Broken Field

by Jeff Hull

  * * *

  Walking briskly across the parking lot at the end of the school day, Tom’s ability to compartmentalize had completely disintegrated. Sophie’s email from the day before: I feel badly about so many things. What could that have possibly meant? Didn’t they both stagger around under the enormous weight of things to feel bad about? In a way it was nice to know that Sophie did feel bad, that she didn’t feel as self-righteous as she had left him believing she felt.

  But why circle back to it now? Tom noticed Jimmy Krock emerging from the bus garage, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. He didn’t want to talk to anybody, but could see Krock O’ heading for him. Tom supposed he’d be a popular destination around town for the next little while. He nodded at Krock.

  “How’s your seat?” Jimmy asked.

  Tom thought about the right answer. “Hotter than a five-dollar pistol.”

  “Bet it is,” Jimmy said.

  Tom could see Jimmy was feeling a kindred spirit. Why was it, Tom wondered, that when things went badly, people contrived their most direct possible connection to whatever went wrong? You saw it in car accidents all the time: My cousin was driving by there and saw the glass on the road. Said it must have been a bad one. Or: My sister knows the wife’s sister. They say the wife’s just all tore up. Can’t sleep or anything. It seemed like a habit of accessing misfortune so you could become an authority on it. Or maybe it was as simple as an inherent tendency to embrace the inevitable and get a head start on wrapping your head around the notion that everybody was bound for bad times in the end.

  “Imagine folks are talking,” Tom said.

  “Oh, it’s the feature story around town. I heard someone say they cornholed the kid,” Krock O’ said.

  “Funny how things get around.”

  “Heard you’re quitting,” Krock O’ said.

  “It’s being discussed,” Tom said.

  “Sure that’s best? Seems to me these kids need someone to set an example for them. Someone with some integrity.”

  “That’s why it’s being discussed.”

  Krock O’ snorted. Tom knew he was disappointing the other man, and wished he cared more. He didn’t have time for a soul search in the parking lot, just wanted to be outside the school building for a moment. Normally Tom used his lunch break to drive home and let the dog out, give her some food, watch her stub of a tail vibrate while she ate. The truth was he treated the dog as a touchstone.

  He’d truly understood his singlehood had become permanent the day he realized he’d quit picking dog hairs from his home cooking. But on this day, Cates had asked Tom to not leave the premises. By lunch, rumors were milled, spilled, and thrilling the student body. The teachers and staff were no better, huddling between classes, whispering furtively what they knew or thought they did. Tom had sat in the teacher’s lounge and stuffed spaghetti from the cafeteria into his mouth, tasting the acidic tomato sauce.

  His teeth found bits of soybean and grit in the meat. Nobody had called for him. In the football office, Tom found a note from Cates. He went straight to Cates’s office and knocked. Cates looked like he’d been working in a sweatshop. His hair had finger tracks plowed through it, and his eyes bore evidence of vigorous rubbing.

  “How are you feeling?” Cates asked.

  “My goddamned stomach’s churning, and I’ve got terrible pains that just zing in and disappear,” Tom said. “It’s either a physical manifestation of the stress and anxiety I’m feeling or just gas from that spaghetti.”

  Cates wanted to smile, Tom could tell. “Better have Slab run your practice again tonight,” Cates said. “Let’s get the boys in here one by one.”

  Tom saw that coming. He’d thought about it. “You talked to that attorney?”

  “She’ll be over tomorrow.”

  “Let me tell Slab to run them through some drills. Maybe we can soften them up a little. He can send them in one at a time.”

  Tom told Rideg to run the boys until they were sick. Build up to it with a couple-mile jog, then start them on sprints. No plays today. No contact. Just physical exhaustion. Tom had a list of names in a specific order. He gave it to Slab, then went inside the school building to Cates’s office. Two hours later, Tom had talked to several of his players and was taking a look at the boy sitting in front of him and Cates, Waylon Edwards.

