One Shot Away

by T. Glen Coughlin

  “Something like that.”

  Hurt fills her face, but he doesn’t take the words back. “My parents don’t want me to date you. Just last night they asked me not to see you anymore.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told them we’d cool it for a little while.”

  “So you agreed with them?”

  “My father talked to Detective Barnes.” Her mouth twists with this fact like she’s eaten something bitter. “You shouldn’t have lied to me about it. Maybe if you trusted me, I could understand this.”

  “I don’t understand it!” he shouts.

  “I think you do!” She turns into Puny Town and brakes. An overturned recycling barrel has strewn plastic milk containers and bottles over the road like bowling pins in an alley. “Just tell me the truth!” A tear rolls from the corner of her eye.

  “You never had your father in your room at midnight asking for a favor. You never had to do anything for your parents. They do everything for you.”

  Roxanne shakes her head like it’s swarming with insects. “I defended you. I called my father a liar!” She’s crying now, with tears coming down her cheeks; she pulls to the curb. “I’m not mad at you, I’m worried about you.”

  Jimmy looks at the garbage scattered across the street. “I’ll get out here. I wouldn’t want you to hurt your precious Volvo,” he says. “You might get dirt on your tires, or worse, get a flat and have to actually get out of the car in this bad neighborhood.”

  “Why are you being like this!” she yells.

  “Because, deep down you think your father’s right about me.” He pops the door lock and opens the door. “And you’re just like him.”

  Diggy

  DIGGY’S BLOWN OFF TWO PRACTICES AND CUT MOST OF HIS classes today. He’s passing the gym when Greco calls him into his office. Greco shuts the door and looks at him as if he’s examining a dead bug. “Sit.”

  Diggy lowers himself to a chair and puts his hands between his knees, waiting to get blasted.

  “Do you have anything to say?” Greco’s eyes are fixed on him, drilling into him.

  His mouth goes dry. How can he say anything, or try to explain?

  Greco leans in closer. His breath comes across his small, straight bottom teeth. “Because this isn’t over for you. You’re not going to do this and just walk away from it like it never happened! Do you understand me?” Veins in Greco’s neck pulse.

  “Yes, sir.” The hairs on the back of Diggy’s neck begin to prickle.

  “All of a sudden you’re ‘yes sirring’ me?” Greco backs off, shaking his head. “Diggy Masters, you are some piece of work.”

  Diggy peers through the blinds at the empty gym, wishing someone would come in and save him. “Am I off the team?” he asks.

  “Did I say you were off the team?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re still on the team!” shouts Greco. “Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, Coach.”

  Greco huffs. “Now, let’s discuss a few things you’re going to do for the team, which you are still a member of.” He raises his finger at Diggy. “I want you in the wrestling room on Monday. You’re going to apologize. I don’t want a two-second ‘I’m sorry.’ I want you to write it, rehearse it, mean it!”

  “To the whole team?”

  “If it doesn’t suit me, then you’ll do it again on Tuesday, and every day after until you get it right. Principal Anderson has asked me for my input on this incident. So don’t disappoint me.” Greco pokes Diggy’s chest. “Understand?”

  Diggy

  DIGGY LEANS CLOSE TO HIS BATHROOM MIRROR, EXAMINING HIS eye. The lid is blue and purple. He looks over; Randy is in the doorway. “Can we talk like two human beings for a minute?”

  Diggy smells alcohol on his breath under a layer of cologne. Randy lowers the toilet seat cover and sits on it. “I should have locked the door,” says Diggy.

  “Could you lose the attitude for ten minutes?”

  Diggy sucks in a breath, holds it, and when he knows he can release it without cursing, lets it go. No good can come from talking with Randy because he doesn’t have conversations. Randy talks. All his life, Diggy has been ordered to listen. But he doesn’t feel like listening anymore.

  “Why didn’t you come to me?” asks Randy in his car salesman voice, so reasonable and convincing that Diggy blinks in disbelief. “Your mother told me about the dog at the motel, chained in the cold. I don’t approve of that sort of treatment of animals either. I could have contacted the ASPCA and had the dog taken away from the boy. It would have been a lot cleaner.”

