County Line

by Bill Cameron

  Ruby Jane took a bowl from the dish rack. Bella draped herself across the opposite counter, temple to Formica, arms stretched over her head. Her grey roots showed through the henna.

  “I’m going back to my maiden name. Don’t you think that’s a good idea? Isabella Bidwell Denlinger, like the day I was born.”

  The sound of her mother’s voice drew a tight line of tension across Ruby Jane’s shoulder blades.

  “You don’t have an opinion? If anyone, I’d think you would have an opinion.”

  The sugar canister was empty. Only a crystalline crust coated the bottom of the sugar bowl. Ruby Jane rooted through the cupboards. Powdered sugar, brown sugar. No plain old white sugar. It was like living in the third world.

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Nothing to say about my plan?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Denlinger is a more refined name, don’t you think? Perhaps you could be a Denlinger too. It would please your grandfather. Ruby Jane Denlinger.”

  “Nothing pleases Grandfather.” Though that might change with Dale gone.

  “You could change your first name too. Pick something more sophisticated than that white trash nonsense your father insisted on.”

  “I like my name.”

  “You might need another one. You never know who’s going to come looking for you, baby girl.” Bella laughed, a tittering falsetto, a little bit hysterical. “What say you to that?”

  “I say it would be nice if we had some goddamn sugar.”

  “Language, young woman! Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”

  She took a bite of sugarless Cheerios. The milk was right on the edge. “As if I could forget.”

  “What was that? You mustn’t speak with your mouth full.”

  “What kind of a person says ‘mustn’t’?”

  Bella pulled herself off the counter and crossed the kitchen, opened the cupboard above the fridge. Ruby Jane had dumped all but a splash out of the Jim Beam bottle the night before. Bella swirled the thin line of liquor, puzzled. “I have no idea why you’re like this. Where are you going with that cereal?”

  “I have to get ready for school. The bus will be here in twenty minutes.”

  “There’s no rush. That nice girl from your team called. Clarice? She said she would pick you up this morning.”

  Clarice Moody was nice the way a raccoon on a chicken bone is nice.

  “Then I must hurry if I’m going to miss her, mustn’t I?”

  — + —

  Clarice found her anyway. Off the bus thirty seconds and Clarice fronted her in the main entrance of Valley View High School. Home of the Spartans. Moira Mackenzie and Ashley Wourms attended her to either side. “Why weren’t you home this morning?”

  Ruby Jane adjusted her backpack on her shoulder. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Your mother said she told you.”

  She mimed tipping a glass to her lips. “My mother says a lot of things.”

  Clarice pinched her lips in a sharp little rose. Everything about her had an edge, from her chin to the straight cut of her black bangs. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow then. Starters need to ride together. It’s team building.”

  Ruby Jane didn’t know if Clarice was offering her a compliment or bowing to the inevitable. Moira, nearly as tall but bulkier—Mothra to Clarice’s Femzilla—was a natural forward, but her lack of a shot allowed opposing teams to ignore her when she had the ball. Her strength was defense, crashing the boards and intimidating shooters with her frightful eyebrows, perfect as a tattoo, and a joyless grin so taut her skin seemed on the verge of tearing. Ashley was more airy, a solid point guard with perpetually hurt feelings whose vanilla hair scattered individual photons. At the post, Clarice could count on Ashley for the pass, no matter how ill-considered; she led the team in both assists and turnovers the previous season. Together the two epitomized Clarice’s concept of teammate: supporting cast to the one and only star.

  “The bus is when I do my homework.”

