by Robert Inman
Trout could feel despair settling in the pit of his stomach. It all seemed so incredibly screwed up and impossible and forbidding. Moseley, Georgia might be Phinizy’s place (or once had been), but it wasn’t his. In the series of parsonages that had been home as far as memory took him, there was at least a sense of temporary permanence. A congregation, eager to make you a part of their little community. And inside the parsonage walls, the three of them. Three. But now with one gone, there seemed to be fewer than two. There seemed to be, at bottom, nothing here in this time and place you could count on, maybe even nothing you could really know. It was all smoke and myth.
It was almost as if Phinizy could read his mind. “I wish I had all the answers for you, Trout. But I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” he said. He took another drag on his cigarette and flipped the glowing butt out into the grass. “I’m like you. Looking for bits and pieces.”
“What about Aunt Alma and my daddy? At least you know about that.”
“Do some thinking on your own, Trout. Form the habit of it.”
“How?”
“All right. Alma and Joe Pike. Think about Alma. Try to imagine growing up as Alma. The girl in the family. Your father owns the mill -- owns the town, for that matter. What does that mean?”
“Well,” Trout said, “I guess you’ve got plenty of money.”
“Money, prestige, social standing. You go off to get finished at a school for proper young ladies up east. You make your debut in Atlanta. The world’s just waiting to kiss the hem of your dress. Then there’s a younger brother.”
“Daddy.”
“What does the family expect his role to be?”
Trout thought for a moment. “The good son.”
“Yes.”
Phinizy waited. Trout searched his memory. “Uncle Cicero was talking about Grandaddy Leland at dinner the other Sunday. Grandaddy Leland said not a damn one of his children did what they were supposed to do.”
Phinizy nodded. “And thereby hangs the tale. Joe Pike was supposed to…” He waited.
“Take over the business,” Trout answered.
“And Alma was supposed to…”
“Be a lady.”
“But what happened?”
“Daddy played football and became a preacher. Aunt Alma…” Trout waved his hand in the direction of the mill. “…she married Cicero.”
“Don’t sell Cicero short.”
Trout thought about Cicero. “He’s always saying something. Just when you think the lid’s about to blow off.”
“Uh-huh. Good work. Now, back to Alma and Joe Pike.”
“I think…” Trout searched, trying to grab something that made sense. Put the bits and pieces together, enough to imagine what the whole thing looks like. “Do they both wish they were somebody else?”
“It’s a quite common human condition.”
“Do you wish you were somebody else?”
Phinizy didn’t say anything at first. Then finally, “Show me a man who doesn’t have any regrets and I’ll show you a man who died at birth. Trick is not to let your regrets run your life. Now, does any of that help?”
Trout shrugged. “Some. I guess.”
“But not entirely.”
“Is all that…what does it have to do with Daddy and Mama and everything?”
“Maybe nothing. I don’t know a lot about your mama and daddy, Trout, at least about what went wrong. I’d tell you if I did. And it doesn’t do any good to speculate, not on something like that. That’s the thing about bits and pieces. Sometimes you put them together and they don’t mean what you think they do. Sometimes they don’t mean a goddamn thing.”
“So what do you do?”
“Keep looking.”
“I’m tired,” Trout said. “I just want things to be fixed up. I just want to be…” He shrugged. What?
“Sixteen.”
“Yes sir.”
Phinizy looked at him for a moment and the ancient crevices of his face seemed to soften a bit. Then he put his hand on Trout’s knee and gave it a squeeze. It helped, at least a little. After a moment, Phinizy said, “Something’s going on here, Trout.”
“What?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’m like you. I listen, watch, keep my own counsel.”
“Something with Aunt Alma and Daddy?”
“More than that. The town. The mill.”
“Have you talked to Daddy about it?”
“Not yet. I figure Joe Pike’s got his own load to tote just now.”
“When?”
“Soon, I hope.” Phinizy rose now, stood on wobbly legs, gripping one of the posts of the bandshell for support. “One piece of advice, Trout.” Trout waited. “If all hell breaks loose, don’t try to be a hero. Save your own ass.”
