Tight End

by Matt Christopher

  “So you think you know what’s bothering me, do you?” he said, his eyes searching through the semi-darkness for the familiar light-blue Chevrolet sedan.

  Cars were parked all over the huge lot, but there weren’t many. The Riverside High School bus was loading up in the lane between the school and the parking lot, and he waved at the players. They waved back.

  “I think I do,” Margo said. “Your father’s out of prison. He was at the game. I saw him with your mother.”

  He glanced at her, a bitter look coming into his eyes. “So? What’s my father got to do with it?”

  She shrugged. “If my father just got out of prison and came to watch me play, I think I’d feel pretty funny out there.”

  “Funny?”

  “You know what I mean.” She touched his hand. “You’ll stay, won’t you, Jim? Even if your parents won’t? Please?”

  They stopped walking and looked at each other. He saw she was a very attractive girl.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I will.”

  Her cheeks glowed. “Thanks, Jim.”

  He found the car, and his parents waiting for him in it.

  “Hi, Mrs. Cort. Hi, Mr. Cort,” Margo greeted them, leaning down slightly to look at them in the front seat.

  “Well, hi, Margo,” Mrs. Cort said pleasantly. “Jim, I don’t know whether you remember Margo Anderson or not. Her father ran for councilman a few years ago.”

  “Of course, I do,” said Jim’s father, his face dimly outlined in the half-darkness of the car. “How are you, young lady?”

  “Just fine, thank you,” Margo replied. “Why don’t you come in and enjoy the party with us?” she went on hastily. “There are lots of other parents there.”

  Jim’s parents smiled. “We’ll take a rain check on it,” Mr. Cort said.

  “I’m staying,” Jim said. “I’ll go home with Peg.”

  “Okay. I’m coming back to pick her up at eleven-thirty,” said his father. “See you and her then near the gym exit.”

  “Okay.” Jim opened the rear door of the car, tossed his duffel bag onto the seat, then waved to his parents as they drove away.

  “I think I know how he feels,” Margo said as she and Jim headed back to the school.

  “Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t,” Jim said.

  He felt a sudden tightness in the pit of his stomach. Right now he didn’t want to talk about his father.

  Margo looked at him, the lights from the school reflecting in her eyes. “Okay. Maybe I don’t. I suppose a dumb kid like me shouldn’t have said a dumb thing like that.”

  “You’re not dumb,” Jim said. He sighed. “Anyway, I just don’t like to talk about my father. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course.”

  They entered the school through the gymnasium exit, their ears bombarded immediately by the mixed sounds of voices and the rhythmic beat coming from the jukebox in the corner. Jim looked around until he spotted the long table with the cake and doughnuts and two large punch bowls on it and tapped Margo on the shoulder.

  “Let’s chow down on some goodies first,” he said.

  They walked along the side to avoid being bumped into by the bunch of dancing kids, and halfway to the table came face to face with Miss Delray, Jim’s math teacher. She was a tall woman with black, frizzy hair and large, round-framed glasses.

  “Well, hi, Jim! Hi, Margo!” she exclaimed, holding a glass of pink punch in one hand. “Tough game to lose, wasn’t it, Jim?”

  “Can’t win ’em all,” he said.

  She glanced past his shoulder. “Didn’t your parents come? This is for parents, too, you know. Parents and teachers, not only for the cheerleaders and the football team.”

  “They didn’t care about it,” replied Jim.

  “Oh. Too bad.” She smiled. “Heading for the goodies table? Don’t let me stop you!”

  They reached the table. Jim poured a ladle of punch into a paper cup for Margo, then one for himself. Then each picked up a piece of cake.

  Suddenly Jerry Watkins emerged from the crowd, focused his camera on them, and snapped their picture. The flash caused stars to blink in front of Jim’s eyes for a few moments.

  “Good shot!” Jerry exclaimed. “Thanks, peoples!” He took a quick look around them, and his friendly smile faded. “Didn’t your parents come, Jim?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mr. Cort said they’ll take a rain check on it,” Margo cut in.