  “We won’t have homework for at least a week.” Clarice and her minions turned in formation and weaved through the chattering throng. Ruby Jane dropped her pack on the floor and leaned against the cool cinder block wall across from the main entrance—office to her right, stairway and the door to Mrs. Arnold’s math dungeon to her left. Last year her JV teammates would have joined her. As juniors they’d now gather in the upper class corridor between the cafeteria and the gym. Ruby Jane felt safer with the D&D boys who loitered near the trophy case and chattered about hit points and quantum mechanics. She ignored their furtive stares. She wasn’t first tier in the social hierarchy—no Clarice Moody or Ashley Wourms—yet still something of a pretty girl, the girl who jumped from JV to varsity midway through her sophomore year because of her ability to sink the outside shot. Fifty-five percent from the field, forty-two from three point range. A lot of people said she’d start this year. But this year was separated from last by more than summer break.

  Though the first team meeting was Thursday, formal practice wouldn’t start for a few weeks. Coach liked to get the girls together right away. Gave him a chance to make his speech, the one about how everyone starts at zero, anyone can make the team. Frosh or senior, didn’t matter—performance and teamwork win a place on the team. Nonsense, of course. Three or four girls were on the bubble, but the varsity core was set—a young team, with Moira the only senior likely to start. Ruby Jane figured she’d rotate in off the bench at first, get good minutes and score some points. But she’d start as soon as she demonstrated last year wasn’t a fluke. The morning Jimmie fled, she’d gone to the court at Farmersville Elementary and shot for hours, counted her misses in single digits.

  “Whittaker.”

  Sure enough. “Hi, Coach.” She’d had him for health her freshman year. Tall and thin like his favorite players, he was a better coach than teacher. Ruby Jane was grateful she’d never have to face another term of that fourth period. “Take out your notes and copy this down.” Every day, all semester long, the monotony interrupted by the weekly tests—open note. The only way to flunk his class was to have lousy handwriting.

  “You know about the shoot-around during lunch period, right?”

  “Sure.”

  Coach had brought an athletic renaissance to Valley View Girls Basketball, district runner-up three years earlier, in the regionals the next two years. Last season, Clarice had sprung up to six-one and gained the inside presence to control the key. Ruby Jane showed she could score from the perimeter. Shut down one, get eaten alive by the other.

  But Ruby Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to play anymore.

  “You’ve missed work-outs the last week or so.”

  “Sorry, Coach. Things came up.”

  “I understand you’ve been shooting up at the school in Farmersville.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You found time for that.” His tone was less accusatory than disappointed.

  “I needed to stay near the house. In case …” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have anything to add.

  “Of course.” Coach’s voice softened a bit. “I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

  “Yeah.”

  Coach was silent for a moment. People were squealing and laughing in the hall. First day of school, welcome back. “I haven’t seen you in forever.” Forever defined as since last weekend at Pizza Palace.

  “You haven’t heard from him?”

  The front doors opened and another pack of students came in, buses still arriving.

  “I’m sure it’s not easy, but people have been surviving broken homes for ages.”

  In other words, buck up, trooper!

  “If you ever want to talk about it, I’m available.”

  “Thanks, Coach.” Ruby Jane almost laughed to imagine that conversation. My father knelt in the mud and begged for his life. Should she find the nerve to make such a confession, Coach would only worry about how t
he experience affected her shot.

  He headed off to find more team members to motivate. But Ruby Jane could see him look back over his shoulder, concerned. “Without my outside threat,” he was probably thinking, “Clarice will have to carry the offense.” Ruby Jane knew what Coach knew, what Clarice Moody would never admit—she let the double team fluster her. Ruby Jane smiled as she remembered the story of Clarice falling apart in the regional semi last year. Two Femzillas from Piqua ate her alive. Ruby Jane hadn’t been able to play: she’d had to drive a bleeding Jimmie to the emergency room—despite not having her license—after another fight with Dale.

  Coach had fresh expectations for this year.