SEVEN
Trout lost in the first round of the State Juniors. Lost badly to the boy from Augusta. From the first volley, he exposed the nasty little secret of Trout’s shaky backhand, and the longer they played, the worse it got. Trout lost the first set 6-4, and by the end of it he was thoroughly un-nerved. The second set was 6-0, and not even that close. Trout felt naked and humiliated, flailing away like a ten-year-old cutting brush with a machete.
When they met at the net at the end of the match, the boy offered his hand and a sly smile and said, “Get a backhand.”
Trout shook his hand. “Get a life,” he said. And then he thought, I’m one to talk. He’s got both. I’ve got neither.
Trout and Joe Pike rode glumly back to Moseley with Trout slumped against the passenger door, letting Joe Pike drive, the hum of the tires on I-20 gnawing at the back of his brain. So much for tennis. After this, he wouldn’t dare show his face at another tournament until he got his backhand straightened out. He might not, ever.
“Oh ye who labor and are heavy laden,” Joe Pike intoned after awhile, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Daddy,” Trout said, “I just don’t need any scripture right now. Okay?”
“I meant it as comfort. Balm in Gilead, all that stuff.”
“He whipped my butt,” Trout said.
“That he did,” Joe Pike agreed. “Bad luck of the draw, getting the kid from Augusta.”
“I wanted to crawl into a hole.”
“I’ve had the feeling. TCU game in 1955…”
Trout cut him off. He didn’t need any Bear Bryant war stories, either. “There’s not even a stupid tennis court in Moseley. How am I gonna work on my backhand if there’s not even a stupid tennis court?”
“You could go back to Augusta. They seem to know your backhand pretty well.”
“Hey, come on!”
Joe Pike shrugged, but he didn’t apologize. A few months ago, before all the trouble, Joe Pike would have carried on at great length -- analyzing, pep-talking, putting a good face on things. Now, he didn’t bother. His silence seemed to say, You blew it, you chew it.
They rode on. It was late afternoon and traffic had slacked off. They passed Social Circle, Rutledge, Madison -- towns that existed only as green exit signs, bypassed by the oblivious concrete ribbon of interstate in its rush to make Augusta by nightfall. Exit 52: Buckhead. Exit 53: Veazey. Exit 54: Crawfordville. And then Moseley, forced to share a sign with Norwood, insult added to injury. Trout couldn’t even summon up the energy for a decent sigh. Air puddled at the bottom of his lungs like swamp muck. Summer stretched ahead of him like an endless, dust-choked road and he trudged along it toward exile.
Joe Pike hadn’t spoken for perhaps fifty miles. But as he flicked on the blinker for the Moseley exit he said, “Maybe a job. Keep you occupied. Put some money in your pocket. I’ll talk to Alma.”
They stopped at the Dairy Queen for supper. When Trout went up to the window to place their order, he saw Keats on the other side. She slid the glass open. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“About what?”
“The tennis thing.”
Trout was stunned. “How…”
“Word travels fast.”
Trout stared at her. When a Moseley farts, everybody smells it. “Want to take a few minutes to gloat?”
She stared back, then the tiniest trace of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “The whole town was counting on you, Trout. We really had our hearts set on you winning that tournament. It would have put us back on the map.”
To hell with her. “Three footlongs with chili, two chocolate shakes.”
The smile faded. “I really am sorry,” she said. She slid the glass closed, left him standing there.
* * * * *
The next morning, Trout said to Joe Pike, “Maybe I’ll go out for football.”
“They’ll kill you,” Joe Pike replied.
“Thanks for the encouragement.”
