Broken Field

by Jeff Hull

  Marlo watched the boy, making a mental note to check this detail with the other stories.

  “It was a joke. That’s just what the guys do,” Wyatt was saying. “It’s what we do on the team.”

  She asked him about the team and his role on it. The story Marlo heard from Wyatt was of a boy who craved attention and wanted to hang with the boys who commanded it. He wanted friends. And he thought the way you gained them was through mouthing off and playing pranks and getting pranked. He was the kid that was always poking, so you’d at least notice he was there.

  “Wyatt, if the pictures hadn’t come out, would you have told anybody about this?” Marlo asked.

  “No way,” Wyatt said. “I’m no squealer.”

  “You wouldn’t have wanted to get the guys on your team in trouble?”

  “No way.”

  “Did they do anything to you that you didn’t like?”

  “They stuck their butts in my face, but that isn’t anything.”

  “Wyatt, it’s important that you be very, very honest here. Did anybody on the bus touch you in a way you didn’t like? With their hands or any objects?”

  Wyatt thought that one through, weighing in his father’s anticipation. Then he said, “I mean, it wasn’t the best time I’ve ever had. It might have gotten carried away.”

  “What about that candy bar?” Jon Aarstad burst in.

  Wyatt looked at her as if he were about to be reprimanded, but Marlo nodded. “What did the boys do with the candy bar?”

  “They just kind of stuck it in my … butt cheeks. For a picture.”

  “Did they penetrate you in any way?”

  He flinched with an undertone of gross.

  “Did they touch your anus with the candy bar or anything else?”

  Wyatt blushed. It was clear “anus” and “penetration” were not topics discussed frequently in his interactions with adults.

  “Do I have to talk about this?” He seemed disgusted, but also amused the way only teenaged boys can be about bodily orifices.

  Marlo felt like she had him on a truth streak and she might as well try the hard one. She kept her voice analytical, and tossed the next question out like it was his to do what he wanted with. “Wyatt, did you feel like they were doing something to you, to your anus, that you didn’t want them to?”

  “Who wants a candy bar in their ass?” Wyatt said, and he beamed as if expecting some feedback for being so clever.

  “Tell her what you told me,” Jon said.

  “It wasn’t the best time I’ve ever had. I said that,” Wyatt said. “I felt like I was up there in front of everyone and they were doing things to me.”

  Marlo couldn’t help but notice that Jon Aarstad nodded on each of Wyatt’s points. “Did any of them touch your face with their penis?”

  “What? Why you gotta be sick, dude?” Wyatt said, and flinched away from her.

  “I saw the pictures, Wyatt. Did they touch you with either their penises or their buttocks?”

  “I don’t think so,” Wyatt said.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Think you’d remember something like that, son,” Jon Aarstad said.

  “I don’t know,” Wyatt said.

  Marlo asked, “Were you afraid of them?”

  “Not really,” Wyatt said.

  “Have any of them ever hurt you before?”

  “Sometimes they hold me down and give me a redbelly. Stuff like that. It doesn’t really hurt for very long.”

  “So were you scared of them at all?”

  “Why would I be scared of them? They’re my dawgs.”

  “Wyatt, why is the TV news saying that you were sexually assaulted?”

  “I heard some guys pranked them,” Wyatt said, breaking into a grin as if he wished it had been his own idea.

  “What do you mean?” Marlo asked, trying not to appear astonished.

  “I heard some guys from the team called that reporter’s hotel room and told her all kind of nasty stuff happened,” Wyatt seemed to think this part was a most excellent coup.

  “And she reported that?” Marlo struggled not to add, Are you fucking kidding me?

  Earlier that morning, when Marlo had left her own hotel room, she had been waylaid by the TV reporter, Penny Meriwether, who had, of course, stayed in the Sportsman overnight. Penny Meriwether had pretended she hadn’t been sitting in the news van for over an hour, waiting for Marlo to emerge, though Marlo knew she had been. She’d heard the van’s engine start shortly after she rose and peeked out to see the news crew loading up, and Meriwether, twisting the van’s side mirror to apply lipstick, a mic dangling over her shoulder like a pelt.

