We sat on one of Granny Wall’s patchwork quilts and huddled, leaning our backs against the giant tree. I wrapped us in a big soft gold blanket I had found in Mom and Dad’s closet…or, I guess it’s just Dad’s bedroom closet now.
As we huddled under the blanket, our quiet conversation drifted to our likes and dislikes. “What kind of music do you listen to?” I asked.
“I like a lot of different stuff—country rock, if it has a good melody, like Eddy Z or Gunshot. I like River Smith, and oh yeah, I love Blaze’s ‘I’m Your Best Move Yet.’” She studied the fading sunset.
I lost track of her words as I studied her face.
She poked my ribs with her elbow. “I said, how about you?”
My brain returned to planet Earth. “I like some of the old stuff, you know? Like The Eagles. I have their Desperado album. Do you know Vertical Obsession? They have a song called ‘Winners and Losers.’ It’s really cool.”
“Wow,” she said. “We have a lot in common. I downloaded the Eagle’s ‘Desperado’ video just the other day, and I have Obsession’s Best Of album on my phone.” She pulled her phone from her jeans pocket and held the screen up for me to see.
I cupped my hand to my ear and said, “Okay, that’s compatibility test number one. Let’s move on to test number two, Gene. Tell our contestant the next category.”
Lisa deepened her voice and gave an impression of a TV announcer. “Sure thing, Andy.”
I guessed she was mocking some game show, but since my TV time was limited, if she was imitating a particular show, I didn’t know which one.
Still using the deep voice, she said, “The next category is movies.”
“I don’t see a lot of movies.”
She dropped the phony voice. “We’ll see. What is your favorite movie, ever?”
Is this a trick question? I know there are chick flicks and guy movies, and what happens if I get it wrong? I doubt we would like the same one.
I didn’t answer.
“Come on, everyone has a favorite movie, even from TV.”
“I don’t.”
“If you could only see one movie ever again, which one would it be?” she insisted.
Cornered, I had to respond. “Okay, I guess it would be The Other Warrior with Lee Lasker.”
“I love Lee Lasker. I had his poster on my bedroom wall until…never mind.”
“Until what? You outgrew posters?”
“Eventually, but my sister and I were fighting over the Lee Lasker poster, so Dad ripped it apart and gave us each half.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Mr. Alfonzo Brazo, Branard’s resident King Solomon.
She asked, “Have you seen him in Lost in Love? He was great.”
I said I hadn’t. It sounded like a fem film.
“I like Rob D’Priest too, the guy from that TV show Vampire Alley. I’ve only seen it a few times. Dad won’t let me watch it. He says it romanticizes evil.”
Wow, our dads have something in common. Who would have thought?
“Like I said, I don’t watch much TV, and I’m really not into fantasy, vampires, and sci-fi.” I hoped she wasn’t too disappointed.
“I guess when it comes to movies and TV, it’s like they say: ‘Girls are different from boys.’”
I grinned. “I noticed.”
She lowered her head slightly, and smiled a faint smile. She said, “I mean, girls like fantasy in books and movies. Boys like action.”
“I like comedy too, just not the real silly stuff.”
We sat in silence.
I took out my iPod and plugged it into a small set of battery-powered speakers I’d stashed in the picnic basket. We listened to music, a broad mix Law downloaded for me from the zillion tunes he had on his tablet. He might have been a troglodyte when it came to most things electronic, but he could make the ZecTunes app sit up, beg, and roll over.
Lisa broke the silence from time to time only to comment on a song.
I’d ask if she was comfortable, or if she needed me to toss another piece of wood into the iron fire ring. In all, throughout the evening, I made three treks back to the truck for bundles of store-bought firewood.
“Our Spot” under the tree stood thirty feet from river’s edge and fifteen feet from the nearest county-provided fire ring. As the temperature dropped, I chose for us to stay huddled together under the blanket rather than to move closer to the fire. Aunt Sue got it right. Cuddling to keep warm was nice, very nice.