  “Oh.” Jerry’s right hand dropped to his belt buckle on which was a brass carving of a Texas steer head. Rubbing the shiny carving with his thumb, he sized Margo up, from her black shoes to her brown hair. “There’s a guy standing like a lost sheep over by the jukebox. Have you seen him?”

  Both Jim and Margo glanced toward the jukebox, emblazoned with sparkling colors, and saw Ed Terragano. He was alone and holding a paper cup. He was also looking directly at them, the expression on his face cheerless and cold. The instant their eyes met, he put the cup to his lips, tipped it up, then set it on top of the jukebox.

  Jerry chuckled. “Methinks the lad is jealous. What do you think?”

  Jim looked at Margo. “Jealous? Jealous about what?”

  Margo’s lips pursed. “Right. Jealous about what? I went to a couple of movies with him. We’re friends. Just like Jim and I are friends.” Her eyes smoldered for a second as she looked up at Jerry. “What’re you trying to do, Watkins? Cause trouble?” She turned her back to him and dug her hands hard into the pockets of her jeans.

  Jerry laughed. “See you around,” he said to Jim, and left, his limp barely noticeable.

  Margo turned back, grabbed Jims hand, and pulled him out on the floor. “The bigmouth,” she growled as they started to dance. “Why can’t they let people just be friends? You know what I mean, Jim?”

  “Sure. But maybe Ed doesn’t.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Jim shrugged. “He probably thinks we’re more than friends. How do I know?”

  “That’s silly” she said.

  The music stopped. “You want to go over and ask him for a dance?” Jim suggested.

  She stared at him, her mouth parting, and he suddenly got the feeling that he should not have said that.

  “You want me to?” she asked.

  He thought a moment. “No.”

  A smile flickered over her mouth. The music started again. She took his hand, squeezed it for just a moment, then held it lightly in hers. The feel of it made him think of a bird he had once held. He had wanted to put it against his cheek, feel its soft warmth.

  They began dancing again. What’s with us? he wanted to ask her. If you and I are just supposed to be friends and nothing more, why did you give me that dirty look when I asked you if you wanted to dance with Ed? And why should I be glad you didn’t want to?

  Suddenly he thought again of the phone call. If Ed had a crush on Margo and thought he was losing her to Jim, could he be mean enough to make that absurd phone call? Could he think that it would bother Jim so much that Jim would quit the team, and thereby cause Margo to lose interest in him?

  How jealous can a guy get? How far would he go to hurt someone he was jealous of?

  Margo’s voice broke into Jim’s thoughts. “Something bothering you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re tense,” she said. “And you’re sweating. You okay?”

  “Oh, sure. I’m fine.” He forced a grin and loosened his shirt collar. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about something.”

  “I guess you were. You’re not embarrassed being with me, are you?”

  “No! What’re you talking about?”

  He tried to push the thought of Ed out of his mind. A few seconds later he saw a long-haired blond trying to get Ed to dance with her, and not having any luck. The more he thought about it, the more Jim started to be convinced that Ed Terragano was the person who had made that harassing phone call.

  “Margo
?”

  “Yes?”

  “Ed can’t dance, can he?”

  “I don’t know. He says he can’t.”

  “Is that why you wanted me to come with you?”

  She stopped dancing and looked at him. “That’s part of it, but not all of it,” she said seriously.

  “What’s the rest of it?”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “I’m not sure. I think I just like being with you. But I guess being with me seems to be bothering the heck out of you.”

  She let go of his hand, turned away, and headed briskly off the floor.

  Jim followed her. “Margo! Where you going?”

  “To get a drink!” she flung over her shoulder. “I’m thirsty!”

  He followed her to the punch-bowl table. “I’m sorry,” he said when he caught up with her. “I’ll try to be more decent.”

  He picked up a paper cup and poured her punch, then poured a cup for himself.

  He felt tense and extremely conspicuous.

