Broken Field

by Jeff Hull

  Wasn’t there always next? He was going to teach out the year, but everything else seemed in flux. Tom had until quite recently imagined himself a Dumont resident for good. Would he stay now? The town would never let him forget the bumbling of its greatest football team ever.

  He knew that, if he let things calm down, he would have opportunities in bigger towns, maybe even a spot on a college staff. But he liked it here, loved the prairie and the sky, found comfort in knowing the town, admired and respected the people. Maybe teaching would be enough. He wished he could find the part of himself that had so recently cared so much about football. Hadn’t it been everything?

  Hadn’t it been what carried him through the split with Sophie and the mundanities of the divorce? Hadn’t throwing himself into the lives of kids been the only way to compensate—even if that compensation was woefully incomplete—for the loss of his son? Football had been everything he thought about—only he realized that it hadn’t.

  He’d wanted it to be, but everything else kept spilling in. He’d tried to seal Jenny Calhoun out, but she seemed to be something worth grasping for. Marlo Stark made him see that. The sun was gone beyond the empty land to the west, a strange, humid twilight gathering close to the snowpatched ground.

  The shelterbelts huddled dark and bristly. When he made the turn into his yard, Tom found a surprise. Strung across the front of his house Tom saw a broad white banner that read, in alternating crimson and blue letters: “Great Coach, Great Season.” Along the steps to his back door he saw planters of flowers, and three or four gift baskets filled with homemade jams, sauces, and soaps. Taped to the storm door was a sign that read, “Thanks, Coach Warner, for getting us where we needed to go.” It was signed by all the players on the team—except the boys who’d been kicked off—and the cheerleaders.

  Some of the players had written personal notes. The Hanson boy’s said, “Thanks, Coach, for making me a better lineman and a better player and a better person. I won’t ever forget this year.” Tom set the plastic bag with the beer cans down on the ground. Inside, he could hear Scout whining. She knew he was out there. He stared at the banner, the flowers, the sign, symbolic logic from forsaken friends. He knew what he wanted to do in that moment—he wanted to cry. But he couldn’t. He felt a hollowness well up in his chest.

  Why couldn’t he cry? What the hell was wrong with him? He started thinking about how he would clean this all up. He moved toward the door, to let Scout out. He could hear her clawing on the wood now. And then he saw, right in front of his door on the worn foot mat, a pie wrapped in foil. He suddenly remembered a line from a song Sophie had liked: “When you live in a world, it gets into who you thought you’d be.”

  He couldn’t remember who sang the song, or even the tune, but those words chased each other around the inside of his skull, and he turned and sat on the step and buried his face in his hands and wept while the dog clawed the other side of the door. He cried for his past, for his lost love and his lost son, for the future he had once believed so fully in, but would never have. Most of all he cried for himself, for feeling so frozen and empty inside and not having any idea what to do about it for so long now.

  * * *

  Josie slipped through a doorway, down a narrow hallway to a bathroom at its end, passing a darkened utility room. Just as she was about to close the door behind her, Mikie slid in.

  “Close it, close it, close it,” he said in a fast whisper.

  She held the door mostly closed but open a crack. “What are you doing?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Josie let her assessment of Mikie build for a long moment, tried to take as much in of him as she could. Was this the kind of guy he was going to be? She felt a long blade of sadness reach into her, like she was losing someone she hadn’t met yet.

  “This isn’t such a good idea,” she said.

  “Just close the door,” he said. “I just want to talk to you. You’re not going to talk to me with all your friends out there, are you?”

  “Why can’t you be normal?”

  “Oh, you mean like the guys throwing darts into each other’s legs?”

  “Why can’t you just enjoy yourself? You don’t have to hold yourself aside and, like, lurk. Just sit down, and talk to some people.”

  “Yeah,” Mikie said, his eyes wide. “Everybody here is dying to talk to me.”

  “Well they might be if you let them know you at all. You always hold yourself aside, like you want to be so different from everybody.”

  “I am different from everybody.”

