The Cheer Leader

by Jill McCorkle

  “I’m sorry,” I said and put my hand on his arm. “I really am sorry, Pat.”

  “Hey, don’t get all dramatic.” He laughed and shrugged. “It’s not like I was madly in love with you or anything. I just thought we were good enough friends that you would be honest with me. You know, no big deal.” He was talking faster and faster, another thumped red glow into the darkness, just about a foot from where the other one had landed. “I mean I didn’t sit around and mourn for you or anything.”

  “We better go in. Your date will be wondering where you are.”

  “Yeah. Hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.” He stood by the door and waited for me.

  “Oh no,” I said and shook my head. “Red should be here soon.” I walked in front of Pat and back into the gym. When I turned around, he was waving and I saw his date walking over. “Bye.”

  “Yeah, it was good to see you, Jo.” Then he walked onto the dance floor to meet whatever her name was who was standing there with her hands on her hips, obviously pissed. Pat Reeves couldn’t stand her; he said that he had never been crazy about me.

  For the rest of the night, it seemed that I kept seeing him. Everywhere that I looked, he was there. Even when I walked up on the stage with the other superlatives, standing beside Tricia who was Best Looking, beside Cindy who was Most School Spirit, I saw Pat, leaning against the gym wall, his hands in his pockets, what's her name clinging to his arm. I even saw him when Cindy, Myron and I were leaving; he was holding open the car door for her and he saw us. He saw Cindy, Myron and me, just the three of us, and he lifted his hand to us which I pretended not to see.

  Red came over on Christmas Eve and told me that they had decided that we should leave on Christmas Day to go skiing because the traffic wouldn’t be bad.

  “Christmas Day?” I asked.

  “Yeah, isn’t that a nice present?” He didn’t even notice my alarm at leaving on Christmas Day, the sudden decision, or if he did, he pretended not to. “Here’s your other present.”

  “Here’s yours.” I got his present from under our tree and waited for him to open it. “You first.” I watched him rip through the carefully creased aluminum paper.

  “A watch?” He pulled it out and stretched the band between his thumb and forefinger. “Jo, you shouldn’t have.”

  “I knew you didn’t have one.” I couldn’t tell if he liked it or not.

  “I used to. I just never wore it. Finally sold it.” He put the watch on his wrist and kissed my forehead. “I’ll wear this one, thanks.”

  It was my turn and I sat staring down at the tissue paper; it was square and flat with a bulge in the center. Carefully, I pulled off the tape and pulled the paper open. It was an album by Black Sabbath and a bottle of cologne that smelled like concentrated gardenias. I kept reminding myself “it’s the thought that counts,” but at the same time, I kept wondering how much thought could have possibly gone into that. I hated that spooky, druggie sounding music; I hated Tussy smelling cologne.

  Christmas mornings at my house always began with Andy making the rounds and waking everyone up. Then he would let overgrown Jaspar into the house and then we all had to wait until the coffee was perked and Daddy had had a cup. That morning, I was anxious to get the routine moving so that it would all be over by the time Red called. As usual, he had not given me a set time and as it turned out, he didn’t call at all.

  The doorbell rings just after we finish opening presents. Mama is fixing a big Christmas breakfast while we all try out our new goods. Andy is outside plowing up the yard with his new minibike; Bobby is trying on oxford cloth shirts in every color of the rainbow even though they all are the same size. He pauses every now and then to flip through pages of his very own copy of Gray’s Anatomy or to show us all another picture of Christine, who is the blond beautiful Phi Beta Kappa from Greensboro and the Miss Right of his life. Not once has he mentioned Nancy Carson. I am modeling my coat and flipping through my new books, one on Degas, the other a poetry anthology, and I do not even get to do one full modeling turn, to read one sonnet aloud over the sizzling pop of my mother’s bacon, before it rings.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I open the door and Red walks in.

  “I figured you’d know that we’d want to get an early start.” He flops down on the couch and I notice that he isn’t wearing his watch. Good, I won’t have to wear that cologne. “Everyone’s in the car waiting. Are you ready?”

