Time Control

by Rex Bolt

  ***

  It had been a heck of a seven days, what with Cathy breaking up on him, then pieces of bizarre information from Mitch, then the tragedy and now the aftermath.

  Maybe because off all that, Pike let it loose Friday night at Stevenson, a light rain falling, very thin crowd. He threw for 5 TDs by halftime, his mechanics in synch, the ball going exactly where he wanted and with zip, and Hamilton stopped throwing in the second half and coasted to an easy win.

  He checked his phone on the team bus home and there was a message from Mitch. He’d leave that alone tonight. He had worked up the guts to ask Alicia Guisti out tonight and she said okay, and he was going to pick her up as soon as he got back, nothing earth shattering, he was thinking maybe a little late night bowling would do the trick and kind of let everything unwind.

  Chapter 21 Wheel

  Things went a little later with Alicia than he planned. Even though she was a beautiful girl, he was dead tired, and two rounds of bowling was enough.

  But she had two parties she wanted to hit, so Pike went along with it. It was semi weird, how they played out. The first one was at Amos Stillman’s house. Stillman was half a black guy. His dad was white, from Oklahoma, and the mom was a black woman who taught math at the JC, in Arborville.

  Stillman was probably the best athlete on the team and he was Pike’s primary receiver. He’d been getting some college recruiting interest, same as Pike. Supposedly Cal was interested.

  Pike was hoping that could work out for him, get out of this hick town where there are almost no other black people. Stillman went with the flow, but he had to put up with plenty of bullshit, maybe not as much as if he weren’t a stud football player but enough, and you never knew where it might come from and when. Pike and Stillman weren’t close, but Pike admired him.

  Country music was wailing away at Stillman’s, which Pike supposed made sense (though when they got to Marty Clarke’s party, the second one, Clarke had on all hard rap, so you’d think the whole thing would have somehow been reversed.)

  Anyway, the big thing, when Pike and Alicia get there, Foxe is at Stillman’s party. Sitting there in a chair by himself, Rick Pardo and Jocelyn Roote fooling around with each other on the couch a few feet away.

  Pike wanted to say something to Foxe, but he thought he better observe the dude first. It became clear pretty quick that Foxe was drunk off his ass.

  At first Pike was sympathetic. Who wouldn’t be trying to shut out the real world right now, and numb the pain?

  But then a panic set in. Did this guy drive here himself?

  Pike mentioned it to Alicia, but she was caught up talking to a bunch of people, and was working on a hefty glass of spiked punch herself and didn’t register or seem to care about Foxe’s situation at the moment.

  Pike went outside. The driveway was jammed with cars and there were a few parked on the side lawn, at funny angles. There were more parked along the street, and the fourth one down, a beat-up white Honda Civic, looked suspiciously like Foxe’s.

  Pike surveyed the situation. There was a light on here and there in the neighbors’ houses, but it was after midnight and things were fairly quiet, and the stretch where Foxe’s car was parked was pretty dark.

  What would be the simplest way? He quietly tried the driver’s door and it opened. People rarely locked their cars in Beacon, though if you had something new you at least thought about it, since once in a while a car would get lifted and it would be a big deal around town for a week or so.

  Pike wondered, could he just pull out the ignition thing, where you stick the key? He tried, but there wasn’t much to grip on to. He thought about finding a rock and smashing the ignition with it, but that seemed kind of messy and unpredictable, and maybe that’d cause some sort of reaction or explosion, who the heck knows?

  The simplest solution, staring him right in the face he realized, was to break off the steering wheel … He grabbed it and pulled it toward him, and there was a snap, luckily not a very loud one, and the thing came off in his hands.

  He slipped it under his windbreaker, gently closed the door, and walked it to his own vehicle which was further down the block. He opened the trunk, threw Foxe’s steering wheel in, and shut the thing and went back to the party.

  Pike didn’t care too much for Alicia by now. She was slightly out of control, and flirting with a bunch of guys. He kept suggesting they head over to the second party, Marty Clarke’s, but it took him an hour to get her out of there.

  As they were leaving, Foxe was on his feet and wobbling out the door too. Pike thought it would be interesting to hang around outside, see how this would play out.

  But Foxe was with another kid, Artie Conklin, and they turned the other way, UP the block, and before Pike knew it, they got in Conklin’s car and drove away.

  Alicia said, “What’s wrong? Aren’t we going?”

  Pike stood there scratching his head. Several people had spilled out of the house now and had also watched Foxe go. No one said anything about his dad at the party, but now that he was gone everyone was talking about it.

  Someone said, “Guy has a lot of nerve showing his face here, you know it?”

  Someone else said, “C’mon you can’t blame him. He didn’t do nothing.”

  A third person said, “All’s I know, if that prick drove here I would have blocked his car for sure.”

  The first one said, “You got that right. I would have gone a step further, smashed him in the face, then punctured all his tires … A-hole sitting there blitzed out of his mind, just like his old man … A damn shame Audie’s dad didn’t finish the job.”

  The Foxe part was over and the crowd filtered back into the house. Pike wondered, could Foxe have driven here, but then left his car when he’d had too much drink, and chosen to have Conklin take him home?

