They’d spent so much of the first part of the relationship just trying to figure out logistics. His mom wasn’t a problem, as 56 pretty much did what he wanted, when and where he wanted, but her parents were strict. Her mom especially did not like the idea of her dating a junior, and Jerry Ross always followed his wife’s lead on such things. She wasn’t allowed to ride in his truck; she could only see him at school, dances, or other gathering points (Vicky’s Diner or Friendly’s being the most likely hangouts). Her mother had just two moods: playful and severe. Around 56, she only showed the latter. Tina ended up lying a lot. Stacey mostly covered for her.
The first time he drove her out to a deserted strip of road, he took off most of her clothes in his truck. She stopped him right before it appeared he would take off all of his as well. This put him in such a surly mood that after he dropped her off that night, she lay awake panicking that she’d screwed things up. The next day at school when he casually put his arm around her shoulder, she could have sobbed with relief.
She decided to make the complicated simple: She was in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and told her parents they were starting a Bible study group in the evenings. That way she and 56 could take off after he got out of practice. She knew she was not the first teenager to think of such a scam, but it did surprise her how well it worked.
By dating him, she shot up the social ladder. She met him at his locker and enjoyed the glares from girls three grades above. They walked to every class together. He came by her study hall and lingered until Mrs. Northup told him to buzz off. She imagined them as celebrities. If the school paper (The Jaguar Journal, a black-and-white glossy distributed in the cafeteria once a month) covered gossip, their picture would have made every issue. (And in fact, it did make one: The JJ always had a photo collage of images from around the school culled by the photographers. These usually included sports, assemblies, but also candid shots; November’s issue featured a large, nearly half-page image of her and 56 holding hands while walking down the hallway. Taken from behind, it showed their heads turned in profile, her laughing, and he with that wonderful half grin. She bought seven copies of that issue. She put four untouched in a box in her closet and cut the pictures out of the rest. One went above her dresser, another in her locker, one inside her notebook.
At the sixth game of the season, Kaylyn Lynn found her beforehand and said, “You can’t stand in the freshmen section when your boyfriend’s a star. C’mon.”
She regarded the older girl, who wore an orange sports bra over her small breasts and had Go Jags! written across the tight muscles of her stomach. She wore her hair in cute pigtails and had fingermarks of paint, one black, one orange, under each green-grass eye. Kaylyn was almost a head taller than her, and maybe because she was a year older and seemed to already intimidate even the senior girls or maybe because she and 56 were such good friends, Tina found herself both flattered and unnerved. They stood in the front row, and Kaylyn pointed at Rick, standing with his back to them, Number 25.
“Look at him,” she said. “I’ve got a thing for butts in football pants. Even the fat kids, you know?”
Tina agreed but felt no more at ease. Fifty-six had a history with Kaylyn. Before they began dating, she’d seen 56 at Kaylyn’s locker after school, the halls empty. He’d stood too close to her, and Tina couldn’t help but strain to overhear him say, “Summer makes you dirty blond” and Kaylyn reply, “Not dirty enough for my taste.”
It wasn’t the questionable comment so much as when 56 reached for Kaylyn’s hair and rubbed a strand of it with his thumb and forefinger like he was testing the consistency of soil.
“Problem is,” she told Kaylyn, clearing her mind of that image. “I don’t know a thing about football. Like I barely understand what Todd even does.”
Kaylyn laughed. Her teeth were nice except for one Dracula fang that crowded out its neighbor.
“I gotcha here, Tina. So he’s the middle linebacker, which is sort of the leader of the defense. He’s like a jack-of-all-trades, so he roams around and can call a blitz and go after the quarterback, whatever he thinks is best. Your boyfriend,” she explained, “is a really freaking good middle linebacker. He already has the school record for sacks and tackles, which is why he’s getting recruited and part of the reason the team’s five and oh.”
