfect. I don’t want you drinking and driving.” He motioned toward the supplies in their hands. “Make sure you lock that beer in your trunk. Absolutely no driving around with open cans in the car.”
“Yes, sir, of course not.”
Danny opened the trunk, and Hank dutifully loaded the large box into it. They would have done the same even if Abe had not come upon them. They had plenty of time to drink up at the Point, a detail they omitted disclosing since Abe never asked if they were going anywhere else.
“I thought I heard you boys shooting hoops down here and saw the lights come on in the store. Figured you were getting some snacks for celebration. You deserve to have a little fun after that great win tonight.” As they grinned in response, Abe focused on Nathan. “And that hit at the end of the game. Wow, I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of that. Bet your dad would’ve loved it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Morgan.”
“Why don’t you boys plan to come over Sunday afternoon? I’ll grill up some burgers. Martha will make her potato salad and one of her pies—I know none of you would refuse that. Charlie, ask Ronnie to come, and Hank, get your mom and Matt out here. Colette will be mad at me forever if I don’t ask your brother.”
Hank rolled his eyes in mock protest. “Sounded great right up to me having to put up with my little brother.”
Abe rolled the ball across the wet concrete and onto the dirt behind the garage. “And after we eat, I’ll show you how a real basketball player can handle you on a court.”
“Really?” Hank asked. “What basketball player you inviting to join us?”
“Starting point guard right here for the Millerton conference champs. Including beating Roosevelt every year.” The boys groaned at the reminder as Abe pointed at Hank. “I might just start with you, smart mouth, but you’ll actually have to play basketball and not bang around like a football jock.”
Hank hooted at the banter. “Ain’t a real sport if you can’t tackle.”
“A real sport calls for finesse and skill, not just brute strength.” As a second chorus of groans arose, Abe turned toward the house. “Sunday it is. You boys have fun and stay out of trouble. And, Danny, don’t forget I need your help in the store tomorrow. Be home by opening.”
“Yes, sir. Good night.”
“Good night, and remember: no drinking and driving.” Abe disappeared into the shadows as he walked toward the house.
Danny cranked the engine and left the parking lot.
4
A hundred years earlier, old-growth forests had blanketed the hills surrounding the original farming community. Timber companies swooped in and harvested the lumber. Once the large trees were nearly depleted, they abandoned the land but left a network of logging roads criss-crossing the rolling terrain. One of those abandoned roads led to a small, flat clearing that jutted out from the recovered forests several hundred feet above the town.
The Point, as the locals had dubbed it, offered a view of the entire park and the town in the distance. On a clear night, the lights from Charlotte glowed on the horizon, a distant beacon of economic prosperity.
Despite the spectacular view, few people ventured to the Point. The fading No Trespassing signs installed years before intimidated few, but the rough, twisting fire roads were the real barrier. They didn’t appear on maps, so only local knowledge served as a guide through the many intersections and branches. Rutted from years of use by heavy logging trucks and overgrown by more years of neglect, only the hardiest of vehicles could navigate the labyrinth.
That isolation made the Point a popular teenage gathering spot on Friday and Saturday nights. Pickup trucks and Jeeps crept through the forest until they emerged in the opening. Music played, and laughter echoed. Beer was guzzled. Cigarettes and marijuana were smoked. Couples drifted to the shadows of the nearby trees. More than a few of the children of Millerton had been conceived at the Point.
But the dismal weather of that cold November night kept even young lust at bay. The Point hosted only the four boys sitting on the hood of Danny’s car, drinking beer and eating snacks. Fog settled over the mountain, shrouding Millerton in a gloomy haze below them.
“Can you believe it’s over? No more football. Ever.” Danny tilted a beer over his head and drained the last drops down his throat.
He crushed the can and tossed it onto a large pile of empties at the edge of the clearing. Periodically, some enterprising—and broke—
high school student gathered all the cans and recycled them for a few dollars, beer money to start things all over.
Danny popped open another beer. Hank swallowed from his own can and wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve—actually Nathan’s jacket sleeve since he carried through on his threat to confiscate the coat until Donna returned his own. “No more banging heads on the field. What are we going to do?”
