Broken Field

by Jeff Hull

“Over on the rez. My cousin.”

  “Give it back to him.”

  “No way. And don’t you tell your hunky honky, either. If he comes after me, he deserves a surprise,” Mikie said.

  “He’s not coming after you.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “What you told me before—that he couldn’t tell you what to do. That you’ll talk to me if you want to.” He might have remembered her telling him these things, though Josie couldn’t pinpoint the exact conversation in which they’d occurred. She’d certainly told anybody who wanted to listen that she decided who her friends were.

  “I haven’t talked to him,” Josie said. “I guess I’ve been avoiding him.”

  “He owns you, that’s why,” Mikie said.

  “Why do you keep saying that?” Josie said. And now here was a time that, if they were really friends, they could talk about her. “What do you hope to accomplish by saying that? It hurts my feelings every time.”

  “Maybe because it’s true.”

  Josie abruptly resettled herself in her seat, turning more toward him and pressing her back against the door. “It’s not true. He doesn’t own me. But, Mikie, I am his girlfriend.”

  “So? Does that mean he can tell you who to talk to?”

  “It means I should have his best interests at heart,” Josie said. She hoped the way she was looking at him would tell him something more obvious. She hoped he wouldn’t make her say it out loud.

  “What about your best interests?” Mikie asked.

  Which made her realize she was going to have to say it out loud. “Mikie, I’m not exactly sure you’re my best interests.” She saw right away that she’d hurt him, and was sorry and started scrambling to undo the damage. “I want to be friends. I want to talk. I’m just saying I’m not sure what my best interests are. I’ve been with Matt for two years now, and he’ll probably go away to school next year—well, who knows now, but maybe. I’m going away the year after that. I’m only sixteen.”

  “Man,” Mikie said. “Man …”

  Josie felt suddenly weak under the burden of his sensitivities. She was so tired of trying to keep everybody’s feelings unscathed all the time. “I also know,” she said, “that I don’t much appreciate sitting in a dark car with a guy wearing brass knuckles who followed me out here with his lights off. That’s just kind of creepy, Mikie. I feel like you’re needing to push me into a corner and make me make choices that I shouldn’t have to make.”

  Mikie glared at her, and what she thought she saw was a pure form of loathing, one that spends most of its time aimed at the self. “I can’t believe,” he said, “you would sell me out like that. You of all people, Josie Frehse.”

  He had the car door open and was out in the night before she could think what to say. Mikie bent, his head and shoulders leaned in to fill the open door, and added, “Tell your boyfriend to leave me the fuck alone.” That was punctuated by the car door slamming. Josie was still staring into the empty space where he had sat when she heard his engine huffing behind her, then the spinning tires, muddy snow splatting against her vehicle, as his red taillights fishtailed away. I’m just a girl, Josie thought. A plain, ordinary, normal girl. Why won’t anybody in this town let me be that?

  Josie lingered at the reservoir for a while, looking out at the blue light on the snow, following the ribs of drifts and the stridulations of broader wind shapes. She saw a coyote trotting across the frozen part of the reservoir, a mercury mix of reflection and shadow traversing the moonlit ice. There was so much to love about this place—this moment, when she was all alone with the ice and the coyote and wind, feeling as safe as she ever had, wrapped in her own sense of wanting that had nothing to do with anybody else.

  She could sit and stare up at the scattered stars for as long as she wanted, watch the moon track across the dome of night, roll down her windows and feel the shock of wind on her cheeks. She could think about songs she liked, what she’d wear to her first college party, an imaginary three-pointer to win a playoff game, her dream man—whomever he turned out to be.

  So she stayed for a long time, silent in a night orchestrated by wind, ever-altering gusts stretching long notes through the distance. It seemed sad that indulging her own sense of longing required her to be separate from everybody she knew. Then she thought she should make an appearance at the church, just to let people see her vehicle there in case she needed that cover.

  When she pulled into the lot, her headlights swept across a black Silverado, gleaming as the splinters of light traced the shapes of its quarterpanels. Her stomach dropped. Matt stared out the closed window at her, his face a fist.