  Even quivering with muscular exhaustion, Waylon projected the sense that he was one step ahead of you and sneaking around to kick you in the ass. It was a neat trick, and unsettling in a kid who was already six-three and blessed with an intimidating physical prowess. Tom could smell the vomit on Waylon’s breath.

  “Coach, all I saw was what you already knew,” Waylon said. Tom found something hinky about the tense of that last verb.

  “You’ve got nothing else to add?” Tom asked.

  “Just everybody helping to tape Wyatt up,” he said. Less question than confirmation.

  “Everybody.”

  “Pretty much as far as I could tell. We did it, like, in advance because we knew we had to get him up on the rack quick. We knew we wouldn’t have much time when we stopped for gas, for you to be off the bus. It took a group effort. I don’t remember exactly who did what.”

  Tom had learned early in his exposure to Waylon that the boy was inordinately smart in a town where it was not cool to be smart, so had found acceptable outlets to exercise his intelligence—mainly smart-assing. He probably understood the consequences of Saturday night’s folly better than his teammates did.

  Waylon probably guessed that the school officials would be looking to suspend some players. He probably furthermore guessed that the Wolfpack wasn’t going to win a quarterfinal game without the players school officials were thinking about suspending. He knew who they were. Waylon may have taken solace in the notion that, as a junior, he had the following year to make an impression on college scouts, but he must surely have understood that he wouldn’t have Matt and Jared and Alex on the field with him the following year.

  Tom, too, had all next year to figure out how he felt about Waylon Edwards, but right at the moment he didn’t like the feeling he was being jerked around by the kid. At the moment he had a feeling, a sharp pinch in his brain, like a sliver he could see in his skin but couldn’t get the tweezers on. The sliver was Matt Brunner.

  “None of the photos on the camera are of you?” Cates asked.

  “I don’t know anything about what those pictures are,” Waylon said. The adults sat in silence, which Waylon couldn’t stand.

  “It was just a joke,” Waylon said. “We just thought it would make a funny picture for the yearbook.”

  “By stripping him and exposing yourselves?” Cates asked.

  “Do you realize how stupid that sounds?” Tom asked Waylon.

  “Wyatt was totally down with it. He went for it.”

  “And did he go for it when somebody put their naked buttocks and genitalia in his face?” Cates asked.

  Waylon made a conciliatory squint, but said nothing.

  “Tell me about the candy bar.”

  “I don’t know anything about that candy bar,” Waylon said.

  “Waylon …” Tom said.

  “I don’t know anything about that candy bar. I don’t. I do not.”

  “Get out of here,” Tom told Edwards.

  Next he’d send for his quarterback, but he wanted to let Matt suffer a little bit longer outside. Tom had no delusions about breaking the kid, had coached him long enough to know that a little extracurricular workout couldn’t ding the shine of Matt’s bravado. Tom suspected Matt rather liked the trappings of suffering in front of his peers. As much as he knew they’d used Waylon Edward’s easy brawn, Tom simply couldn’t imagine the taping of Wyatt Aarstad happening without Matt’s involvement, without his ringleading.

  Cates pushed himself back from his desk. “It’s amazing how people lie,” he said. “They just sit and lie right to your face. I never understood how people can do that. I tried it a couple times
when I was younger, but I got all tied up and embarrassed. I could never pull it off. Some of these kids, even after we tell them what we already know, they try to cover.”

  “It’s a teenager’s job to lie,” Tom said.

  “Right,” said Cates, after thinking about that for a moment. “To their parents. Not to the world, though.”

  “Well, they never believe you already know what happened,” Tom said. “They always think you’re trying to trick them.”

  Silence settled between the two men, until Cates broke it. “I should tell you that, unless Mr. Brunner drops some kind of bomb, this keeps looking more and more like horsing around. I don’t see any criminal intent. What they did was stupid, to be sure, but the Aarstad boy seems at least complicit. I just don’t see any clear lines.”

  “I think we don’t see it the same way,” Tom said.