  Or, much more likely now, was the white Honda Civic someone else’s?

  “Yeah,” he said to Alicia, “we should get a move on, before Clarke’s thing wraps up.”

  And he took her arm and hustled her as inconspicuously as he could to his car, and got out of there quick.

  ***

  When they walked into the second party the Foxe thing hit Pike front and center again, since Audrey was there, mingling, trying to keep a happy face.

  After a while Pike noticed her in the family room with her friend Megan, looking a lot more subdued, and he sat down with them. It was probably out of line to bring up the subject, but he asked it anyway. “How’s your dad?”

  “Oh, he’s good. Thank you … Not really good though … You know what I mean.”

  Pike’s phone buzzed, and Jeez it was Cathy. He let it go, made some small talk with Audrey now, nothing more about the situation.

  A few minutes later Mitch called. Pike was sure the two calls must be related, maybe this was an emergency or something, so he answered it.

  “You got a minute?” Mitch said.

  “Not really,” Pike said. “But here I am.”

  “Okay now we got a development … I have a friend, runs another site, similar to mine. Not that similar actually, but he does have a section where people upload videos, that type of thing. Sometimes they comment.”

  “Come on,” Pike said.

  “Fine. So I cross-check our deal on their site, and there’s one item in particular. This guy in Texas, from everything he says, his case is looking very similar to yours … The mercury filling, the sudden onslaught of super strength.”

  “Unh-huh.”

  “But what he does, he puts two and two together, becomes suspicious the filling may something to do with it, which you have to give him credit for.”

  “That it?”

  “So he has it removed.”

  “Oh,” Pike said, not sure he wanted the answer but asking, “What happened then?”

  “He got weak. Weaker than before.”

  “Was it … temporary? Or what?’

  “We’re not sur
e. I’m trying to get a hold of him. But the implication was, it was several months since the removal, and he still hadn’t regained his previous strength.”

  This was rough news, and what Pike suspected might happen if he tried to have his own filling removed. That he would pay the price in some other way.

  And this was assuming he even bought in, which he was having plenty of trouble doing, that his own filling was causing all this.

  But no matter what, it didn’t help to hear this. “Did anything else … go wrong?” he asked Mitch.

  “You mean subsequent to the removal? Not that he mentioned. At least nothing that he was aware of.”

  “How much weaker was he? … I mean, like a cancer victim or something?”

  “I don’t have a handle on the degree, just yet. It sounded like he could live normally, but went from being the strongest guy in the pool to the weakest. Overnight.”

  “The pool?”

  “Just an expression.”

  “Okay … is that it?”

  “For now.”

  “Did Cathy contact you at all? … My ex-girlfriend?”

  “No she didn’t.”

  Pike thanked him and put the phone away.

  “Gosh,” Audrey said. “What was that all about, if you don’t mind my asking? It sounded quite intense.”

  Pike looked across the couch at her. She was a sweet person, always had been, all the way back in first grade. There was an innocence and vulnerability about her, never more so than now.

  Megan had gone somewhere and it was just the two of them, and Pike hated himself for not being truthful with her, but he couldn’t.

  “That was nothing,” he said. “Just some football stuff, more or less.”

  “And Cathy was part of it?” Audrey said.

  “Ah, yeah, I guess. This guy, he has kind of a scouting service … and I guess she sent him a video, or whatever.”

  “Wow … Does that mean you’re thinking about playing football in college then?”

  “That’s just … way out there, at this point,” Pike said. “But let’s don’t worry about me … What are you planning?” Realizing as soon as he blurted it out that it was a terrible question, and wanting to kick himself.

  Audrey handled it. “Well I’ve been applying back east,” she said.

  “That’s been my dream … Of course now …” her voice broke slightly and trailed off.

  Pike felt as awkward as he ever had. He debated it for a moment, and then moved over next to her and held her hand. There was nothing to say, they just sat there.

  All kinds of thoughts were swirling around in his head. The craziest one: If he could somehow take out the devil filling and go through the rest of his life weak, like the supposed dude in Texas—but have Audrey’s mom be okay—he’d do it.

  But obviously it didn’t work that way.

  Chapter 22 Air Popper

  Pike got up around noon on Saturday. There was just the one text from Cathy still, no follow up. He thought at this point maybe he should let it ride, and not get back to her. It was something different than Mitch called about obviously, but if it were really important she’d try him again. Wouldn’t she?

  The business with the car was circulating around. It turned out to belong to Danny Crow, a junior, a basketball player. There’d apparently been a police report, which alarmed Pike for a second, but you couldn’t worry about it now.

  He was trying to think of a way he could take care of it. Like the kid going to the gym to shoot some baskets and he comes out and Pike has it back to normal. Except he didn’t trust himself re-installing a steering wheel.

  But then by the end of the afternoon it didn’t matter, as the kid Crow posted a before-and-after picture, first the wheel missing and then everything repaired, him holding the new steering wheel with a big forced smile.

  So someone didn’t waste time, which was just as well. Pike would have to come up with a way to pay the kid back. Anonymously of course, now that the cops were involved.

