by John Oakes
Cody entered the arboretum, and the shade of the trees quickly turned the mild, sunny Autumn day into jacket weather. Cody walked wearing only a Brown State University t-shirt, and the wrinkled khaki shorts he'd woken up in. He passed through stands of birch and red oak, through white pines intermingled with exotic trees he had no name for. He walked on and on, scanning through the immense variety of trees and the orange leaves that rained down periodically. He heard sounds off to his right and followed in their direction.
He found Raul more or less where Anita said he would be, with three other workers winterizing some of the less hearty tropical trees and shrubs. Raul, however, was on his cell phone speaking heatedly, so Cody stopped a few yards away.
The simple flip phone at Raul's ear drew Cody's attention to the grey creeping up Raul's temples into the same short haircut he'd worn since Cody's childhood.
Raul was the caretaker of the Latour estate, but was also the highly skilled landscape architect who built it. But six-year-old Cody had simply known him as his friend Raul who worked in the new back yard of the big new house. Most workers politely told him to get out of their way, but Raul let him roll sod with him and one day even brought small work gloves for Cody to use when he helped.
"Food poisoning?" Raul's voice and the lines in his tanned face grew deeper. "How could that have happened?"
Cody turned and kicked at a small curved pinecone. He'd hoped to find Raul in a happy mood today, as apologizing to people always seemed easier that way. But now Cody was standing there, hands finding his pockets and shoulders slumping as they had so many times in his life, while awaiting Raul's fair but stern judgment. Raul's constantly gentle nature seemed only to compound the shame Cody felt by disappointing him, like when someone spun white gravel into the grass from their bicycle, or a tree branch in the arboretum broke off from someone hanging on it, or an angel statue's ear got shot off by a bb gun.
And then there was all the stuff he'd done as a kid.
Cody reminded himself that he was no longer so destructively clumsy. He straightened himself, but only a bit. Besides, Cody thought, forgetting about showing up for a football game had to pale in comparison to getting drunk with one of the workers and, completely by freak accident, driving a riding lawn mower into the pool. Nothing would ever top that.
"How many can't play?...ALL OF THEM?"
Raul's alarm whipped Cody from his wandering thoughts.
"Well, will they be better by Friday?...What can I do about it?...No, no I get it."
Clearly, it was a fairly urgent matter, otherwise Raul, the consummate professional, would never be seen losing his cool, let alone be seen on a cell phone in front of his workers during the work day.
Raul closed the phone and cursed softly in Spanish as he crammed it back into his pocket.
"Everything ok, Raul?"
"Sorry, Cody." Raul ran a hand over his hair, still not making eye contact. "I have a minor emergency on my hands."
"Oh, ok." Cody said hesitantly. "I can come find you another time. Just wanted to apologize for missing the boys' game again."
Cody had plum forgotten about his promise to show up for a Carter Greenfield High School football game where Raul's oldest son and nephew played. If only he had remembered that excuse before Jason had dragged him to the wedding.
"And I wanted to ask when the next game is. I really wanna make one before the season ends."
Cody had little desire to sit through a football game. He went periodically only because it made Raul immensely happy to share his pride for his son and nephew, and for the entire Carter Greenfield team.
"Well," Raul said, shaking his head. "It's the day after tomorrow, Friday. But...there is a problem. Big problem."
It was Wednesday already?
"What? Are the boys ok?"
"They're fine. The team is fine. It's the marching band. They got food poisoning."
"Food poisoning? The whole band?"
"Apparently! Or most all!" Raul finally met Cody's eye and waved an arm in exclamation. "Them and most of the flag and dance teams too!"
"Good god! How'd that happen?"
"They hit a Big Barn Buffet coming back from some field competition up in Ft. Worth. Guess they got a bad batch of something. That was Earl Davies the transport manager calling me. He said they had to have those people that clean up murder scenes come in before the busses could be used again."
Cody summoned every ounce of strength he could to stifle a laugh at the thought of all those band nerds shitting themselves in their funny uniforms.
"Ten kids are still in the hospital."
"Good god!" Cody said, not having to pretend anymore to be concerned. "Jeez. That bad?"
"And how many more are home but still recovering? Poor kids! But now the boosters have to scramble to cover the halftime show. And we're playing Albany High!"
"That's a big rival right?"
"They are all rivals! But yes. We can't afford to lose face."
Cody's private school hadn't had football, mercifully. But even Cody couldn't miss the fact that football was religion in Texas, and high school football was its high temple. Cody hadn't realized until meeting lots of folks from out of state in college that it wasn't this way for the rest of the country. Regardless, Raul was right. Every game mattered here.
As chairman of the booster committee for Carter Greenfield, Raul was now in a severe pickle. If the coach was the four-star general and the team members were the soldiers, the boosters were the rest of the army: logistics, supply, intelligence and public relations. The problem, as best Cody could see, was that in football religion, as in any religion, there were rites and traditions. How could you have church without hymns? How could Jared Cohen have shown up for his Bar Mitzvah without his small, round hat? And how in the burning fires of hell could a high school home team in Texas not put on a halftime field show?