  His mouth pressed shut. Shit, Josie thought. Matt’s door swung open and a booted leg reached the ground. Josie jammed her truck in park and dug around on the seat beside her, moving her phone and handbag, trying to imagine what she might be pretending to be looking for. The key to the church, maybe. She pretended to put it on her keychain, where it already was. She tried to think of what she needed to say to get out of this. Matt tried to whip her door open, but it was locked.

  “Where were you?” he growled.

  Josie stared at him through the window, leveling a gaze meant to tell him not to overdo this. She clicked the lock.

  Matt grabbed the handle and practically ripped the door from its hinges when he flung it open. His face wrinkled into a scowl and he thrust his head further into the car, sniffing.

  “You smoking dope?”

  “No,” Josie said.

  “Why’s it smell like a pot farm in here?” he asked.

  Josie shook her head.

  Matt stood back. He gnashed his teeth so hard she feared he might pop them off. “He was in here? You had that fucking punk in this car?”

  Josie swung and sat sideways in her seat, her feet in the open door space. She put her elbows on her knees and rested her chin on her fists. She felt a tremendous sadness, knowing that whatever was going to happen now would probably change everything that followed.

  “Cleaning the church?”

  “That’s what I came here to do. I got hung up earlier.”

  “Hung up?”

  “Matt.”

  “Where the fuck were you, Josie? You owe me that.”

  “We don’t owe each other things,” Josie said. “We give each other things because we want to. At least that’s how it should be.”

  “When I spend two years of my life on you, you owe me things,” Matt said. He wasn’t quite yelling now, but she could see that he was looking for his excuse to let himself go.

  “Maybe that’s our problem,” Josie said and shrugged.

  “Or maybe our problem is that you’re sneaking around with that half-breed fucking mutt.” There it was.

  “Matt …”

  “Don’t even try it, Josie. I know where you were. I can smell it on you.”

  “Matt, I’m going home now. You’re starting to scare me.”

  “Why are you doing this to me? You want to do him? Is that it? You want to fuck that scrawny little piece of shit? You want to suck his skinny Indian dick?”

  Josie closed her eyes and let her head shake slowly. She remembered how hard it was to think like a boy, to try to understand those gashes of insecurity that opened so suddenly and gouted the precious emotions boys usually cradle and grasp so close to themselves.

  “Were you with him?”

  “Matt.” Josie dropped her hand to the door armrest, as if to start pulling it closed. But Matt stepped in quickly, blocking the door with his body.

  “No,” he said. “Did you hook up with him? I want that one answer.”

  “Matt, don’t be an idiot. It’s late.”

  “Too late to clean the church, I guess.”

  “Matt, stop.”

  Matt stepped into Josie, slashing a finger in front of her face so closely that she jerked back. He kept bearing in with the finger. “Did you hook up with him?”

  Josie
said nothing. She tried to glare at Matt. For the first time in her life she actually let herself hate him a little.

  “Tell me!”

  It would have been easy to say no, but that would be a sort of gift. Josie didn’t want to give him anything anymore.

  “Matt, fuck off.”

  “Fuck off?” That seemed to surprise him. Matt responded by snatching her hair and pulling her head forward, yanking her from the truck and piling her on the ground. Josie started to shout but wound up shrieking. She felt his boot tip spear her buttock, another one lance her lower back, a few more in her ribs. Then a single heel stepping on her back, crunching her to the ground. She lay on her stomach, throbbing aches mapping the places he’d kicked her. Still holding her down with one heel, Matt squatted beside her, wrapped his fist in her hair, lifted her face off the gravel.

  “Fine, don’t tell me. I’ll beat it out of that little fuck. It’s up to you.”

  “Don’t,” Josie said. “Leave him alone.”

  “I am not going to leave him alone. Oh, no. He’s going to be anything but left alone for the next little while.”

  “He’s a poor kid who just wants friends. That’s all.”

