It’s spreading. Jimmy’s legend. Inking itself more perfectly by filling in the negative spaces.
• • •
Nobody wants to lose sight of the Kirkus men and this beautiful, expanding, insane, terrifying moment. Each and every person boiled and reduced down so they are just fans again. Not postal men or pastors, not high school kids or stay-at-home moms, whether eight or eighty they are the same. Just fans. Willing to believe, waiting to be converted.
Finally someone shouts and then others join in, as if trying to pin down the moment before Kamikaze Kirkus leaves them to beat their numb hands against their legs, remind one another of what they just saw, and invariably fall short in describing with words what they’d just felt.
“Way to be, Jimmy.”
“Good seeing you, Kamikaze.”
“You haven’t lost a step.”
These really are fragile apologies—all of them—only using different words.
• • •
Carla’s father has finally ventured into the crowd to find her. He is suspicious of any gathering that isn’t his own. He feels them to be sacrilegious and sinful in a way he can’t fully explain, and feels silly whenever he tries. A worrier to begin with, he’s been in overdrive since Carla came in complaining of a stomachache. She admitted without him even asking to taking the pills. Some pain medications from his root canal. His mind is there again. He’s suspicious. Has she gone back on her promise to never, never, never do it again?
“Carla!” he yells, ignoring how people look at him. “Carla, please!”
When he finds her, his relief is enormous and he assumes she feels the same. He puts a hand on her shoulder to steer her back to his car, to tell her it’s all right. She has a bedtime to keep. He doesn’t trust these other young people. All hips and lips and cigarettes, as far as he can tell. They homeschool Carla for a reason—all this Kamikaze Kirkus stuff, it’s sick. Typical of a public education.
She shrugs him off though. He can feel her contempt of him in the heat coming off her shoulder, in the cut of her backward glance. She’s not scared to be here—she’s enjoying it just as much as everyone else in this insane town.
“Leave me alone,” she says.
“Goodness, Carla!” he whispers back.
• • •
Just before they get into the van, Grandpa starts flapping his elbows and high-stepping his knees. Classic Flying Finn. “Anyone and everyone wants to face Kamikaze Kirkus best be warned.” He twirls around in place, hooting all the louder. “Can’t be stopped, won’t be stopped! From here to Galilee, nobody can beat Kamikaze!”
“Goofy bastard,” someone shouts back to him.
“Braggart son of a bitch!”
“You idiot, Finn, you must be high.”
“Yes,” he yells. “High!” Not getting the reference. “I am the Flying Finn after all.” Laughter from the crowd.
Todd grabs his father roughly on the elbow. It’s been almost a year since they’ve had meaningful interaction, but there will be no heartfelt reunion. “Get in the fucking car.”
They get in the van, Todd slamming the driver’s side door so hard it pops back open. “Shit,” he says and closes it proper. He starts her up. She squeals awake and they drive away.
• • •
Jimmy listens to the Flying Finn hum the old song that he’s always singing—we will, we will ROCK YOU!—as his pops turns on the heater full blast. Jimmy’s in the front seat, next to his pops; the Flying Finn’s in the back bench seat, arms out on each side as though he were making moves on two loveys at the same time. He’s filthy in street-heavy clothes, motorcycle helmet cocked back on his head. The heat in the car unlocks his body odor. Todd cracks his window, keeps glaring at the Flying Finn through the rearview mirror.
“Why you got to do that? Adding to it. Like they don’t get enough of us already, you strutting around, just giving them more. Phone lines’ll catch fire tonight, believe that. You don’t think Jimmy’s got enough? He needs more of this whole.” His pops bangs the steering wheel. Makes the car drift toward the center of the road. Bam, bam, bam. Jimmy’s pressing himself up against the passenger-side door. The window crank digging his ribs. “He needs more of this shit you keep shoveling on?” Todd’s getting more pissed as he goes. Red kind of angry—hard to cool off without burning something down first. “You pushed me so goddamn hard, Dad, that I broke. I broke. In front of the whole town. And now Jimmy too?”
