Joseph and I had always made bets on the games. He played cornerback. Whoever’s bet was the closest to the number of tackles he made had to pay up. I paid by taking Joseph out to eat. Joseph paid by fixing dinner. If we tied, we ordered out. “Two dinners on four tackles,” Joseph had said the week before. I had bet on six tackles, and by the end of the game, Joseph had brought seven of the opponent’s offensive carriers down.
This would be a big game. Rio Mesa was supposed to make it to state this year. Joseph was one of only three sophomores who started.
When I turned onto the driveway, Kona, who was riding in the back, immediately stood up. His tail was wagging; the tags on his collar were clinking together.
There was a snow shovel leaning against the house. I cleared the steps to the porch. The town had gotten only four to six inches so far, but the snow was still coming down. On the porch, I removed my boots and hung up my jacket by the door next to a coal shovel that I used to knock icicles from the roof. I stepped inside, set the keys on the counter, and glanced at the clock on the stove. A little after six. If I hurried, I could get a shower and still make it in time for the kickoff.
The water burned hot against my skin, bringing my blood to the surface, warming my cold bones and muscles. I dried off quickly and dressed in a pair of jeans, a thick sweater, my down jacket, and gloves. I picked up my keys off the counter. “You have to stay,” I told Kona. “You be a good boy.”
As I drove to the school, I pictured Joseph, his slight bowlegged stance along the sidelines while the offensive team was in the game, the way he would glance back at the stands every so often to see if I was there. I’d be stepping onto the field with him at the halftime ceremony, when the players honored their parents.
When I got out of the truck, I heard the band playing and people cheering. I jogged across the plowed pavement.
“Has the game started?” I asked, when I got to the gate.
“Just getting ready to.” And then, “You forgot your program.”
But I was already making a good stride toward the field, brushing shoulders with a couple of the people I passed, dodging kids who were running around in jerseys and tossing anything they could catch, from foam footballs to wadded-up paper cups.
Cheers erupted around me. The teams were taking to the field for the kickoff. I climbed the bleacher steps and looked for an empty spot.
“Pru . . . hey,” a cheery voice called. “Come up here. We can make room.”
It was Ellen, the tech who worked at White River Animal Hospital, seated two rows higher. Her son was a freshman. He played junior varsity.
I climbed up to the higher bleacher.
“You want to share my blanket?” Ellen asked.
Ellen was wrapped in a large, checkered fleece blanket. Beside her was a thermos. She wore a Broncos knit cap, and her face was mostly covered in a thick black and gold scarf, Rio Mesa’s school colors.
“No, I’m all right,” I said, though already my knees were bouncing.
“Go Cowboys!” Ellen screamed as the defensive team ran onto the field.
Cowbells rang from the student section. “Go get ’em, Joseph!” I yelled over the other cheers.
The student section was to my right. I didn’t recognize all of the kids. There were new families in town that had moved in when the pipeline workers came looking for jobs and the gas companies had started drilling fresh sites. I hugged myself tighter, smelling wool and mustard and coffee, and a slight whiff of booze from the crowd around me.
Then Ellen told me she’d heard about a hunter going missing near Rangely. Someone had come into the animal hospital and was talking about it, she said. “I heard it was a woman.”
“Colm called off the search late this afternoon.” I went on to tell Ellen what I knew.
Ellen wanted to know about the husband. She asked about the kids. “That poor family,” Ellen said.
More cowbells, and cheers, and drumrolls sounded. I watched my son running onto the field to take his position in the lineup. The quarterback now had the ball. He fell back to make a pass. Joseph was laid flat by an offensive lineman. The short pass was completed. First down.
Ellen grimaced. So did I.
“That had to hurt,” Ellen said.
And as I watched my son play, I thought about Amy Raye. I thought about the note that had been found. I have lots to learn from you, Amy Raye had written. Her words gave me the sense that her journey with her husband wasn’t over.
By the third play, Joseph made the tackle. “Number eleven, running back for Hayden, is taken down by the Cowboys’ number twenty-four, Joseph Hathaway.”
Ellen was clapping. Cowboy fans whooped and cheered.
“That’s my boy!” I hollered. I was waving my fist in the air and screaming with the rest of the fans.
After the punt, Rio Mesa’s offensive team took to the field. Joseph jogged over to the sidelines and glanced up at the stands. He was built just like my brother, Greg, same height, same broad shoulders. Oftentimes when watching Joseph, I’d remember all the games I’d attended when Greg had played wide receiver. Greg was three years older than I, and no doubt, growing up with him had played a role in my being a tomboy most all my life. That, and our father’s insistence that we love the outdoors as much as he did. Though my parents owned a small business and managed their parcel of farmland, each summer they’d leave the co-op in the hands of one of their employees for a couple of weeks; they’d pay a neighbor a little something to take care of the chickens and any other animals we had at a given time; and we’d take off for one of Dad’s many adventures—the Sierra Nevadas, Sawtooth Mountain in Idaho, the Grand Tetons. Dad had me carrying a backpack and hiking trails before I’d even started school. He’d plan these trips for months and outfit us with army surplus packs, down sleeping bags, and bedrolls of thin foam. Greg and I shared our own tent away from our parents. He’d tell me stories late into the night, making up adventures of long-forgotten Indian warriors. I’d lie on my back, smell the wild sage, listen to the gurgle of the snow-fed streams. And each day as we hiked, we’d keep our eyes peeled for arrowheads or potsherds. We never did find an arrowhead, or a projectile point, as our dad would call them, but we did find flakes of chert that we’d store in our pockets.