Joe Pike was making fresh-squeezed orange juice. He had sliced a dozen oranges in half and he was standing at the kitchen counter, grinding away on a glass juice squeezer, an orange half lost in his massive hand. It made Trout wince, watching him. “Football’s not a game for small people any more.” He put down the orange, drained the juice from the squeezer into a pitcher and turned to Trout. Joe Pike was huge, deep into one of his Dairy Queen phases now. If he kept going like this, Trout knew, he would pass three hundred pounds by mid-Summer, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice and eating Lean Cuisine at home, then fleeing to Dairy Queen for sustenance. If habit held true, he would one day look at himself in horror and launch into grim dieting -- salads, popcorn, gallons of water -- terrible battles with himself that made Trout fearful. Throughout Trout’s young life, Joe Pike had been, in turn, merely big and huge, two people (at least) at war in the same body. It scared Trout, this going back and forth, kept him wary and off-balance. He wished Joe Pike would just stay put.
“In my day,” Joe Pike was saying now, “a little guy could play. Coach Bryant liked little guys. Agile, mobile, hostile, he called ‘em. But later on, after he’d been at Alabama for awhle, he figured out he couldn’t win with little guys. They just got busted up.”
“Well, I’m not talking about playing for Bear Bryant.”
“Soccer. Now there’s a sport for a little guy. In fact, it helps to be little if you want to play soccer. Speed. Agility. Endurance.” Joe did a little shuffle-step-kick, aiming an imaginary soccer ball through the legs of the table. Trout tried to imagine Joe Pike on a soccer field. No.
“They don’t have soccer at Moseley High School. Or tennis.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, I could go somewhere else.”
Joe picked up another orange half, cradled it in his hand, looked out the window for a moment. Then he said, “If you’re gonna live in a place, Trout, you gotta live in it. Know what I mean?”
Trout didn’t say anything. He worked on his scrambled eggs and instant grits, feeling Joe Pike’s eyes on him.
“I want you to finish high school here,” Joe Pike said.
Want? Or Need? Trout thought. He didn’t look up. “Like you did.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you?” No answer. “Miss Trawick said your family shipped you off to Georgia Military, but you ran away and came back home and caused an uproar.”
Joe Pike smiled. “Sounds about right.”
“Well?”
Joe Pike thought about it for awhile. “I guess I just wanted to be regular, you know? Just one of the local kids. And that’s what I want you to do.”
“I’m not you. And it’s different now.”
“No,” Joe Pike said, “I doubt it’s much different at all, son. It wasn’t easy for me, and it isn’t easy for you. I know that. But it’s what you make of it. Everything…” a wave of his hand took in the parsonage, the church next door, Aunt Alma, Mosely Mills, the universe, “…is what you make of it.”
And what, indeed had Joe Pike made of it – insisting on being one of the regular kids at Moseley High? He might have thought he was, but when he fell down on the extra point try in the state championship football game, it wasn’t just a regular kid screwing up, it was Joe Pike Moseley. The only Moseley in the stadium, he had said. When a Moseley screws up, everybody knows it. And the stakes, Trout realized, were infinitely higher.
Trout put down his fork, pushed back his chair, stood up, looked down at the instant grits and made a face. They were really terrible. They sat there in a gray lump in his plate, hardening like cement. Surely, after all these months, he should have the hang of instant grits by now. But they were either too runny or too lumpy. At the motel in Atlanta, the morning before his tennis match, they had had real grits. It was the best thing about the day.
He looked at Joe Pike. “If I’m gonna go out for football, I guess I need to get in shape. What should I do?”
Joe Pike gave him a sly grin, and there was some mischief in it, maybe an echo from Junction, Texas -- flinty-eyed and remorseless Bear Bryant looking on as young men beat each other to a pulp in the heat and dust. “Go ye unto the football stadium and cast thine eye upon the grandstand and ascend and descend the steps thereof. Yea verily.”
By the third time he started up the grandstand steps, he had a great deal more appreciation for Bear Bryant. And for Joe Pike Moseley the football player.
