“Good sermon, wasn’t it?” Bob Dunphy, eyebrow raised, looked at Paul.
“Good sermon, indeed. If you know what to listen for.”
Stormy lines moved across the mayor’s pink face and then receded.
“Good one, Paul. Listen, we need to talk.”
“About what?”
“The team. The town. Waddell tells me you’re not too keen on a booster club.”
“That’s what I told him, yes.”
“May I ask why?”
“No time, mayor. Practice has started. For the next few months, I’m all booked up.”
Dunphy put a hand on Paul’s shoulder and squeezed. “Look, Paul, now’s not the time, but I think this is something worth talking about. I tell you what: Why don’t you come to our Rotary meeting tomorrow morning. Six a.m.? You can meet the fellas and hear some of our ideas.”
Paul stepped out from under Dunphy’s grip as Valerie rolled up in the Explorer. “My wife,” he said. “Listen, mayor, I can’t make it tomorrow. I’m booked solid. We’ll do just fine with the same bake sale we have every year. We bought new uniforms last year. We’ve got new shoes. We’re good. Really. But thanks. Thanks for the offer.”
Two quick steps carried Paul to the SUV and he climbed into the passenger seat. As Valerie pulled away from the curb, Paul looked back out the window at slackjawed Bob Dunphy.
“What was that?” Valerie asked.
Paul loosened his tie and unfastened his top button. “Fucking town.”
“What?” Zoe asked from the backseat.
“Everybody’s gone nuts. Dunphy wants to form a booster club for the girls basketball team. A booster club, Val.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about that,” she said.
“From who?”
“Grant.”
Paul hurled his tie to the floorboard. “Lundquist?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“A few days ago.”
“What the hell did he say?”
“He said the town is into this big time and that you ought to let people inside a little bit more. It’s not a radical point of view, Paul.”
Paul turned away from her and looked out the window at the passing stubble fields. “You know, I’ve had his kid on the team two years now. Jana? She’s pretty good. Quiet. Hard worker. Gives me no guff. She’s a lot more like her mom, luckily for her.”
Valerie ground her hands on the steering wheel. “Janet was their whole world, Paul. Grant’s raising that girl alone, has been for three years. You should cut him some slack.”
“Yeah, Dad, come on,” Hugh tossed in. “Mr. Lundquist is a good guy.”
Paul said nothing.
“Anyway, maybe you ought to hear them out,” Valerie said. “It might save you some trouble later.”
“I think Daddy-o ought to do what he thinks is the right thing,” Zoe said. “You know better than anybody else.” She put a hand on his shoulder. Paul reached for it.
“Yeah, Dad knows best,” Hugh said. “Just ask him.”
Paul turned in the seat, his face gone crimson. “I’ve heard quite enough from you lately, Junior. Sarcasm must seem like the highest form of debate to you right now, but you’re just making yourself look silly.”
“Don’t you call me that,” Hugh said, his fists forming tight balls.
Valerie slammed on the brakes. “Enough. Everybody, just cool it. Zoe, Hugh, this isn’t your conversation. And, dammit, Paul, don’t egg him on.”
She put the Explorer into gear and eased into the subdivision.
“It’s my team,” Paul said, staring out the window.
Valerie exhaled. “Yes, dear. Of course it is. It always has been.”
Zoe’s thoughts traveled, as they had intermittently for months, to an early July night. She and Mendy had lain on their backs in the cool grass of the Grunwalds’ backyard, staring intently into the black sky as starbursts in neon colors exploded above their heads. She couldn’t remember now if she had moved first or Mendy had. It didn’t matter, really. What lingered, as if Zoe were feeling it today for the first time, was the electricity that pooled between them as the wispiest hairs of her own bare leg mingled with Mendy’s. Zoe dared not make a move, dared not lose the connection, and eventually, she gathered the courage to turn her head to the left and look at the younger girl, who was already staring at her. They smiled simultaneously, and then turned their gazes skyward again, and inside, Zoe felt liquid and warm.