On that June day that Brody was killed, Greg was spending his second summer as a seasonal worker for the Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, Colorado. He was sharing a cabin with four other men and spending most of his days clearing trails. When he came home for Brody’s service, Greg did his best to console me, and the rest of the summer he tried to get me to come visit him at the park, but I was too thick in my grief to be apart from anything that Brody and I had shared.
There was a shrine for Brody at the edge of the field where he had died, cards and letters and stuffed animals from friends of ours in high school. I didn’t leave anything at the shrine. Instead I would walk out to the middle of the field where he had fallen. I’d lie back in the grass where some of the bloodstains still remained and I’d imagine him lying beside me.
I worked at my parents’ store a few days a week, usually in the back where I unpacked merchandise, or I helped unload bags of feed and grain from the delivery trucks. And in the fall, though I still lived at home, I attended classes at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. I was supposed to major in life sciences. Brody and I had planned on getting married that following summer. I would have stayed in college until I’d finished my degree. He would have taken classes and continued to work on his family’s farm. We would have lived in a sixteen-foot trailer on a piece of property he had bought, while we built our house. And maybe we would have had a son as beautiful as Joseph. Maybe we would have had a few more.
Greg was a senior in college that year, and majoring in secondary education at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. He’d already lined up a job teaching freshm
an English at a high school in Boulder that next fall. He’d come home for Christmas break. That was when he and my parents sat me down. They said they wanted to talk to me. They said the Lidells were stopping by, too.
The dishes from dinner had been put away. Mom and Dad and Greg, Mr. and Mrs. Lidell, and I were all sitting around the table. Mom had made coffee but none of us were drinking any.
Dad said they wanted to talk about me getting away for a while. They thought a change of scenery would do me good. I wasn’t comfortable with the conversation. I thought I’d been doing all right. I’d gone to my classes. My grades had been fine.
Mr. Lidell reached across the table and took my hand. “We’re real worried about you, Pru. And I know it’d tear Brody up to see you like this.”
Then Greg talked about the contacts he’d made while working for the Park Service. He said he had friends in Colorado who’d also held seasonal jobs. One of those friends had recently taken a position as a full-time ranger for the Bureau of Land Management. The friend was working out of the Grand Junction field office. He’d told Greg that the BLM was looking for seasonal workers for the summer and that there were several openings on the Western Slope. “He can put in a good word for you,” Greg said.
I felt intrigued by the job, and yet terrified of leaving Brody behind. I looked at my parents. Their faces were hopeful.
Mrs. Lidell said something about Brody wanting me to be happy. And I thought about how strong she was, how strong she and Mr. Lidell both were.
I finished out my semester. Then I packed my truck, a red Tacoma. I would be leaving the next morning. It was a hot day in early June and unusually humid for Missouri. I put on my running shoes and took off down our road, ran past the fields and pastures, and I might have kept going, all the way to the cemetery another three miles out of town, but as I came up on Brody’s house, Mr. Lidell waved to me from the driveway. He was working on Brody’s car, an old Camaro. I stopped running and walked up the driveway, and for a moment, I didn’t think I could do it, didn’t think I could get in my truck that next day and drive away.
Mr. Lidell invited me in. The house felt dark, the curtains having been drawn to block out the heat from the sun. I apologized as I sat on the sofa in the living room; my legs were still damp and sticky with sweat. Mr. Lidell talked of a new minister at the church. He told me of the minister’s family, something about him having four kids. I said that was nice. We were working too hard at conversation, and I had this desire to curl up on the couch from the exertion of it all.
Dinner was ready, Brody’s mom told us. I didn’t want to stay, but I was already caught up in the moment as we moved to the kitchen and sat around a large oak table. We held hands as Brody’s dad prayed and my legs stuck to the shellac on the chair. When we finished praying, I picked up my glass of ice water. My wrist and hand shook. Brody’s parents spoke to me. There were long pauses in the conversation. I concentrated on keeping my hand steady. This was our good-bye, only we didn’t know how to say it.
The next day, I drove nine hours before stopping in Boulder, where Greg had just moved into his new apartment. We spent a couple of days exploring the area together. We hiked Gregory Canyon because I’d gotten a kick out of the name, and walked the trails around the Boulder Reservoir and Coot Lake, where local dogs swam. I told Greg he needed to get a dog now that he was out of school and had a real job, and he said he would.
I cried when we said good-bye, when Greg pulled me in for a hug and told me to be strong because I was the strongest woman he’d ever known. He said he’d check in on me and that he knew I’d be great. In two more weeks Brody would have been gone for a year, and though I’d be alone on the anniversary of his death, I’d be seeing Greg again soon. He and I agreed to meet for the Fourth of July if I had the day off. Then I climbed into my truck, and with the windows rolled down, I held out my arm and waved to him as I pulled away.