  “No, I’m not even dressed.” I run to my room to dress and finish packing. I hear Mama invite Red to stay for breakfast. “No, thank you.” He can be so polite. “But it sure smells good.” Red makes the rounds saying “ho-ho-ho” to Bobby and Daddy and it makes me feel strange like he has no business doing that. Bobby doesn’t have much to say to Red and that makes me feel strange, too. I would be extra nice to Christine if she came over. I was always nice to Nancy Carson even though I couldn’t stand her.

  “Jo, do you need some help?” Mama is in the doorway. “Thought you might want to take this heavy flannel gown that Grandma Spencer sent. It’s going to be cold up there.”

  “Yes, I do.” I take the gown and cram it into the already stuffed suitcase. All of a sudden, I have that feeling that I used to get during fire safety week at school. “What would you take with you if your house was burning down?” I look around my room: scrapbook, pictures, the pink rhinocerous that Bobby gave me on my eighth birthday, the Bible that I got when I was born, toe shoes, letters, collected verses of Millay, Dickinson, Wordsworth, A Death in the Family, Lord of the Flies, Where the Red Fern Grows, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Biography of Helen Keller, Grandma Spencer’s locket . . .

  “Honey, I think you’ve got all that you need for one night.” Mama is in the same place, spatula in hand, her Rudolph apron tied around her waist. “They’re all waiting for you?”

  “I’m ready.” I press in the locks on my suitcase and pick it up.

  “You be careful,” Mama whispers. “And if you need us for anything, just call. Never hesitate to call.”

  “I know, I know.” I kiss her quickly on the cheek and go to the front door where Red is waiting. My parents follow us onto the porch. The people in the car all turn and give big friendly smiles and waves. Red has coached them.

  “Be careful,” Mama calls. “Have fun,” and she has that scared look on her face that she gets from time to time, the time Bobby busted his head, the time Andy broke his arm.

  “I’ll take good care of her. Don’t worry!” Red has coached himself.

  The car starts and my parents get smaller and smaller and I feel like I am getting smaller, too. Bobby isn’t on the porch and I have a horrible feeling that I will never see him again, that while I’m gone something horrible will happen, something that wouldn’t happen if I stayed. My parents and Andy are too small to see now and it is a sad feeling, maybe what Mama is feeling—the same way that she felt when I graduated from Kindergarten, when I hugged her around the waist and gave her my last finger-painting. She had looked that way then.

  “What’s wrong?” I had asked.

  “You’re growing up.” She had smoothed my hair over my head the way that she had always done before I fell asleep. “Soon you’ll be as tall as me, maybe taller.”

  “I don’t want to get big.”

  “Sure you do. It would be sad if you didn’t.” She had knelt so that we were the same height. “I want you to.”

  “Well, I’ll never leave home!”

  “You’ll change your mind.”

  I felt a gnawing homesickness before we ever got on the highway. There are seven of us all together, three in the front, four in the back of this ancient Cadillac that ? Bond owns. Red and I are huddled in the backseat with Scott and Wanda and the back window is covered in heavy plastic. The edge right near my head keeps flapping and letting in quick spurts of cold air. The road gets longer and longer, and I keep thinking about how warm it is at home, how safe I feel at home.

  Now, the road gets curvier and I
keep tapping the driver on the shoulder. He has long hair, an earring in one ear and does not speak in complete sentences. “Could you please slow down?” I whisper.

  “What say?” He is passing a transfer truck so I close my eyes, grip Red’s leg and say a quick prayer in my head.

  “Gary’s (Gary?) a good driver,” Red tells me and puts this little white pill in his mouth. He thinks I didn’t notice. “Why don’t you have a drink?”

  “I’ll have a drink,” Wanda says and pulls a bottle from under the seat, takes a big swallow and passes it. I should be drinking, should get drunk but I am afraid of wrecking, afraid that I will die without having sense enough to think of something really profound, something so profound that maybe I won’t die after all. Instead, I get sick.

  “Red,” I say and grip his leg tighter. “I’m going to be sick.”

