Men, Women & Children: A Novel

by Chad Kultgen

  Jim said, “Yeah.”

  Don said, “Really?”

  Jim said, “Yeah.”

  Don said, “Jesus fucking Christ. Lucky piece of shit. I actually—I don’t know why I’m fucking telling you guys this—I actually got so desperate a few days ago I used Chris’s computer to look at porn.” He took a long pull from his flask.

  Jim said, “Oh my god. You’re a disgusting individual. You know that, right? You need help.”

  Don said, “Don’t we all?”

  Jim said, “Kent, you think Tim might come back out this season?”

  Kent said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what his deal is. He just seems like his heart’s not in it, but I think it’s just a phase, you know? I’m hoping he will.”

  Jim said, “I think we all are.”

  In the announcer’s booth, Principal Ligorski switched on his microphone and said through the PA system, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first game of the season here at Goodrich Junior High. Thanks for coming out tonight to support your team. And now, here they are—your Goodrich Olympians!”

  On the field, Brooke and Allison pulled their banner as tight as they could. The field house doors opened and the Goodrich Olympians eighth-grade football team ran toward the field, each player screaming. The visiting team, the Park Panthers, were not granted such an entrance. They stood silently at the opposite end of the field, watching as Danny Vance led his team at full speed, tearing through the banner held by Brooke and Allison. Brooke tried to make eye contact with Danny as he ran by. She had come to the conclusion, in a day’s time, that she did not want to break up with Danny. In fact, she wanted desperately to stay together, but still was uneasy about the new nature of their physical relationship. She planned to put off any future sexual encounters as long as she could and then, if she was pushed to do so, she would talk to Danny about how she felt, at which point she assumed he would break up with her.

  She wanted to blow him a kiss as he ran on the field, but he never looked anywhere other than straight ahead as he tore through the banner. He, too, was consumed with thinking about the nature of their physical relationship. The game and his role in it should have been his primary focus, he knew, but he found that the only thing in his mind was a slow replay of Brooke putting his penis in her mouth and eventually of semen spraying her face. It disturbed him. He had seen pornography, but the sight of his own penis in the mouth of a girl he actually knew was somehow far more disturbing to him. He came to the conclusion that he would avoid any kind of situation that led to a physical encounter with Brooke until she forced the issue. Then he would tell her how he felt and endure whatever her reaction might be, presumably a breakup.

  The parents of the players clapped and cheered at their appearance on the field. Kent took out his telephone and thought about sending a text message to his son, Tim, to tell him that the game was starting. He put his telephone back in his pocket without sending the text message, assuming there was no point.

  The two Olympian co-captains, Danny Vance and Chris Truby, walked out to the fifty-yard line along with two players from the Park Panthers and the referees. Danny called heads to win the coin toss and elected for the Olympians to receive the ball first, and a few moments later the game was underway.

  Chris Truby, as the fastest player the Olympians fielded, served as their kickoff and punt returner. The opening kickoff of the game was a line drive that bounced several times before finally making it to Chris, who returned it for twelve yards before being brought down in a dog pile near his own thirty-five-yard line.

  As Danny Vance and the rest of the Goodrich Junior High School offense took the field for their first drive of the season, Coach Quinn pulled him aside. Despite the fact that it had already been predetermined that the first play of the game would be the X fade, a passing play designed to deceive the defense—making them think all of the receivers were running short routes while Chris Truby stalled on the line and then sprinted down the sideline as the primary receiver—Coach Quinn said, “Danny, let’s switch it up. Run the seven-three-nine flip.” Danny had no time to protest Coach Quinn’s decision to go with a running play as the first play of the season. He ran out onto the field, into the huddle, and said, “Okay, seven-three-nine flip on one. Ready—break!”

  The abrupt change of play caused some minor confusion. Danny quelled it by saying, “I know we were supposed to run the X fade, but Coach Quinn changed it. So let’s do it. Hit your blocks.” They ran the play for a loss of one yard, as a result of Randy Trotter missing his block assignment and letting one of the Park Panthers’ defensive ends straight into the backfield.