The Flying Finn is still humming, choosing not to answer, and Jimmy turns his tender forehead back and forth against the window. Sweaty from the game, aching, it squeaks against the glass, cool with the outside air. This helps place him. I’m here, in this van. I made it.
“But it wasn’t for me; it was for you,” his pops is going on. “Hey. Look at my boy. Look at Jimmy. It was for you.” His words are wet by the end of it and his pops leans forward and wipes the steering wheel with his sleeve.
Grandpa stops humming. “How you feeling out there this night, huh, Jimmy?” A whisper almost.
Jimmy wants to be honest and also strike a blow. Miraculously he finds the words to do both. “Good, Grandpa.”
“You know why them peoples so quick to cheer you on, Jimmy?” The Flying Finn whistles out now, slow. Tests the interior of the van to see if his words will survive. When Todd doesn’t pounce on them, he continues. “Cause you like magic, that’s what you are. A long time ago, magic was everywhere you looks.” His pops readjusts the rearview mirror to see the backseat better. “Least people thought. Now we know everything so there’s no reason for magic. Not no way. Not no space. The cell phones, the Internet, no ghosts in the machines.
“But maybe. Just maybe kid like you or your pops comes along. Do stuffs people don’t think possible.” He leans forward and reaches out his gnarled hand and pulls on Jimmy’s hair. It’s the starter cord on a lawnmower inside his injured head.
“Grandpa, what the hell?” Jimmy slaps his hand and the Flying Finn lets go.
Todd keeps driving, his anger still there, just barely contained, and Jimmy can feel it about to slop over.
“Maybe if a kid can beats ten people in a row with no giving the points to none of them, there’s space enough for a little magic still. Maybe they’ll get better lives next year, or the year after that. Find lucks with the loveys. ’Cause yous just like them and look how good you are!” He laughs now. Ups the pitch of his voice to sound like someone else. “You heard about Kamikaze Kirkus beating both those Johnston boys by hisself? Magic . . .” Grandpa sighs, back to himself, and Jimmy can read his tiredness in that exhale, a letdown from the rush of the Boston baked beans, MoonPies, and basketball. “Life’s always better with magic, wouldn’t you say, Kamikaze?”
• • •
This is too much for Todd. He pulls off the road, almost tipping the van with the sudden yank on the steering wheel. The car stops and shivers in its place. “You don’t call him that name. He’s Jimmy, that’s all he is. I bet you want him to rush back in? Like those people who say he’s got to prove himself in 6A? He’s played them all before, coming up, and ran circles on them. Even with what happened his freshman season, he doesn’t have to do nothing for no one and his name—goddamn it—is Jimmy.”
“Todd, you know, every star needs good a nickname as you had.”
“No son of mine.” He slams the steering wheel again. His voice trembles with rage. “No son of mine.” He’s gritting his teeth. He’s remembering that night wandering the University of Oregon campus, lost and looking. His father had said the same words to him. No son of mine.
“Get out,” he tells his own father who’s been homeless almost a year with sightings of him as far south as Ashland. “Get out of my fucking car.”
But the Flying Finn is already moving. He looks tired. So tired. There is a tug inside Todd, but he fears himself evil because it’s easy to i
gnore.
“Sleep well, both you,” the old man says, holding the sliding door open.
The exhaust from the idling engine wafts in like a ghost looking for haunting. Smells poisoned and good. Todd could breathe it all night. There’s the cold of the night, too, muscling in late.
“Thanks for food, Jimmy. I’s hungry.” He slams the door shut; he’s already shivering. He blinks his milky eyes.
• • •
His pops puts the car into drive and starts off down the road. Jimmy is unsure but sure all at the same time. They drive in silence. He’s trembling now, same as his pops. Some of that crackling bigness from the basketball court before is back inside him. Two blocks back, Grandpa is stumbling in the side-view mirror, still visible. Green helmet looks too heavy, a weight that’s squishing his self down into his greasy shoes.