—
Joseph and I had carved out a nice life for ourselves. I smiled at the thought of that. Again he made a tackle. Again I cheered. I drank some of Ellen’s coffee. Brian, who worked at the post office, and was sitting behind us, offered me a shot from his flask. The sweet burn of Jack Daniel’s warmed my throat and chest. He asked me about the missing hunter. I filled him in on some of the details, most of which he had already heard. He shook his head. “I feel bad for the person who’s going to stumble on her in the spring,” Brian said. He took another drink from his flask and passed it back to me. Already I was thinking about Colm. I hoped he was getting some rest.
By halftime Rio Mesa and Hayden were tied 7–7. The band was lined up on the track, preparing for the halftime show. I wondered when the ceremony would begin, the one where the players would be announced and their parents would be asked to join them on the field. The ceremony where the boys presented their mothers with roses because that was how it was done. This would be my first time to be a part of it. The year before, Joseph had played junior varsity. I waited while the band marched out onto the field, and Ellen talked and poured more coffee, and Brian talked to the man beside him about the Broncos’ upcoming game against the Patriots, and students moved up and down the steps to my right.
“What about the ceremony?” I asked Ellen.
Ellen looked confused.
“The one where the parents go down to the field,” I said.
“The ceremony took place before the game. Right before you got here. I thought you knew.”
“I thought it was at halftime.”
Maybe the look on my face told her how miserable I felt. Maybe she saw the ache crawling up my throat, because she reached out her gloved hand and rubbed my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then Ellen turned to talk to someone behind us. I stared at the field, listened to the band play a bad version of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”
A hand pressed against my back. Cheryl Manning, another mom, was kneeling behind me. “We made these for the mothers of all the players,” she said.
Cheryl handed me a button with Joseph’s picture. He was wearing his jersey and giving the victory sign. Strips of gold and black ribbon hung from behind the button.
“I thought the ceremony was at halftime,” I said again.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cheryl said. “Joseph’s playing great.”
And when no one was looking, I wiped my eyes. I continued to stare at the field. I waited for Joseph and the second half.
The rest of the game didn’t go as well. Hayden scored again in the third and made the extra point. By the fourth quarter Rio Mesa was at its third down on the twenty-yard line. The quarterback tried for a pass to receiver Tyler Cook. The pass was incomplete. Mesa went for the field goal and scored another three points.
The final score was 14–10, Hayden. The stands cleared. Ellen left, her plump legs moving in a hurry down the bleacher steps, her blanket under one arm, her thermos under another. “I’ve got to get home. Russell’s driving in from Paonia tonight. Tell Joseph he played a good game.”
Other people talked among themselves about Hayden’s quarterback, about the weather, about the new restaurant going in at the Rio Mesa Hotel. Someone behind me talked about the five-point buck he’d spotted at Yellow Jacket Pass. I thought of Amy Raye Latour, and checked my cell phone in case Colm had called. As I descended the bleachers, I saw a program on the concrete beneath one of the seats. I picked up the booklet, folded it, and tucked it in my coat pocket.
Inside the school building, along the painted cinder-block walls, were signs the students had made for the game. Groups of parents stood together talking. I walked down the long hallway that led to the lobby and then to the locker rooms. Displayed in the lobby were the trophy cases and the pictures of the school’s graduating classes. The pictures dated back as far as 1917. I recognized many of the family names, even recognized some of the faces of the men and women who still lived in the area. I brought the folde
d program out of my pocket. There was a special insert for the evening’s ceremony, with a picture and small blurb of each of the players. The photos were organized by the players’ class rank, with the sophomores toward the end. There was Joseph, his neck long like mine. His light eyes looked like glass in the black-and-white photo. Neither his dad nor I had blue eyes. Sometimes I was sure Joseph looked like the son Brody and I would have had.
Joseph and his friend Corey walked toward me. I watched my son, his uneven gait, the way his body rocked, his feet slightly turned out. Groups of other players were making their way down the wide corridor as well, none of them looking too happy.
Joseph’s left hand was shoved into the front pocket of his jeans. He was wearing his jersey and carrying a yellow rose in his right hand. His hair was still wet and hung over his broad forehead. “Thanks for coming to the game,” he said. He handed me the rose.
I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “Joseph, I’m sorry. I thought the ceremony was at halftime.”
“Is the woman okay?” he asked.
“We haven’t found her yet.” And then, “Do I dare talk about the game?”
“Offense sucked,” Corey said. “Three turnovers on the fourth down. They should have punted.”
“Coach’s call,” I said. “You got plans tonight?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet,” Joseph said.
“Want to walk me to my truck?”
Joseph and I stepped outside and walked across the parking lot. “You played well,” I said. “We’ll do dinner.”
“Okay.”
Another inch of snow had fallen while we’d been inside the school and was still coming down. I unlocked the truck and set the rose inside. “Be careful,” I said. “The roads will be slick. Curfew is eleven thirty.”
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