"Maybe you get a different school to do the half—...ah never mind." Cody cut himself off, knowing that was a stupid idea, like suggesting that a cure for impotence would be having another man come have sex with your wife.
Raul pressed his palm to his forehead. "Now I have to somehow come up with something to replace a fifteen to twenty minute field show? Argh!"
Raul was in full crisis mode. Cody hated to see it.
"What about the cheerleaders?" Cody asked. "Are they sick?"
"Well, they may be throwing up, but for different reasons," said Raul. "Sorry, that was mean." Raul shook his head. "They can't fill 20 minutes though. Maybe they could kill a couple minutes max. But what about the rest of the field? It would be all open space."
"Is there a way to cancel the game? At least postpone it?"
"No, no, the team is fine." Raul said extending his arms. "The league would never allow that. We'll have to play or forfeit."
Cody wondered if the shame of not having a halftime show would be so great that the team would just forfeit the game. Perhaps, but the public outcry over a forfeit would be incredible. Poor schools like Carter Greenfield didn't have much to show off with. Winning at sports was about it.
"So what are you gonna do?"
"I don't know. I have less than 48 hours to think of something. Maybe the booster committee can put their heads together and figure something out. A lot will depend on how much booster funds we have to throw at the problem."
How much could that be? Though Carter Greenfield was actually the high school closest to the Latour Estate, it was one of the poorest schools in the metro area, and served a largely minority, working-class population.
"I'm sure if you need to leave work to take care of this, it would be ok."
"That won't be necessary. I'll call an emergency meeting tonight, though." Raul put his hands on his hips and nodded his head resolutely. "Yeah we'll plan through the night if we have to." He looked up at Cody. "Please feel free to come. We always could use some good ideas."
Cody was taken aback at that. "Me? Good ideas?"
"Yes
of course," Raul said, before he caught a passing worker and rattled something off in Spanish. Cody caught an arboles and felt rather worldly for it.
"Well...thanks, I mean...but, I doubt I'd be much use." Cody feared that might sound unhelpful. "But if the game is still on, I'll try to make it and support the team, band or no."
Raul pulled out his ringing phone again. Cody waved a parting gesture, but Raul's eyes were downcast and his normally kind face was grim, shadowed by deep concern. So Cody just walked away.
Texas football...ruining lives as usual. Making Raul look ten years too old.
Then again, he didn't love anything as much as Raul loved football, or his drafting boards and pencils, or his lawns and shrubs and flowers. Raul was passionate and diligent. He seemed to Cody like everything a man ought to be. He was firm because he believed in principles, but he was also kind and giving. He lived a full life, even with the rough bits.
Who was Cody to be sad for him?
Still, Cody wanted more than anything to be able to help Raul. He was family. In the way Ricky was sort of like a cousin, Raul was sort of like an uncle. Cody felt bad for walking away. He just genuinely felt like he would have nothing to offer, not knowing much about football. But he feared his comment might have made it sound like he didn't care to help.
This thought ate at Cody from the inside while he made his way back to the pool house. He passed a bronze cherub that was continually pouring water out of a bronze jar into a larger stoneware jar. Cody stopped. His eye was drawn to the distinct dent in the cherub's face where it'd been hit with a four-foot-long boomerang. It had been a complete accident of course. Nevertheless, another pang of guilt ran through him.
He had to help Raul.
Once inside the pool house, he cracked a beer and sat down heavily in the padded, wooden armchair nearest the fireplace. He rested his head back and gazed up at the beautiful, exposed, hardwood beams that crisscrossed in the air above him.
What could he do?
Cody did have quite a lot of money at his disposal. At least, he had a couple of cards given to him by his father's accountant that kept him in beer and video games. Could they solve the problem? Perhaps, but Cody would need a solution to pay for.
First off, what exactly was the problem?
No field show.
What purpose did a field show serve? It was all pretty silly right? Just a bunch of band geeks making geometric shapes on the field...
There was spectacle. And music was part of the spectacle. So there was movement and music...and funny band hats with big feathers sticking out the top. He couldn't forget the funny hats.
Cody could not help but wonder at how a bunch of pimply nerds dressed in ridiculous outfits, normally the subject of great mockery, could have come to be such a staple of football events, where brawn, machismo and athleticism were the order of the day. Regardless of the irony, the band's loss left a void.
The dead air! There definitely could not be dead air. But they couldn't bring in another band. So it couldn't be live music unless Bon Jovi was in the area.
Cody tried to think back to the dozen or so games he'd attended over the years. They'd all had bands.
Except one.
Way back when he was a kid, at a game with his parents, couldn't even remember where, puppies were brought out at halftime. They were in these cute little jerseys – one team in blue and the other in green. All they did was run around with a foam ball and play fight and sniff each other's butts. Still, people had thought it was great and laughed like crazy every time a little pup made a run with the ball in its mouth.
Puppies?
It was something to work with, but it lacked a certain quality. Cute was not enough.
Spectacle. It had to be a spectacle. It didn't have to be all flash like the band, but it did have to draw the eye and keep it.