  “Not really,” she said. “Not any more than anybody else.”

  “I thought if I came here you might be nice to me,” he said.

  “I am being nice,” she said through exasperated clenched teeth. Then she relaxed and repeated, “I’m being nice. What more do you want me to do?”

  “You could act like I exist.”

  “I do.”

  “Not when he’s around, Captain Football Man.”

  “It’s a hard day for him, Mikie. He’s blowing off steam. It’s not evil.”

  “So that’s going to be the party line, eh? Stand by your man?”

  She held her hands out and gave him a seriously dubious look. “Did I ever indicate to you that I wasn’t going to stand by my man?”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, falling into a mumble. “Whatever. I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “You can talk to me. Get out of here and let me pee, and we’ll go right out there and I’ll talk to you like you’re anybody else. Now get out. Before someone else comes down here.” She pushed him out of the bathroom, feeling him at first stand firm, then seem to let her wrap into him, halting a moment before he let her push him out the door. She shut it behind her and, after a second thought, turned the lock.

  When Josie came out of the bathroom door, Mikie was still waiting in the doorway, and there were people coming down the hall. Matt’s voice said, “What’s this all about?”

  “What’s what all about?” Josie asked. She had stopped in the act of scooting past Mikie in the hall.

  “Some secret meeting?” Matt asked. “Some powwow?”

  “Matt, cool it,” Josie said. She stepped forward now, to intercept him before he came too close to Mikie.

  “I’m talking to him,” Matt said. “Mike LaVagina.” Josie could see Mikie’s face fall a deeper shade of red. “You having a powwow with my girl back here, LaVagina?”

  Josie’s brother and Alex Martin had filled the other end of the short space, forming a blockade.

  “I’m just trying to take a piss,” Mikie said, his voice a shuffling whisper. He flicked a glance at Josie, and she saw the betrayal he felt.

  “What’s that?” Matt asked.

  “Just trying to take a piss,” Mikie said, louder, but he couldn’t look at Matt. His eyes shied to the side, the curve of the white showing.

  “You can’t piss outside like the rest of the boys?”

  “Jesus, Matt, don’t give the kid the third degree over his bathroom habits,” Josie said.

  “You think you can just show up here and start putting some moves on my woman?” Matt yelled at Mikie.

  “Jared,” Josie implored, “could you help me drag my idiot boyfriend out of here?”

  Josie wrapped her arms up under Matt’s armpits and tried plowing into him, which was as futile as trying to tackle a pickup truck. They stood, tilted against one another. “Jared,” she said, this time as much warning as plea. Jared came forward then, wrapped an arm around Matt’s shoulders, but also close to his neck. He tightened his grip and gave a few good ol’ boy hooks, pulling Matt toward him.

  “Come on, Mattie,” Jared said. “It ain’t worth it. Let’s go drink all that beer.”

  “That motherfucker is going to make me do a little paleface stomp on his ass,” Matt said.

  Josie let go of him, backed up a step and stomped forward again, jamming the heels of both palms into his chest. “Don’t talk l
ike that.”

  “I ain’t just talking,” Matt said.

  She whacked both palms into his chest again. “I’m going home.”

  Josie brushed by him, desperately hoping he might take the bait and follow. Jared pivoted to turn Matt in the direction she was walking and shoved him. “Go talk to her,” Jared said.

  Matt stumbled a few steps after Josie, then seemed to change his mind, righting himself in the direction of Mikie. But Mikie had slipped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

  “I oughta rip that door off its hinges,” Matt said.

  Alex, who had been watching quietly, said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Josie crossed the rec room and paused at the bottom of the steps, hoping he’d see the hesitation and follow. But Matt rushed the bathroom door, wound up his arm and threw his fist into it. His body followed. The door didn’t budge. Matt screamed into the wood, “I’m going to beat seven colors of shit out of you, LaValle. I might just kill your stupid Indian ass. Don’t let me catch you!”