Danny clanked his beer can against Hank’s as the two boys shouted, “Mo-rines!”
“Morons is more like it.” Nathan, coatless, shivered in the cold. “What are we doing up here tonight?”
“Celebrating victory over Roosevelt High!” whooped Hank as he tapped a cigarette out of his ever-present pack and lit it. “And if you’d stop sipping like a sissy and actually drink that beer, you might be in a better mood.”
“You guys celebrate. I don’t want Ronnie to kill me for drinking.” With his arms wrapped around himself for warmth, Nathan headed for the back door of the car. “I’m getting in so I don’t freeze.”
Shouted insults questioning his manhood followed him as he settled into the backseat. The dome light flashed on again, and Charlie slid in the other back door. He shut it firmly, sipped his beer, and grimaced. “Why did we get warm beer when there were plenty of cold ones in the coolers?”
Hank and Danny leaned on the bumper and raced to see who could drain an entire beer first. Danny won by just a second, slammed the can on the hood of the car, and released an echoing burp.
From the backseat, Nathan gestured toward their friends. “Because those two will drink anything.”
“Why are we up here freezing in the rain while the girls are all in town?”
“Because we’re idiots.”
“Yeah, well nothing personal, but being at the Point in the backseat with you is not the best plan I’ve ever had.” Charlie shivered in his rain-soaked clothes, nodding at their two friends in front of the car. “You think they will really do it? The Marines?”
“Hank will for sure, and he’ll be good at it. He’s been talking about it since kindergarten. All I ever heard him say he wanted.”
“And Danny?”
Nathan shrugged. “Probably. Though I don’t know why he doesn’t stay here and take over the family store. Sure sounds like an easier way to make a living.”
Charlie watched through the window as Hank blew smoke rings and Danny broke into a drunken song. “You know what I have thought about doing?”
“Based on our last two thousand conversations, I guess writing great novels.”
Charlie grinned. “Well, that too, but I meant what I am going to do for a couple of years before becoming a best-selling author.”
“What?”
“Teach high school English.”
Nathan looked at Charlie in surprise. “For real?”
“I know you think it’s silly, but I love reading and books. Getting lost in some story. Teaching English would be fun.”
“Man, I think the Marines would be easier than corralling a bunch of idiots like us to read Shakespeare.”
“And yet, somehow, I got even you hooked on the Bard.”
“Not sure I would call it hooked, but yeah, you made it make sense. And some lines are hilarious once you wade through the weird way he says it.”
Charlie looked down at his hand wrapped around the beer can. “But that’s what I mean. I have fun helping you see the jokes. And sometimes, the students are smart—like Colette.”
“Gee, thanks. Smarter and prettier than us dumb jocks.” Nathan waved off Charlie’s protest. “Makes you wonder how she’s related to Danny, huh?”
Charlie shrugged. “Matt’s related to Hank. He’s smart. And he’s a jock, so anything is possible.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Nathan spoke up again. “You would make a great teacher though even you can’t make me like Billy Budd.”
Charlie smiled at the thought. “What about you? You going to listen to my dad and go to college?”
“I really can’t see it.” Nathan opened his Mountain Dew bottle. “If Ronnie doesn’t kill me when I tell him Donna’s having my kid, I’ll work at the plant. Learn how to fix that stuff while I pay for diapers and baby food and doctors. Besides, I ain’t smart like you.”
“Come on. You’re smart. Especially in math. Go to college and be an engineer.”
“Engineer? Ha! Four years of college. Can’t imagine. Even without the kid, I couldn’t handle all of that studying.”
“Why not? What do you think fixing equipment and setting up manufacturing lines means? It’s engineering. I know you could do it.”
Nathan stared out the window at the lights from the town below as he fiddled with the bottle cap. “What makes you think that?”
“It’s like how I can read a Robert Frost poem and get what he’s saying, but I still suck at algebra. You might have trouble with Shakespeare, but you’re a wiz with equations. I don’t have a clue how you figure that stuff out, but the answers just come to you.”