  Anyhow … you had another Saturday night in your face, and he was again girlfriend-less. The Alicia thing had been a mistake, for the most part, and that wasn’t going anywhere. He could see his dad’s point, from the other day, how there wasn’t much going on around here and you took what you could.

  Which tonight was essentially zippo.

  Pike decided to go over to the high school and take a run. It was starting to get dark early, but it was nice out. The air was cold and fresh, and he started with some easy laps around the track. It was an odd feeling, being out here all solitary and no lights on and the parking lot empty and everything still and quiet. You could hear the sound of trucks from miles away, and a train in the distance too.

  Contrast this to a Friday night game. The exhilaration of the crowd. The band, the cheerleaders, the dance team. The bright lights, especially this year after Hamilton improved them over the summer. Out on that field, it was temporary, everyone knew it, but for those couple hours it was the center of the universe.

  Pike finished his run. It was a slow three miles but it felt good. He sat on the turf and stretched it out and then left the field. He’d only seen one person the whole time, some old guy walking his dog on the baseball diamond, which was adjacent.

  No one was home in his house. He opened the fridge, stared in there for a while, checked the cabinets, and finally decided to make some buttered popcorn. He didn’t know how to cook much of anything, but he had popcorn down. An air popper for the corn, and then you melted a stick of butter in small saucepan being careful not to burn it and then combined the whole thing in a big wooden bowl. Far superior to the movies, where the butter was fake.

  He took the bowl of popcorn up to his room, showered and got comfortable, and settled in at the computer. He felt stupid, but if you can’t beat ‘em, then maybe join ‘em. He began to google “materials in dental fillings” and “sources of amalgam fillings”.

  It was basically chaos, trying to come across any results that made sense. Mostly you had articles, about a thousand of them, telling you why mercury in fillings is bad. There were other articles challenging the first ones, saying that the mercury in modern fillings has been altered and is not dangerous anymore.

  Pike didn’t give a flying frig about any of that. Finally after sifting through several idiotic pages of results some blogger explained what was in the damn fillings.

  Apparently they were made of half mercury, and half an alloy. The dentist mixes liquid mercury with the powdered alloy, it said, to make a putty. They put the putty in the tooth and it hardens.

  The alloy is a combination of silver, tin and copper.

  So … whoopee, there you had it.

  It was after 10 and Pike was ticked off that he’d just wasted so much time. He’d never returned that call from Cathy, so what the hay … Maybe.

  He thought about it for 30 seconds seconds and called her. It went to voice mail, which he already didn’t like, but he left a message: “It’s me. Just getting back to you. Hope you’re good.”

  His first thought was where would she be on a Saturday night. Totally unfair, he knew, since on his end he hadn’t wasted much time hooking up with Alicia. But still, sitting here now, his mind raced around.

  He decided to call Alicia. It hadn’t worked out last night, it was a definite mismatch, but you never know. She answered right away, a lot of noise in the background.

  “Hey,” Pike said.

  “Hey you,” Alicia said. “I didn’t hear from you today.”

  “So … I don’t know, you want to meet up, or something?”

  “Well I would’ve,” she said, “but you’re a little late.”

  Pike said he understood, and to have fun, and he figured that would close the door on him and Alicia. She was a player, and he knew that going in, and if she wanted to hang with someone else now, God bless her. Even though it killed him to admit it.

  He heard his family come
in and start banging around downstairs, and he cranked up the music in his room. He didn’t feel like socializing.

  He lied on the bed and started re-reading some of the college recruiting letters he’d been getting. There were over 30 now. Mostly from schools he’d never heard of, a lot of them in Division 3. There were a few from higher profile programs though. San Jose State, Oregon State. University of Idaho. Colorado State.

  Still, most of them had a form-letter feel to them, and Pike was guessing hundreds of guys around the country were getting the same letters. He asked Coach about this, and Coach told him yeah, but to keep his head down and keep playing hard, that playing for a small high school in a small conference was keeping him under the radar a bit, but that wouldn’t last.

  He was focused on a paragraph in one of the letters that talked about how that school’s football program had ‘a long tradition of exemplary achievement, both on and off the playing field.’

  Pike got a kick out of this, since last season there was a scandal at that school and some players got kicked off the team and expelled, along with the head coach and an assistant getting the axe too.

  He was dozing off when the phone rang.

  “Yep,” he said, clearing his throat.

  “How are you?” It was Cathy.

  “Jeez,” Pike said.

  “Uh-oh,” Cathy said. “Are you mad I called?”

  “No … I just didn’t expect it. I mean this late.” He checked the time, it close to 2 in the morning.

  “I apologize then. I just wanted to let you know, I received something more from Reggie Riley, the man—”

  “I got it, I know who we’re talking about.”

  “Of course, then … He said something very odd.”

  “Said? What, you’re speaking with him now? Direct?”

  “Yes I am. He’s a nice man. There’s nothing to worry about in that regard, Pike.”

  “Oh my God … Except he’s convinced we’ve been invaded by aliens … that kind of nice man.”

  “Do you want to hear it or not?”

  “Fine.”