  Jared and Alex both latched onto Matt and dragged him from the door. Josie started moving away again, and Matt followed. Jared and Alex stayed with him, though they had to dodge Waylon and Wyatt Aarstad, who were wrapped up in a new round of boot darts.

  Upstairs, they went right outside. In the cold dark, Matt stopped and seemed to shrug the other two boys off him. Josie had pulled her coat on before getting out the door, but Matt stood in a T-shirt, his hair spiky from running around and then the short wrestling match in the hallway. Prompted by nothing, he began to speak as if he had an audience that had asked him his opinion.

  “That Wyatt, he’s spunky, man. He keeps coming at you. Mikie LaValle is just a punk. What’s with that black wardrobe?” he asked his arms reaching into the darkness for some sort of answer.

  “I heard him the other day saying he’s a Metis now,” Alex said.

  “He’s a half-breed from Fort Miles, and I’m gonna kill that little fuck if I catch him near my woman again.”

  “He’s from Browning,” Josie said. She leaned against the fender of an F250, her arms wrapping herself for warmth.

  “How do you know that?” Matt asked. He took a step like he was coming toward her, but made it a feint, as if they were playing a game.

  “I don’t know.” Josie shrugged. “Everybody knows that.”

  “I didn’t know it. How do you know?”

  “I just know. I’m in class with him. We talk. I talk to people, Matt.”

  “I’m going in,” Jared said.

  “Go,” Matt said. “You don’t give a shit anyway. You got to play.”

  “Give a shit about what?” Jared asked.

  “Just go.”

  “Whaddya think, Joser?” Jared asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “What, are you protecting her from me now?” Matt said. He’d just caught on. “Like you could.”

  Jared stood long enough to let Matt see he wasn’t turning tail. Then he looked at Josie, and she nodded. “We’re fine.”

  “Fuck you, Frehse,” Matt said.

  Jared rolled his eyes Matt’s way. “Just …” He made a gesture with his finger like turning a knob. “Dial it down a touch, bro.”

  Then Jared went back inside. Matt didn’t move. He was going to make her come to him, and she did. He stared down at her and said, “You don’t support me. My whole life is coming apart, they just took away the only thing that matters to me, and you don’t even support me.”

  “I thought I was part of what mattered to you,” she said.

  “You were, until you decided not to support me. Now I don’t even have you on my side. Everybody’s against me. What did I do to deserve this?”

  “I support you, Matt,” Josie said, “but not when you start acting like a big puckered ass.”

  Matt looked at her then with an obtuse sadness in his eyes. He seemed unable to understand why she had said what she just had. He threw her hands down and wailed, “Nobody gives a goddamn what happens to me.” And he took off running.

  Josie shouted and followed, but she couldn’t keep up with him as he headed into the snow drifted across the field. She turned and ran back into the house and found first Waylon, then Jared and Alex.

  “He’s running again,” she said.

  Matt’s teammates took off across the field after him. She watched their backs, rectangular patches of brown and black jackets hovering over legs that flickered as they disappeared into the dark.

  * * *

  When he decided to call, Tom was actually thinking about Italy, about the places Marlo Stark had talked about.

  He wondered if people there looked different, if they spoke in different voices—languages, sure, but were the tones different? Did they wear different clothes? He had always imagined foreign countries like that, folks walking around in traditional costume, the way movies set in the Middle Ages looked. It was, he assumed without dwelling on it to much, another of those holes in his imagination. Tom did not consider himself naïve, or inexperienced.

  He felt that he had loved and been loved. And he didn’t blame any of the women who loved him for no longer being in is life. Even Sophie, whom he had believed in so completely … he knew that statistically a couple who loses a child is far less likely to find a way through. He had thought they would be different, believed, and been wrong. That the mistake held such high stakes did not mean it was any less honest than other well-intentioned mistakes.