  Diggy studies his father’s face in the bright bathroom. “The ASPCA?”

  “Oh, and you’re grounded,” says Randy.

  “I didn’t get caught smoking or cutting a class,” mumbles Diggy.

  “Grounded until I say otherwise. Got it?”

  “Trevor could have died! I almost killed his dog.” These are undeniable truths and no one seems to get it. He and Jane brought Whizzer to a veterinary office. Somehow, Whizzer didn’t have any broken bones. The vet listened to his heart with a stethoscope, then felt his body and said, “He’s lucky he didn’t break his neck.”

  “Your mother told me Coach Greco wants you to apologize to the team.”

  “Go away,” groans Diggy.

  “Apologizing is admitting you’re guilty. You shouldn’t admit anything. This is already being handled by my insurance company.” Randy’s voice is hard and flat. “You know I have contacts in the police department. Perhaps we’ll have some cruelty-to-animal charges against Mr. and Mrs. Crow.”

  Diggy stomps across the bathroom, chest heaving, nostrils flaring. “Mr. Crow is dead and the dog was run over! I took Trevor’s dog. I did it! I don’t want your help. I’m sick of the way you think.”

  “Let me tell you something, mister, the police could have pressed charges against you. I’m the one who made the phone calls!” His booming voice echoes off the tile walls.

  “Leave me alone!” Diggy pushes him in the chest. “Like, now!” Diggy punches the wall, crunching the sheetrock.

  “You spoiled punk-ass little—” yells Randy.

  Diggy hurls his mother’s electric curler set. The curlers bounce off Randy and clatter to the floor. Diggy races down the stairs, heading for the front door.

  “Grounded!” yells Randy. “Grounded!”

  Diggy

  DIGGY PARKS AT JANE’S APARTMENT WITH HIS HEART STILL drumming from the argument with Randy. She’s dressed funky, wearing his varsity jacket and a denim skirt with knee-high socks and black lace-up sneakers. Her face is funny, sort of gloomy. She gets in and pulls her skirt over her thighs. “What’s with the getup?” he asks.

  “It’s a look, not a getup.” Her eyes are raw. “I just had some major drama with my mother,” she says. “She’s on her third mojito and she’s drinking them from a milk glass.” Her gaze falls into her lap.

  “Randy, the moron,” says Diggy, “he tells me I’m grounded, like I’m twelve and that’s going to prove something.”

  “What did you expect him to do?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted him to understand....” Diggy can’t finish the sentence. Because what is there to understand?

  “Are you sorry?”

  He nods.

  “Really?” She blows her nose in a tissue and balls it in her hand.

  “Yeah, I am.” They sit in silence, looking at her green apartment door and the dead poinsettia. The bow is gone from the pot. “Can we go in your room?” he asks.

  “I don’t think right now is a good time. Gloria told my mother about you, what happened, the dog, everything. That’s what we were fighting about.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “Say? You mean, what’d she scream? Nothing wonderful.” Jane shakes her head. “She called you a spoiled rich brat.”

  “That’s it?

  “And a parasite
.”

  He rests his forehead on the steering wheel. “What’d you say?”

  “I stuck up for you.” She shrugs. “At least, as much as I could. This whole thing is ugly. The little puppy almost died right in front of our eyes. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen an animal get run over like that.”

  Diggy pictures the dog rolling under the truck.

  “All you guys and your precious manhood. Why do you think my brother’s in jail and my other brothers can’t keep jobs? All this manliness junk. You all have something to prove. Ya ever see what happens when you put two of those little fighting fish in the same bowl? They rip each other apart.” She rests her head on his shoulder. “And they both die.”

  “Maybe I was never supposed to wrestle,” he says softly in her ear. “Maybe that’s what this whole mess is about.”

  “Maybe your father’s an asshole and he had you believing his bullshit.”

  She’s right, but I did it, he thinks. No one told me to take the dog.

  She guides in a CD she made him, lots of bands he never heard of, and cranks it.

  “I have to do something. I just can’t leave it like this.” He rubs his eyes. Snow begins to blow across the windshield.