Tina nodded, though much of the explanation flew over her head. Yet this became her identity. She was 56’s girl, and thereby staked her claim to the first two rows of the bleachers next to juniors and seniors. She felt mature there, adult, knowledgeable about the world in some new unquantifiable way.
She loved how everyone referred to the guys by their jersey numbers and quickly adopted the practice. She made a shirt with his number and last name across the back and threw dagger eyes at Jess Bealey, the cheerleader responsible for making his locker signs and baking him cookies and brownies before games. (They were just friends, 56 would say, and she’d worry about all the female friends he seemed to have.) It was her introduction to this exclusive club, this new world. His best friends, Ryan Ostrowski, Curtis Moretti, Matt Moore, and a few others, formed a kind of athletic elite. They got away with drinking, toilet papering houses, egging cars, always something. At the pep rally they introduced one another on stage, each to a rap song, each with a dance, jerseys tucked haphazardly into baggy jeans. She felt like an intricate part of the spectacle unfolding in the bonfire’s glow.
Once she understood more about what he did on the team, she found him even more appealing. She’d watch him on the sidelines. When the weather turned cold, steam would rise from his hot, sweaty head. In the game, he’d look to the one coach on the sidelines (the defensive coordinator, this was called), take a signal or wave it off, expressionless beneath the helmet, yet still expressive in the tics of his head and hands. Then the play would commence and it was like watching jujitsu, the way he tried to snatch apart the opposing player’s hands, feint, or slip his grip in some manner. She began to see that he was quicker and stronger than almost everyone he played against. Often he’d get right past the other team’s player, and then it was like watching a wolf in an open field bearing down on a rabbit. In the sixth game of the season, against Marysville (at that point the twenty-fourth ranked team in the state!), he had one truly amazing moment. The center hiked the ball, and instead of clashing into the other team’s player, 56 duped his matchup by sliding back, which caused the Marysville player to go tumbling forward. Fifty-six leapt over him, smashed aside another defender, and then there was nothing between him and the Marysville quarterback but grass. The QB tried to retreat (drop back, was the term), tried to throw, but 56 was so fast. He hit him with a spectacular plastic-crunch of pads, lifted him off the ground, and hurtled both of them through space. The whole stadium heard the hit, and a collective gasp and groan went up from both sides of the bleachers. The ball came out, and Stacey’s brother Matt (No. 44) scooped it up and ran it back for a touchdown. Fifty-six jumped up screaming, muscles flexed, beating the air with his fists as his teammates slapped his butt and helmet. The QB left the game with a concussion and New Canaan won 28–14. From the bleachers, Tina screamed and jumped and smacked her hands pink while she thought about how she was falling in love.
* * *
When driving into New Canaan from the west there’s no sign to greet you the way there is from the north. There’s only the farmland giving way to clusters of homes until you reach the first stoplight on SR 229. You followed that into town, past a massive grain silo, the empty steel factory now three decades abandoned, the old middle school shuttered since ’96 and entombed behind barbed wire fencing to keep inquisitive kids from running through the ruins. The Little Caesars and Donatos Pizza sitting side by side, Le Nails, House of Hair, A-Plus Insurance, Wendy Bakerfield Attorney at Law.
She’d brought Cole here to show him her hometown shortly after she agreed to temporarily move into his one bedroom. This living arrangement had not been an ideal situation from her parents’
perspective, but at that point the rent for the house on Jennings had become too much of a burden. Moving into a smaller place saved her parents so much money, and Cole had become family to them anyway. “I suppose your generation does things a little different anyhow,” was her mom’s final word about it. So she moved into Cole’s one bedroom in a little development five miles east of Van Wert.
She drove Cole out to the park in New Canaan, the town square, the baseball fields, the high school. She was incapable of articulating how alive this place had seemed when she was young, how much energy you could feel here. She could only see it through his eyes now: a dingy town getting dingier. Nostalgia shielding the rest.