Now, as Mendy tossed in jump shots in the driveway while their folks talked inside, Zoe fetched the ball and tried to drum up the courage to speak of it.
“Are you nervous about Tuesday, Mend?”
Another shot fell through the net.
“Nope.”
“Really? The town’s gone a little nuts.”
“I don’t notice.”
“Come on.”
Another made shot.
“I don’t.”
“I envy you.”
Another made shot.
“Why?”
“Well, you’ve got everything going for you, everybody is watching you. Don’t you like it?”
“I guess.”
Another made shot.
This time, Zoe fetched the ball and held it. For the first time, Mendy looked at her, annoyed.
“Do you think about the fourth of July?” Zoe asked, surprising herself with her boldness.
Mendy scratched the back of her neck. “Sometimes I do, I guess.”
“I think about it all the time.” Zoe passed the ball back to her.
“Why?”
The next shot hit the back iron and arced back into Mendy’s hands.
“I liked it,” Zoe said. The older girl decided to throw everything in now. It was just her heart and her desire. “I think I’d like to kiss you. Could I do that?”
Mendy pushed up another shot, straight and true and dead center. “No, I don’t think so. Whatever you think is going to happen between us, it’s not.”
Zoe got the ball and passed it back to her. “Okay, Mendy.” She cursed herself in her head. Okay, Mendy? That was all? Not “I’ve been dying inside to tell you how I feel and this is what I get”? Zoe thought of all the times she’d touched herself, imagining that her hand was Mendy’s, that she was Mendy, that Mendy was her, that the feeling from that night lived on in both of them. Suddenly, she couldn’t get out of there fast enough, needed air, needed to be somewhere—anywhere—else. As the tears came, she ran.
Mendy shot again.
Coffee sludge and bacon grease met Paul at the door of the Double Barrel on Monday morning, another blast of comfort for the man who trusts his nose. Most early mornings found Paul here, among the long-haul truckers and the farmers and the pensioners who had nowhere and nothing else, but on this Monday, hesitation dragged on Paul. Thirty-six hours from game time, he’d have preferred to be just about anywhere else, so long as it was absent of folks who wanted to jaw about Bronco basketball.
He scanned the room, nodding politely at the proliferate greetings of “hey, Coach” and “go get ’em,” finally finding Dirk sitting in the back of the room, at a table that would allow for at least some semblance of privacy. God bless the pastor, Paul thought. He knows when I need to talk.
“How’s your stomach, old man?” Dirk teased as Paul poured himself into the opposite chair.
“Hanging in there. Just keep those eggs on your side of the table, will you?”
Dirk stabbed at a whittled-off hunk of white and gobbled it up. He found himself in a reflective mood. His friendship with this man across from him had been easy, right from the start, twenty-five years earlier. The young pastor, a man deeply devoted to his faith, found common ground with a younger-still educator whose own politics and spirituality were so different from Dirk’s. Paul, he knew, came to church because coming to church is what a man of influence does in a small town, but Dirk never got the impression that he’d reached Paul in that place where a man finally gives him
self over, no restraint and no hesitation, to the Lord. It troubled Dirk sometimes to know this about Paul, and though he knew he shouldn’t, he often saw it as his own failure, that he could not shepherd his best friend to that peace and joy.
And yet, the two men had shared enough hunting trips—where in the screaming silence of solitude, they had shared penetrating conversations about love and family and ethics—that Dirk trusted Paul implicitly and completely, and never was that unshakeable faith in his friend more important than now, when Dirk’s own daughter was central to the plot.
“You okay, buddy?” Dirk asked.
Paul dumped three servings of half-and-half and four sugar cubes into his coffee. “Yeah. I need to talk to you about something.”
“Okay.”
Paul stirred his drink, clinking the spoon against the ceramic rim of the cup to get at the last drops. “It’s about Mendy.”
“I figured.”
“I’m going to bring her off the bench tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to know why?”