  Trevor

  HE SITS ON THE EDGE OF THE BED, A PILE OF LAUNDRY AT HIS feet, stroking Whizzer’s neck. The weather station shows a radar blob of snow over Molly Pitcher. He lies back on his pillow and shuts his eyes. Highway traffic and the dead, late-afternoon nothingness of the day rings in his head.

  He could have gone to school today. Yesterday the family doctor listened to his chest and said his lungs were sounding better. “Anytime you feel ready,” he said. Out his window, snow falls under thick clouds. He shivers, remembering the ice-cold pool water, the panic, the fear, kicking, punching, and then that feeling of warmth. In the deep end of the pool, he finally gave up. He let go of the world, and it wasn’t terrible. Dying felt as natural as that moment when sleep comes. Trevor hopes his father felt something like this.

  He lifts Whizzer to his chest. “I’m going to have to leave you tomorrow,” he says. “You have to stay in here and be a good boy.” Whizzer licks his face. Trevor wants to get back to the mat, the mindless drills, the body heat, diet, and sweating. He misses it, and he’s going to show his father that he would have been a Varsity Dad.

  Trevor knocks on the connecting door to his mother’s room, then pushes it open. The bed is unmade. London’s Green Bay Packers hat lies on the night table. His leather sneakers are under the bed. London is spending most nights with his mother. There is a sudden tightening in Trevor’s gut. He closes the door and goes back to his bed.

  He feels as if he’s traveled a long distance and finally arrived here. Everything is already familiar, as if he knew the shape of the motel and the dimness of this old room for a long time. The feeling that all this is a nightmare that he might wake from, that feeling is gone. It’s as if he knew the refrigerator would be a light green, and the kitchen floor would be curled at the corners, and there would be traffic on the road in front, then a cornfield under a sky, dark with snow.

  Someone’s knocking on his door. Whizzer barks. Trevor moves the edge of the curtain from the window. Diggy Masters. What the hell does he want? A chill crawls along his spine. Trevor whips his belt from his jeans and wraps it around his fist. There’s another knock. He doesn’t want Diggy seeing the motel room, the exact place where he lives.

  Another knock, then, “Trevor?”

  Trevor leaves the security chain on the door and opens it a few inches. Diggy’s eye is still black and swollen. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans and clears his throat. “Can I talk to you?”

  “About what?”

  “About the team.” Diggy looks back at something or someone.

  Trevor tightens the belt around his hand. He unhooks the chain and lets the door swing open.

  Diggy steps in. “This your room?” He takes in the wrestling posters tacked to the walls and Trevor’s medals hanging from a nail. Whizzer jumps up on Diggy. Trevor grabs the dog’s collar and walks him into his mother’s room, then shuts the door.

  “Whizzer looks okay,” says Diggy.

  “What are you doing here?” Trevor watches him closely, sort of not believing he’s really in his room. And it’s the same Diggy, chin raised in the same cocky way, like he’s ready for a fight.

  “You really gave me a few shots.” Diggy rubs his cheek. “I still can’t open my mouth all the way.” He moves his jaw side to side.

  Trevor knows the unyielding feel of his fist on Diggy’s chin. He never wants to hit anyone that hard again.

  “I wanted to say it was a mistake—”

  Trevor cuts him off. “Really?”

  “I saw him in the parking lot tied up,” says Diggy. “It was too cold for a puppy.”

  “How many dogs have you saved in your life?” asks Trevor. “This the first one? Just happened to be my dog? By coincidence? You never expected me to take one-fifty-two. Admit it.”

  “It wasn’t just that.”

  “Diggy, you sat next to me at lunch talking about finding him. Then my mother gets a call from a veterinarian?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. That’s all I came here to say.”

  “You’ve got a brother who went undefeated. But it wasn’t enough.” Trevor steps in front of Diggy.

  “Trevor, be cool.”

  “I heard the way you talk to your father. Like he’s nothing. I never spoke to my father like that.” Trevor inches closer. Diggy stumbles backward. Trevor wants Diggy to know it wasn’t okay and it’s never going to be. “So tell me again—why did you take my dog, Dig-gy? You think you’re going to walk in here and make it all better?”