Lost in thought, Cody blew over the mouth of his beer bottle and made a high foghorn sound. He guzzled the rest of his beer, because an empty bottle made a deeper, more fulfilling horn sound.
"HOOOOOOOOO, HOOOOOOOO," the beer horn sounded.
"HOOOOOOOOO, HOOOOOOOO," it sounded again.
"HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."
Cody jumped up from his chair like something had bit him in the ass.
He stopped himself from running out the door.
Could this really work?
He didn't know who to go to first. Raul? Or..."
Chapter Fifteen
Tiny Tacklers
The sun was setting behind Carter Greenfield's stadium, which consisted of two separate grandstands on either side of the field, surrounded by twenty-foot-high fencing. Cody stood in front of the will-call box outside the stadium. Fans worked their way past him, funneling slowly through the turnstiles and security checks.
A large white van stopped forty yards away with a blonde woman at the wheel. She seemed to be talking to herself or talking on the phone. But then she turned in her seat and began making aggravated gestures with both hands. This carried on until all of a sudden a figure popped up on the passenger seat, waving his own arms. Soon, though, they grabbed each other's faces and began feverishly making out.
Eventually, the passionate embrace came to a halt and Winton hopped gingerly down out of the passenger door. He walked toward the will-call box wiping his face all over with his sleeve.
"You missed a spot," Cody said, when they shook hands. Cody pointed, and Winton rubbed the last bit of lipstick off his face.
"You think this is gonna work?" Cody asked.
"It was your idea."
"Only partly," Cody said. "Plus, I've never done anything like this. You're the expert."
"Well, I'm not much of one. But I think you'll like what I got worked out."
The milling throng kept working its way past them and through the turnstiles to enter the stadium. But here and there a small figure emerged from the gaggle of people and walked toward them. Cody and Winton greeted them, one by one. A couple of them Cody had seen around Darla's, like Glen, but mostly they were new faces. Two women arrived and approached Winton. They hugged him and chatted amiably before Winton introduced them to Cody. He had not expected any gals to show up in the crew, but what the hell...why not? They seemed spirited and already had their game faces painted, one in yellow, one in red.
Once the group was fully assembled, Cody thanked them all for coming and went to find Raul, while Winton went over their instructions again. Cody knocked on the window of the box office and Raul came out with a bundle of tickets. He handed them over and clapped Cody on both shoulders.
"Thank you so much Cody. You're a godsend."
"Well, let's see if they don't run you out on a rail before you go thanking me."
"And here." Raul handed over a check from the booster association for $1600. "It's not as much as you deserve, but it was all you asked for."
It worked out to $100 for each participant and an extra $100 for Winton for doing all the legwork putting it together. It seemed meager to Cody, but Winton had assured him it would be met with great thanks, as they were also getting free tickets to a game and were only putting in ten minutes work.
Cody led Winton and the others into the brightly lit stadium and then to their seats near the fifty-yard line. They were about the best seats in the house, the ones the boosters usually saved for dignitaries and alumni donors. As they were filing into the seats, Cody caught a glimpse of a man in grey 10-gallon hat and a powder blue shirt tucked into blue jeans. He was walking away from Cody, so he could not see his face, but his walk – the way his hands turned as his arms swung, the set of his solid shoulders, the line of his jaw – it all set off a ringing sensation of recognition in Cody. But no. Grampa was dead. And even then, he would never be caught in a 10-gallon hat.
Cody sat down between Winton and the end of the bench. He looked over the group Winton had assembled expecting to see expressions of nervousness. But no, they were all chatting away happily, adjusting their seat pads, sending designe
es off to the concessions stand on snack runs, or sitting with their feet swinging contentedly below the bench seats in anticipation for the game.
Cody darted furtive glances around their area looking for any sign of treachery, any teenagers pointing and laughing, any rednecks looking too particularly pleased with themselves. But the most reaction Cody had seen was one big-haired woman in an ugly sweater motioning for another big-haired woman to look over in their direction.
Winton shot an elbow into his arm. Cody looked down to his right.
"You looking out for snipers on the rooftops?"
"Sorry," Cody said. He turned his gaze from the surrounding spectators and folded his hands in his lap.
"How do you do it?" Cody asked Winton.
"I was born this handsome. It's rather effortless."
"No. How do you deal with everyone looking at you?"
Winton thought for a moment.
"They only look for a bit, then they get over it."
Cody felt like he was walking on a knife's edge. It was too late to change course, but...
"Winton, I don't know about this, man. I got a sick feeling in my stomach all of a sudden." Cody thought he had been nervous about the performance going off well, but it was more than that. "I shouldn't have asked you to do this."
Winton looked up and regarded Cody for a moment. He nudged him again with his elbow, but with affection. "Cody, you don't gotta play mama-bear. Let us worry about that. It's going to be ok. Ain't my first rodeo."
The Carter Greenfield stadium was no match in size for some of the obscenely expensive ones around the city and state, but it was still no small thing. The mass of people and the hubbub of pre-game activities made Cody feel less visible, and he managed a laugh or two while chatting away with Winton and a handsome, funny young man named Ace who had come dressed in a leather jacket over a Houston Oilers jersey and a gold chain necklace.