“Is there a reason I should?” Dirk burned with the question of why, but one of the promises he’d made to himself was that he wouldn’t interfere in Mendy’s coaching. He’d given her the genes and the grounding in fundamentals, and now she belonged to Paul.
“Yeah, there is.” Paul rubbed his eyes. “Look, I don’t have to tell you what we’ve got in Mendy. You played big-time basketball. You’ve seen it. You know.”
“Yes.”
“And Mendy, she will be the starter soon enough. There’s nothing anybody can do to stop that. But there’s something about this team that’s just not right. Some of them, they don’t see what you and I see, not yet. To them, she’s this young kid who’s coming to take something from them. So I’m going to bring her off the bench, let her find her way with these girls, let them see how unbelievably good she is, how she changes everything just by her presence. Everything will sort itself out as we go along.”
Dirk considered the words and considered Paul, and for the first time, he took note of how haggard the coach looked. “You’ve been thinking about this a lot, I take it.”
“More than anything else. And look, Dirk, I’m probably not explaining it very well. Every one of these kids, I’ve asked them to prove that they deserve to be on this team. I’ve asked the same of Mendy, but maybe this will let everyone else see that, too.”
“Makes sense,” Dirk said.
“I’m glad you think so. I felt like I owed you an explanation, so you’d at least know what’s coming. It’s going to upset some people.”
“They’ll get over it.”
Paul chugged coffee. “I keep thinking so. I’m starting to have my doubts.”
“When will you be telling Mendy?” Dirk needed to know, needed to be ready to provide comfort, if comfort were necessary. This girl, his baby, had grown up with a basketball under her arm, and in all those years, she had never been a reserve. He wondered how she would take it, and perversely, he found himself excited to learn the answer. How Mendy dealt with this would, perhaps, provide some insight into his own questions about how she would handle her growing fame.
“I’m not telling her, per se. I’ll tell the team who the starters are tonight after practice. I really need to keep this focus on the team. Mendy, she’s going to go places and do things most of these girls can only dream about. I’m not worried about her, you know?”
“I get it.”
“Do you think she’s going to be okay with it?”
A slight smile crossed Dirk’s face. It was the question of the hour, and an open one at that.
“We’ll see.”
KBRK-FM, 7:42 a.m., Tuesday, November 11, 1997:
T.J.: “All right, that was Chumbawumba with ‘Tubthumping,’ right here on KBRK The Brick. This is T.J. and I’m here, as always, with the Rake. Rake, my man, we’ll probably play that song eight more times today. What do you think of that?”
The Rake: “Don’t care.”
T.J.: “You don’t care? Why not?”
The Rake: “I want to talk about something else.”
T.J.: “Well, Rake, the floor is yours. This here is a democracy. What do you want to talk about?”
The Rake: “You know how we’re the Brick? How we always say that, you know, KBRK The Brick?”
T.J.: “The baddest radio station in the land.”
The Rake: “It just reminded me that tonight’s the big night, the Burdon County girls basketball team opens the season against Dawson County, right here.”
T.J.: “People are loving this team, Rake.”
The Rake: “Yeah, well, anyway, I was just thinking, for a few years now, that’s all we’ve seen from the Broncos. Bricks.”
T.J.: “Ooooooh. Rake! Unkind, brother! Besides, the Broncs have a not-so-secret weapon this time around.”
The Rake: “You’re speaking here of the lovely and talented Mendy Grunwald.”
T.J.: “The one and only.”
The Rake: “You know, I’d like to show her how to put it in the hole.”
T.J.: “Uh …”
The Rake: “You know?”
T.J.: “Not cool, Rake.”
The Rake: “I’m sorry, man, I’m sorry. I’m just so stoked, dude! The Broncos are going to be awesome this year, man. Awesome!”
T.J.: “That’s what everybody’s saying.”
The Rake: “There’s some fine girls on that team.”