  Meriwether had at first asked politely if Marlo would go on camera for an interview, which Marlo declined. Then she had signaled her cameraman, who zoomed in on the scene as Meriwether began firing questions. Marlo struggled to remain polite and cool while saying “No comment. No comment. It would be inappropriate to comment on that at this time. Sorry, I can’t comment” until the exercise was over.

  “Why does your father think you were sexually assaulted?” Marlo asked Wyatt.

  “Those boys jab-assed my kid and everybody’s talking about it,” Jon howled.

  “That doesn’t seem to be what he’s saying.”

  “It’s all over the school! Everybody thinks the kid got jab-assed. I’m catching six flavors of shit at work over it.”

  “All due respect, Mr. Aarstad, you were the one on TV last night crying sexual assault,” Marlo said. “You’re where the innuendo came from.”

  “I was just saying what everybody else was already thinking,” Jon blustered.

  “Okay, Wyatt, I think we might be almost done,” Marlo said, while Jon fumed and tried to dream up a way back into his defense. “Have any of the guys on the team said anything to you about all this since it happened?”

  “They told me to keep quiet, like everybody was gonna.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Some of the guys. They said just told me to keep it shut.”

  “Which guys?”

  “Couple different guys.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t really remember.” He was closing down. Marlo wanted him back. “One more time—you were naked and taped up. Did anybody touch you in an inappropriate way?”

  “Well, I was naked and taped up. All those cheerleaders were there. I couldn’t cover up. I didn’t like that too much.”

  Marlo felt something giving way. “And the candy bar?”

  “Yeah, they put it in my butt in front of those girls. I didn’t want that. I was okay with them taping me up, it was a goof, a picture for the yearbook.”

  “A naked yearbook picture?

  “At first they were going to tape me up and hang me from the book rack. They texted those girls to bring the yearbook camera over. I had my clothes on. I didn’t know they were gonna, like, yank my pants down.”

  “Were you penetrated in any way? You’ve got to answer this one, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt looked at the floor, his eyes scrubbing back and forth.

  “It’s okay, Wyatt. It doesn’t make you less of a man.”

  Wyatt said, “I … I don’t know.”

  “You know, Wyatt. You definitely know. The sheriff’s going to want to know, too. I know it’s hard …”

  Wyatt looked at his father, who was staring at him. “Maybe I’ll remember better when I talk to the sheriff. Will there be a lot of people there?”

  “Is it because I’m a woman, Wyatt? Is that why you don’t want to tell me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, what about the boys who put their buttocks or their penises in your face?”

  “That’s stuff that just happens,” Wyatt said.

  “Really?” Marlo asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Who put their buttocks in your face?”

  “Matt, Waylon, Alex.”

  “Who put their penis in your face?”

&n
bsp; “Matt and Alex.”

  “Did you want them to do that?”

  “It was just goofing for the girls. Stuff seniors do to freshmen.”

  The girls, Marlo thought.

  * * *

  Josie Frehse sat at a table with Ainsley Martin and Britnee Mattoon, and they talked about what they assumed everybody else was talking about.

  “Did you see Matt do the candy bar thing?” Josie asked the two girls who had been on the bus when it all happened.

  “I didn’t,” Ainsley said.

  “I kind of did,” Britnee said.

  “Did he do what they said?” Josie asked.

  “Don’t you talk to Matt about these things?” Ainsley asked.

  Josie sat, stumped. She had talked to Matt about it but he hadn’t really told her anything. She kept thinking he would. She kept thinking she wanted to know more before she brought it up again, wanted to come to the conversation armed.

  “Is Matt, like, into that?” Britnee asked.

  “Into what?”

  “You know … butt stuff.”

  Ainsley’s face wrinkled in disgust, but clearly she wanted to know this, too. Britnee laughed at both of them.

  “No,” Josie said. Then she really got it. “Oh, they all talk about it, but not with me. God no.”