The dark brought the night’s temperature down another five degrees, finally forcing us to move closer to the fire. A few more degrees drop, and Lisa began to shiver.
I fought off the selfish desire to stay put and offered, “If you’re cold, we could leave and go get a cup of coffee at Joe Java’s.”
“I am starting to get a little uncomfortable. A hot cup of coffee would be nice.”
I doused the fire with water from the river, spread the ashes, and doused it again.
Lisa packed our stuff into the picnic basket and tote bag as I collected our trash.
The soccer crowd had dispersed. Personally, I had spent the time in a world four feet square, and the rest of the world hadn’t existed. Had it really been three hours? It seemed more like twenty minutes, thirty tops.
I draped the blanket over Lisa’s shoulders, and we walked slowly back to the parking lot, this time taking the pathway closest to the street rather than the river. It was damp, dark, and cold. The streetlights did an adequate job of lighting the street sidewalks but not the parking lots. Those lights must have been rigged to turn off with the soccer field’s lights.
Lisa was the fulfillment of my dream girl. My own Corsa Red Ferrari Speciale XLE. She was equal parts femininity and strength, grace and passion, beauty and brains. She was perfect, and that was exactly what worried me. She was too perfect, at least too perfect for me.
I was a mess. I was a pariah at school. Who am I kidding? I was a pariah all over town. I was in the middle of dealing with Mom’s death, had a delinquent brother, and a dad who was about to lose his job. If all that wasn’t enough, chances of Coach Newcomb recommending me for a college football scholarship were somewhere between zero and minus infinity squared.
With my attention otherwise distracted, we were almost to my truck before I saw what, three hours before, had been my baby. I changed the oil exactly as the manufacturer recommended. I washed it once a week, and waxed and polished the deep blue exterior and the chrome trim every three months. I liked being seen in it. It was big, rugged, and cool, like me. Okay, so maybe I’m not exactly cool, but Lisa seemed to like me. That ought to count for something.
What I saw was heartbreaking. An odd mixture of sadness, anger, frustration, and pain overtook me. Everything glass or plastic on the exterior of my truck was shattered. The windshield, back window, side windows, headlights, and the taillights—all smashed. The shatterproof glass was in a million one-eighth-inch pieces hanging together the best they could by the clear material sandwiched inside the glass. There were big holes in the windshield where someone had obviously paid special attention to break all the way through. The vandals, plural—any idiot could see it had to be more than one person—also worked over the truck’s hood and door panels with what I guessed to be baseball bats and boots. The only parts of the whole truck spared were the bed sidewalls and tailgate.
I gave the interior a cursory glance and didn’t see anything missing or bashed. Neither Lisa nor I said a word. Lisa was, I guessed, in some stage of shock, disbelief, and fear, and in me, those same feelings quickly morphed into seething anger and hate. The anger was ten times stronger and deeper than the new norm, but this time it didn’t come in a flash or a tidal wave. This was different. This anger was boiling, festering, and seething, but all under the surface, like a monster volcano on the verge of incalculable destruction.
It didn’t take a detective to know who had done the job. Murderous ire toward Lance and Jamel exploded in my gut. To hell with Branard. To h
ell with church, and to hell with me. My body blazed with the fire of a million infernos. Had Lisa not been there, I would have raised my arms to heaven, shaken my fists, and screamed obscenities at the Almighty Himself.
There I was, trying to live a good Christian life, abstaining from the sort of things so many of the other kids were doing and talking about. I said my prayers and paid attention in church. How was this fair? It was as if God Himself had looked down and picked Todd Nelson out of the seven billion or so people walking the earth to mess with.
You can’t challenge God to a fight. I couldn’t scare him off or call for help. Even the devil got run out of heaven with his pointy tail tucked between his legs. I didn’t want to sound like a little whiny baby and ask, Why me…but…why me?