  He laughs with his mouth wide open and he looks like one of the faces they show before the early morning horror films on Saturdays. I have never seen this look before. He laughs and laughs and I feel so cold; my hands are so cold.

  He doesn’t make Gary pull over until I am all sweaty and gagging. I have just enough time to get beside the ditch beside the highway. The grass is cool and wet and it feels good to my hands and knees and it feels good to put my face against the cool grass when I am through. Everyone in the car is watching me and I can’t forget the way that Red laughed. I try to think of something better like when he told me that he loved me.

  “Come on, Jo. We’re almost there.” Red is picking me up so I clutch the grass and carry two handfuls the rest of the way and I keep pretending that I am still beside that cold overgrown ditch, away from these people, by myself.

  I have never skied before and the rest of them have so I suggest that they all go ahead and ski and leave me on the beginner slope. I want them all to go and ski and ski and ski and to let me find a warm place to sit and drink a cup of coffee, smoke a pack of cigarettes.

  “I’ll show you what to do.” Red gives me these boots to put on and even when I stand up straight, I’m at an angle. He clamps me in the skis and then we walk sideways up to where the moving chairs are. I feel weak from being sick and my legs feel like they do when they fall asleep and there is no control. We sit in a chair and start going higher and higher. I start feeling queasy again so I try to concentrate on the bright toboggans zipping below. That makes it worse so I stare at my blue wool gloves, the snaps on my coat.

  Before I know what has happened, Red jumps from the chair and is screaming for me to jump out; the chair is going higher and higher and I am yelling, “Stop! Make it stop!” just like I had done once at an amusement park when Bobby had talked me into riding this one wild ride. That time it had stopped; my Daddy had made it stop and he had bought me some popcorn and taken me home. Red can’t do that; he doesn’t love me.

  “Damn, Jo!” He is getting smaller and smaller. “I’ll wait right here but next time jummmmp!” I can barely hear him and it feels good, the air feels good and I can sit forever until my Daddy makes it stop.

  When I come back around, he is still waiting and I jump feetfirst. I slide off of the ramp and all I can see are specks sliding, getting smaller and smaller, a cluster of organisms at the end of that sloping white sea. I scream and grab hold of a skinny pine tree and squeeze it until I can hardly breathe. Red is pulling my arms away and I don’t know how he does it, but he gets me loose and the next thing that I know, I am sprawled out just a few feet from the tree, covered in snow and freezing.

  “Get up and try.” Red pulls on my arms. I feel helpless so I stand up and inch my feet so that the skis are straight and I start moving, slow at first, and then faster and faster, so fast that the trees off to one side look like a green stripe painted on white. I keep my feet straight, frozen that way because I don’t know what else to do and I don’t want to fall. It is in that very second that I realize that I don’t know how to stop and it is just that second that I notice the woman just a few yards in front of me. All I can do is scream as loud as I can but that doesn’t help because I run her down and turn a somersault off to one side. I turn to see that the woman is all right (she is standing there in her fancy pink suit glaring at me) and all of a sudden, a kid in a red suit is coming right at me. I scream again but not loud enough because he plows into my hip. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, my whole body is asleep.

  My hip is bleeding; I can see it and I am wet all the way through to my long underwear that I borrowed from Tricia. The gray haired ski patrolman is standing over me, fussing me out for not saying “skier on your right” or “skier on your left.” I want to explain to him that I don’t know how to turn but my throat is dry and his face is getting blurry. There are little black organisms rapidly multiplying all over his face and I can barely see his mouth saying something about a little cart coming to get me. I can barely hear Red say that he will wait for me at the bottom. Swing lo, sweet chariot—I am a blood clot, wet and sticky, sliding down the cool white marrow, down—the air hitting me, making me turn brown, and then black.

  When I came to, I was in this room that looked like the sick room at my elementary school. A big nurse was sticking adhesive tape to my skin to hold a white gauze bandage on my hip. I remember looking around and expecting to see Mr. Sauls, the principal, or my Mama coming down the long hall of the school to take me home. Instead, enter Red, and he is followed by Scott and Wanda:

  “She can leave whenever she’s ready,” the big woman calls and walks out. I wish that she had not said that and that I could spend the night here.