  “I’ve seen it in pornos,” Britnee said.

  “That would be so gross,” Ainsley said.

  “So gross,” Josie agreed.

  Britnee laughed at them more, because it was her job, in the group, to be shocking, and she had just done well.

  At that moment, Mikie LaValle shuffled by the table and then paused as if he were going to start talking to Josie. This was not the most unusual thing in the world. Dumont’s cafeteria—the high school itself—was not so stratified that certain people feared interacting with others. Well, Mikie probably wouldn’t stop by the football player’s table, or talk to her if Matt were in the cafeteria.

  Kids knew each other from helping out on neighbor’s or uncle’s farms, from sticking together at sports camps in Havre or Billings, from parents getting together for dinner or at the bar. Everybody knew each other, and had brothers who were friends with someone’s else’s sister, or cousins who hung out together. There were factions, just as factions existed in town. Josie wondered if any time you had two people in a room, you had factions, if it was part of being human. But it was hard to stay distinct.

  Which was why Mikie LaValle stopping at her table neither surprised nor informed Britnee Mattoon or Ainsley Martin, who were used to seeing her talk to people from all the different groups in school. They knew that Matt was developing some sort of grudge against Mikie, and suspected it was based in possessiveness, but they also knew Josie didn’t let Matt’s petty jealousies gain traction and refused to let him tell her what to do, which made theirs not the smoothest of relationships, and caused her classmates to form opinions about her—she was either being a strong role model who knew what she wanted, or just asking for trouble. The views divided neither along lines of age nor sex.

  Plenty of girls in school thought she was asking for trouble, and might even be trying to steal their boyfriends or crushes. Some girls thought Josie wanted to have a boy on every hook, and they deplored what they saw as greed in a place where even marginally attractive boys were so few and far between. On the other hand, most of the boys loved that she talked to them—even if they thought Matt would prefer she didn’t.

  So when Mikie LaValle scuffed to a halt beside her, Josie looked up from her fish stick and said, “Oh, hi Mikie. ’Sup?”

  Mikie held his tray and looked at the other girls at the table as if they were contagious, his distrust palpable. Josie could see he would much prefer to talk to her alone and, while she had no desire to make him feel uncomfortable, she didn’t see why she should have to leave her friends to talk. She had, the way she saw it, no secrets.

  Except of course there was the night at the reservoir, which was definitely still a secret, even though nothing that needed to be kept secret had happened. And she had passed a few notes that she had gone out of her way to conceal or disguise. And there had been some phone calls that nobody at the table knew about.

  “Hey,” Mikie said, and it sounded as if he were wondering if that was the right thing to say.

  Oh come on, Mikie, Josie thought, don’t geek out on me now.

  “What are you doing?’ Mikie said.

  “Just having some lunch,” Josie said.

  “You got something going on after school?” Mikie asked.

  “Yep. Basketball practice starts tonight,” Josie said, happy to be able to perk up about something. “Unofficially, of course. Shoot around.”

  Another boy stopped a few feet behind Mikie, his friend Arlen Alderdice, who was every bit as skinny as Mikie, only four inches shorter. Arlen wore glasses with rims that were too thick and toted his lunch tray like everything on it was trying to get off. He stared at Mikie, watching something he was not sure he believed, and seemed to anticipate some sort of ultimate failure.

  “You gonna go out for basketball?” Josie asked, glad to be able to sound so enthusiastic—she was this way whenever she talked to anybody about basketball—and glad she could be nice to Mikie in front of everybody.

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not rez ball,” Ainsley Martin said, sounding like he’d been arguing that it was. Josie turned and stared at her, baffled. Mikie’s glance carried more heat.

  “Yeah, well, hey, I’ll see you around,” he said, and moved off in a stride that was somehow long and bouncy at once. Arlen Alderdice swirled along, sucked away in his wake.

  “What was that?” Josie demanded of Ainsley, once Mikie was gone.

  “Rez ball is different. I didn’t want him to be disappointed.”