“That’s the football field.” She pointed to the ring of fence and bleachers overseen by bleach-white stadium lights. As a child, the place had looked like it could hold the Super Bowl. The jaguar mascot burst through a wall, snarling, muscled arms with razor claws extending for prey, looking the way 56 had when he swallowed up that Marysville quarterback.
How to explain to him the town’s sadness, the tragedies. By the time she left, she’d held in her heart the notion of a curse, the one the town whispered about. At that point she and 56 had been broken up for well over a year. He was playing football for Mount Union, destined to flunk too many classes and get into the trouble that he did. She weighed around eighty-eight pounds, her eating problem having reached its apex. She kept seeing herself in the mirror; she’d always understood how pretty she was, blessed with strong cheekbones, a slim, delicate nose, long lashes, and smooth, smoky skin framed by raven hair. And yet her body never stopped looking grotesque to her; she pinched the flab around her belly, arms, and thighs; she skipped meals or ate a bag of chips for dinner. She’d also gone too far with the pricks.
Then that sensation of a curse began to be borne out. When Curtis Moretti died of a drug overdose, she found herself envying him. What a relief it would be to no longer be afraid and hurt all the time. The same fate later befell Ben Harrington. Rick Brinklan was killed in Iraq, and New Canaan had a parade when his body returned. Though her parents and Rick’s had known one another since they all went to New Canaan High School themselves, Tina missed the parade. How could she explain to Cole that it followed them all, that sadness somehow born in their high school days that could reach out and touch any of them at random. She had this image of Christ swimming through the chaos of life, trying to protect all these people who deserved mercy, and yet these oily tentacles kept slipping past Him, carrying away all the people He wanted to give sanctuary.
Tragedy wasn’t entirely why it was so hard to come back to New Canaan. After she drove Cole past the high school that day, she took him out to the overlook where the Cattawa River flowed, a spot popularly known as the Brew, where her classmates had sometimes come to drink and where she’d sometimes made love to 56. She’d felt guilty next to Cole, but she wanted to return to all the memories so badly, even the ones that throbbed, that brought so much shame. Looking out over the steady murmur of the river, the setting sun turning the clouds pink, draping that soft, wonderful color over all the leafless trees clamoring at the sky, she began to cry.
“What’s a matter?” he asked.
She wiped her eyes. “Nothing. It’s just always been so pretty out here. Just sometimes I miss this place so much.”
She thought she’d want to be left alone with this thing only she could understand, but when he reached out and took her hand it felt in sync with the shiver of the sunlit water.
* * *
She checked The Office, then Honey Buckets, grew nervous. She reminded herself that there were only three bars he really ever went to, and his routine was so ingrained it would serve as a sign from God if by coincidence he had not gone out to drink tonight. He stayed, usually till close, nearly every night after he got off work at Cattawa Construction. Finally, she spotted his truck parked across the street from the Lincoln Lounge. In high school, when the truck had been new it looked like the gleaming transport of a futuristic military. Obsidian black with chrome door handles and a cap for the truck bed that kept the rain, leaves, and snow out. A lift kit gave it a bulked-up look, like the vehicle had been chugging the same protein shakes as its driver. Over ten years later the cap was gone and the truck was covered in a film of dust that gave it a sickly gray color under the streetlights.
She parked a ways down the street beneath a lamp fortuitously burned out. She felt safe in the shadows. Her mind worked furiously trying to puzzle out what she’d say. She turned off the dome light before she opened the car door.
After her parents finally agreed to let her ride with him, he began driving her to school, to the movies or the diner, to Ryan Ostrowski’s place. So much passed between them during their time together. Memories wonderful and not as wonderful. They spent the day that became very famous just driving. This was the day when classes stopped and all the boxy TVs affixed to the corner of the ceiling in each classroom got turned on, and the whole school watched as the towers burned and collapsed, that expanding cloud of cancer-gray smoke blooming through the city streets, turning all the fleeing faces to ash, coating the visible world. It had all felt very far away to her. New York City was a bright, colorful set in TV sitcoms. Terrorism was nothing she had ever considered before. She’d gone to an emergency service at church that night with her parents where Pastor Jack said that wonderful line that offered so much clarity (“In this moment of profound grief for our fellow countrymen, this will seem odd, but today I’ll paraphrase not Paul the disciple but Paul the musician: God makes His plans, and sometimes that information is unavailable to the mortal man.”).