  Suddenly he felt a hand on his back. He turned and saw Peg smiling at him. Chuck DeVal was with her.

  “Hi, brother,” she said. “Hi, Margo. You two having a good time?”

  “Yeah,” he lied.

  He barely looked at Chuck, whose black, wavy hair and dark features showed up his French-Italian ancestry. Chuck knew a smattering of both languages, and often amused the kids in his classes by rattling off something in either French or Italian. So far Jim hadn’t learned more from him than “Oui oui,” “Comment allez vous?” and “ciao.”

  “Personally, I’m not so sure,” Margo said.

  Peg looked at her and then at Jim. Jim shrugged. “I think she means I’m not any better at dancing than I am at playing football,” he said.

  He drank the punch and set the empty cup on the table. “Come on,” he said to Margo, grabbing her hand after she had drunk a little of her punch. “Let’s get back out there.”

  They danced to a few more tunes, sat out a couple, and danced to a few more. It was a long evening, and he was glad when it was over.

  He told Margo his parents would drive her home, but she said her mother was coming after her.

  “Well, thanks for a good time,” he said.

  “Are you sure you mean that?” she asked him.

  “I do mean it,” he said. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Jim.”

  His father was waiting in the car for him and Peg when they went out to the parking lot at eleven-thirty.

  Jim was having breakfast the next morning when the phone rang. His mother answered it. It was for him, she said.

  He went to the phone, his nerves tightening. “Hello?”

  The voice he heard was the same one he had heard before. He listened carefully, trying to recognize something in it that would give him a clue as to the identity of the caller.

  “I saw your ex-con father after the game last night,” the muffled voice said. The caller had probably wrapped a handkerchief over the mouth of the receiver. “He didn’t look very proud. Maybe he wishes he were back behind bars.”

  Jim’s grip tightened on the receiver. “Ed, is this you?” he snapped angrily. “Is it?”

  The phone clicked as the caller hung up.

  5

  Who was that?” his mother asked him, frowning. “I can usually recognize your friends’ voices, but that one I couldn’t. It sounded as if he had a mouthful of potatoes.”

  Jim tried to think quickly of one of his football teammates, other than Ed Terragano, someone he was sure his mother hardly knew. “It was Hardy,” he said. “Randy Hardy I guess he doesn’t have good manners. He was talking with a mouthful of cereal.”

  He didn’t know why he told her it was Hardy instead of Ed, except that he wasn’t one-hundred percent sure it was Ed. If it were Ed, Jim wanted to let him know that he knew, and make Ed stop making the calls. He was sure that the minute Ed was convinced his identity was discovered, his perverted attempts at humor would stop.

  As Jim headed for the living room, his mind still wrapped up on the call, his mother called to him, “Jim! Aren’t you going to finish your breakfast?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry,” he said.

  He returned to the kitchen and sat back down in front of the eggs and toast he had left. The call had caused a lump to form in the pit of his stomach, but he finished his breakfast, put the plate and cup in the sink, and went to the living room.

  His father was sitting in the leather lounging chair by the window, reading the morning paper. “Good morning, Dad.”

  Mr. Cort curled over a corner of the paper and looked over its edge at him. He was clean-shaven, looking younger than his forty years. “Good morning, son. How do you feel this morning?”

  “Okay.”

  He sat on the divan, laid his head back, and stared at the ceiling. The thought of the phone calls began to gnaw at him. How could he prove it was Ed making them? That was the hundred-dollar question.

  He tried to remember word by word what the caller had said. “I saw your ex-con father after the game last night. He didn’t look proud to me. Maybe he wishes he were behind prison bars again.” Or words to that effect.

  Was Ed capable of saying those things, just because Margo had begun to show interest in him? Jim asked himself. Was he really that kind of guy?

  “Something on your mind, son?”

  The question from his father startled him.

  “Nothing important,” he said.

  His father laid the paper aside, then folded his hands and stretched them out in front of him. “I noticed the look on your face last night when you answered the phone, and I see it again now. The expression’s the same. I heard you tell your mother that it was Randy Hardy who called just now.”