  Nor did he blame her. Tom remembered how impossible he had found it, sometimes, just to be in her presence, just to stand under her gaze. He had been driving. He had done nothing wrong, but he had been driving. And whether she actually could or not, Tom’s experience led him to believe she would never forgive him for being the driver when her son died. He could never touch her in her grief. For the entirety of their relationship, Tom had found such confidence in the notion that, no matter the problem, Sophie thought of him as the first choice for a solution. And then a thing happened that wrecked each of them inviolately, and he could no longer access her searching.

  It wasn’t her fault, just the foolish belief that lives will always mean what you think they can. He had never answered her email. I feel bad about so many things, she had written. So did he, but that didn’t mean he knew how to make them different. Nor, until this moment, did he know anything to do about Jenny Calhoun.

  He had disrespected her by bringing the young lawyer from Great Falls into his house, making her a drink, talking into the night with her. If Jenny knew about that—and people in Dumont seemed to know about every coming and going—she would probably feel disrespected.

  Jenny was an honest woman. He suspected she would forgive him, thought that’s what the last pie meant, but he was not sure he was ready to forgive himself. He found her beautiful in so many ways, even more so in her grace, but that was the heart of it. He knew now that he had been so attracted to Marlo Stark because he felt Jenny getting close. The problem with Tom’s coping mechanisms, developed through a life lived mainly in small towns on wide-open plains, was that they relied so heavily on nothing much ever happening.

  But then things did. He had made a fool of himself, and of Jenny. Maybe it was knowing that. Maybe it was knowing the outcome of the season finally, feeling released from the burden of how everything was going to turn out. In any case, he called.

  “Hi, Tom,” she said. “How are you?”

  He tried to picture her, sitting in a chair at the table in the kitchen, where her voice would be least likely to carry up the stairs to the children in their beds. Or maybe she was on the sofa, reclining in the dark, bare ankles crossed. She was speaking softly, which made her sound either exhausted or urgent, Tom couldn’t figure out which. He said, “I’ve been here thinking.”

  “What about?” she asked. Her voice sounded so welcoming, like a soft place to land.

  “Well, I know I said I was going to call before, but then things just sort of got away fro
m me,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said, and he heard not a forgiveness or acceptance, just an acknowledgment that maybe things do sometimes get away.

  “So I’m sorry for that,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “And then I’ve been thinking a lot about how I really wish I could have talked to you more about what’s been happening.”

  “Well, you can,” Jenny said. “You know, I really admired how you did what you did. Even though I know it must have been so hard for you.”

  “Do you think it’s possible to see each other to talk about this stuff?” Tom said.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’d like that.” And there was a long pause. But he didn’t want there to be a long pause, so he said, “Well … how’re the kids?”

  “They’re great,” she said. “How’s that dog of yours? How’s Scouter?”

  “She’s good.”

  Tom let the silence hang. He felt it palpably unbalanced, wavering around some tipping point, as if the wrong words from him would topple it crashing over. He started to notice his breathing and tried to keep it deep and even, a way he liked to cope when things seemed out of his control. It wasn’t impossible to miss Sophie and his boy Derek and also want this. It wasn’t any violation to miss things he loved about his old life and to still want a new one. It didn’t make him a greedy person, or unreliable.

  “Is there a time you had in mind?” she asked.

  “Tonight is good,” Tom said.

  “Oh,” she said, and he could hear the smile. “The kids.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “I could get a sitter for, say, Thursday?”

  “Thursday would be great.”

  “Let’s do something Thursday. We can think and figure out the details later.”

  “Okay, good. That’s good.”

  “Listen, there is one thing, Tom,” she said. “I don’t want to feel like I’m just because there aren’t any other choices.”

  “No. I don’t want you to feel like that,” Tom said. “Not at all.”

  When they hung up, Tom sat in his sparsely furnished living room, alone with the TV sports newscasters, the cuts to highlights altering the dim flicker of light in the room. His fingers felt short furrows in the wooden arm of his chair, scratches from when Scout was a pup. The springs in the cushion remarked on his nervous weight shifting. He heard the wind moan outside and felt a strange comfort in it, as if the slipstream around the house’s outer walls had formed an eddy where he might find shelter.