  My father knelt in the mud—

  Jimmie was smarter. He’d wrestled, a more individualistic sport in a school not known for its wrestling program. There’d been no Clarice Moody among the muscle-bound farm boys who made weight during the season by switching from beer to vodka. And now Jimmie had constructed a hell for Ruby Jane to share with her mother and fled, nine excruciating days before her own first day of school. With Bella’s help, word got out fast. Dale Whittaker ran off and left those children and their mother. Bella was a master of working the crowd for sympathy. Ruby Jane saw the tut-tut chins at the store, at the doctor’s office when she went in for her athletic physical. At home, she suffered through days and nights of her mother, moaning and intoxicated. “Where is your father? Ruby, why has your father left us?” As if Bella hadn’t orchestrated the whole thing.

  During the long, dead week after Jimmie escaped to Bowling Green, Ruby Jane could run only so far, could practice only so many shots on the playground court at Farmersville Elementary. Two hoops, no nets, one rim less crooked than the other. The start of the school year offered refuge. Classes, homework, practice, and, as always, roadwork. Basketball practice, even with Clarice Moody, beat the oppressive house on the Walnut Street, haunted by her pickled mother.

  “Are you awake in there?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You. In there? Are you awake?”

  Her mother had kept her up late, cataloguing Ruby Jane’s character flaws. Ruby Jane hadn’t gotten to bed until three. Six o’clock alarm. Bella’s timing was impeccable as always. Ruby Jane blinked and looked into the eyes of a strange man with a razor nick on his chin and big, brown eyes. Crisp white shirt and a thin tie in Spartan blue.

  “What?”

  “The bell rang. First period?”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  “Where are you supposed to be?”

  She dug into her backpack and pulled out her schedule. “Halstead.” She didn’t know the name, someone new. “Constitutional Law.”

  He smiled. “That’s me.”

  “You’re late too.”

  “That was the warning bell. We still have about forty seconds. We can make it.”

  “You go ahead. I’ll catch up.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  The corridor was emptying as stragglers raced to their classrooms. “I need to make a stop.”

  “You should have thought of that sooner.”

  Among her frazzled thoughts, she found the one topic sure to drive him away: “I just hope I don’t bleed all over my seat.”

  “Oh.” He stepped back. “Of course. Well, be quick.” He turned and trotted up the stairs.

  Too easy.

  She moved down the main hall toward the gym, her pace unhurried. She ran her fingers along the white wall, eyes stinging as she passed through the lingering cloud of some freshman’s Drakkar Noir overdose. Soon, once the pep squad got to work, the bleak expanses between classrooms would be adorned with butcher paper banners, rallying cries in tempera paint. TAME THE WILDCATS! … FELL THE LUMBERJACKS! … SPARTAN SPIRIT!!! For now, it was bare cinderblock and speckled industrial tile. The cool sterility suited her. When the Farmersville and Germantown school districts consolidated back in the late 60s, this post modern catastrophe arose in the no-man’s land between the two towns. Everyone hated it, except her. Ruby Jane liked to imagine herself running two-ball speed dribble drills up and down the long hall, each smack of leather against the floor like a gunshot.

  “Ruby Whittaker! Where are you going?”

  Mrs. Parmelee seemed to appear out of nowhere, tall and imposing.

  “Mister Halstead’s.”

  “The stairs are behind you.”

  “I’m getting a pop. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “So? You forgot today was the first day of school?”

  No. But my mother was drunk and required an audience last night. But she only looked at the floor between her feet. Speckled industrial tile. “Sorry.”

  Mrs. Parmelee put a hand on her forearm, a feathery touch. “Be quick. And tomorrow, get your soft drink before the bell rings.”

  “I will.”

  “See you sixth period.”

  - 16 -

  First Day of School, September 1988

  The pop machine was empty, most likely by the football team during two-a-days. At least she didn’t have to explain to Mister Halstead why she was bringing a Pepsi to class when she was supposed to be in the bathroom arranging to not bleed all over her seat.

  He smiled nervously when she slipped through the door, sent her to an empty seat near the back. An unfamiliar girl had the spot next to her. Ruby Jane nodded a greeting as she sat down. Halstead was talking. “Welcome to the new year,” and so on. She hadn’t missed much. She dropped her backpack on the floor and looked at the textbook centered on the desktop. She’d never known a teacher to put the books out like that.