Jimmy punches the dashboard. Busts through the gray textured coating. It’s yellow foam beneath. It’s been enough. He’s tired of his pops making him do what he thinks is best. Pops’s life turned out a wreck, why’s he get to steer Jimmy’s too? Plus there’s something in what his pops said about proving himself at 6A that Jimmy’s been chewing on. 6A. Division with Shooter Ackley out of Seaside, Ian Callert over in Canby, Danny Rubbe down in Cape Blanco—all going to be NCAA Division I athletes. A bumper crop of talent rounding into fine form. Talk is already brewing about how the state tourney will be one for the record books. Jimmy doesn’t want it, not yet he doesn’t. But if he doesn’t have it this year then next year it will be gone. He’ll be up against the also-rans, the semi-goods. Why is his pops so pissed the Flying Finn is aware of this stuff? Shouldn’t he be too? Shouldn’t Jimmy? “Stop the car,” he says. “We’re bringing Grandpa home.”
“You listen to me,” his pops starts, rage threatening everything about him, but it’s not enough, not anymore. Jimmy slams his left leg down next to his father’s and hits the gas pedal. The car lurches forward, engine flooded in gas, trying not to drown.
His pops has no choice but to hit the brakes. Van makes a terrible noise. Smell of melting and metal. Tires squeal. Then Jimmy takes his foot off the gas but his pops is still stomping the brakes and the van is stopped. His pops’s head cracks the steering wheel. He isn’t wearing his seat belt. There’ll be a bruise on his forehead tomorrow for sure. Like son like father. Jimmy’s brains slosh around in his skull. How boring. He doesn’t care about his pops’s mood. He wants to lie down. He could sleep for ten years straight. He could die. He opens his door and vomits milky stomach acid onto the sidewalk. Then he turns back to his father, eyes open, unflinching.
• • •
Todd looks at his kid. When he get eyes fierce as that? His head pounds. He can’t imagine himself ever standing up to the Flying Finn like this. Or rather, not unless he was drunk. What is it in this kid, a sign of the times? The rap on the head? The rap music in the ear? He touches his forehead where the steering wheel hit. He might be bleeding. His eyes bulge. He feels his anger deflating around him—Jimmy’s eyes popped it—until it’s big and floppy, fits him poorly. It’s a puddle he’s splashing in. He’s embarrassed by everything. He looks away from his son.
“You could of got us killed,” Todd finally says, feeling deep inside that he should say something.
“Well, good thing you hit the brake.”
Todd cuts eyes back to his son. This comment, to him, shines light on every corner of how Jimmy’s changed. Kid’s got deeper hallways, little trapdoors, secret rooms, and all inside him, hiding a man who could come out tough, or angry, resilient, or looking for a score. He’s got to be careful. He’ll have a hand in this.
When the Flying Finn catches up to the van, he has a small cough in his lungs as if ball bearings are loose in his throat, eating away at him on each breath. He climbs in, and for once, has no words to say.
The three men drive the rest of the way home in silence, and Columbia City colludes—dropping a thick curtain of ocean-laced mist over their route. Sticky, beading rain glues together cars and houses, trees and telephone poles, until all shapes are parts of even larger shapes. Behind the curtain are hideous monsters made haphazardly from the normal parts of Columbia City’s life. This magical rain gathers on the van’s windows in covens of liquid until they are too heavy and race down with abandon. Todd burns through as much of the rainy soup as he can with his yellowed headlights and hunched forward he drives on.
Rule 12. Get Up When Knocked Down
Thursday, February 3, 2005
JIMMY KIRKUS, FOURTEEN YEARS OLD—THREE YEARS UNTIL THE WALL.
Todd Kirkus looked up from the afternoon’s Columbia City Standard, cleared his throat, and proceeded to surprise his whole family. “I guess the Fishermen are playing tonight,” he said. He snapped shut the paper and stood from his chair. “Maybe we should go.”
“Scappoose Indians?” Jimmy asked.
Todd looked to his son. Of course Jimmy would know exactly what team they were playing. He probably had the schedule memorized. “Yeah. Want to go?”
Kid looked him up and down, like there could be a trick in it. “Um, OK?”
“Todd?” said Genny Mori. “Whole town’s going to be out.”
He looked at his wife, annoyed that she didn’t think him man enough to handle it. Also that she was showing it in front of his sons. He tried to brush it off, affecting a light tone. “Who cares; let’s go. We’ll have to get going, though. Probably missed first quarter already.”