I reached through a basketball-sized hole in the driver’s-side window and unlocked the door. I brushed glass shards from the seat and slid in. Miraculously, when I turned the key, the starter whirred, and the truck started. The problem was, with all the lights and windshield smashed, if I tried to drive it, I’d probably get pulled over by the cops and arrested.
I called Law’s cell, but didn’t get an answer. He was either charging his phone or at the movies. I knew he had planned to ask Nessa Daws out. With no other options, I called Dad at the house. I gave him the short version of what happened and told him where we were.
He asked, “Have you called the girl’s folks yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But I will.” I didn’t want to call Mr. Brazo. He wasn’t exactly on my most favorite persons list, but it had to be done.
As if she had read my mind, Lisa said, “I need to call my dad and tell him we’ll be late.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll do it. It’s my fault.” The sound of her voice touched the last bit of humanity left in my miserable soul.
“How is it your fault?”
“Trouble follows me around like the ghost of Christmas Past. I shouldn’t have got you mixed up in my troubles.”
She rubbed my shoulder and said, “You don’t need to call Dad. I’ll do it.”
“No, please. I think I should do it.” My insistence seemed to please her.
Mr. Brazo must have been sleeping. He sounded like a fog horn. “Hello, who is this?”
“It’s Todd Nelson, Mr. Brazo. I wanted to tell you that some vandals disabled my truck while Lisa and I were away, and my dad is on his way to pick her up and bring her home. I didn’t want you to worry. Lisa’s fine.”
“Tell her I’ll come get her.” He sounded adamant.
“Sir, my dad is already on his way.” I didn’t know how much Lisa had told her father about me and my family, so I quickly added, “My dad is the pastor of Fellowship of Faith Church over on Garden Avenue.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“There’s no need for you to come out, Mr. Brazo. She’ll be home in fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”
Mr. Brazo finally agreed.
From a logical standpoint, it would have made more sense to let Lisa’s dad come get her and for Dad and I to tackle the chore of getting my truck home, but as Mom would have said, “It’s the proper thing to do.”
Lisa and I sat on the tailgate to wait. She didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t in the mood for polite chitchat.
She finally asked, “Who do you think did this?”
“I don’t know. Just vandals, I guess.”
She probably knew better, small-town gossip being what it is. Just in case she didn’t know about my situation, I didn’t feel like going into the whole mess.
I knew exactly who the culprits were. Lance Brighton, Jamel Crockett, and their brainless drones. My anger began to creep back to the top.
After a few minutes, Lisa began to cry. “This is all my fault.”
“Your fault? That’s crazy. How could it possibly be your fault?”
She said, “There’s this guy I used to date. He’s crazy jealous, and devil mean.” She sniffed in and continued. “He calls me at work and at home. He called my cell too, until I changed the number. I didn’t think he would know if we went out, and if he did, I thought if he knew how big and strong you were, he wouldn’t try anything.”
“You dated me to scare off your ex?” It was a stupid thing to say. The comment blew right by my brain and out of my mouth before I could stop it.
She cried harder. “No, no, it’s not like that. I’m saying that’s why I didn’t say anything, you know, warn you. I didn’t think he would…” More sobbing.
I hate when girls cry. I never know what to do. Am I supposed to give them a hug and say, “Everything is going to be all right,” even if I don’t know if it is or not? I did what all guys do in that situation. I just stood there like a wart on a windmill.
When she calmed down a bit, I began to tell her about the recent downward spiral, laughingly referred to as my life. I barely finished with the events on the bus trip home after the game when my dad showed up. I still wasn’t used to small-town living. In Houston, it often took half an hour to go five or six miles because of the constant traffic and the endless roadwork. In Branard, you could go across town and back in five minutes.
I promised I’d tell her the rest of the story later.
When I tried to show Dad the damage to my truck, he said, “First things first. I need to see the young lady home safely first, then we can see to your truck.”