  From the sidelines, Coach Quinn sent in Tanner Hodge with the next play. It was the four-two-six pitch wide right, another running play. Danny ran the play as Coach Quinn requested, for another loss, this time for three yards, as a result of Tanner attempting to run through the incorrect hole. The third play was another running play, this time executed for a gain of four yards leaving the Olympians with fourth and ten. In spite of the fact that little more than forty-five seconds had passed in the first quarter of the game, Danny called a time-out and went to the sidelines. He approached Coach Quinn, who immediately said, “What are you doing?” Danny said, “Coach Quinn, don’t punt. Let me throw. We can get a first here with the Xfade or a deep cross. Just let me hit Chris. We can get this.”

  In the stands, several parents of the other players made comments in Jim’s general direction like, “What’s your kid doing calling a time-out, Vance?” and “Does he think he’s in the NFL?” and “It’s the first goddamn quarter.”

  On the sidelines, Coach Quinn thought about the likelihood of Danny completing a pass to Chris Truby for enough yards to get a first down. He knew the Park Panthers wouldn’t be ready for a pass play. They already had a player lining up deep in anticipation of the punt. It seemed like it might work, but more important to Coach Quinn was making Danny understand that he couldn’t undermine a decision that came from the coach and certainly couldn’t undermine a decision that cost his team a time-out.

  Coach Quinn believed he was more than just a football coach to the players on his team. He believed he was teaching them skills that they would carry with them into whatever endeavors they may encounter in their later lives. Discipline and the ability to follow instructions from a superior were skills he thought every one of his players should have by the time they made their way into high school. He took personal offense at Danny’s defiant attitude, but also saw it as an opportunity to teach Danny the value of subservience.

  And beyond all this, Coach Quinn had recently been through two significant events in his life that left him feeling somewhat powerless. After attempting unsuccessfully to conceive a child with his wife for three years, Coach Quinn had been told by a fertility doctor that his sperm count was insufficient to father a child. There were methods by which he and his wife could conceive a child using his sperm, all of which were surgical—leaving the decision on which method would be employed entirely up to his wife. Then, within a week of learning about his low sperm count, Coach Quinn was passed over for the head-coaching position at a high school in a neighboring district. The position would have meant more money and would have signified a move toward his true goal, coaching at the college level.

  Coach Quinn used his hours on the field as the leader of the Goodrich Junior High Olympians as his time to take control back in his life. And, as much as he believed that his players needed to learn discipline and respect, he also needed to administer these things in order to feel like he had control over something in his life. He looked at Danny and said, “We’re kicking it, Danny. Take a seat.” And, in that moment, some switch was thrown in his mind that made him decide that this game, and every subsequent game, would be dominated by the running game, if only because he needed to have absolute control over something and that something was the eighth-grade football team he was coaching.

  Danny took his helmet off and sat down on t
he bench next to Chris and watched Jeremy Kelms kick a twenty-five-yard punt. Brooke saw Danny sitting on the bench and took a momentary break from cheering to approach him and say, “You look seriously awesome out there. I love you.” Danny said, “Thanks. I gotta stay focused, babe,” and then put his helmet back on. Brooke understood. She turned back to the crowd and began cheering again.

  The Goodrich defense took the field and in the stands Jim said, “I guess we’ll see how bad we need Tim out there. Here we go.”

  Kent nudged Don, prompting him to offer his flask again and took a deep drink from it. He had never watched a youth football game in which his son wasn’t playing. He obviously wanted his son’s school to win, but he found himself wishing not only for his son’s replacement to fail but to be significantly injured in that failure. He wanted it to be more than obvious to everyone watching that his son, the way he had been before his mother left, was sorely missed.

  The Park Panthers ran a quarterback sneak as their first play and gained eight yards, their quarterback running straight past a diving Bill Francis and finally being stopped by the free safety, who moved up to cover the middle linebacker’s mistake. Jim said, “Shit. That’s not a good sign.” Kent was happy. He thought again about sending a text message to his son and again thought better of it. He was content to know that Tim was missed.