  “My father comes to practices because he thinks it’s his job. All he ever cared about was winning. That’s all he ever wanted from me. My father’s an asshole.”

  Trevor forces a tight smile. “You’ve got it all wrong. You’re the asshole. You took my dog.” Trevor pokes him hard in the chest.

  Diggy turns toward the door. “I didn’t plan it,” he says in a choked voice. “I saw him and took him. I never thought it would turn out like it did. It was a prank.”

  “You think I’m some piece of garbage. I mean, look at this place, right? I’m a piece of garbage, right?”

  “I don’t think anything.”

  “You do,” says Trevor. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Could we shake hands, or something?” Diggy extends his hand.

  Trevor remembers him yanking his hand when Trevor tried to shake it. “Get out of my face.”

  Diggy opens the door and Jane is standing there.

  “What’s all the yelling about?” she asks. “Trevor, Diggy came to apologize.”

  “Jane, Diggy could have given Whizzer back. He had him for a week while I was driving around tacking flyers on telephone poles looking for him!”

  “Let’s go.” Diggy pushes past Jane, then crosses the lot to his car.

  Jane grabs Trevor’s arm. “He’s screwed up in the head,” she says. “Like everyone.” She trots to the car with her hands in the pockets of the varsity jacket.

  Trevor

  TREVOR WATCHES THE MUSTANG SPRAY GRAVEL AND SURGE into the road. Snowflakes swirl behind the car. “Dad, what the hell is this?” he yells. “You weren’t supposed to let this happen!” He lifts the edge of his makeshift desk and topples his books, pens, and papers. He kicks his metal trash can into the old trunk. He smashes his heel on the lion-faced lock again and again, until it’s in pieces on the floor. He’s crying and he knows he has no right.

  Trevor opens the connecting room door and scoops Whizzer into his arms. He stands in the middle of the mess with the puppy, shaking. Trevor touches the hard scab on Whizzer’s back. The vet called it “road rash.” He said it would heal but leave a scar. Trevor holds him tightly, breathing into his soft coat. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Don’t be scared.”

  He gathers his
calculus text and pieces of the lock. He drops them on the bed.

  He forces the trunk’s wooden lid open. The hinges creak. The smell of an old attic floats into the room. Whizzer backs away and sneezes.

  The trunk’s empty, except for a flat leather folder stuck into a crevice where the planks meet. He tugs it from the trunk and brings it to his desk. He peels back the tough leather flap, revealing a stack of photos. The top one is of a boy with long hair parted in the middle. He’s shirtless and wears a shell necklace. On the back of the photo are the words “Joe Crow, age 9.” Trevor takes a deep breath. It’s the first time he’s ever seen his father as a boy.

  He lays the photos on the desk. Some show men on horses, or men and women standing next to streams or lined up for group shots. The people are dark-skinned, with coal-black hair. He holds the photos up to the light, examines the faces, the woods, and the horses. He finds another one of his father. A sixteen- or seventeen-year-old Joe has his foot on the bumper of a truck. He’s wearing cuffed dungarees and work boots. His hair is past his shoulders. He’s smiling. Tears come to Trevor’s eyes.

  He turns the photos over, checking for dates, names, anything. One says “Quaddy.” He knows this is short for Passamaquoddy. He mouths the words “Micmac, Maliseet, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, the Wabanaki Confederacy,” as if they are magic.

  Trevor lifts his desk off the floor and sets it back on the sawhorses. He slides the family photo album from under his bed and sets it on the desk. He finds a picture of himself taken two years ago in their backyard at the old house. He positions his father’s photo next to his. Trevor’s eyes go back and forth between the two faces. The resemblance sends chills through his body.

  Diggy

  DIGGY’S THE FIRST ONE AT THE CLASSROOM DOOR AND INTO THE hallway. Free period. Library or handball. He bangs open the band hall exit and hurries out. There’s a chilling mist in the air. A lousy day for handball, but he has to get some fresh air and clear his head.