  Cates leaned back in his chair, pressed his lips together, looked at Tom. They were going to be frank now. “Think of the big picture. This football team means a lot to this town. You, of all people, should appreciate that. And the accomplishment you personally are on the verge of?”

  “I appreciate it,” Tom said, “but that doesn’t make it an excuse.”

  “I’m at pains to understand why you seem so resigned toward resigning,” Cates said.

  Tom thought for a moment. It was a good question. Did he really not want to win a second state championship? What was his problem with the boys on this team? He said, “I think there are right things to do.”

  “Well,” Cates said, “we’re doing some. You should know that I’ve talked to the members of the school board. There’s been a meeting called for tomorrow night. Let’s let things play out, let others weigh in. Let the town decide. It is their school.” As if to end further discussion, he checked his watch and said, “Let’s get Brunner in here.”

  “Let me talk first,” Tom said. He rose and walked down the hall and stepped outside the side door, caught Slab’s attention. Tom yelled “Number twelve” and went back into Dave’s office. From the office window, they could watch Matt head for the lockers at a run, not about to admit that the sprints had taken a toll, although his stride appeared crazy-legged. In a few minutes, the boy knocked on the door, still wearing practice sweats and a T-shirt, although he had shed the pads and cleats.

  “Yes, sir—sirs?”

  Oh, this. Tom told him to have a seat and then they went through a little drama wherein Tom told him that some of the boys had already broken the code and told things they had all agreed to stay silent about, and so Matt should not hold back and be caught lying. Matt’s role in the drama was to nod calmly and peep a touch of smile to indicate it was his opinion that Tom was blowing smoke. Then Tom told the boy his team was in a bit of trouble.

  What they needed was for someone to start acting honorably before the whole season collapsed into nothing. Tom said that he was looking to Matt for that, didn’t expect it much from the rest of them. Tom said that what he prized most in Matt was his decision-making capability.

  It was why he was such a leader. Matt seemed attentive. His breath had settled down to a steady rattle. Tom stared out the window at the practice field, short dead lawn carved from a horizon of longer dead field grass. Without looking at Matt, he said, “How many hours you reckon you’ve spent out there?”

  “Well, we’ve had nine weeks of practice—eleven if you count the two before our first game. That’s …”

  When he saw Matt was intending to do math, Tom interrupted. “Your whole life, Matt? How many hours in your life have you spent preparing to play football?”

  “God, I don’t know, Coach.”

  “Hundreds? Hundreds, at least, just in formal practices. Thousands when you count all the pickup games and weight sessions?” Tom said. He turned and let his gaze fall heavily on the boy. “What’s it worth to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt replied without thinking.

  “What are your plans? Do you plan on going on, playing college ball somewhere?”

  “Football or basketball,” Matt said.

  “Do you know how it works for Class C players? I mean, recruiters are not exactly driving up and down Route Two, hunting for five-foot eleven-inch quarterbacks.”

  “I’m six-foot,” Matt said.

  Tom shrugged. “Northern, they know who’s around, but that’s small potatoes for you. Carroll, Dickinson keep an ear to the ground out here. But the Bozeman, Missoula coaches, anyone from out of state?” Tom could see Matt had no idea where he was going with this. He said, “Here’s how college coaches recruit Class C players: they call me. Every year, they call me and say, ‘You got anybody you think can play?’ If I do, which is not most years, I say, ‘You know, this kid or that kid might be a good fit for your system.’ They say, ‘Send me some film.’ Then they ask me, ‘He a good kid?’”

  Tom stopped, let Matt feel that. When he saw the light come on in the boy’s eyes, he picked up his spiel again. “When they call me this year, Matt, I’ll tell them I have some guys I think can play. I’ll tell them about your arm and your feet and about your ability to recognize defenses, and about your timing. Mechanics. Those are the easy questions. But when they start asking me about your character—and they will, because you’re a marginal recruit at best and they’ll need the intangibles to believe. Colleges can’t waste scholarships on knuckleheads who are going to get themselves thrown off the team two semesters in.