  “It was.” Jim felt his father’s eyes probe his. He could remember that during his younger years he had tried to tell his father little harmless lies now and then to get out of a ticklish situation, but his father had always seen through them. He was afraid his father had seen through this lie, now.

  Mr. Cort leaned over the side of his chair and looked out the window. “Isn’t that Randy Hardy out there playing catch with Barry and another kid?”

  Jim felt his stomach tighten. He got up and went to the window. His throat felt suddenly dry as he saw Randy on the street, catching a pass Barry had just thrown to him. “Yes,” he said, embarrassed. “It is.”

  The next second his eyes widened as he saw the third kid who was playing catch with Randy and Barry. It was Ed Terragano!

  Jim turned and looked at his father. He wet his lips. “Dad, how long have those guys been out there? Do you know?”

  “No. I heard them yelling a couple of minutes ago. That was the first I saw them.”

  A couple of minutes ago. Then it could not have been Ed on the phone.

  Jim returned to the divan and sat down heavily. His face was pale.

  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” his father said. “What’s going on? Whom or what did you see out there that’s giving you that scared look?”

  Jim took a deep breath, exhaled it, and told his father about the two phone calls.

  “Hmm,” his father murmured. “And you have no idea who made them?”

  “Well, I thought it was Ed Terragano, but it can’t be Ed if he’s out there with Barry and Randy.”

  His father wanted to know why he had suspected Ed, and Jim told him. He felt foolish giving Margo’s change of interest from Ed to him as Ed’s possible motive, but his father didn’t dwell on it.

  “Now that you’re sure it isn’t Ed, who else is on your suspect list?” his father asked.

  Jim mentioned Pat Simmons.

  Mr. Cort gazed silently at him. Jim knew he didn’t have to explain who Pat was. His father knew.

  “Could be,” he said. “But it’s not likely.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’d be too obvious a suspect.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly why he would do a thing li
ke that, Dad,” Jim countered.

  “Maybe. But you’d better make sure before you accuse him,” reminded his father. “You wouldn’t want to make the situation worse than it is.” He cleared his throat. “Why should he, or anybody else, make such phone calls to you, though? What reason should anybody have to embarrass you by mentioning me in their calls?”

  Jim shrugged. “I don’t know, Dad. But one thing’s for sure: it’s bothering me so much that I’m only putting out fifty percent on the field instead of a hundred. You saw me last night. I should’ve had that pass. At times I only had half of my mind on the game. The other half was on what the guys were thinking of me.”

  His father frowned. “Because of me, you’re trying to say. Because your father committed a crime and served time in prison.”

  Jim stared straight ahead. He found that suddenly he could not look directly into his father’s eyes. He might break down and cry.

  “No, Dad. No. I didn’t mean that.”

  His father sighed. “Mean it or not, it’s the truth. I’ve been a disgrace to you.” There was suddenly pain in his eyes when Jim looked at him. “I’ve been repenting my stupid error ever since it happened. I don’t know what got into me to do what I did. I must have been out of my mind. But I did it, and I can’t undo it. I served my penalty, but I know that that doesn’t make a bit of difference in certain people’s eyes. They can’t see — or they refuse to see — that I’ve paid my debt to society, that I regret with my whole heart what I’ve done.”

  Jim’s heart was heavy. “I can see that, Dad. Mom and Peg can see it, too. I think a lot of people can see it.”

  “A lot. But not all,” said his father. He picked up the paper. “I’m going job hunting Monday. If I can’t find anything in the next week or two, I might consider going somewhere else.”

  Jim frowned. “You don’t mean you’d move out of Port Lee, do you, Dad?”

  “What else can we do? It wouldn’t make sense for you, Peg, and your mother to live here while I live in another city where I happened to find a job, would it?”

  Jim stared at his father. “We can’t, Dad,” he said seriously. “I have to find out who’s making those phone calls.”