He cocked his head as he puzzled over his mind’s workings. “I don’t know why I can do that. It’s like working in Mr. Morgan’s shop, fixing cars in the summer—it feels natural. I just know how.”
“It’s not just you can solve equations. The freaky thing? I watch you working on cars, and you always grab the right wrench. Always know the part number without looking it up. Always know what will and won’t fix something. I guarantee you on that last play tonight, you were calculating the arc and speed of that football in your head. It’s the way you think.”
He remembered how he knew where the ball would land the second it left the quarterback’s hands. The trajectory was a clear image in his head. “Yeah, in a way. I could just see it.” He studied the plastic bottle in his hands, peeling the label off in a single piece of paper for something to do. “It’s more than just dreading the college work. I get a charge out of fixing stuff. Working with my hands. Making things come to life. I’m not sure I want to sit at a desk, shuffling papers.”
“If I can handle grading papers, you can push a few.”
They laughed at the visual and then settled into a comfortable silence in the car, both with visions of the future floating in their heads.
Charlie broke the quiet and asked, “You really thinking of marrying Donna?”
“Before she told me she was pregnant, never thought about it. I mean, we joked about it a little, but I think we both knew we weren’t that serious.” He turned to face his friend. “But how do I leave a kid out there without both parents to raise him? What I would give to still have my dad around. And to at least have known my mom.”
“I get it. Really. I wish my mom was still alive too, but I think you can be there without having to get married.” They sat quietly again, nursing their drinks, before Charlie continued, “It’s just with football over and graduation this spring, it feels like the beginning of something really awesome, you know?”
Nathan had expected to feel regret with the end of the game. Football had been such a large part of his life, but turning in the equipment had been easier than he thought. He agreed with Charlie—it felt less like an ending than a beginning. In a few short months, they would have their diplomas and move on with their lives.
Also, he realized with some sadness, the Fearsome Foursome would probably drift apart in the years to come. Not he and Charlie, of course—they would be neighbors and best friends just as their dads had been. Danny would probably come back after a couple of tours overseas and take over the family business.
Hank, however, was a military lifer. It was all he had ever wanted to be—the only future that made any sense for him.
Charlie broke his reverie with another question. “How many beers have they had?”
“All of them.”
“All? You think they’re okay?”
Nathan leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. “I’ve seen them drink more. And wait until they tap that keg tonight. They won’t be able
to stand by morning.”
“Well, we won’t be around for that. But maybe we should drop by real early tomorrow and make sure they’re awake.” They laughed together as Charlie cranked the window down and leaned his head out into the rain. “You guys ready to go yet?”
Danny drained the beer in his hand and belched. He crumpled the can and fired a hook shot, and the can clinked against other discarded metal. “What’s the hurry?”
“Hank’s little brother is alone with your sister.”
Hank flicked his cigarette and ground it into the wet ground with the heel of his shoe. He lifted the empty box and shook it in the air. “Good for my li’l bro, but we’re also out of beer. A much bigger crisis.”
Danny crumpled the empty box and tucked it into a pile of cardboard on the edge of the clearing, saved for campfires in drier weather. “Well, that’s two good reasons, so let’s go party!”
5
Slimy mud oozed around Nathan, chilling his already freezing body. His head rang as he wiped debris out of his eyes and opened them. He couldn’t make out any details from the shadows in the thick darkness.
Only muted sounds reached his ears. A river gurgled nearby as it meandered past rocks. Woodland creatures scurried through the forest. Trees swayed, and leaves rustled in the wind. An engine ticked as it cooled.
The smell of smoke tickled his nose. Mechanical smoke. And radiator fluid. And spilled gasoline. Nathan had hung out enough in Abe Morgan’s shop to memorize those odors.
He wiped his eyes again, and objects came into focus in the darkness. Trees. The river. Boulders. Graffiti on the boulders.
Aiden was here
Tammy gives great head
Nathan + Donna
Aiden had been out there a few times, just like every other high school kid. Tammy wasn’t that great, according to Hank, and he did claim a lot of comparison points. But that last, Nathan himself had painted a few weeks earlier, so he knew where he was. The Point. Or close to it. The old logging road that cut through the forest high above Millerton.