  “See, you’re okay!” Red has already inched his big hands under my thick wool blanket and is feeling around my bare thigh. He must have seen my pants and soggy underwear thrown over the chair at the door.

  “Tough break,” Scott says and shakes his stringy hair.

  “Yeah, what a freak accident. Isn’t it?” Wanda nudges Scott with her elbow and then proceeds to put her hand down the back of his jeans. “Me and you haven’t even had the time to talk some girl talk, yet.”

  “Hey yeah,” Red says. “You girls have a lot in common.” He smiles at me and then back at Wanda. It is a trick. “Wanda loves to read poetry, too.”

  “Sure do,” she says. “Who do you read?”

  I shrug. I am uncomfortable here in this bed, a hand on my frozen thigh.

  “Wanda is in love with Todd McKuen,” Scott says and puts his hand down the back of her jeans.

  “Rod, Scott,” she says and glares at him. “How many times have I got to tell you, it’s Rod!”

  “All right, all right, baby. Cool your jets.” Scott steps closer and pulls Wanda up with him. “It really was a freak accident. I was in the chair lift and only caught the very end. What happened?”

  “Jo’s not real athletic.” Red’s hands are still roaming and he winks at me. “She can cheerlead and ballet but otherwise she’s kind of spastic.” He laughs and Scott and Wanda chime in and it sounds like the idiotic chorus. Scott and Wanda laugh themselves right out of the room and Red laughs his other hand right under the blanket so I fake a gag and say, “Feel sick,” kind of like Gary would say. Red moves away because nobody wants to be around someone who is about to throw up and I have to remember that; it is a lesson that I will use again.

  I use it again that night at the motel when everyone is getting ready for bed. We are in a room with Scott and Wanda and the other three boys say that they are going to go out and “scout” and that they will stay wherever they end up. It bothers me that we have no transportation and that I have no idea where the hell I am besides on a mountain in a cheap motel called The Ranger’s Cove. What bothers me even more is that Scott and Wanda think nothing of taking off all their clothes and sprawling out on the bed to watch T.V. Red says that they are a little spaced, a little out of it, and I agree.

  “Jo, you’re so inhibited,” Red says when I come out of the bathroom wearing the flannel gown from Grandma Spencer. He has turned out all the lights and there is jus
t the dull gray of the T.V. Scott and Wanda have passed out with just their feet under the sheet and Red is sitting with the sheet just up to his waist.

  “I’m cold that’s all.” I cut off the T.V. and climb under the covers.

  “You won’t be cold for long,” he says and this is where I gag. I gag and gag until he leaves me completely alone, won’t even talk and I know that he is mad. It occurs to me that I have felt this way before, here, in this bed, not knowing where in the hell I am except in this bed, under the sheet, an exposed ghost. It is a scary feeling, a lonely feeling and I must do something to make it stop. I must find a new cause.

  I don’t really remember much about the next day or the ride home. Red still wasn’t talking to me which meant that no one else was talking either. They had all said that they were burned out from the night before so I guess that’s another reason for the quiet. Whatever it was, I was glad because it gave me plenty of time to think about what I needed to do. I must give up my mission, my cause, in saving Red and turning him into that gallant, successful businessman and husband that I had once pictured so carefully. I must find something new, a new secret thought. I guess I thought the whole way home but I never really came up with anything concrete. All I knew was that I felt a surge of strength, a flicker of hope.

  All I know is that when we rounded the corner and I saw Andy riding his minibike round and round a tree in our front yard, I started crying. I don’t know what I thought could have happened in less than thirty-six hours but everything was the same—the trees, the front walk, my bedroom window.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Red was shaking me and rubbing his bandana all over my face. “Your parents are going to think that I’ve done something to you.”

  I just shook my head back and forth. I didn’t know exactly why I was crying, why should he? “What’s wrong with her?” I heard Wanda whisper to Scott. Everyone was looking and Gary was driving slower than I had ever guessed that he knew how.