  “So when they ask, ‘Is he a good kid?’ Am I going to tell them, ‘Matt’s as honest as the day is long, I could trust him with my life?’ Or am I going to have to say, ‘To be honest, he’s kind of a jack-off. Makes poor choices off the field, sneaks around, lies to his coaches, sticks candy bars up teammates’ asses … ?’”

  Tom expected a long quiet, but Matt came right back with, “I guess you’ll tell them what you want to tell them.” He was obviously offended by the question. “I hope the first thing.”

  Tom let some time simmer away, sat staring again at the field, then at Matt. “Mr. Cates is going to ask you some questions now,” Tom said. “Before you answer, I want you to think about how much time you’ve spent playing ball, practicing for ball, thinking about ball. I want you to think about making some good decisions. Because your answers right here are going to determine how I answer those recruiters.” Tom arched his eyebrows, trying to convince Matt that he knew more than he did, perhaps even the answer to the forthcoming questions. He nodded to Cates.

  “Did you take that boy’s pants off?” Cates asked.

  Matt was shiver-quick. “Not me. No, sir.”

  Just as quickly, Tom knew he’d done it.

  “Are we looking at you in any of these photos?” Cates asked, fanning out the printed copies.

  “No, sir,” Matt said, “you’re not.”

  “This belt doesn’t look exactly like the one you wore to school today?” Cates asked, pointing to a photo of a naked ass with the pants still visible in the frame. The belt was a broad, tooled leather belt that Tom knew Matt wore with a Big Bud buckle the size of a dessert plate.

  “Lots of guys have leather belts.” Matt shrugged. “Look, Mr. Cates, to be honest, there’s no way we can win out if I get suspended. Coach knows it.”

  Cates’s eyes opened wide, as if this were his brand-new thought for the moment. He jerked a glance at Tom, as if beseeching him to consider the concept. Then he pressed the bridge between his thumb and forefinger into his brow and shook his head. When he seemed to have rubbed this most recent experience from his forehead, he said, “Matt, you’re going to get the chance to answer these questions again in the next couple days, in front of the school’s attorney. Maybe in front of the sheriff. I hope you do a better job. I want you to think about what we know and what you know and how you want to answer to your team and your school and your parents and your community. And to yourself. Why don’t you take off that team gear and go home and think about it.”

  * * *

  That evening,
at a small blue double-wide home plopped atop a rise like a thumb in the wind, Mikie LaValle stormed through the door and blew through the kitchen without a word, heading straight to his room. Caroline let him stew for an hour, then called him for dinner. Mikie opened the door and began to emerge, a wary squint in his eyes.

  “Crunchy tuna casserole,” she sang, standing outside his bedroom door, dangling a favorite she had scrambled to throw together, running to the store for the Grape Nuts he liked to have sprinkled on top.

  “Don’t be nice to me,” Mikie said.

  “Mikie,” Caroline said. “Come out here and help me eat this.”

  Mikie stood beside the table. He picked up his spoon and pried it into a hunk of tuna casserole.

  “Tell me why you won’t sit with Wyatt Aarstad,” Caroline said.

  “Christ, Mom, it’s not my choice.”

  “Why can’t you just—“

  “You’re doing the third degree,” Mikie said. He picked up his plate and run-walked down the hall to his room, making the door slam a highlight of his retreat.

  “Mikie,” Caroline said, regrouped, patience buttressing her voice. She rapped her knuckles against the door. She had yet to hear the blanking surge of indefinable music, so knew he had not gone to ground yet. She could still reach him. She rapped again. “Mikie …”

  “What do you want?” he whined through the door.

  “We’re going to talk, Mikie. Now or in an hour or tomorrow. Might as well get it over with so the rest of your night can be pleasant.”

  “You don’t listen when we talk.”

  “I can’t listen through the door.”

  “You don’t listen when we’re face to face. Your ears are on inside out.”

  Caroline almost chuckled. “I’ll listen. I’m all right-side-in ears.”

  The door cracked open. Mikie filled the vertical space, a cartoon boy as narrow as the stripe of space he stood in