Afterward, her mom dropped her off at Stacey’s, and then 56 picked her up down the street. They spent the evening traversing the square downtown as they sometimes did.
“I say we bomb those faggots back to first principles,” he said. “Whoever it is, China, Iraq, doesn’t matter. Just turn their country into a fucking crater.”
He drove slouched to the right, his elbow propped up on the center console, his hand in an L with the index finger on his temple, thumb thoughtful on his chin. His left hand guided the steering wheel with all the loose nonchalance of how he held his books in the hallway.
“It’s so crazy,” was all she could add. They were all unprepared for how this would unfold around them. Bill Ashcraft told someone that if Americans had to live like some of those people do, we’d probably want to fly planes into buildings too. Bill always said stuff to provoke people, but this would be the time he went too far, when his addiction to attention manifested as an easy way to wound the people around him. After all, they were still children by every measure, still reeling, in shock and mourning. She was glad when 56 knocked him down in the hallway. How frightened he’d looked, unable to even get up until a teacher came and rescued him.
“Why not use the nukes too,” 56 reasoned. “We got ’em for a reason, right? Put down a nuke on Mecca, and then the Arabs have an example set for them. It won’t be more clear what happens when you try to fuck with the most powerful military in the world.”
He looked over at her when she said nothing. He fingered the chain to his dog tags, drawing thumb and index along each little ball bearing.
“You wanna go out to Strow’s place tonight? The guys are out there.”
She swallowed, kept her gaze steady. “Not tonight.”
He kept looking at her, eyes flitting back to the road only momentarily. “I want to go out there.”
“Well.” She pondered a less obvious way to phrase it, came up with nothing. “I don’t.”
The square, abruptly awash in American flags wafting lazily in the breeze, glittered with light. Drivers laid on their horns in solidarity as they circled the town’s heart.
“That’s fine, but we’re heading out there soon. Maybe this weekend.”
When she didn’t respond, he returned to his previous line of thought.
“People without the Christian faith don’t view the sanctity
of life the way we do. They think it’s disposable, which is why they can do the suicide thing. Don’t even realize it’s a sin, that’s how fucking backward they are. Maybe we can convert some of ’em, but I doubt it.”
She’d never say anything, but in the months that followed as the news filled with images of the men who did this, she’d think maybe people had it wrong. Maybe it was about being Muslim or hating America, but also maybe not. Maybe it was about the need to lash out at the world, to make someone listen to you and see that you are there.
They ended up going to Ostrowski’s place that weekend.
For the rest of the month as the news reported on anthrax and color-coded alerts, military recruiters set up tables in the cafeteria, and he took the pamphlets. A few of the other seniors on the football team simply began the sign-up process right there.
“It’s tough because I’ve got this skill,” he explained to her. “I’m a hell of a football player, and this’s been my dream since I was a little kid. I’d have to give it all up.”
She understood, and she felt for him with that mourning ache you feel for someone you love so much. When he didn’t score high enough on his SATs the first time, she’d seen how it rendered him helpless, how it made him so angry and sad, he was like a boy again. It made her care for him unfathomably. If the worst happened, and he couldn’t get a high enough score to play college ball, maybe the military would be another, better place he could make his mark. Of course, she didn’t want him to go fight in a war, but she knew he would be a hero. His bravery was practically written across his brow. He had something great inside of him.
They spent Halloween evening playing with his dogs. He and his mother—a bear of a woman with a considerable gut and close-cropped blond curls—had a feverish love of dogs. They adopted them rapid-fire, kept some, and tried to find others homes. He hated that the New Canaan pet shelter wasn’t no-kill.
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