  Tim was at home checking his Myspace account, thinking only briefly about the fact that he was missing the season opener. He tried to find some small part of himself that cared or missed playing football, but he couldn’t; it seemed meaningless to him. His nightly raid had been canceled due to the raid leader, at the age of twenty-six, taking the next few days to move out of his parents’ house and into his first apartment. Tim had no new messages from his one hundred and two friends, most of whom were other Goodrich students, but some of whom were people he’d met through Myspace based on various common interests, people who belonged to fan pages for Noam Chomsky or World of Warcraft.

  Near the bottom of his home page, six profiles were suggested to Tim as people he might be interested in based on other common friends. One of them was a profile for a gothic-looking girl named Freyja who claimed to be twenty-five years old. Freyja’s resemblance to Brandy Beltmeyer, the girl Tim had unsuccessfully attempted to ask out on a date via text message the year before, was uncanny. The makeup Freyja had on was transformative enough to stir significant doubt in Tim’s mind that this person actually was Brandy Beltmeyer in some type of alter-ego disguise, but the small scar over her left eyebrow, which he knew Brandy also had, erased whatever doubt the makeup had conjured.

  He saw that Freyja was online and had the impulse to send her an instant message asking if she knew Brandy Beltmeyer or was related to her in some way, or perhaps even overtly proclaiming that he knew her true identity. Instead, he clicked on Freyja’s picture section and viewed twenty-three albums containing pictures of Brandy dressed in various gothic outfits and makeup schemes. He found it a strange coincidence that her profile was randomly suggested to him by whatever means Myspace defined these suggestions. Tim reasoned it must have had something to do with he and Freyja both having a large number of friends who had links to other friends who were involved with fantasy and gothic games and lifestyles. He read some of her blog entries: “My First 3some,” “Anal Only Hurts A Little At First,” “My First 3some With 2 Grls,” and “Swallowing.” He wondered how many of these blog posts were based on actual experience, or if they were all fabricated. If they were based in reality, he wondered if his sexual inexperience had played a part in her ignoring his text-message movie invitation the year before. He had a vague notion that Brandy’s mother ran some kind of parental watch-group for Internet abuse, based on the fliers his father had received advertising monthly meetings at Brandy’s house and giving helpful tips for parents to keep their children safe from Internet predators. He wondered if her mother knew her daughter was Freyja.

  Tim wrote a brief e-mail to Freyja. It read, “The Myspace references thing popped you up when I logged on. Just thought I’d say hi.” He didn’t want to let Brandy know that he knew who she was. He decided to see what her reaction would be to his e-mail before doing anything else.

  Brandy had just sent a response to an e-mail from Dungeonmax, part of an extended conversation about True Blood regarding which of the vampires they found to be the most sexually attractive, when she saw a new message from Tim appear in her in-box. The subject line read, “Hello.” She was instantly nervous and slightly afraid. She frantically wondered if she had been discovered by one of her classmates—and not just any classmate, but one whom she had had romantic interest in the year before. She opened his e-mail and read the message, which seemed innocuous enough not to warrant any alarm. Nothing in the message led her to believe he knew it was her, and even if he did, it didn’t seem like he was the type to divulge this information to her mother or anyone else for that matter. Despite her understanding of the situation, Brandy decided to ignore his message and delete it.

  In his room, Tim waited fifteen more minutes for Brandy to respond. In those fifteen minutes she never went offline and she never sent a response. He assumed her reasoning was identical to the time he sent her the first text message: that she was uninterested.

  Danny was allowed to pass twice in the first half, each time resulting in a gain of over fifteen yards, once resulting in a touchdown throw to Chris Truby, who was alone in the end zone. Despite the success of both passing plays, Coach Quinn forced Danny to execute a battery of running plays. The final play of the first half found Danny Vance handing the ball off to Tanner Hodge for a gain of three yards. As the Goodrich Olympians ran off the field into the field house for a halftime pep talk, the score was thirteen to seven in favor of the Park Panthers. In the wake of the football team, the Olympiannes took the field to put on a halftime show they had been practicing all week.