“Wait, really?” Dex asked from where he lay on the couch, dropping potato chips one by one into his mouth. He sat up a little and the next chip bounced off his lower lip and down to the floor.
“Dex, goddamn it, throw that away,” Genny said.
“Whoa nelly, easy there, easy,” Dex said in a cowboy accent. “It’s like I always say, if we had a dog, he’d just eat this up. Dropping chips on the floor is a protest, Mom, you ever hear of that?”
“Just get your coat.”
Dex picked up the chip from the floor, blew on it, and then, just to get his mom revved even higher, popped it in his mouth—three-second rule—and stomped off, Jimmy following.
“Can’t our family ever just be in peace?” Todd said, peeved.
“You tell me,” his wife said.
• • •
And so Freight Train took his wary family to the Brick House. It was the first time he’d been back since high school. They were late and had to wait for a stop in play to find their seats. Shoe squeaks, the smell of gym—Todd closed his eyes. Tracked the feeling as it reached his toes. Not relief, exactly, but a close cousin. The whistle sounded. When he opened them, play was stopped. A Fishermen time-out. Heads turned. People poking neighbors and pointing. A whole gym’s worth of eyes. First one person clapping, and then another. Popcorn coming to full heat, it became one sound. Only sound. The crowd threatened to pop the roof right off the Brick House.
These were young kids who’d only heard of him in story and parents who remembered him play firsthand. Old classmates, fans, teachers, and teammates who had one of the best nights of their lives back when Todd led the team to the first championship and all of Columbia City went delirious. Two-for-one drink specials at Desdemona’s, free soft-serve at the Dairy Queen. Dancing in the streets and car horns gone hoarse from being leaned on. These were the same people laid flat when Todd was suspended from the team the day of the championship game the next year. Their boy done good crashed up on the rocks of alcohol and injury. A hero wallowing, an ugly sight, Freight Train spent the years since trying to be as scarce as can be. Finally here he was, cornered with the whole town giving praise. Refs clapping too, players and coach on Scappoose looking on, calm, giving the moment the respect it deserved, the game could wait. People shouted, “Hey Freight Train!” and, “Go choo-choo!” Just like the old days. Hell, it was something to see. They still remembered him for all he’d been sixteen years before.
/> Todd nodded his head, bit his lip. “OK, now,” he said, “all right.” Waved his hand, like You’re too kind. Crowd even louder. Feet stamping bleacher seats. The old chant: “Hey, hey—down the lane. Hey, hey—it’s Freight Train.” Water in his eyes. Noise didn’t stop until the Kirkus family found seats. And then when they sat, it settled down, but for the rest of the game, people kept stealing glances.
Todd felt as if he were floating. Jimmy, Dex, and even Genny Mori were balloons.
• • •
On the way home, Jimmy’s mom gave up on being bitter for a little bit and his pops was talking ball. Stories about his glory days that he rarely told, and never with this energy. There was a light rain. It studded the windows with water. For a night at least his mom didn’t care she’d got pregnant with a doomed little girl and married too soon to a sure thing that turned out to be anything but. His pops forgot that he became a townie, a Van Eyck PepsiCo lifer, who had let his daughter die and screwed up his basketball chances.
“Let’s play that tape you like so much,” his pops said. He rubbed his mom’s knee.
“Which one?” she asked, surprised. He usually preferred silence to anything else—and, he didn’t really like that either.
“Paul Simon.” Jimmy saw the way he smiled slyly in the rearview mirror, and it made him smile too. “Whose gonna get that girl diamonds on her shoes? Lose them walking blues?”
“You know what I like,” she finally said, and laughed and it was all so odd, and peaceful and dark, that Jimmy felt a soft sleepiness drift over him. He felt young in the best way. He felt young and protected. Finally.
“You guys live in the Stone Age,” Dex said. “Get a CD player already.”
“Shut up,” Jimmy whispered.
Dex shrugged, and as the music started, Jimmy watched the rain. Then his brother poked him on the shoulder, whispering.
Rules for Becoming a Legend Page 15