T.J.: “Rake …”
The Rake: “I mean players, man, players. And how about Coach Paul Wainwright, huh? Coaching all that prime talent. Lucky dog.”
T.J.: “Easy now …”
The Rake: “Everybody knows it, man. Dude picked up his wife after she played on his team. I’m just saying, he has an eye for talent, if you know what I mean.”
T.J.: “I’m pretty sure that was some years later.”
The Rake: “Whatever, dude. Have you checked out Mrs. Wainwright? She’s still got it going on. Props, Coach Wainwright!”
T.J.: “Let’s move on. Who do you think’s gonna win tonight?”
The Rake: “Burdon County, no doubt.”
T.J.: “You’re that sure, are you?”
The Rake: “And then The Rake will win later with one of those fine girls. Call me, ladies. You know where I am.”
T.J.: “He’s just kidding, of course.”
The Rake: “Who’s kidding? I’m telling you, top to bottom, this is the foxiest team we’ve ever had.”
T.J.: “Rake, seriously …”
The Rake: “I’d like to dress ’em all in cheerleader outfits and …”
The dead air on KBRK lasted six days until, just after 2 a.m. on November 18, the signal crackled to life with Dr. Mathilda’s Herbal Remedy Hour, a previously recorded talk show out of Chicago. Over the next several weeks, the station veered from simulcast all-talk to sixties country and western to a tri-county trading post show, and finally back to all-talk.
T.J. was seen later that week making deliveries for the Pizza Shack. The Rake was never spotted in Burdon City again.
On Tuesday, the town woke to a hard freeze. Paul, returning through the garage after taking Buster out for his morning pee, found his daughter lying on the cold concrete, between the two cars, wearing only a T-shirt and his mesh shorts.
“Jesus, Zoe,” he said, dropping to his knees beside the girl and gathering her into his arms. He could feel the shape of her bones through her frigid, purpling skin. “What happened?”
He held her close, rubbing her back, trying to bring forth heat. He wrapped her in a hug, and her chill moved through him.
“I’m so stupid, Dad.”
Enveloping her, he said, “No.”
“I am.”
“How long have you been out here?”
The girl broke down, burying her forehead in her father’s chest, telling him all in a choked whisper, her shoulders heaving, her father rubbing her back, holding her, not knowing what el
se to do except whisper in return, “It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay,” over and over, to convince her—or maybe to convince himself.
At breakfast, Paul covered for the girl.
“Zoe’s not feeling too good,” he said. “I told her to stay home and get some sleep.”
Buttering a slice of sourdough, Valerie said, “I think I know this ruse.”
Paul slammed a carton of orange juice on the countertop. “She’s sick. I saw her. It’s not a ruse.”
Val held up a hand, her common signal. The debate was done but not resolved. It was ever thus. Hugh looked at his father, annoyed.
“Are you coming tonight?” Paul asked.
“Not me,” Hugh said.
“I didn’t expect so. I’m talking to your mother.”
Valerie rinsed her plate. She wanted to appropriate Hugh’s answer, but she knew it wouldn’t fly.
“I’ll be there. Same as always. You know that.”
Without another word, she went downstairs.
TRUST.
TOGETHERNESS.
TEAMWORK.
The message written on the dry-erase board in the Broncos’ locker room
Paul ambled along the sideline to the BCHS bench, the most common walk of his life, and his stomach turned on him. His final words had been delivered to his girls, and he now faced the crowd alone, before his team tumbled from the locker room in perfect lines for drills he’d choreographed nearly three decades earlier.
On the Burdon County side of the gym, you couldn’t have slipped a piece of paper between the wedged-in partisans. A roiling wave of black and orange, they waved fleshy arms holding hand-lettered signs of exhortation: the benign (Go BCHS!), the self-satisfyingly clever (On this ranch, Broncs bust Cowgirls!), and, something new this season that Paul entirely expected and yet felt offended by just the same, the ones that elevated individual over team (The Great Grunwald!).
Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure: Short Shories Page 4