I opened the back door of Dad’s car, but he said, “She can sit up here. You need to wait here and talk to the police.”
I hadn’t thought to call them. For one thing, I didn’t see much point. How much effort were the police going to put into a vandalism case? They couldn’t even solve the case of the two twelve-year-old urban scavengers.
Chapter Twenty
With the police report complete, Officer Manley said, “We are going to have to tow your vehicle. Do you have a preferred towing company?”
I didn’t want the truck towed at all, but with no lights and a busted windshield, I had little choice. “Tilson Towing, I guess.” Mr. Tilson was a member of Dad’s church.
Dad was waiting outside when we towed my truck up into the grass next to the garage. I didn’t see any point in worrying about the paint job, considering its trashed condition. When Josh came out to see the damage, it occurred to me that Dad had left him home alone, something he would have never done, had he known of Josh’s thievery. I had started to tell Dad about it a dozen times, but he didn’t need the extra stress. Not now.
After Dad and Josh turned in for the night, I sat out on the front steps trying to clear my mind. I asked myself, “What now?” I didn’t have half a clue. Although I told the officer who I thought was behind it, when he asked if I had actually seen them there, I had to say, “No.”
I finally hit the sack sometime after two o’clock, a little surprised Dad hadn’t come out to chase me in. Sleep wouldn’t come. My mind spun, and my gut alternated between knots and gurgles.
I called Law’s cell at seven a.m. No answer. I scrolled one click down and phoned his house.
“Goot mornings. Can I help you?” It was Law’s mom. Somehow, even after everything she had been through, Mrs. Stefanac was one of the most genuinely pleasant people I’d ever met. Her speech had a touch of the old country in it, but with her cheery attitude, it only added to her charm.
“Mrs. Stefanac, this is Todd. Is Lawrence there?”
“He goes to the school early today. He need to see the cow slur,” she said.
“The cow slur?” I asked.
“Yes. The cow slur said she could help him fine a work job.”
Oh. The counselor. Law hadn’t said anything about looking for an after-school job.
With no Law, I had to ask my dad to take me to school. How embarrassing.
He said, “I have a meeting this afternoon. Do you think you can get a ride home?”
I said I could, although if Law couldn’t take me, my chances of catching a ride were slim. I could walk the four and a half miles home if need
be.
»»•««
Friday was another typical day in hell. My books were “accidently” knocked out of my arms three different times. Guys bumped into me from behind four times, and my heels were stepped on twice. They were all quick to say they were sorry, and I knew if I slugged one of them, I’d be the one kicked out of school.
At lunch, I got back to my table after buying a mango punch from the vending machine, to find my plate lunch turned upside-down on my tray, and of course, no one saw a thing.
Over a month had passed since the football game. I was beginning to think the harassment had become more of a sadistic habit than a provoked response. In an effort to find some possible relief, I made one last attempt to convince Coach Newcomb to let me see the game film. He refused with his now familiar venomous, “No.”
»»•««
I knew Lisa had a quinceañera to attend on Saturday so I waited until Sunday afternoon to call. I thought about texting but decided a call was more personal.
“Hello, Al Brazo here.”
I asked to speak to Lisa.
After a few seconds of silence, Lisa answered, “Hello.”
“Lisa, it’s Todd.”
“Oh, hi, Todd.” I thought I picked up a coolness in her tone. I should have texted. Coolness doesn’t come across in a text.
I asked, “Did you enjoy our date?” I quickly added, “Up to the part where we found my truck trashed, that is.”
“It was nice,” she said.
Nice? Nice is what you say about the two dollars in the birthday card your Aunt Gertrude sent you, or the new weathervane on top of the VFW hall. It is not what you say about a perfect evening with someone who adores you.
I pushed full speed ahead. “What say we go to the Christmas Fiesta at the town square next Sunday afternoon?” I knew she would be off work all day Sunday.
“I’ve got to go somewhere with my cousins Sunday.”
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