  “I think you managed to do that anyway,” Josie said.

  “I would never hook up with an Indian,” Ainsley said, “They’re all so gross.”

  Britnee leaned in conspiratorially, and when it became apparent nobody was tilting to meet her, she went ahead and said, “I heard they’re never circumcised.”

  “No way,” Ainsley said.

  Britnee shrugged, dared them to believe her, “I guess it’s spiritual.”

  “You’re just making that up,” Josie said. “Anyway, Mikie’s only half Indian.”

  The other two looked at her as if trying to figure out why she was defending herself.

  “Well, you can’t just make generalizations about people,” Josie said.

  “God, Jos, Matt’s in trouble so now you’re going native?” Britnee said.

  “That’s not even funny.”

  “Maybe you and ol’ what’s-his-name can move into a nice trailer at Fort Miles,” Ainsley said. “Play Keno on Saturday nights down at the gas station and get hooked on meth.”

  “That’s just … don’t even talk like that,” Josie said. “And for god’s sakes don’t talk like that around Matt. He already wants to beat the crap out of ol’ what’s-his-name.”

  “Mikie,” Britnee said. “Mikie LaVagina, so you don’t have to pretend you don’t know.”

  “Matt’s not the only one who would beat the crap out of him,” Ainsley said. “Your brother would scalp him. Probably scalp you, too. Can you imagine?”

  Ainsley let them imagine. Josie was confused about what she was supposed to be picturing. A scalping?

  “That’s, like, the worst thing you could do to your parents,” Ainsley said, talking hypothetically now. “Bringing home an Indian. God, my dad would skin me alive.”

  “I don’t think my dad would care,” Britnee said.

  “Really?” Ainsley asked, sarcastically.

  “Seriously,” Britnee said. She shrugged her lips. “If he was a nice guy and treated me good, they wouldn’t care. My parents aren’t like that.”

  “Josie’s are,” Ainsley said.

  “I don’t know if they are,” Josie said. “My dad
? I doubt it. My mom might worry but only because she knows how some people,” and here she made it clear she was referring to some people like Ainsley, “treat mixed-race couples. She’d just worry about whether I was happy.”

  “All I know,” Ainsley said, petulant after suddenly finding herself in a minority of what she clearly felt was superior thinking, “is that Matt has enough troubles right now.”

  Josie hadn’t thought they were talking about Matt, but she wasn’t going to let any ember of rumor flitter toward flammable material. “I’m not interested in cheating on Matt with Mikie LaValle,” Josie said, her tone slanted toward pointing out how ridiculous the idea was. “Just so we’re all clear on that.”

  Ainsley gave her a whatever shrug, implying Josie was the one who’d started the implication.

  “Be serious,” Josie said. She felt a compelling desire to look over her shoulder at where Mikie LaValle would be sitting, where he always sat, to see if he was watching the exchange. She wondered if he could hear any of it, or pick up from their gestures that they were talking about him. She hoped he wasn’t noticing. But mostly, she knew she couldn’t look—for his sake as much as for hers.

  * * *

  Matt Brunner sat at a desk, flanked by his parents, and told Marlo there was no way the school could keep him off the team. “If I don’t play,” he said, “we lose.”

  “Matt, I think you may have to consider that the school is looking at punishments that go beyond Saturday. You could be expelled,” Marlo said.

  “They won’t kick me out,” Matt said, slouched a little too coolly. “They need me for basketball. If I don’t play, they don’t even have a team.”

  Her first reaction had been: asshole. But the kid’s affect was so flat she had an instant understanding of how much Matt simply believed what he was saying. His parents looked on, apparently in complete agreement.

  “Matt, several people I’ve talked to think you’re lying about your role in what happened. I’m going to give you a clean slate and the benefit of the doubt. Let’s start at the beginning and you tell me what happened.”

  She let him tell his version of events, which mainly included him sitting in the back of the bus having nothing to do with any of it except helping to tape Wyatt Aarstad to the rack. The whole thing was stupid, he said, immature.