  Matt raised an open hand, poised to strike. “Has he felt you up yet?”

  “No!” she said, fear and anger scored the counterpoint to her breathing. “God, no. Can’t people be friends without getting felt up?”

  He moved the hand to make sure she could see it was ready to hit her. “Has he touched your pussy?”

  This time Josie’s voice fell to a low grunt, devoid of energy. “No.”

  “So that’s the Josie Frehse version,” Matt said, opening his fingers and letting her hair drop in strands from them. He rose, stepped off her back. “Next we’re going to hear the Metis Mike version. Can’t wait to see how they stack up.”

  “Leave him alone, Matt. What are you going to prove?”

  “You fixed it so I can’t leave him alone. I could have when it was just mooning at you in school. But now you’re sneaking out for meetings with him—whose idea is it, anyway? His? Yours? Don’t want to tell? It’s okay. He’ll tell me.” Josie hated the smile she saw on Matt’s face, hated its smugness, but also the edge, the tilt toward oblivion, that Matt didn’t seem to have a handle on.

  “What are you crying about?” Matt said.

  Josie was crying because she’d been violated, jerked by her hair to the ground and kicked. Crying because she felt scared for Mikie, upon whom Matt, she knew, was pointed his furor at next. Crying because, as she sat looking up at Matt, she saw no glimpse of the boy she’d spent her first real love on.

  Then she saw him duck his head and flash a thumb toward his eye, sweep away a tear from his own face, before stuffing his hands in his front pockets and turning to face the wind. He started walking to his truck, took one sidelong look at Josie, but didn’t break stride. Matt started his truck and just before he closed his rig door, he turned down his car stereo so she could hear him say, “I’ll see you real soon.”

  * * *

  Later that night, Tom waited in his kitchen for Jenny to show up. He didn’t know what to do with her, felt wretched and shabby offering her a place as spare, dim, and dog-hair-drenched as his house. He had offered to make dinner and felt deeply relieved when she said she would eat with the kids before coming. He’d driven all the way to Malta after school to find a bottle of wine you couldn’t buy in a gas station. He’d bought three bottles, knowing she didn’t drink much, but feeling he might have to. He wondered if his house smelled.

  He’d noticed some houses smell musty or moldy or like smoke and dirty overalls or wet dogs. They were often the houses of old people or single people. Probably the people living there didn’t notice it anymore, was all he could think, because how else could they stand it? For a brief moment he fought the impulse to break out the housecleaning supplies and wipe down the kitchen, just to telegraph the impression that he tried. But it was too late. She arrived, her hair hanging in lush, shiny arcs on either side of her face. Down, he noticed.

  She rarely wore it down. She looked gorgeous, and he could suddenly see her as a young girl, years ago, a teenager. For some reason he saw her leading a horse or at a corral, wearing a low-slung rodeo belt buckle, a ponytail pulled through a cap. Deep-set eyes that looked at you from a long way away. Her long slim nose, lanky hips, narrow lips, red weathered cheeks, and a sloping jawline to a rounded chin. The back of her jeans higher than the front.

  Cowboy boots making her hips lead her walk. All of it in a sudden flash. And then she was herself, walking through his door in a barn coat and a pair of wool twill pants he’d never seen her in, black pants that framed her hips and hung loosely down her legs. She must have been cold, he thought. But she wore them anyway.

  Christ, the dog hairs she’d collect on those by the end of the night. She wore a red sweater with white sprinkled throughout. Maybe it was a snowflake design. Her breasts rounded it on the sides. He made sure he didn’t look too long, tried to meet her eyes, a gray-blue gleam that regarded him too earnestly.

  “So this is where you live,” she said, stepping in. “I’ve been out here, but I’ve never been in here.”

  “Yeah … yes.” What to say to that? He hurled his gaze at the floor, pushed it around like a broom, wishing away food scraps or dust bunnies that might be lying there. “Let me take your coat.”

  She handed him a bottle of wine, not the kind you buy in the gas station. He wondered if she had gone to get it, or had been saving it for something. Better get into that pretty quick, was what he was thinking.