  He droned on for a while: test schedule, homework policy, term project requirements—the usual rulesy syllabus hooey. She retrieved a pen and her notebook from her backpack and pretended to take notes. After a while, the girl next to her gave her a nudge.

  She looked up.

  “Your book.”

  The girl had her own book open. Ruby Jane saw everyone else did as well. Some people were writing their names inside the front cover.

  “Oh.”

  “My name is Gabi.”

  “Hi. I’m Ruby.” She wrote her name in the first slot in the Assignment Form printed inside the front cover. Halstead had noted its condition: Good. The book was brand new, but somehow Hardy Berman had managed to draw a cartoon of an erect penis on the flyleaf. She knew it was Hardy because the dimwit had signed his artwork.

  “You’re on the basketball team.”

  The girl was still talking to her. Gabi. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I haven’t decided if I’m going out this year.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering what the team is like.”

  “You play?”

  “I did back in Cleveland. Bay Village, actually. No one’s ever heard of it. I’m living with my grandparents this year.”

  “What position?”

  “Guard.”

  “Point?”

  “We rotated. Three-guard offense.”

  “We run a post-up.”

  “You have a good center?”

  Ruby Jane hated to admit it. “Yeah.” Clarice would probably be the dominant Femzilla in the league this year.

  “Why aren’t you going to play?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to.” Gabi flinched at her sharp tone, and Ruby Jane blushed. “It’s just … I haven’t made up my mind.”

  “Sorry. None of my business.”

  Ruby Jane turned back to her book and pretended to be fascinated with a sidebar on Roman law. Halstead had moved from the syllabus to a grand speech about the history of jurisprudence. Hammurabi’s Code. English common law. Some guy named Montesquieu. Fascinating. She found herself glancing at Gabi, who watched Halstead in a kind of rapt trance. She was a slight girl, ginger-haired and freckled, with long, ball-handler’s fingers. She wore jeans and a boy’s white t-shirt, red-trimmed Nike basketball shoes.

  Gabi turned her head, no
ticed Ruby Jane staring at her. Ruby Jane made sure Halstead wasn’t paying any attention to them. “You know about the team meeting Thursday after school, right?”

  “Already?”

  “No one told you?”

  “They had me fill out an athletics form when I registered, but no one mentioned the first meeting. At Bay, we don’t start until October first.”

  “It’s Coach talking about heart and effort. Practices won’t begin for a few weeks.” Ruby Jane pointed at her feet. “Are those your shoes?”

  “Why?”

  “Coach will want you to have new ones by start of the season.”

  “Oh.” Gabi looked at her shoes. Her face cycled from carrot to pomegranate. “Okay.”

  “They have to be Spartan blue and white. But don’t worry. I know where to get the best discounts.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ruby Jane was quiet for the rest of class. Afterwards, in the corridor, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Ruby, hey.”

  It was Finn Nielson, one of the cirrhosis cases who hung out with Jimmie the last few years—a senior now. Ruby Jane stopped in the hall and folded her arms across her chest. “Hi, Huck.” He answered to Huck only for her.

  “What’s up with James?”

  “What’s what with James?”

  “He vanished. Never showed for the party a couple of weeks ago. No one has heard from him.”

  “He went to Bowling Green.”

  “Early?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “I forgot to subscribe to his newsletter.” Ruby Jane didn’t bother mentioning the Jersey shore lie. If Jimmie checked in with any of the blockheads, who knows what he’d say.

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “Thanksgiving, I guess.” Or never.

  “He missed the party.”

  She rolled her eyes. There was always a party.

  “What are you doing this weekend?”

  “Not going to some blockhead bash, that’s for sure. You think with Jimmie gone you get to hit on me?”

  “Jesus, just asking.”