He could see the shabby wooden pressbox a great distance away, up there at the top of the stands, and he said to himself that he would never make it because his legs had stopped bending at the knee and his butt was bumping along the concrete steps and he had lost heart. He had passed mere pain on the first trip up, and by now everything was simply sweat-gushing, gut-churning, air-sucking misery. By the time he neared the top, he was barely moving. He thought that he could quit right there and never feel a pang of guilt, but he was afraid that if he did stop, he would tumble back down the steps and bash his head on the concrete. HEADLINE: BOY DIES STUPIDLY IN FOOTBALL STADIUM. So he bent at the waist and gave a heave with the upper part of his body and somehow staggered up the two last steps. Then his legs buckled and he slumped against the wooden side of the press box, flaking paint raking his face. Down on his fanny now, legs splayed, chest heaving, eyes closed, white spots dancing in the grayness.
In his agony, he thought again of Joe Pike. He thought that he had none of his father’s genes, that he was in truth too small and timid to play football. But he might try anyway if it would save him from being an invisible curiosity when school started again in late August. Maybe he would break something early in the season and wear a cast and be an object of admiration. Or maybe he would simply remain invisible.
After awhile he opened his eyes and looked out across the brown-green sun-baked expanse of playing field, blinking in the great aching whitewashed June noontime. It was quiet except for the singing of crickets in the shady underbelly of the grandstand and the drone of a lawnmower off in the general direction of town.
“Hey!” she called, and he remembered suddenly that she was there, sitting in the shade of the concession stand down at the end of the field.
She had surprised him with her phone call just before he left the parsonage. He was in his room, putting on shorts and tee-shirt, when the phone rang back in the kitchen and Joe Pike picked it up. Trout heard the drone of Joe Pike’s voice and assumed the call was church business. Or Aunt Alma. But when he emerged from his room a couple of minutes later, Joe Pike called down the hallway, “Trout. Phone for you.”
It must be someone from Ohatchee, he thought. Maybe Parks Belton, inviting him to visit for the summer. Or the rest of his life. He would go, gladly.
“What’s up?” she asked, and he recognized the voice immediately.
“What do you mean, what’s up?”
“Well, your tennis career is over, you’ve disgraced the town, school is out and there’s nothing for a rich kid to do in Moseley, Georgia.”
God, he thought, she is a first-class female asshole.
“Actually,” he said, “I was just going to the stable to give my polo pony a workout.”
“Your daddy said you’re going out for football.”
&
nbsp; “That’s right.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“That’s what he said.”
“I know. He told me. He’s right, you know. Those mill kids, they’d love to get you on the football field.”
“Well,” he said, “I plan to add fifty pounds and some blazing speed before August, and I will kick their butts from here to Atlanta.”
“Can I watch?”
“Sure,” he had answered, but he hadn’t imagined she meant right now, today, while he committed suicide on the grandstand steps. She was waiting when he got to the stadium. Joe Pike must have told her. Trout wondered if she had brought some of the other mill brats to hide in the bushes and snicker. But she was alone, sprawled in the shade of the concession stand. She gave him a wave, then watched while he made one magnificently vigorous ascent up the steps, bounced back down, started a second, faltered and nearly fell, made it to the top only by the Grace of God, lurched slowly down, and damn near died on the third trip up. And now, all courage and fortitude gone from his frail body, he stood on wobbly legs, squinting at her in the brightness. Her aluminum crutches leaned against the side of the small white building. She had her legs crossed beneath her, Indian-style, and her drawing pad was open in her lap. She had a way of wrapping herself around the pad when she was drawing, shoulders slumped, back arched, mothering it, shutting out the rest of the world. But now she looked up at him, up here on the grandstand steps, barely alive.
“Take off your shirt,” she called.
“What?” His voice was a dry croak.
Louder. “Take off your shirt.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at him, waiting. So he pulled the sweat-soaked tee-shirt over his head and stood there holding it, feeling the sun hot on his bare shoulders.
“Put it back on,” she said after a moment. “You look like a plucked chicken.”
“Kiss my fanny!” he yelled back.
“Show me!”
He turned his back to her, hiked down his shorts a bit and presented a sliver of bare rump in her direction.