  “Should we open this?”

  “Oh, Tom, can we just open that bottle and drink it and not talk about serious things. I feel really nervous, and I don’t want to. Can we agree to that?”

  “I think that would be fantastic,” Tom said. He didn’t sigh, but not because he didn’t want to.

  Tom made a hash of the cork, which was too dry and fell to bits beneath his overpowered augering. Well, shit, he wanted to say, but didn’t.

  Jenny busied herself talking to Scout, then stepped to the threshold of the living room and stood there, peering about.

  “How are the kids?” Tom asked. “There’s something wrong with this cork, is why it’s taking so long.”

  “Oh, no worries,” Jenny said, but he was pretty sure he could see her wanting a drink.

  Worse than high school, he thought.

  “The kids? The kids are great. They’re … constant. Erin is so cute. Yesterday, I saw her plinking on this little toy keyboard she has, like a toy musical keyboard kind of thing my dad bought her, and she was plinking away and then she’d stop and write something down and I said, ‘What are you doing, honey?’ and she said, ‘I’ve been wanting to write this song for years, but I’ve been so busy.’”

  Tom laughed too hard.

  “It’s funny the things they come up with,” she said. It sounded like she might go on but she stopped. Tom finally managed to drill out the last bit of cork, though crumbs had fallen into the wine. He poured her a kitchen glass full and handed it to her. He didn’t know what to say, and noticed that she was still not talking. He looked at her, and wondered if she could see how baffled he was.

  “I’m sorry,” Jenny said. “I sometimes forget that you didn’t get to have that. Or that you had it and then … you didn’t anymore. Which I’m sure is even worse.”

  Tom felt the enormity of that wallop him, and felt socked into silence. He drank about half his glass of wine in one gulp, nodded his head up and down while looking back to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, letting out a confused breath. She took a healthy swallow of her wine. “I didn’t mean to …”

  A little silence ensued before Tom said, “Can I ask you something? Does my house smell?”

  Jenny stared for a moment, then burst out laughing.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Does—” But she was laughing too hard to finish.
/>   Then Tom laughed. They both bent in a heightened, nervous laughter.

  “Does my house smell?” she managed to squeeze out before needing to inhale.

  Tom realized he was laughing at himself, which made him roll into a new round.

  “Does my house smell?” she said again, though it took two breaths to say it.

  Jenny let out a long cooing sigh, then said, “Oh Tom, do you take anything for your anxiety?” He looked at her, ready to start laughing again. She said, “Is there anything I can take for your anxiety?”

  And he broke up again. He tried to slug back more wine but he choked on a drop and sprayed some of that in the sink.

  “Listen,” Jenny said, “I think we’re going to need all of that.”

  “Ah, shoot,” he said. “You wanna sit down?”

  “Are there …” she giggled a bit. “Are there enough places for both of us?”

  “I got two,” he said. But when she sat on the couch, he plopped down beside her, making her self-consciously bump over a bit to put a bit of space between them. It wasn’t anything he planned, but he liked the way that unfolded.

  “When you walked in here tonight,” he said, “you looked so pretty for a minute I was imagining what you must have looked like when you were a young girl. Not saying you’re old, but, you know, young. High school. When you’re first learning about the effects you have on boys.”

  “Oh, I don’t know that I ever learned much about that.”

  “Then I realized I don’t know anything about then. You when you were young.”

  “Not much to know,” she said. “I doubt I was different than anybody else.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Not a lot of farm girls were reading Jack Kerouac and crushing on Neal Cassady.”

  “Yeah, but I also crushed on Boyz2Men. And whoever was winning the bull riding. I was just a girl.”

  “You had horses.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I could ride the hair off a horse. I grew up on the farm, west of town, out closer to the mountains. We always had a couple horses around. We had them until one of them rolled down a coulee bank and pinned my father under it. Broke his hip. He got rid of the horses after that. First time a man ever broke my heart. But farmers can’t afford to break their hips.”