  In the stands, parents freely issued conjecture on the state of the team, the outcome of the season, and the mistakes that would surely be made in the second half. Jim, Don, and Kent were among these parents.

  Don, who was inebriated, said, “Well, it’s not looking good, huh, guys?”

  Jim said, “Nah, we’re fine. Danny and Chris will hook up a few more times before the game’s over. You’ll see.”

  Kent said, “It’s not going to matter much if our defense can’t stop them from scoring.”

  Jim said, “I know. And Park probably has the weakest running game of any school this year. I hate to sound like a broken record but you have to find a way to get Tim back out here.”

  Kent just nodded.

  On the field, the Olympiannes formed a pyramid with Allison Doss at the apex. Dawn Clint knelt by the pyramid, snapping photos of her daughter, who was in the second tier of the pyramid. She found that from a certain angle she was able to take some in which Hannah’s buttocks were slightly exposed, shots she knew would be favorites of her subscribers. Upon review of a series of ten photographs she took, she found that one actually allowed the viewer to see a small part of Hannah’s vagina on the side of the underwear she wore beneath her cheerleading skirt. She deleted this image immediately.

  The pyramid was to be held for ten seconds, at the end of which Allison Doss was to stand up on the shoulders of the two girls supporting her, scream “Go Olympians,” and then fall back, to be caught by Mrs. Langston and Rory Pearson, the only male member of the Olympiannes. Allison stood at the correct moment but found herself unable to scream “Go Olympians,” due to becoming abruptly and extremely light-headed. She fell backward from the top of the pyramid, unconscious and bleeding from the nose. As Mrs. Langston caught her limp body and became aware of the blood trickling out of her nose, she yelled, “Doc!” Mr. Kemp, the school’s athletic trainer, made his way to her as quickly as possible from the sidelines. Mrs. Langston told the rest of the Olympiannes to continue the show with basic cheers and individual gymnastics while she and Mr. Kemp took Allison to the field house.
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  In the field house, Coach Quinn was explaining to the football team that the offensive line needed to pick up the slack in order to make sure the running game was as effective as it was designed to be. Danny became aware of the fact that Coach Quinn had no intention of letting him pass and was unsure of how to change the situation. He was on the verge of voicing his opinion when Mr. Kemp and Mrs. Langston carried Allison Doss through the front door, prompting Coach Quinn to stop his speech and say, “She okay?”

  Mr. Kemp said, “I think so, just got a little light-headed, nose bleed. Nothing serious. Just needs to lay down for a few minutes.”

  Coach Quinn said, “Okay, you can use my office if you need or anything in the training room.” Then Coach Quinn turned his attention back to his team and began his speech about the importance of a solid ground game again.

  In the training room, Mr. Kemp and Mrs. Langston laid Allison down on a table that was generally used to tape athletes’ joints before games. Mr. Kemp retrieved some smelling salts from the first-aid cabinet and brought Allison back to consciousness. He gave her a washcloth to wipe the blood from her nose.

  She said, “What happened?”

  Mrs. Langston said, “You passed out on top of the pyramid.”

  Mr. Kemp gave her a grape Gatorade and said, “Just sit here as long as you need and drink this and you’ll be okay. I have to get back out on the field. Mrs. Langston, you okay in here?”

  Mrs. Langston said, “Yeah.”

  Once Mr. Kemp was gone, Mrs. Langston said, “Should we call your parents or anything?”

  Allison didn’t want her family to have reason to suspect that anything might be abnormal with her. She said, “No, they’re both working and wouldn’t be able to come anyway. I’m fine, really.”

  Mrs. Langston said, “Allison, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to, but I want you to know that I’m here for you if you do. Have you been eating okay?”

  This was the first time Allison had been directly confronted about her eating habits, the first time anyone had recognized that something might possibly be out of the norm. She said, “Yeah, I had a big lunch today. I mean, I know I’ve lost a little weight, but I think it’s just because I’m going through puberty or something, you know? Same thing with the nose bleeds. I read online that you just get them sometimes as you grow.”